Who is God Calling Us to be?

Is God calling you? Who might God be calling you to be, and how are you responding to God’s call? If you are in the last quarter of your life, are you accepting God’s call to age gracefully, or are you fiercely resisting going “gentle into that good night?” If you are younger, how is God calling you, your spouse, and your family? How is God calling this parish? In 1841 a small group of Episcopalians decided to begin meeting. To what might this community be called 175 years later? And are we as individuals or as a parish called to partner with God in bringing God’s reign nearer?

Today’s readings from Scripture invite us to wonder about God’s call and possible responses to it Actually, from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is filled with stories of people hearing God’s call and wondering about how to answer it. Think of Jacob at Haran, how he dreamed of a ladder on which angels were going up and down and heard God’s promise to bring him back to the land of Israel. What did Jacob say when he woke up? “’Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’” Or think of Moses and the burning bush, or Isaiah in the temple, or Jeremiah. All knew themselves called by God, and all answered at first, “Surely, not me!” Even so, all eventually heeded God’s call and were transformed into leaders and prophets.

Do we see something similar in today’s Gospel reading? Jesus is about to depart from his faithful friends. Before the end, he gives them a preview of what life after his resurrection might look like. He promises that the Holy Spirit will lead and guide them and will call them to new, more confident life in him. In the last chapter of Revelation, the culmination of many visions, John of Ephesus has a foretaste of God’s future, of the re-creation and renewal of the entire cosmos. And, of course, the reading from the Acts of the Apostles depicts a point in the history of the early church where visions, calls, and responses proved decisive for the fledgling Christian community.

We enter the story at the point where Paul is making further plans for sharing the good news of Jesus. Having left Jerusalem, his plan was to stay in Asia Minor, i.e., what is today western Turkey. However, he “had a vision” of a call to Macedonia, i.e., the northern part of what today we call Greece. Taking with him the younger Timothy, he sailed about 100 miles northwest from Troas on the west coast of Turkey. He then went inland about ten miles to the Roman colony of Philippi, an area that had been settled mostly by veterans of the Roman wars who had been given land in return for their service. In a new place, Paul’s practice was to look for a synagogue where he might begin teaching devout Jews about the new Way of Jesus. So on the Sabbath day, he went where he thought they might gather, expecting no doubt to meet that “man of Macedonia” who had called to Paul in his vision. Sitting down to teach – that was the normal way in the ancient world – Paul found instead that he was teaching women.

One among these women, Lydia, heard God’s call through Paul’s teaching. Lydia was originally from an area of Asia Minor especially known for its expensive purple dye. Perhaps she was an agent of a company there. She was probably a widow and an independent businesswoman who owned her own home, to which she could invite Paul and Timothy. Most likely she was a gentile but also what was a called a “God-fearer,” i.e., someone who respected Judaism and worshipped with Jews without converting. Because of her devotion to God and her regular worship, because of her openness to God, she was able to hear God calling her to join the community of Jesus’ followers. From that moment on, her life was transformed. She was baptized, offered Paul and Timothy hospitality, eventually became a leader of the Christian community in Philippi and an evangelist in her own right, and even offered Paul her home after he was released from prison later on.

Through regular worship and prayer, both Paul and Lydia were able to hear God’s call. Both were transformed by God’s call. Paul left Asia Minor to evangelize Europe, even eventually planning trips to Rome and Spain. Lydia joined other women leaders of the early church, trusting in God’s promises, and courageously spreading the good news of Jesus wherever the Holy Spirit led them.

Does God still call us? On Monday I returned from a week-long CREDO conference at the retreat center of the Diocese of Virginia. The conference asked us to discern several questions. Perhaps the most important of these questions were “What is God calling me to do?” and “How am I responding to God’s call?” Nineteen of us officially retired clergy, all older than 68, attended the conference. Most were fully retired, but a few, like me, were still serving parishes. We were joined by eight faculty members, four of whom were also priests, representing the financial, vocational, health, and spiritual aspects of ministry. All of the faculty members were very candid about their faith journeys, how they had felt called, how they had responded, and what call they were now hearing. In small groups, each of us looked both back and ahead, sharing our own sense of how we were living out our call.

