Here are my thoughts for the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany.
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Sometime long ago (and probably in a galaxy far, far away) I started collecting sayings that interested me. (Some of them are listed at “A Collection of Sayings”.) One that causes me to smile is “time is nature’s way of keeping everything happening at once.” Of course, with our new granddaughter, I am reminded that “a child with a hammer thinks everything is a nail.”
When I looked at my collection as I was preparing this piece, I noticed that I had also recorded a saying by Nehru. Nehru, who with Mahatma Gandhi successfully freed India and the Indian sub-continent from British colonial rule, once said,
“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”
It seems to me that I recorded this statement because it was very similar in nature to the first saying that I ever wrote down. From the Talmud, we read,
“In every age there comes a time when leadership suddenly comes forth to meet the needs of the hour. And so there is no man who does not find his time, and there is no hour that does not have its leader.”
John Kennedy used this saying as a way of expressing why he ran for President in 1960.
There have been times when I have felt that I was at a time and in a place where I was supposed to be and I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. To me, this is a feeling that comes when you are called by God.
Now, I have to be honest. I have never had the life-changing experience that transformed Saul into Paul on the road to Damascus. There are those who have said that you are not a true Christian if you do not have such a born-again experience.
But I don’t think that you have to have a public life-changing experience in order to understand that you have been called by God. To be born again is to understand that your life has a greater meaning through Christ than it does otherwise. It is to understand that there is a time when you are called to do things that only you can do. It will change your life because you will not walk the path you were walking; you will go a different way and you will be a different person to the people you meet.
I began my walk in 1963 when I was living in Montgomery, Alabama. Then I made the decision to seek the Boy Scout God and Country award. I am not sure how many individuals earn this award each year but I would hazard a guess that it is a substantially smaller number than the number of Scouts who earn the rank of Eagle. That is because the Eagle award can be earned by the successful completion of a number of tasks, whereas completion of the God and Country award requires a number of personal decisions that cannot be measured through completion of tasks.
Throughout the period of time between 1965 and 1991, when I gave my first sermon, there were times when I had a feeling that something was missing from my life. There were times in this period of life when I felt that I was lost in the wilderness and each time when that feeling of being lost was perhaps the greatest, I could feel God pulling me back.
It is a feeling that I think Isaiah is trying to express in today’s Old Testament reading. Isaiah knows that God called for him to be a prophet long before he was born. He also expresses the frustration that comes with being a prophet at that time and, in his own frustration probably expresses what will happen to the Messiah when the Messiah begins His own ministry. But Isaiah’s understanding of his situation should be something that is very familiar to each and every one of us.
It could be that your minister or a friend asked you to do something for the church. It might have been a voice in your mind was telling you that you had to do something, that you couldn’t stand by and let the people go hungry or without a home. So you started volunteering to work for a food cabinet or at a soup kitchen. You read about Habitat for Humanity and began using the skills you were taught in shop class so many years ago.
It was a call that wasn’t a shout but rather a murmur. It was like John the Baptist pointing out Jesus to his friends. It is out of curiosity that you seek, as did Andrew and Peter, to find out who Jesus was.
You might find that you are torn by this call that you hear. Society says that we are to be paid for our time and effort; society turns a deaf ear on those who call out for help and it chastises those who try to help. We often find ourselves wondering what we will gain if we answer the call and we often do not answer the call because we would much rather have the riches of the world than the riches of the kingdom.
But Paul’s words to the Corinthians somehow echo in your mind as well. We find that the work that we do will strengthen us and that we grow each day that we answer the call. Once, we were afraid to answer God’s call because of the ridicule that it would bring. We were also worried that we would turn into some mindless automaton following some tyrannical church leader.
But we find that as we work and as we study, we grow. Our lives slowly change and we become different. People say that we look the same but that we are somehow not the same. We are not sure how to answer them but we explain that a call from God is not a life-ending change but rather a life-changing beginning. A life in Christ has not restricted us but rather allowed us to grow.
And one day, someone came up to you and say thank you for what you did.
The call to be a follower of Christ is neither as dramatic as some make it out to be nor so subtle as to not even be noticed. Rather, it is a part of your life. The life change will come after you are called, not before. The likelihood is that you are being called right now, by the name that your parents gave you when you were born. All you have to do is stop for a moment and listen, for the call is there and it is up to you to answer. You are called by your name because God knows your name and He wishes you to be a part of His Kingdom.
(1) Isaiah 49: 1 - 7
(2) See the Gospel lesson for today – John 1: 29 - 42
(3) 1 Corinthians 1: 1 - 9
