The Call of all Callings

2 Epiphany B  January 15,2012

1 Samuel 3:1-10  Psalm 63:1-8

1 Corinthians 6:11b-20  John 1:43-51

Lectionary Link 

  The lessons that we have read today from the first book of Samuel and from John’s Gospel are about what is often referred to in religious terms, a call from God.

  The young boy Samuel heard God speak to him at night.  Philip heard the call of Jesus and shared it with his skeptical friend Nathaniel.  And Philip was not sure how to convince him so he simply offered an invitation, “come and see for yourself.”  And Nathaniel went and showed his skepticism to Jesus and Jesus was impressed with how he spoke his mind and Nathaniel became impressed with Jesus.

  In the religious world sometimes a call from God is used to refer only to those who go into the official ordained ministries.  And so priests, bishops and pastors have callings from God.  But that is truly a very limited notion of calling, since the call of God is available to everyone and obedience to the call of God must mean more than the ordained ministry of the church, since if all people became ordained, it would be like joining an all tuba band; lots of bass without any variation.

  What can the call of God mean for you and me today?

  I would suggest that our lives are made up of many callings.  Those callings arise from the circumstances of our lives.  I did not have any choice to be a son.  That happened as soon as I was born.  And since I have an older brother and sister, I did not have any choice in being a brother.  The circumstances of our lives provide us our social definitions and in many ways we find ourselves to have as many callings as we have roles in life.  In the household division of labor, one gets the call to be the cook, the dishwasher and the one who gathers and takes out the trash.  Our situations and the requirements of each social obligation in some way define the various calls of our lives because as social beings, whether we want it or not, we have obligations to other people.  And since we are not islands, there are people who are called into our lives who have responsibility to us.  Indeed, we have some freedom in where we live and with whom we live, but all of the details of the roles that we play in life are not always completely pleasant or inspiring; in fact lots of our roles require tolerating or even enjoying a certain amount routine drudgery. 

  We don’t usually see our roles as citizen, spouse, brother, sister, son or daughter as callings in life but we know that to be successful in life requires a certain amount of multi-tasking shifting in and out of the time that we must give to the fulfillment of the various roles in our lives.

  What we normally refer to as our life’s calling is the profession for which we have trained and from which we earn our livelihood.  Hopefully our professions are chosen because we have discovered and developed our personal gifts and then can express those gifts in a vocation that can provide for us the means of livelihood.  And even our professions are not always completely satisfying.  We may feel burned out because we are forced to earn a higher standard of living and end up taking positions that do not really express our true life passion.  Sometimes we earn a living in a job and express our life passion in a hobby or avocation.

  Whatever our relation is with our life work, our life work is very important.  After we say hello, what is your name, how are you, we ask, “What do you do?”  What we do is a very important identity question in our lives.

  I would suggest to you that we do many things in our lives based upon the roles that define in our place.  Spouse, parent, sibling, student, citizen, pet owner….all of these are callings in our life.  They require our time and each role require a degree of proficiency or even excellence in order to satisfy and be satisfied.  I would also suggest that we spend our entire lives dancing with all of the various callings in our lives, and we know success and disappointments in all of our various callings of life.

  And since you and I are caught in a web of life callings, we need a Calling of callings.  And that is place for the call of God in our lives.  We can disappoint people in our lives because the way we execute our life role may not please the people who are most effected by us.  And other people can disappoint us even when they have important roles in our lives.  We can also know great joy and success in the various roles of our lives but if we try to place all of our expectation upon a particular role, we are bound to be disappointed.  That is why we need a Calling of callings.

  The call of God is the Call of callings.  We believe the call of callings is what is expressed in our baptism.  We are primarily called to be sons and daughters of God and the realization of this is to become aware of the call of God to us in our lives.

  And if we can hear and heed the call of God in our lives, then we can find the wisdom to do the balancing act which is required by all of the other calls that come to us in our life roles.

  The call of God tells that we are made first and foremost for God and that we should try to please God first, in all that we do.

  If we learn how to perform all of the roles and callings in our lives as unto God, then we will be able to weather the uncertainty that all of us have to face in all of the roles that we must fulfill in this life.

  You and I through prayer and worship are invited to attend to this call from God, a call that is universal, but unheard, if not attended to.  If we can attend to the call of God, we can find an inner place of love, peace and joy, and from this inner place of peace and joy, we can execute the requirements that meet us each day in our circumstances.

  Today, you and I have many roles and many callings, but one call from God.  And if we can hear and heed the call of God, we can find the wisdom and the ability in all of our life’s callings.  We should not expect equal success or disappointments in all of the callings of our lives; but we can expect God to be equally presence with us in all of the times and places in our lives and we can know that God is a success in our lives even when we don’t seem to be.  The call of God can make us know a kind of equalizing success in all that we do.

  I wish each of us many great adventures in the callings of our lives; but I hope that each of finds the call of God in Christ, at all times and places in our lives.  Amen.