Calling
1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 1:43-51

January 19, 2003

A young earnest university graduate came to see his pastor one day, asking for advice on the process to be ordained into the ministry. The young man was bright, an excellent student, and very honest about what direction he wanted to go. The pastor was deeply perplexed before long listening to him.

He didn’t want to serve a church, and certainly did not want to be held accountable to any denominational body, nor did he feel attracted to a ministry of the sacraments, although he wouldn’t mind preaching once a month or so.

“Then why do you want to be ordained?” came the inevitable question. “For the identity, I guess,” he readily admitted. “I want to be able to sit down next to someone on a bus who looks troubled and ask them how they are without feeling I’m hustling them. I want to be up front about what I believe in public and in private. I want to be ordained so I would have the credentials to be the kind of Christian I want to be.”

The pastor reflected, as do I, God help the Church if clergy are the only Christians with “credentials.” God help even more all those troubled people on the bus who have to wait for an ordained person to get on the bus for someone to talk to them.

“To be the kind of Christian I want to be” is a way of saying what a lot of us want to do sitting here in these hard pews. If it were a matter of wishing, being a Christian would be easy, and that is an oxymoron. I am venturing that every single one of you here wants badly to be some kind of Christian. Yes, some already have an idea of the exact kind of Christian you want to be, and not anyone else’s kind. Some have no idea at all, except that somehow you are called. One point both of the Biblical stories just read make is that when you are called by God, by Jesus, you have no choice in the matter. You did not call up God; God called you.

Both stories are loaded. Those hearing them in worship already know that Samuel was one of the great prophets of Israel. We know how he responded to the call. Likewise, everybody in the early Christian Church knew about the disciples Philip and Nathanael, that they were two of the great men of the faith. No one doubts the faithfulness of these two, but the manner in which they were called is still worth knowing.

Simon Peter and Andrew are in the fold, but now Jesus decided to go to Galilee, and there he found Philip. Not bumped into, or caught his eye, but Jesus went out and found him intentionally. That is the frightening part about how God calls: it’s not haphazard, it’s intentional for God wants you in particular.

Jesus’ words were marvelously ambiguous and vague, “Follow me.” We have pretended to know what that means in the Christian context – to follow in the footsteps of Jesus – but that’s more rhetoric than it is an operating manual. Jesus did not add, “and be ordained into the ministry.” Following Jesus is frighteningly wide open as to the details. Almost anything you do is “following Jesus” if you go about trying to be God’s person in this world. That may not be good news for you, too busy already with the responsibilities of family and work and this not always kind world. To realize that you can also be God’s person in this helter skelter place may add to the burden of your soul.

Philip found Nathanael. That is his only Gospel response to Jesus’ invitation, to the call. By Philip’s announcement, Nathanael is looking to find someone. It must have been a hot topic of conversation among them. The one whom Moses and the prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth. There’s a lot of conversation we are not informed about in this narrative; the fast-forward is on, maybe we are only reading the trailers.

“Can anything good come out of Moose Jaw?” Nathanael cynically quips. Since Nazareth is never mentioned in the Old Testament, the town must have worked fast to come up with a bad reputation so quickly.

“Come and see,” Philip responds. Use scientific, empirical thinking and methods in making your evaluation.

The one thing we ought to know about the Biblical tale is that God does not do things according to our standards. In the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, there is a genealogy list of the ancestors of Jesus. Included in this famous list of begats and patriarchs are five women – in itself a noteworthy inclusion in that day – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary; all of whom did not have a good reputation as far as the world was concerned. God chooses, God calls people we have routinely eliminated from the pool.

In the very same way, God keeps on calling people who do not fit our notions of people engaged in a Christian vocation. The world doesn’t need more ministers; it needs more people who do any and every possible thing while being God’s called person in the world.

Nathanael was in a receptive mood when he finally met Jesus. Jesus figured out who he was and called out to him, “There’s an honest man for you!” I can’t image Jesus slapping him on the back, but there is almost that mood to the exchange. Nathanael is a little overly-flabbergasted and Jesus says, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

You and I are called, not to a particular occupation, certainly not a pious one, but we are given the vocation of being an incarnation of God’s mind and spirit in whatever we do, wherever we are, whenever we live. You have probably already been called, perhaps like Samuel in the temple’s night when you were not really sure where the voices were coming from. Have you listened? It’s really a question of whether you should dare to listen. And speak up, “Here I am.”

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan