The 1^st United Methodist Church of Napa

January 15, 2006

2^nd Sunday after the Epiphany

A Weekend in Recognition of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Scripture Readings:

Hebrew Scriptures – 1 Samuel 3: 1-10[1]

¹Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

²At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; ³the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. ⁴Then the LORD called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” ⁵and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. ⁶The LORD called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” ⁷Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. ⁸The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. ⁹Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

¹⁰Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

Gospel – John 1: 43-51[2]

⁴³The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” ⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” ⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Do You Have a Vocation?

Would you say that you had a vocation? We often confuse the terms "vocation" and "occupation." An occupation is how you occupy most of your time – it's what you find yourself doing, day after day, like it or not. A vocation is meant to be something far deeper: you feel called to it, as the word implies.[3] If we're truly blessed (or have simply had the courage to pay attention to that "calling" deep within us) our occupations, in fact, do express our vocations. So, how about you? What's your calling in life? Do you have a vocation – in the fullest sense of that word? What are you here for? What are you all about? Along with the consideration of those questions, I want to invite us all to consider that our lives probably reflect more than just one vocation – and, yes, the name "Grandpa" has, just a couple of years ago, gifted me with one more!

"Our Mission Statement" printed there inside the bulletin reflects yet another reality that an entire community can have a vocation.[4] Israel's vocation was to be "a light to the nations."[5] An entire nation, it was believed, came to have a sense of a divine calling to be a unique people with a special role to play in the history of salvation. Would any of us be so bold as to claim that our nation has a divine calling? More than one political party in the United States has claimed that we were that "shining city set upon a hill."[6] On the one hand such a claim seems outrageous. On the other hand sometimes, for both individuals and nations, this sense of a high calling has been ignored because no one's even listening.

Our reading from 1 Samuel begins with a fascinating statement of a time in ancient Israel's history when "the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread." Enemies were everywhere, but what the nation lacked was leadership. The judges were corrupt and people were saying that maybe it was time to have a king so that somebody strong enough would be in charge. As it's been said, "Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it."

According to the story God's answer to the people's longing was the birth of Samuel from a woman long thought to be unable to bear any children at all: Hannah. Some commentators have suggested that Hannah's barrenness was meant to symbolize the barrenness of that time in history when the "word of God" was no longer heard – by anybody. The prophet Amos later warned that there would be times of famine – not of bread and water, but "of hearing the words of the Lord."[7] It was just such a time for Hannah, for the house of Eli, and for the nation of Israel. Are we in another time such as that today?

Samuel is recognized as someone who grew up to become Israel's greatest judge. So I find it ironic that our reading for this week should be offered in the context of the conflicting viewpoints that are currently swirling around a modern-day Samuel: our latest Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito. Will he empathize with the suffering and oppressed, or will he be identified yet again with the elite and privileged of the nation?

So, in our hunger and thirst for a truly holy word, someone else appears on the scene and simply makes a two-statement invitation: "Follow me" and "Come and see." All of us who would claim to be Christian must have our vocation defined by our response to that profoundly simple invitation.

Unfortunately that invitation seems today to be made in what the playwright Eugene Ionesco has called "a metaphysical emptiness."[8] Too many people live their lives without any sense of the sacred – of transcendence – without any sense that they're part of a purpose that is, in fact, larger than themselves. Many of us have become functional atheists. We live our lives without any sense that there could be something holy about how we earn a living, raise a family, express our relationships with others, care for the environment, or even – on a national level – carry out our destiny as a people. If we don't hear such a call, has anybody?

That question reminds me of something that Marian Wright Edelman (president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund[9]) once wrote:

There is something in every one that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself…the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the end of strings that somebody else pulls.[10]

I've found it significant that the voice of the black lesbian poet Audre Lorde is one voice in which I've heard a sacred call to turn away from what has failed in our society and look toward the power of my own vocation. In a poem entitled "A Song for Many Movements," Lorde has written these powerful words:

Broken down gods survive

in the crevasses and mudpots

of every beleaguered city

where it is obvious

there are too many bodies

to cart to the ovens

or gallows

….

