SERMON OF JANUARY 18, 2008

 M. Bruce McKay
 Pilgrim-St. Luke’s United Church of Christ

 “Hearing and Responding to God’s Call”
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-20
 I Samuel 3:1-20

 Someone who understands very well the deepest yearnings in human hearts has written: “We (they) want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to our (their) lives that will relieve a chronic loneliness or lift us (them) above the exhausting, relentless toll of daily life.  We (they) need  an assurance that somebody out their cares about us (them), is listening to us (them) - that we (they) are not just destined to travel down a long highway toward nothingness.” (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope,p.202)
 In one sense, we gain this sense of purpose in our lives in as many different ways as there are people in the world. 
 In another sense, we all gain this sense of purpose in the very same way – if it’s the purpose we were created to pursue.  If we’re talking about what it means to live the life God created us to live then we’re talking about something that comes from the same source for every human being. 
 We’re talking about getting a sense of God’s purpose for our life and our life together in community with one another.
 We’re talking about the God who “knit each of us together in our mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13) doing so not to create lives of chronic loneliness or lives that travel a long highway toward nothingness but to create people with a purpose – people who know that they cannot escape the relentless pursuit of their loving Creator who is trying to communicate that somebody out there cares about them – somebody out there loves them as if there was only one of them to love.
  Our Creator communicates this deeply personal and broadly universal love by calling people into lives of self-giving service. 
 Thanks to technological advances in telecommunications calls come to us in many different ways.  No matter where we are or what we’re doing someone can track us down.  We’re always reachable.  If we purchase the right equipment we can guarantee that we won’t miss any calls, except perhaps the one call that matters most.
 When you think back over your life, and all the calls you have received, how many here would say that you have received a call from God?
 Becoming more reachable by everyone else doesn’t necessarily mean that we are more reachable by God.
 How many here would say that in some way God has called you to engage in God’s work in the world?
 Many of us may be thinking that calls from God come to priests and pastors, but not to people sitting in the pews.
 St. Paul tells us, however, that “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  (I Corinthians 12:7)
 Each of us is gifted by God and called to use our gifts for the common good. 
 Each of us is created and called by God for the purpose of making a difference in a world that is desperate for compassion, community, justice and peace.
 In case you’re thinking that you may be beyond the range of God’s calling area the Psalmist is quick to dispel any such notions.  For the God who has searched us and known us is relentlessly pursuing us in whatever corner of creation we may happen to be.  There is no place in heaven or on earth beyond the calling range of the God “who searches out our path…and is acquainted with all our ways.”  (Psalm 139:3) 
 Whether you have a sense of God’s purpose for your life or not, let’s listen together to our Still Speaking God calling Samuel.
 The boy Samuel was working in the temple under Eli, the chief priest.  Among his many jobs was keeping the lamp of God in the temple lit at night.  The lamp stayed lit through the night as a symbol of God’s abiding presence.   God’s call came to Samuel at night, when the lamp of God had not gone out.  God’s call came in a time of literal darkness and in a time of spiritual darkness as well.
 The text says that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days...”  Many other voices could be heard.  Voices of violence and greed.  Voices of hatred and hostility.  Voices of injustice and division.  Voices of isolation and separation. Many voices were heard in the land, but the word of the Lord was rare.  Sound familiar?
 Samuel heard God’s call in a time of darkness and in a place of darkness.  Lying there in the temple, in the quiet darkness of night, the other voices in the land were stilled.  It was then that Samuel heard someone call him - by name.
 