Some of you have heard my own call story, but perhaps this is a good time to share it. I was not like Lydia! Actually, I thought I heard a call to ordained ministry as a teenager, but I am old enough that no one was ordaining women in those days. As an adult I was busy with raising three children and pursuing a demanding academic career at three different universities. In 1998 I had organized a quiet morning at Good Shepherd in Athens led by a sister from the Community of the Transfiguration in Cincinnati. As I sat praying in the sanctuary, I distinctly heard God’s call. But I answered, “Not me, Lord! Go away.” In 2000, I chaired a parish discernment committee for another person. To my surprise, I asked myself the same questions that we were asking her. Again I said, “Nope, not me.” Shortly after the long-time rector of Good Shepherd left in late 2002, a sister from the Community of the Holy Spirit in New York, Sr. Faith Margaret whom some of you have met, came to talk with then Vestry members about the transition. I spent about five minutes with her talking about Vestry matters and the rest of the time about my lack of prayer life. Following her counsel, I began to pray again and in May 2003 became an associate of the Community.

Perhaps all the prayer had finally opened my ears. Perhaps the Holy Spirit finally shouted at me loud enough. In early 2004, I opened my mouth and said to Sr. Faith Margaret, “I’m thinking about ordained ministry.” She was the first person I had ever said those words to besides my spouse. After that, the Holy Spirit grabbed my hand and off we went: I was a postulant for the priesthood eleven months later, took early retirement from Ohio University in 2005, was ordained priest three years later, and have now stood before you for eight years. By God’s grace, and with the help of you all, my spiritual directors, and many others, I am still learning and growing as a follower of Jesus.

What is God calling you to do? Do you create the time in your day, in your week, so that you can hear God’s call to you? Is there any Sabbath time in your life, so that you too might go outside the gate by the river and hear life-changing teaching? Have you perhaps had a vision or heard a call, as Paul and others in Scripture did? Or perhaps God’s words have pierced your soul as you have read, sat in silence, or even sung a hymn. Is God calling you to have the courage to change the course of your life, to minister in some new way to those around you, to leave behind those habits and addictions that keep you from following Jesus? How are you answering God’s call?

What is God calling us to do? Are we as a parish called to leave our comfortable home in Asia Minor and cross over to Macedonia? Perhaps there’s a Lydia waiting to hear from us. Soon after Johnny “Knuckles” DeVincenzo left prison after a 44-year sentence, he heard a child crying in the lobby of his Harlem apartment building. Her mother explained that they were both hungry, so DeVincenzo took them out to dinner. So began a most unusual partnership between the leaders of the Fortune Society, a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to reintegrate formerly incarcerated people into society, and “The Castle,” a Gothic-style apartment house. Partnering with a development firm, Fortune opened an eleven-story building adjacent to the Castle that houses both former convicts and low-income families. As so many former convicts are older and male, and so many of the low-income families are headed by single mothers, The Castle has become a unique haven. After having previously having been on the own, both the men and women have found surprisingly supportive families and healing for their souls.

Whenever we are moved by love, we are being sent by God. Who is God calling us to be? Where is God sending us? How are we answering God’s call?

Love is a Verb

A parish member who often seemed angry tackled the rector after worship one Sunday morning. “I’m so glad you preached a historical sermon,” she said. The rector was shocked by this unusual praise and beamed his thanks. The parishioner continued, “Yes, because I am sick and tired of hearing about love all the time.” In the interest of truth in advertising, I am warning you up front: this sermon is about love. Actually, we have been hearing about love throughout Easter tide, in all our Scripture texts. God loves us. God sent God’s Son to live, die, and rise again for us. We are branches of the vine that is God’s Son. As God’s beloved children we are commanded to love one another. But the “love” we are talking about is more than a feeling, more than a word, more than even a gesture. Loving one another as Jesus loves us means realizing that we are not the center of the universe, committing ourselves wholeheartedly to working for the good of others, serving others as widely and generously as we can, and enabling others to know God’s great love for them. As St. Augustine said, “One loving heart sets another on fire.”

