“Waiting for God” January 15, 2017 Mono Mills United Church

Psalm 40 ^1-3 I waited and waited and waited for God.
    At last God looked and listened.
God lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from deep mud.
  Stood me up on a solid rock to make sure I wouldn’t slip.
God taught me how to sing the latest song, a song of praise.

“God called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. Paul, called to be an apostle . . . to those . . . to be saints. John exclaimed, Look . . . the Lamb of God!And he two disciples . . . followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, What are you looking for?”

I grew up a “preacher’s kid”, a ‘child of the pulpit”, daughter of a minister. Life in a minister’s household was less than exciting. Most often it was a pain, a burden. I remember one place we lived, where the manse was furnished with other people’s cast-offs, including a chair which had been used to burp babies – and was still covered with burp down the back. My mother re-covered the chair. The previous owner wanted it back. I remember my sister, an art student, arriving in church one Sunday with a large floppy hat and wrap-around coat – and the criticisms about the inappropriateness of her clothing in church. I remember the manse committee walking into the house one day, unannounced, while my mother was in the bathtub, and I was home from school sick. I remember the Session tracking us down in a campground in Cape Breton, because they couldn’t find the communion cups. Clergy then lived in glass houses and so did their kids. In many ways it has changed for the better – manse committees are now aware that if the minister is living in the house it’s a private residence and they can’t just walk in. Most people have learned that commenting on what someone wears is no longer legal regardless of who it is. As a young teen and young woman, I determined that one could live the teachings of Jesus without adhering to organised religion. I rejected the common understandings of God. I vowed that I would never become an ordained minister. Yeah – and here we are today. But I was 49 when ordained, and by then knew what I was getting into.

And yet. Long before that, I went to Japan to work for the church, I worked with refugees in Viet Nam, and with the YMCA International Refugee Services. I worked in church offices, and with aid and non-profit organisations. All the time, that energy or spirit which we call God was present – I just would not have named it that way. It was a long time before I realised that all those things were ministry, all facets of a calling.

In with other traditions within the Christian faith which follow a liturgy, we read through the Scriptures in a three-year cycle called the lectionary, which gives us what is intended to be a logical and organized life and ministry of Jesus, as well as texts which otherwise might not ever see the light of day. The readings chosen from the Hebrew Scriptures and the letters are intended to support or reinforce the story of the Gospels. Intended, although sometimes the connection is stronger than other; sometimes, the only link seems to be a word that appears in all four of the texts. Sometimes we’re hard pressed to find a link at all.

Amazingly, in today’s lectionary selection, the theme that connects them is about being called. However, today’s readings also make it clear that it’s not just certain people who are called, it’s all of us. And we learn four things about callings - they are before us, between us, beyond us, and around us.

“God called me before I was born,” is what the prophet Isaiah says about his calling. We may not be used to thinking in such terms, but if we believe that God is before us, behind us, around us, in us, and infuses everything in creation, then there is a calling to discipleship in each of us. The seed is planted. One of the ways we begin to learn about our calling is that when we tend it, it grows. The thing about a ‘call’ is that it is not always clear at first, it doesn’t get communicated in unmistakable words or a blinding flash of insight. Sometimes it’s something which on the surface seems small, even maybe ridiculous.

Even Paul had to take time to figure his calling. Yes, he had an Epiphany on the road to Damascus, but he still spent three years after figuring out exactly what he was called into; but a calling is not something we search for on our own, or find without help, or enter into alone. There are no “Lone Rangers” in the realm. Even Jesus did not discern the shape of his ministry entirely without help - a long lost, not to mention very strange cousin named John who was into a very ascetic sect called Essenes.  Neither did John. Neither Jesus nor John knew exactly what the call was. Both John and Jesus were part of a wider community in which their calls were tested.

Too often we spend time waiting around for God to do something spectacular. I don’t believe it happens that way for individuals, I don’t believe it happens that way in community either. In a sense the blueprint is already there – Jesus’ life and teaching laid out the blueprint for what we are called to do, and although we have formalised our faith into congregations and community, the blueprint is still there. The question is, do we acknowledge the call, do we embrace it, and do we live it.

Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was an American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. In his essay ‘Thoughts in Solitude’, he said this: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

One of the things Jesus said so often, is that the realm of God is ‘at hand’. He used parable to describe how the realm is, what it is like. In every instance, there’s a parallel to actions taken by people. The realm isn’t going to “just happen”. To build the realm, in the here and now, is a calling which takes every one of us in whatever way we can. Does it come in one size, one structure, one way of doing things? Or does it mean we have to change how we do things, and embrace the change – fearful though we might be.

It’s that Epiphany thing again isn’t it? About stepping out on a different road, afraid, concerned, anxious – but swallowing hard, and being willing to walk with change. It tests our faith, tests our abilities, even tests what we think is our calling, and maybe forces us to re-navigate and re-negotiate, to go down some rabbit trails on occasion. God waits patiently for us. But if we wait for God to make something happen, it won’t. The dream, the realm, is at hand - together with God.

Sources:

1.      “Never Alone” sermon by Rev. Ken Howard.

2.      Thomas Merton “Thoughts in Solitude”. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, publishers. 1905 Edition.