Our labor has become

more important than our silence[11]

Lorde asks us to take a long and lingering look at the damage caused by injustice in our society, to see how it compels us to work day-after-day-after-day against the old and broken-down gods – the same idols that The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. labored against. Her voice, even after her death from cancer, calls out to us to look honestly at the sources of our real pain: at the poverty, emptiness, oppression, and loneliness that we'll see – if we'll look – in not just those around us, but in ourselves. Her voice calls us to resist letting these things be glossed over, sentimentalized, neither glorified nor cheapened.

"Our labor has become more important than our silence" – more important than our discomfort, fear, self-doubt or apathy that keeps us from responding to that constant invitation: "Follow me." "Come and see." If we'd take up that kind of labor – like Samuel, like Philip and Nathanael – we can't help but come to know just how sacred and gifted life can be.

Today's scripture readings are metaphors about vocation, about human self-discovery heard as a sacred calling, a deeply personal and honest communication with the very center of our being. This kind of call is not only completely unrelated to what others expect of us, or try to project onto our lives, it never comes from the delusion that we have to live in such a way so that others will love us. Any vocation, if it's true, will reflect both our mind and our heart – not as something that just "feels good," but as something that feels right. In that the readings from 1 Samuel and John make it unanimous. A calling, if we're to name it holy, is fundamentally an identity issue – an imperative to be and to identify with who and what we are.

It's not surprising that a lot of us are reevaluating our lifestyles these days – taking a second look at our "callings." I'm told that while serving as a fire watcher during the dark days of World War II, one of my favorite poets, T.S. Eliot, was led to look back at the history and meaning of England. Even nations like ours can reconsider their identities and callings during times of crisis. What do we stand for? What are we willing to die for? Is it really what everyone sees happening in Iraq? Eliot refracted England's identity and calling through the focal point of an obscure village called "Little Gidding" – a place that used to be a small religious community. He wrote these memorable lines in his Fourth Quartet:

With…the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.[12]

This is why those identity crises and vaguely uncertain feelings that we have about our occupations all too often bring us back to those first stirrings within our hearts that called out to us. In spite of all our explorations, we come back to where we started and discover its meaning in a fascinating and new way.

A couple of John's disciples came searching for the messiah who was to unite Israel and be the leader that they longed for. Was this Jesus the one who would fulfill all of their hopes and finally make sense of their life-long search? "Come and see," is his almost gentle invitation. Their willingness to at least explore the possibilities that he offered, opened them up to an experience that was life-changing and, finally, transcendent. "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth."[13] It wasn't exactly who they expected. "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"[14] It's like us here in Napa saying, somewhat disparagingly, "Can anything good come out of that other end of the valley?" There's absolutely no reference at all to the tiny village of Nazareth in the writings of Moses and the prophets. So how could he be the one to whom Moses and the prophets pointed? At least they were willing to take a second look, to "come and see" for themselves.

A vocation creates the future – not just the future of the one who is called, but the future of those around him. Samuel helped create Israel for a long, long time. These first disciples help create the shape of the church. And a man named Martin created a new role for not only his own people but for all of us – white people as well as black people lived with more passion and intensity in a world that Dr. King created. But any vocation isn't really complete until the story is passed on to the next generation. Samuel, the disciples, and those who still labor on behalf of freedom and justice would have far less influence, their vocation would make far less of an impact on the world, if their stories were to go untold. A vocation is never complete unless it's recognized by the community in which it was given birth.

