Reverend Deborah Streeter
Associate Conferernce Minister
Northern California Conference, United Church of Christ
Listen to the Sermon.
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Meditation: "Cantique d'Amour" by Franz Liszt, 1847.
Brring, brring. God calling. (cell phone) Ever had an experience where it seems like a voice is calling you, from out there somewhere, from above, from a higher power, calling you, enticing and challenging you, to do something different with your life?
When we look back on our lives, have there been times when we heard some kind of call challenge like that; leave that job, move to a new town, keep quiet, speak out, go to that church, say yes, say no, stop doing something destructive, start a new way of being, do something new and surprising and it’s coming from out there, like a voice, calling us.
And we listened, and we heard, and we followed and we changed.
As individuals, we follow a call, we do something new and different because we had to. Might not get us a lot of money or prestige or success, just because we had to do it. God is calling us.
And as a community, a church, sometimes we in groups, we just have to be bold, move out there into new territory, not for money or prestige or success, but just because we have to. God is calling us, plural us.
We ordained ministers, we talk about our call, when did we receive the call to ministry, what is our call. But you know we all receive calls, God calls all of us, clergy and lay folks, to follow, speak, act, listen.
We’ve just heard two great Bible stories about call, two of many call stories in scripture. Women and men who get a sense that God has something in mind for them that was different than what they had been doing so far. Isaiah in the temple, weird mystical experience of angels and smoke and live coal on the lips, and his ultimate response to God’s question, whom shall I call? He says, here am I, send me. And he goes on to do the hard work of being a prophet, telling the truth, help folks turn and be healed.
And then Simon Peter, James and John, fishermen, Jesus says to them, go deep, experience abundance – the big catch, and then he says leave those nets, you old life, come and follow me, do a new thing, don’t catch fish, catch people.
Here’s a story about a call I once got. This wasn’t my supposed “call to ministry”, but later, I’d been a parish minister for 15 years or so, and frankly I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep doing this work. So I took a break from ministry, took some time off, went with my family, my husband, my two young kids, to Mexico for a month.
In the town we were staying in, there was a big church in the central square, open most of the time. I’d stopped in already several times as a tourist, with my kids, did the big Mom lessons on diversity, architecture, etc. But this night, I was on my own and just looking for a quiet moment of prayer. I saw they were having a service of rosary and blessing. That should be interesting, I said to myself in my best guide book-ese, another cultural experience. I’ll just sit in the back and watch, out of respect of course, not wanting to get in the way of a people’s service, but also, I think out of a bit of superiority, that I was above this folk custom. Also I felt very conspicuous, so much taller than the Mexican folks, blonder, wore different clothes.
Folks gathering in this parochia, the parochial church, coming in as they got off
work, teenage couples maybe getting ready for a night on the town, lots of grandmothers, abuelitas, bent over Indian women, kids, babies. And me, the blond giant in the back
The service began slowly, not great fanfare arrival of priests, but a simple old man in a parka turning on the lights in front, two kids bring up a book and microphone, and then suddenly, a woman’s voice, saying some kind of familiar prayers, people respond from memory, seems like it’s a daily devotional, led, I gather, by a lay woman, not a priest.
I noticed lots of activity in the pews near me, in the back, five or six women moving around, carrying huge bundles of white gladiolas, which were also placed all around the church, behind the altar, on the sides, but these women, the altar guild?, were picking off dead leaves from the stalks, putting bunches in water, chatting softly to each other, making the proper responses to the prayers. And wearing brown pinnies, like they were a basketball team, with a crown on it and big letter M.
All of a sudden the organ starts up (I noticed a man rushing in a little late and go up a side door behind me to the loft – the organist?) and as the music starts the altar guild women stop pruning and they start handing out the gladiolas to everyone, one or two each, with a smile. I was in the very last pew, sort of in the dark, not sure they saw me. But oh, I wanted a flower. Please please please, I said to myself, let me have a flower and I’ll take it home to my family and tell them about this service and press it in my journal and keep it forever.
Who says prayers aren’t answered? A tiny wizened old Indian woman, smilingly, hands me a beautiful gladiola. What a souvenir to keep!
But then everyone is standing up, walking to the front, carrying their flowers. Should I join in? Would I seem standoffish if I didn’t, or butting in if I did. When in Rome, when in San Miguel, so up I got, feeling like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, and as they sang we all walked, miles it seemed, to the front of the church, and watching carefully and respectfully, I knelt, as they did at the altar rail, and then put down my beautiful special gladiola on the step, as they all did. Oh well, I didn’t really need to keep it, giving it away was pretty special too.