One of those many loving hearts who set others’ hearts on fire was Harriet Bedell. When so many of us suffer from lack of love, Harriet Bedell models for us the love to which Jesus calls us. Bedell was born in Buffalo, New York in 1875 and was originally trained as a school teacher. However, she was inspired by an Episcopal missionary to China, and so she enrolled as a student in the New York Training School for Deaconesses. There she was instructed in religion, missions, teaching, and hygiene. After a further year of nurse’s training, she was sent as an apprentice deaconess to Oklahoma to minister among the Cheyenne. Her love for the people she served was so great that she was adopted into the tribe. In 1916 she was sent to Stevens Village, Alaska. She also served as a teacher and nurse at St. John’s in the Wilderness at Allakahet, just 40 miles south of the Arctic Circle, where she sometimes travelled by dogsled to remote villages. When she went home for a sabbatical in 1932, Bedell agreed to begin ministry to the Seminoles in Florida. She used her own salary to reopen a mission among them. She encouraged them to revive native crafts and to use the sale of their handicrafts to improve the local economy. Bedell knew that love is a verb, and that our love in and for Christ is to be a way of life. Even after officially “retiring” at the age of 63, Bedell continued her ministry of health care, education, and economic empowerment until Hurricane Donna wiped out her mission in 1960. Even after she finally moved into a retirement community at the age of 85, she continued to model Christ’s love for the residents of the community by teaching Sunday school, working in the infirmary, recruiting mission workers, and writing for the national Episcopal mission periodical, The Spirit of Missions. Bedell died on January 8, 1969, just short of her 94th birthday.

Throughout her long ministry Bedell showed no partiality to anyone, ministering alike to Native Americans, whites, and blacks. She too had seen Peter’s vision of God’s love for all. She too had learned the lesson that Peter and the other Jewish Christians learned in their encounter with the Roman commander Cornelius, that God has no favorites, and that the power of the Holy Spirit is available to all, regardless of community or ethnicity. Bedell also understood the lesson we heard in today’s second reading. She knew that her ministry was grounded in her relationship with Jesus. She believed that Jesus is the Son of God, and that we are freed by Jesus from the values of this world, and so she was free to minister to her neighbors, both inside and outside the church. Just as God had sent Jesus into the world, Bedell knew that she was sent to carry out Jesus’ mission. Like Jesus, she accepted her ministry not as a painful or burdensome duty, but as a joy-filled response to God’s call to her.

Indeed, Bedell was grateful for having been chosen by Jesus. She knew that she was not Jesus’ servant or slave, but rather that she was his friend, truly Jesus’ beloved. As Jesus’ friend, she had the honor of sharing with Jesus all that Jesus had learned from the Father. As Jesus’ friend, and as a member of the community called into existence by Jesus, she did her best to go and bear fruit that would last. Although Hurricane Donna destroyed her physical mission, Bedell is still remembered among Native Americans for her compassion and her respect for their way of life. The diocese of Southwest Florida continues to honor her memory on January 8, the anniversary of her death.

So, are we ready to follow Harriet Bedell’s example? Bedell’s example should help us to understand how, through committing ourselves to Jesus, we may carry forward God’s mission. Bedell shows us how to offer real witness to Jesus’ love. We too may be inspired to bear in our own time and place the fruits of love, generosity, and service that Bedell bore in her life. Oh yes, we have families, we have jobs, we have lives, we have duties, we have civic obligations to which we must attend, and surely we need time for rest and recreation. Certainly, our obligations are real. Even so, we too have been called into relationship with Jesus and with each other. We too have committed ourselves in baptism to prayer, witness and service. We too have been called Jesus’ friend, and we too have heard his commandment – his commandment, not his suggestion -- to love one another as he has loved us.

How can we too live out Jesus’ command to us, both as individuals, and as a Christian community called together by God in this place? I invite you to remember a simple formula: ASAP. No, not “As Soon as Possible.” Rather, Acknowledge God’s sovereignty, seek to do God’s will, accept personal responsibility and accountability, and place Jesus first.

ASAP. To what do those letters call us? A: Acknowledge God’s sovereignty. Who is the Lord of our lives? Is it God, or is it something or someone else? Is God someone we think about only between 10:30 and 11:30 on Sunday morning, or does our commitment to God impact the rest of our day and week? Are you putting your skills and talents to use everywhere but in this parish? Would this parish benefit from your deeper involvement in its life?