“Samuel, Samuel!” called the voice.  This was a very personal call, but it was never private.  As soon as he heard his name he ran to Eli, thinking the call came from the old priest with dim vision.
 Eli assured Samuel that he hadn’t called him and told him to go lie down again. 
 The same thing happened a second time.  When it happened a third time, Eli understood that it was the Lord who was calling the boy.  He instructed him to lie down a third time.   If he heard his name being called again, he should say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
 Samuel followed Eli’s instructions.  He heard the Lord call a fourth time and said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
 Samuel would soon discover that discerning God’s call was only the first step.  The second was responding to what he he’d heard. 
 The Lord told Samuel that it was time for a regime change.  It was time to inaugurate a new way of doing business in the temple at Shiloh.  Eli’s sons had corrupted the worship of God by seeking personal pleasure and private gain at the expense of the public good.  Now it was time for change and God needed Samuel to make it happen. 
 God needed Samuel to risk responding to God’s call.  For who could predict what Eli would do upon hearing the message God called Samuel to deliver?  Samuel’s doing so meant risking his place in the world as he’d known it and perhaps risking his life itself. 
 There was good reason for Samuel to be afraid of responding to what he heard God calling him to do.  And yet he did so faithfully and became “a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.” (I Samuel 3:20)
 Annie Dillard notes the curious way in which we come to church on Sundays.  Here we are, with secure pews and carpeted sanctuaries.  Everything is orderly, neat, tied down, predictable, respectable.  It's a safe and comfortable environment.
 And yet, says Dillard, if we knew much about the Bible and what it says about what it's like to meet God - to be called by God - then the ushers ought to be handing out crash helmets rather than bulletins! 
. 
Like Samuel, Martin Luther King, Jr. also grew up with religion.  His family business was the church.  In a sense his call to Christian discipleship came when he was five years old when he decided to chase his sister Christine down the center aisle at Ebenezer Baptist Church – only to discover that she was going forward to proclaim her faith and join the church - something he did then as well.
 But King’s call from God didn’t really come until years later. 
 He’d been the pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery since April 15, 1954.  He'd planned to become a professor, after gaining some experience in the parish.  His life was comfortable, orderly and pretty much predictable until that December day in 1955.
 At the height of the bus boycott, King would become uncertain about  his calling as its leader.  He was troubled, exhausted, and afraid for his family's safety and his own.
 One night he was unable to sleep and got up at midnight to fix himself a pot of coffee.   Sitting at his kitchen table, over an untouched cup of coffee, he prayed, "Oh Lord...I'm down here trying to do what's right.  But, Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now.  I'm afraid...I am at the end of my power.  I have nothing left.  I can't face it alone."
  In the silence of that moment at midnight, in the dark night of his own soul, King heard another voice speaking to him, saying: "Martin, stand up.  Stand up for righteousness.  Stand up for justice.  Stand up for truth.  And, lo, I will be with you, even unto the end of the world."
 “Almost at once,” King went on to say, “My fears began to go.  My uncertainty disappeared.  I was ready to face anything.” (Martin Luther King, Jr. Stride Toward Freedom, p. 114-115)
 King risked responding to God’s call by saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
 Having considered the call of Samuel and the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. some of us may still be thinking, “I’m off the hook.  After all, both Samuel and Martin grew up in the temple or the church.  They were both the sort of people you expect God to call.  They were both the sort of people you expect to say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”
 What about people in the pews and not those in the pulpit?
 Consider Rosa Parks.
 The word of the Lord had been rare in Montgomery and throughout the segregated south.  In the gathering darkness of December 1st Rosa Parks was on her way home from working as a seamstress in a downtown department store.  When the bus driver ordered her to the back of the bus, so a white person could have her seat, Rosa Parks, heard her Still Speaking God say to her, “Rosa, now is the time to take a stand.” 
 So Rosa Parks stood up that day by remaining seated.  
 She didn’t just do this on a whim.  She’d studied the theory and practice of non-violent civil disobedience at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.  She was Secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP, where she’d been a longtime member.  She’d been an active church person all her life.  She’d spent years saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” 
 When the word came she was ready to respond knowing how her life would change - knowing the risks she was taking in breaking what was then the law of the land.
 Chesley B. Sullenberger III is known as Sully to his friends.  As yesterday’s front page story began, he “spent practically his whole life preparing for the five-minute crucible that was US Airways Flight 1549.” (Crash pilot was well prepared”  Buffalo News, January 17, 2009, Front Page)
 When he spoke over the intercom telling his 155 passengers and crew members to “brace for impact” he did so with remarkable calm.  Everyone survived last Thursday’s splash landing in the Hudson River because a man named Sully had spent a lifetime pursuing God’s purpose for his life.  I don’t know whether Sully is a church person or not.  I don’t know if he sees himself as a believer or not.  I do know that God gave him “the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  And I do know that he spent his life saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
 I heard a community organizer from Connecticut tell a story this week about an immigrant who is being deported after living in this country for 35 years.  For most of that time he’s run his own auto repair business and been a faithful husband.  Several years ago he became addicted to the oxicotin that he was prescribed for back pain following a car accident.  He was arrested for possessing a controlled substance and convicted of a felony rather than a misdemeanor because he was in the country without the proper papers.
 His wife is on dialysis, as is his father-in-law.  He was the one who regularly took them for treatment.  At the hearing, when the judge deported him back to Poland, the organizer overheard his mother-in-law say something to the judge in Polish.  The judge didn’t know any Polish, but the organizer did. 
 What this elderly woman said to the judge was, “Who will shovel the snow?”
 “Who will shovel the snow?” 
 She wasn’t concerned about herself, but about her husband and her daughter.  Who will shovel the snow so they can get to dialysis was what she was asking.
 Who will shovel the snow in these incredibly hard but deeply hopeful times?
 Who will use their God-given gifts for the common good?
 Who will say when they get up every morning and go to bed every night, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!”
 Denise Levertov ends her poem called Beginners with these words:
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture…
 As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in April 1968 to those supporting the right of sanitation workers in Memphis to form a union:
 “I don’t know what will happen now.  We’ve got some difficult days ahead.  But it doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountain top.  And I don’t mind.   Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place.  But I’m not concerned about that now.  I just want to do God’s will.  And God’s (He’s ) allowed me to go up to the mountain.  And I’ve looked over.  And I’ve seen the promised land.  I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.  And I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any one (man).  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”  (April 3, 1968 Memphis, TN)
 
Barack Obama was the one who said that every human being “wants a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives that will relieve a chronic loneliness or lift them above the exhausting, relentless toll of daily life.   They want the assurance that somebody out their cares about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to travel down a long highway toward nothingness.” (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope,p.202)
 With Martin on his mind, with Lincoln in the distance, and with the love of Jesus in his soul, Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States this Tuesday.
 This won’t happen because he happened to be in the right place at the right time.   It will happen because he knew God had a purpose for his life.
 It will happen because he kept saying, over and over and over again: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!”
 The question that comes to us isn’t: “Who will take the oath of office?”
 Or “Who will lead the civil rights movement?”
 Or “Who will land the plane?
 The question that comes to us is: “Who will shovel the snow?”
 In these incredibly hard but deeply hopeful times, “Who will shovel the snow?”
 Who will use their God-given gifts and capacities for the common good?
 Who will keep saying, over and over and over again, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!”

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture…
Amen!