Advent Lutheran Church

"Call - God's Revelation to Your Heart (Epiphany 2)"

As you can see by the changes made in the chancel today, we have arrived in the season of Epiphany.  The word, “epiphany” means “revealing” and it is the season of the church when we hear the stories about how God is revealed to us in the person - the ministry, life, death and resurrection – of Jesus of Nazareth.  It is also a season about the revealing of us in God’s good creation.  We begin our lives, rooted in the identity which we received in the waters of our Baptism.  And that “call” is a lifelong process for each one of us as we learn how to figure out who God created us to be.

But how does that call happen?  Well, in different ways for different people.  The Bible is full

of stories about God’s call, and one of my favorites is our Old Testament lesson today about the call of Samuel.  Samuel was a little boy whose mother, Hannah, had been barren for many years.  She prayed fervently to receive the gift of a child, and finally, God answered her prayer with the birth of Samuel.  Now, most of us would hold that child tightly to our bosom, never letting him out of our sight.  But Hannah did a strange thing.  She “returned” Samuel to God and dedicated him as a “nazarite,” one who was given for a life of service in the temple. 

            So Samuel spent his young life at the temple in Shiloh, the center of worship at that time (this was before the Temple in Jerusalem was built.)  One of his duties might have been to tend to the flame near where the Ark of the Covenant was placed.  The Ark was the same one that the Israelites carried through the wilderness, and it had become the symbol of the presence of God.  Therefore, the flame was like the eternal candle in our sanctuary, and needed constant fueling and trimming.  In the story, it says that these things happened, “before Samuel knew the Lord…before the word of the LORD was revealed to him.” 

Imagine, lying each night next to the Ark of the Covenant - being this close to the presence of God, and not knowing the Lord!  It took three false alarms with the old priest, Eli, until Eli told Samuel that if he heard his name called again that it was God, and he should probably answer him!  Scripture says that God “stood” there and called Samuel, and it was then and only then that Samuel had his own “aha!” moment, the point at which God was revealed to his heart.

I wonder if it was the stories we have in the Bible about children - Joseph and his many colored coat, Samuel serving in the Temple, or little David the shepherd boy who became the King - that gave God the idea to come to us as a child.  Imagine the picture of God as “Papa” (as depicted in The Shack.)  Picture that large, affable, African American woman stirring a great bowl of dough in the heavenly kitchen and trying to find the perfect plan for relating to Creation.  What a wonderful image - God with a twinkle in her eye – pondering the question:  “How will I get them to accept me and know me?” And then coming to an amazing answer:  “Ah, yes.  A baby… No one is afraid of a baby!” 

Babies are God’s gift, and nowhere do we hear about this relationship more beautifully than in Psalm 139: “Lord, you have searched me and known me…”“you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb."  You don’t have to be a parent to appreciate these words, because they make a prayer rise in your throat at the miracle of birth.  This prayer is not in praise of us (as if we were responsible,) but is just a reminder of how far beyond us is the mystery of Christmas:  the Incarnation of Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. That event was the illustration of Mary’s call, which was to say ‘Yes,’ and bear that Babe in Bethlehem.  And, today, from John’s Gospel - that Babe has become a Man, and has presented himself at the River Jordan to be baptized by his kinsman, John.

Jesus, still dripping, receives followers from John when the Baptist realizes that Jesus is the Lamb of God.  Andrew, and probably Philip, left John to follow Jesus, and Andrew brought in his brother Peter, while Philip excitedly invited his friend, Nathanael. There is a banter between Nathanael and Jesus, then, the “aha!” moment for Nathanael, when Jesus’ identity is revealed to his heart.  Nathanael was called.

What was your call like?  When did God become “real” to your heart? Was it at the point at which God’s ‘beckoning’ of you began in earnest?  Did you have an “aha!” moment?  Was it (as so many churches hope) on the day of your Confirmation?  (Don’t worry, that doesn’t usually happen!)  Or, was it later in your life, when you fell in love, or when you looked at that gift of a newborn baby?  Or maybe it was the first time you were driven to your knees in pain, or grief, or loneliness.  How did God become real, “revealed” in your heart?  Sometimes you need to know who you are to see God.  But sometimes, you need to see God to know who you are.

I recently received an email blog by a writer named Bronnie Ware (a palliative care/ hospice worker from Australia.)  In it she described how people in her care who are in their last few weeks of life often have the same regrets.  Whereas everyone she worked with came to a peace about their dying, they all had similar wishes about their lives.  She grouped them into five regrets, and the first one was common to almost all of her patients.  They expressed this:  “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”  The others were, in my opinion, not nearly as profound:  “I wish had hadn’t worked so hard, or “had the courage to express my true feelings;”  “I wish I had been a better friend,” or “let myself be happier.”

“I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”  A life true to itself – of knowing and being known– is the revealing of your heart to God, and the revealing of God’s heart to you.  Last week a friend of mine posted this saying on her Facebook page, “You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day…”  That reminds me of a story told by author James Limburg in his commentary on Psalms in the Westminster Bible Companion.  He tells the story about "young Rabbi Zusya, who was quite discouraged about his failures and weaknesses. Said an older rabbi to him, 'When you get to heaven, God is not going to say to you, "Why weren't you Moses?" No, God will say, "Why weren't you Zusya?" So why don't you stop trying to be Moses, and start being the Zusya God created you to be?'"

We spend alot of time and energy trying to control who God created us to be; as if our identity is something that we create on your own.  But consider these images as you reflect on your call this week:   

Consider that God is like the characters in the 1990 movie, Ghost.  When the boyfriend dies in a crime, the grieving girlfriend loses herself in the art of her pottery wheel.  As the wheels spins and she shapes the clay, she can actually feel his presence behind her, his arms encircling her, his hands over her hands, guiding the shape of the clay. Even though he was lost to her in death, he is always there…

Or like the arms that encircled you to teach you how to swing a golf club or a bat; or set you atop a horse, or a bike or a tricycle; those arms that lifted you into their lap so that you could hear a story.  The parents who raised you are always there. Or God’s arms guiding you, training you, loving you…always there – waiting for you, breathing Spirit upon you, calling your name - always there. 

Some of the final verses of Psalm 139 are, “How weighty are your thoughts, O God! I try to count them –they are more than the sand; I come to the end – I am still with you.”

Are you struggling today with who you are and how to better connect with God? Then, just be yourself with the One who made you at the first.  Relax.  Lean back into those familiar arms.  God is there. God is always there.  AMEN.