"Don't call me late for dinner"

Text: John 1:43-51
Other texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-10

Sometimes it seems as if our destiny were in our own hands. Sometimes is seems as if we have some control of our future. But usually it isn’t, and usually we don’t. And that can be good news.

Do you remember as a child looking out the windshield of your parent’s car as it moved along the road? It seemed that the road magically straightened out. The car seemed to go straight ahead while the road came around to meet it. The magic was that the car, or your parents, or you, seem to control the world.

But as you get older you realize that the road is fixed in space, and that the driver is directing the car to follow it, rather than making the road follow the car. So some of the power of the driver—your parent—is diminished. But not entirely. The road is not a rail. A train or trolley. The road does not compel you to follow the path it lays down. It is as if the road issues an invitation. Follow me. Follow me and your life in the minutes ahead will be easier and safer. The road does not compel you to follow it. It calls you to follow it.

It calls. Jesus calls his disciples. Samuel is called by God to be a prophet. Ministers are called to serve in a church. You are called to be here, since the word for church means to be called out of one’s house into assembly with others. Calling seems to be a religious activity.

But your vocation is your work, and the root of the word vocation—the “voc”—means to call. What is your calling, people used to say about people’s careers. One can evoke a memory—same root—meaning to call up images of the past. Academics gather in convocation, meaning to be called to gather with one another.

It may be that we march through life. Bushwhacking, blazing new trails, climbing new peaks, conquering new ground. Our future, in this view, is an open, uncharted, and virgin plain, and as our life proceeds, we create its path as we go. There is no room for calling in this view.

But trying to live like this seems to me to be like trying to push a string, trying to barge into our future rather than being invited into it. It can be hard, fruitless, and lonely work.

Or it may be that we are called into the future. That God, through others and through circumstances, makes constant tiny (or not so tiny) invitations to us. God neither pushes us nor lets us figure everything out for ourselves. Instead, God beckons us. Come this way. Come and see. Come listen.

It is not that these two views bring us to different places, though I think they do. Or that the road is any easier to travel—we are called sometimes to do hard, hard things. It is that we are blessed to live as recipients of a constant gift: the gift that we are offered a future, invited into a future. That we are called. There is adventure ahead, but it is not dependent only on our own energy and wisdom and strength. Thank God for that.

Both Samuel, in the first reading, and Nathanael, in the Gospel reading, respond to the call they experience with a sense of open, trusting, and eager acceptance.

But perhaps you don’t find this prospect thrilling and comforting. Perhaps you find it scary. Or annoying. In that case, we might look for reassurance to these two stories to find out more about how God seems to work when calling us.

First, we are called in the midst of others. We are not alone when called. Samuel is not just walking down the street when God calls to him. Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli, it says. Samuel was supported by his history, by his parents, by his work with the priest Eli. And they in turn were supported by the history of prophets and priests and stories of Israel. So Samuel is surrounded by all these witnesses and is called out of them. We are called not at random but from the story of our own lives.

Second, we are called to be with others. We are not alone after we accept God’s call. Nathanael became one of a group of disciples. Philip, already a follower of Jesus, invites Nathanael to become part of a particular gathering of followers, including Simon and Andrew. So Nathanael will be surrounded by all these companions and is called to be with them. We are called not into lonely endeavors but into associations of new friends and colleagues.

And third, we are called unexpectedly. None of us knows how and when we will be called. It often surprises us. Samuel hears God calling three times and three times thinks it must be Eli calling. It takes Eli to point out that maybe something is happening that Samuel should attend to. Samuel does not expect to be called to be a prophet. Eli sees what Samuel does not. We are called by God who sees us better than we see ourselves.

Others may suspect you are being called before you do. You think you are the wrong person, too skeptical maybe, too young, too old, too rude, have other plans. But look: here we all are at Faith in Cambridge. How did that happen? Isn’t that amazing? Who would have guessed? One moment Nathanael was lounging under a fig tree. In the next, his life is changed.

I suspect that God has hopes for us as a world and as individuals. But that does not mean that God has a blueprint or a script that each of us must follow. Whether God knows what is going to happen is up for debate. And it is unlikely that God pushes us around like little toys for God’s own amusement, or even for our own well-being. Our destiny is more complicated. It seems that God prefers to work, as we hear from scripture and in our own lives, by making us offers. By calling us.

A call is an invitation to movement. And therefore to change something. Something in our heads, or hearts, or lives. In small steps or big ones. In the way we see or the way we act. To make different practical decisions than we have been making. To hope for different things, too.

And though the consequences may be momentous, the call is gentle. God invites Samuel: Listen. Jesus invites Nathanael: Come and see. Open your ears, open your eyes. Open your hearts. Do not be afraid.

And God demands little in the form of a reply. Only an acknowledgement, not a contract. The simplest and most basic answer we can give. Our existence. And our attention.

Here I am, Lord. Speak. I am listening.