S: Seek to do God’s will. Do we prayerfully invite the Holy Spirit to guide us? Not only as we sit in this place, but in all that we undertake? I commend to you the prayers for guidance in the Book of Common Prayer. I especially invite you to ask God to direct us, so that “in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name.” I challenge you to pray this prayer daily for the coming week. Let the Holy Spirit guide your works. May we continue to follow that guidance as we embark on ministry wherever we go.

A. Accept personal responsibility and accountability. What limitations and weaknesses in our lives do we need to acknowledge, so that we can begin to heal and grow? With what are we unhappy in our lives that we may personally begin to change? Are there old enmities that we need to put to rest? Whom do we need forgive and by whom do we need to be forgiven?

P: Place Jesus first. Does Jesus really have first claim on us? Does faithfulness in our commitment to Jesus come before anything else in our lives? Here’s another challenge for you. Today, think about the person in your life, either someone you know personally, or someone you know about, who for you comes closest to modeling the kind of deep love for others that we see in Harriet Bedell. Can you follow that person’s example more closely? Are there ways in which you can love people you may never meet through working for justice and through financially supporting ministry to those in great need? At the end of the day, how can you tell if you’ve been a genuinely loving person that day? I commend to you a spiritual discipline that many have found a source of growth. Take a few minutes in your last prayers of the day, perhaps before bedtime, to reflect on the day. Thank God for all that went well, for all of God’s many blessings to you in that day. Ask God’s forgiveness for those unloving things you have done or the loving gestures that remained undone. Ask God to help you deepen your relationship with Jesus, so that you may truly live out your commitment to Jesus and obey his commandment to love one another as he has loved us.

In all that Harriet Bedell said and did for the sake of the Gospel, she brought to life the texts that we heard today as we live into resurrection life in Christ. May Harriet Bedell encourage us to offer our own witness to God’s power, and may we too partner with God so that God’s reign of peace and love may come into being.

We Are Like Him

On the wall in our family room hangs a picture of my paternal grandfather, who died before I was born. Every time I go by the picture, I stop for a moment. Hard as I try to discern my father’s face in the face of my grandfather, I can’t do so. Apparently my father resembled his mother, who was so superstitious that she would never allow anyone to take her picture. I favor my father’s side of the family and apparently also look like her. Alas, I will never know whether I do or not, at least on this side of the grave. On the other hand, I once saw a picture of one of my father’s cousins. Although I had never met him, I knew him immediately as a member of my father’s family. By the same token, anyone meeting our younger daughter would know immediately that we were mother and daughter. Our older daughter and son? They tend to favor Jack’s side of the family.

It’s a favorite game, isn’t it, especially among extended families, and especially at family gatherings, or when we look through old photograph albums. Who is like whom? Who favors whom? Is that Uncle Phil around the eyes? From which family member did he inherit his musical talent? Is she as good an athlete as Aunt Phyllis was? Who will the baby favor when he is grown?

Our readings for today invite us to look at resemblances in another way, to look through a different lens. Besides our natal families, as Christians, as human beings really, we are all members of a much larger family. As baptized Christians, we are members of Christ’s family – we are his brothers and sisters – and we are also members of the human family, all children of God. Our texts invite us to see ourselves through a different lens, not the photographer’s lens but God’s lens, to see a different kind of resemblance among us, and to see that we might resemble someone else besides Grandpa Jim or Aunt Louise.

Our first reading from the Book of Acts continues the story we have been hearing throughout Easter tide of the outward expansion of the fledgling Christian community. Besides giving us a flavor of some of the issues faced by the early followers of Jesus, the book depicts the various missionary journeys of Paul after his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Now we are in the second half of the book. We catch up with Paul as he is preaching on Mars Hill, the place where many famous philosophers, including Socrates, expounded their ideas. An outstanding speaker himself, here Paul notes that the Athenians are a very religious people and worship many different images. He then suggests, through his allusion to the Unknown God, that the Athenians already sense that there is a deeper truth underlying their usual forms of religious practice.