On the way back I could see the woman at the mike, reading from the prayer book, wearing the brown pinny. Kneeling at the rail I had seen close up the delightful statue of Jesus’ mother Mary, smiling, holding the baby Jesus on one hip as I had seen so many women do in the market, the mercado. And I saw that Mary in this statue held in her other hand one of those brown pinnies. This must the Mary group or something, and they were running this service.
Walked all the way back to my back pew, more prayers, responses, busy altar guild, music, then they passed out a whole other set of gladiolas, and we did the solemn walk all the way back up to the altar, pile of gladiolas getting bigger and bigger up on the steps. Ok, I thought, the trinity, three times we will do this praying, singing, gladiola thing. Nice simple way to end a long working day. Do they do this every day? Do they reuse the gladiolas? Blahblahblah, my brain is still analyzing this event, picking it apart, rehearsing how I will describe it later to Ron. Second time up and back, third. Thinking about dinner.
And they keep doing it. Five times we went up and back, and finally I turned off my brain. I put away my tourist consciousness, and I just went with it. I stopped noticing how I was different from everyone else. Moved into the rhythm. Gave up the need to KEEP my gladiola (like it was mine!). I prayed at the rail each time, for myself, for my ministry, for my church back home. I got in touch.
Finally the rhythm of the prayers changed a bit, the song varied, the altar guild women took away their buckets, the people slowly filtered out into the warm night and I walked back home slowly in the dark, gifted by this surprise, the leadership of the women, the CALL to get up, go to the altar, give back what I had been given, I hadn’t earned it, just been given, not “understanding” half of it all, but know I had worshipped and heard from God, been part of a community in a new way.
I was called, in that time and place, called, to leave behind my tourist superiority and my distance and to become a part of that community, not to cling to THINGS, keep souvenirs of my experience, but give them back, share, offer them, at the altar, get up and move, do something new and different. Called, to experience being included, we are all included, even if we are different in appearance, language, culture, all included. And often it is the poor, the lay people, the workers in the church, not the so-called leaders, who are the ones who do the calling, the including, the praying and the leading. They get it.
Our scriptures today are about call. And really two kinds of experience of call. Isaiah’s is sort of like mine in that Mexican church, sort of mystical, a surprise. Perhaps you have had that kind of surprise encounter and call, seems like it happens easier in a new place, that’s a good reason to travel, but it can happen at home, woah! Wake up, here’s a new direction, and the only response can be – here am I, send me.
Jesus’ call to his new disciples Peter and James and John, on the other hand, happens in the midst of the ordinary, at work, fishing, smelly fish, frustration over a small catch, but another surprise, a large catch and a call to a completely new life. So God’s call doesn’t only happen as a bizarre experience, mystical, in a foreign country. We hear it in the ordinary, the day to day, the frustrations of small catches and failed attempts. This is my call as well, and yours, in the ordinary, the workplace, the supermarket, the home, to hear God’s call, and to leave everything, and follow. I’ve heard that call, and so have you, simply by being here this morning, to follow God. We hear that call in all kinds of ways profound and ordinary, in gladiolas and old women and music and being included. And then going out and doing something. Catch people not fish. Speak the truth, as Isaiah and other prophets did. Turn, and be healed.
You folks are in the midst of a messy situation here in Sunnyvale, related to your attempts to transform your nursery school into an actual ministry of your church. That’s part of your call to be a religious presence here in Sunnyvale, you are doing some very hard and faithful work in this struggle. I’m glad to talk with anyone after church about this. I am in regular contact with Gen and Mei and other church leaders about this hard work. I have worked with them in the past year to bring the resources of the wider church here to help you in this hard struggle.
But I hope that perhaps you can frame this issue in the lens of call. You remember I said that as calls come to individuals they also come to groups. You, this church, for over a hundred years have been called to be a religious presence here, to give away, not to hoard (like me and those flowers), and you are doing it tremendously and faithfully. Go deep. Here we are, send us.
You have been called to follow the leadership of the surprising folks, of women, the poor, other cultures, and hear God’s voice everywhere, and you are doing that tremendously and faithfully. Go deep. Here we are, send us.
You have been called to be an open, honest, real community, bound not by convention, or external pressure, or what might make you look good, but to be true to God’s call, to be real, loving, caring, bold. Go deep. Here we are. Send us.
Both Isaiah and Peter say, in response to their call, I am not worthy, I am a person of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. Go away from me, for I am a sinful person. Does Jesus rule them out because they are not perfect? No. He chooses them, often God chooses first the ones who look sort of messed up; Go deep, whom shall I send. Here am I, send me.
Last thought: Jesus says throughout his ministry one phrase more than anything else. Do not be afraid. Life is scary. And hard. Church can be scary and hard. But we are not alone. Be not afraid. Go deep. Here we are, send us.
