It takes courage to answer God’s call. It takes guts, moxie, and nerve, to proclaim God’s word, to declare what God has shown us, to go where God sends us. It takes courage to answer God’s call.
The late 7th century BC was a turbulent time in the history of Israel. The northern kingdom, the likely birthplace of the prophet Jeremiah, had lost its independence a century earlier. The southern kingdom, whose capital was Jerusalem, was struggling to maintain its independence. The seers and prophets attached to its weak kings advised a series of political negotiations and alliances. In the midst of this political maneuvering, maneuvering that would eventually lead to the great Exile of the 6th century, a teenaged descendant of a priestly family now living in the northern kingdom heard God’s call. We don’t know how old Jeremiah was, we don’t know where he was, and we don’t know what he was doing when God’s call came to him. Perhaps he was reading the Torah or meditating on God’s holy word.
Whatever he was doing, Jeremiah knew without a doubt that God had taken the initiative to speak to him. He knew, that the “word of the Lord” had come to him. He heard God reveal to him that God had known him intimately even before he had been born, and that God had set him aside for a particular task. Like almost everyone who has a distinct sense of God’s call, including almost all those mentioned in Scripture, Jeremiah resisted God’s call. He had a good excuse. He protested: “I’m too young!” “No,” God said, “you are not too young. And anyway, I’ll tell you where to go, to whom to speak, and what to say.” Was Jeremiah afraid to do God’s will? Of course he was, and God knew that. God told him not to be afraid, that God himself would always be with him. What is most important, God gave him the authority he needed to speak: God touched his mouth and said, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.” We don’t know what Jeremiah said to God in reply, but we do know, from the rest of the Book of Jeremiah, that Jeremiah more than fulfilled God’s charge. Often in peril of his life and challenged by the other prophets, he warned the weak kings and their flunkies over and over again, that the alliances would fail, and that the Babylonians would eventually destroy their kingdom. Having done all that God had asked of him, Jeremiah himself was exiled and ended up dying in Egypt. It takes courage to proclaim God’s word.
It takes moxie to declare what God has shown to us. On May 8, 1373, in Norwich, England, a woman of “thirty and a half,” as she said of herself, lay mortally ill. When she seemed close to the point of death, a crucifix was put in front of her. Suddenly she felt herself drawn into the crucifix. She had an intense vision of the Passion, and she experienced direct mystic sight of Jesus. After she recovered from her illness, the woman, who subsequently came to be known as Julian of Norwich, continued to have intense visions of Jesus on the cross. Altogether, Julian experienced sixteen visions. She tells us that she was a only “simple creature,” who was not literate in Latin. Nevertheless at the urging of her parish priest, she wrote up her visions briefly in a sentence or two. Following the leading of the Holy Spirit, Julian then spent the rest of her adult life enclosed in a small suite of rooms built onto the side of the church of St. Julian of Conisford in Norwich, from which comes the name by which we know her. Over the next twenty years, led by Jesus, she continued to meditate on her visions. Though not a church leader or teacher in the formal sense, through God’s leading, Julian developed a sophisticated understanding of the Passion, of the problem of sin, of the Trinity, and of Jesus as our Mother. In her last great vision, she saw the soul as a great city, at the center of which, Christ is enthroned forever.
Although she was enclosed Julian was a spiritual guide to many. At the urging of those who knew her Julian finally wrote up the full versions of all her visions. Following the last vision, Julian concluded her book having heard God’s assurance that his purpose in enabling her to write it was to have her visions more widely known. She tells us, “This book is begun by God’s gift and his grace, but it is not yet performed, as I see it. For charity pray we all to God…; for truly I saw and understood our Lord’s meaning, why he showed it was to have it known more than it is, and in this knowing he will give us grace to love him and to cleave to him.” Although Julian died in about 1416, miraculously her writings did survive. Today they are an inspiration to many. The church where it is believed that she was enclosed is a beloved shrine, and an order of Benedictine Episcopal monks and nuns bears her name. It takes moxie to declare what God has shown us.
It takes nerve to go where God sends us. Henry Winter Syle was deaf. Soon after his parents returned from mission work in China, in 1850, Henry had a severe attack of scarlet fever that robbed him of his hearing and left him prone to other illnesses. He was fortunate to be educated at the only school for the deaf in the US, and was able to enter St. John’s College in Cambridge, England. Though forced by illness to return to the US, he eventually earned both a BA and an MA from Yale College. He was the first deaf man to take degrees from a hearing college. First a teacher of the deaf, he then became a librarian of the New York Institution for the Deaf and opened a free night school for the deaf. After moving Philadelphia to work for the U.S. mint, Syle became an active lay leader in his local Episcopal parish. He joined the work of Thomas Gallaudet, who had begun working with the deaf some twenty years earlier. In Philadelphia, Syle felt a call to ordained ministry. He could have protested that he was deaf, and that the Episcopal had never ordained a deaf priest. Instead, he screwed up his courage and began studying for Holy Orders. He was ordained deacon in 1876 by Bishop William Bacon Stevens of Philadelphia. At that time, many people believed that impairment of one of the senses was an impediment to ordination. Nevertheless, Syle was encouraged by Gallaudet and Bishop Stevens to continue his studies. On October 14, 1883, against the opposition of many, Syle was ordained priest by Bishop Stevens, the first hearing-impaired person to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church.
Following his ordination, Syle was a thundering voice for mission to the deaf, not only in Pennsylvania, but also in Delaware and New Jersey. In 1888 he founded All Souls Church in Philadelphia, the first Episcopal church constructed for ministry to hearing-impaired people. A prolific writer, Syle wrote many articles for journals devoted to the deaf. He was also active in professional organizations and helped establish a home for aged and infirm deaf people in Philadelphia. When he died of pneumonia in January 1890 at the age of only forty-three, both the church and the deaf community lost a valiant servant of God.
God called Jeremiah, Julian, and Henry Syle. Although each of them felt unworthy of God’s call, each of them accepted God’s invitation. They proclaimed God’s word, declared God’s visions, and did God’s work. What of us? To what has God called us? In our conversations with the Spirit yesterday, we talked about many ways that God might be calling us to growth and ministry in this place. Are we ready to accept God’s invitation to renewal? Perhaps it’s trite to say that “God has no hands but our hands,” but in every age, God uses human servants and prophets to make Godself known to us, and to effect God’s will in the world. God is well aware of the fragility and incompetence, the sinfulness and weakness, the physical impairments, the age or youth of all God’s human instruments. In the incarnation, God experienced all that and more. Yet Scripture and history show us over and over again that God’s strength can be, indeed must be, in this world, expressed through weak human beings. What is more important, when God calls, God gives the power and authority that we need to do God’s will. All that is needed on our part is to respond to God’s call.
And so what of us? Do we have the courage to accept God’s invitation to new life?
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