Paul also quotes from the Athenians’ own philosophers, suggesting that they already know that, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Echoing the assertion in Genesis that God created humanity in God’s own image, Paul then reminds the Athenians that “we too are his offspring.” The implication is clear: we are God’s children. We are loved, treasured, and valued, and we live by the grace of God at work within us. Most important, unlike the Greeks, who believed that the gods were fundamentally different from humankind, Paul asserts that we resemble God in the core of our being. We are like God, and we all have what Quakers call “that of God” in us.

Today’s psalm also points to “that of God” in us. Speaking for those who have experienced the wilderness, the psalm reminds us that God is not distant from us but, rather that God upholds us, God “holds our souls in life.” More important, for the psalmist, God listens to us and hears our prayers, not from an unbridgeable distance, but from within. Since God is within, we can express both our gratitude for God’s deliverance from trouble, and, what is more important, our deep sense of being heard and known by God. As the psalmist says, “God has heard me, he has attended to the voice of my prayer…. He has not rejected my prayer nor withheld his love from me.”

Our reading from the first letter attributed to the apostle Peter gives us a different lens through which to see ourselves. We have been hearing portions of this letter throughout Easter tide, because the letter states so well the impact of the risen Jesus on the early Christian communities. The letter was probably written in the late first century by a disciple of the apostle in order to offer consolation to a Christian community that was facing persecution at the hands of the civil authorities.

Here, the writer invites his hearers, and, by extension us, to adopt a “theology of identity,” i.e., to know ourselves, by virtue of our baptisms, as members of Jesus’ family. If we are members of his family, then we are invited to perceive our intrinsic value and worth to God. We are so valuable, the writer assures his hearers and us, that Jesus was willing to die for us. Because we are valuable to God, because we are members of Jesus’ family, we can let go of self-pity and doubt, even in the face of suffering. We can be assured that we are growing in our capacity for love and in our ability to live as Jesus lived, and that, with Jesus as our guide, we can even forgive those who persecute us.

The Gospel according to John was also written for a persecuted community. Written in the late ‘90s, the gospel was addressed to a community at odds with the wider Jewish community and its leadership. These were people who were wondering whether they had made the right choice in following Jesus. Through Jesus’ words at his last gathering with his disciples, the evangelist provides the reassurance that we all need to hear. Jesus reminds his friends that, although he is leaving them, they will always have him with them. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit he will always be inside them – and not only he himself, but God the Father as well. He will be in them, he tells them, as a kind of “organic indwellingness,” working from within them, through their own spirits. This is really the good news in a nutshell: even though Jesus is physically no longer present to us, the Holy Spirit is within us, making Christ present to us from within, enabling us to live as he lived, and continuing to remind us of our membership in his family and our resemblance to him.

If we are God’s offspring, if we are valued and loved by God, if God’s Spirit dwells within us, if we resemble Jesus, then what are we called to do? If we turn back to the letter of Peter, we hear the writer contrast those who did not “obey” with Noah and his family members who did “obey.” Noah, you remember, after the flood, was the first human being with whom God made an everlasting covenant.

So, first we are called to “obey.” Now, that is a word that gets a bad rap in our culture for anyone past childhood. The word “obey” equals “follow blindly” for us. We can’t help remembering, for example, the Nazi soldiers and officers who were only “following orders.” However, the word we translate as “obey” means, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin to “listen closely,” in order to deepen one’s trust in God. Some of you know that I am training to be a spiritual director. Spiritual direction is a listening ministry, in which one person helps another listen more closely to God. Zalman Schacter tells us that “a nun once told me so beautifully that ‘spiritual direction deals with only one thing: how to reduce our resistance to God.’” We are called to listen, in spiritual direction, in prayer, in contemplative reading of Scripture, in calming our mind through the use of Anglican prayer beads, in any way that will enable us to open our ears, to hear God, to remain connected with God, and to trust God.

And then we are called to do what Jesus commands: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” What does Jesus command? That we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, and that we love our neighbors as ourselves – actively. And here is the good news: because we resemble Jesus, because we are members of Jesus’ family, because we have God’s Spirit within us, we can live in confidence and hope that we can be and do all that God asks of us. We can evangelize, we can endure hardship for God’s sake, and we can love and serve all those around us.

O God the Holy Ghost …
Evermore enlighten us.
Thou who art Fire of Love,
Evermore enkindle us.
Thou who art Lord and Giver of Life,
Evermore live in us ….