As long as the television networks tell our nation's story, Donald Trump will remain our patron saint, because our gods are wealth and power. But if, instead, the media were to choose to tell the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi or that itinerant rabbi from Nazareth, we would have a very different patron saint. And our country would be very different. If churches, families, and communities tell the story of their vocations, then those vocations will be the ones that will shape the world. And, yes, first disciples create the story, but then the story creates disciples. That's why we come together here Sunday after Sunday.[15]

Jesus' invitation to make our homes with him will cost us – to paraphrase T.S. Eliot – nothing less than everything we have. Yet when we do begin to search within ourselves for meaning and direction, to make sense of our callings, and even to consider that to have a calling means that somebody has called, we will "arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

* * *

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[1] The Hebrew sanctuary at Shiloh (presided over by the levitical family of Eli) was the site for pilgrimages made by early worshipers of God. It promised "the Lord's favor" to those faithful Hebrews who came with expectations for the fulfillment of their deepest desires. Samuel's mother Hannah, having her desire for a child fulfilled, dedicated her son to God and left him at the sanctuary in the custody of Eli the priest. This is the story of what happens next.

[2] This call-response-vocation is a pattern that's repeated throughout the Bible. We see it again here in John's version. Jesus, the person that the early Christian community came to be convinced was the incarnate revelation of God, has just stepped out of the waters of the River Jordan, fresh from his baptism by John, and now marks the beginning of his early ministry by calling his first two disciples – curiously enough they were originally disciples of John. Who (or what) is calling you these days? And how have you responded?

[3] The root of the word "vocation" comes from the Latin word vocatio, meaning "a calling" (and from the verb vocare, "to call").

[4] Our Mission Statement: The First United Methodist Church unconditionally welcomes all people in greater Napa wherever they are on their faith journey. As a congregation rooted in scripture, tradition, experience and reason, we promise opportunities to growth in the Spirit and to become active followers of Jesus Christ.

[5] As the servant's mission is expressed in Isaiah 49: 6b – "I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

[6] These were allusions, no doubt, to Matthew 5: 14 ("You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.") and the "new earth" described in Revelation 21: 2 ("And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."). Curiously enough, in an article posted on www.voterepublican.net, even the Puritan pilgrim John Winthrop is quoted as having said:

…that with God on our side, America would be as a “shining city set upon a hill for all the world to see,” but that “if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and byword throughout the world; we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all believers for God's sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us, until we are consumed out of the good land to which we are going...”

[7] Amos 8: 11 says, "The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord." People will run around everywhere looking for it and not find it. What's more, if things keep going as they are everyone will collapse from thirsting after it, and never rise again (vv. 12-13).

[8] This phrase comes from Ionesco's tragic farce entitled The Chairs in which two old people, isolated in a circular building surrounded by water, pass their empty days remembering an uncertain past and enacting a present that's populated by imaginary people. They're filled with regret at how abysmally they've failed to achieve their hopes and dreams of an earlier time (this from a review at http://www.curtainup.com/chairs.html). Ionesco wrote to the director of the original production that the play's subject…

…"is not the message, nor the failures of life, nor the moral disaster of the two old people, but the chairs themselves; that is to say, the absence of people, the absence of the emperor, the absence of God, the absence of matter, the unreality of the world, metaphysical emptiness. The theme of the play is nothingness."

[9] Read a bit about her at the website http://www.childrensdefense.org/about/mwe.aspx.

[10] Marian Wright Edelman, The Measure of Our Success (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 70.

[11] Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1978), pp. 52-53.

[12] T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), p. 145.

[13] John 1: 45b.

[14] Loc. cit., v. 46b.

[15] While not wanting to further lengthen an already long sermon, and while I might want to "clean up" her gender-specific references to God, I think that it's worth noting one more point in this message on vocations – from Simone Weil in her book Waiting for God (New York: Capricorn Books, 1951, p. 133):

God comes at his own time. We have the power to consent to receive him or to refuse. If we remain deaf, he comes back again and again like a beggar, but also, like a beggar, one day he stops coming. If we consent, God puts a little seed in us and he goes away again. From that moment God has no more to do; neither have we, except to wait. We only have not to regret the consent we gave him, the nuptial yes. It is not as easy as it seems, for the growth of the seed within us is painful. Moreover, from the very fact that we accept this growth, we cannot avoid destroying whatever gets in its way, pulling up the weeds, cutting the good grass….On the whole, however, the seed grows of itself. A day comes when the soul belongs to God, when it not only consents to love but when truly and effectively it loves.