"Who Am I?" given 1-8-17

 Bishop William Willimon was for several years Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. One day, the door to his office suddenly flew open, and a student entered. Without a word of explanation or introduction, the young man plopped down in one of Willimon's wing chairs and asked,

"How did you know you were supposed to be a preacher? Did you hear some voice from the sky? Did you always want to be a preacher? Did you ever think that you should do something else? How did you know?"

With penetrating sensitivity and spiritual insight that would do credit to the best chaplain or pastor, the future Bishop replied,

"Who sent you here? Who wants to know?" Of course, the young man didn't really want to know about the chaplain and his call. What this seeker really wanted to know about was himself—and his own all..

"Do you know a God who calls? If so, tell me about that, because I've never heard God calling. Is it that only some people hear from God and others don't? Because I think, I just may have heard this God of yours calling me."

He wanted to know who he was, and what he was supposed to be doing. Probably the majority of the students at Duke, or Harvard or Yale or Northwestern, or NIU, or COWC or Olivet Nazarene, or any college or University are walking around, from class to class, from dorm to Union, asking themselves, at one time or another, in one form or another, that same question.

“Who am I? What am I doing here? What am I supposed to do with myself?” Or, if they think of themselves as Christian, the question becomes, “What (or whio) does God want me to be and do?” I know that ju st about all of us hereo are beyond that age when questioning is allowed and encourage, and yet we may well still carry around-- at the back of our minds and souls, some of those same, long unanswered questions. Who am I? What have I been doing with my life for the last umpteen years? Is this all there is? What have I accomplished? Was this really what God had in mind for me? And now, when I'm retired or settled in my occupation, and my kids are gone, what am I supposed to do? DI spend then rest of my life on the sidelines?

No doubt the young seeker would have envied Jesus at his Baptism in the Jordan. How easy it would be for searching young people—how easy for any of us, young or old or in-between-- if the sky would open for us and the Holy Spirit would descend upon us like a dove and a voice would speak—

"You are my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased."

If God did that for everybody, we wouldn't need chaplains or pastors in offices with wing chairs. We wouldn't need career counseling, or Bible Study groups, or mid-life crises, if vocation happened like that for everyone. Of course, for some people, it really does. Some folks get dramatic, straight-forward, unambiguous spiritual calls, like the one at Jesus' Baptism.

Most of us, I'm afraid though, have to be content with less dramatic revelations-- revelations that are ambiguous, veiled, quiet. So quiet that we often miss them. That's the way that God speaks to most of us-- not through a dove from heaven, but through a still, small voice.

I read about a very nice, peoper New England Unitarian woman who had a life-changing, earth-shaking, spiritual experience. Did she share this wonderful encounter with anyone at her church? No. Why not? Because, as she herself admitted,

"Unitarians don't believe in stuff like that". That's typical of God's sense of humor-- to give a no-holds-barred mystical experience to a straight-laced Unitarian who's embarrassed to talk about it, instead of to some evangelical Methodist or Baptist who'd love to shout it from the housetops.

A few years ago a random survey was made of a group of Americans that revealed that a majority of those responding had had a mystical experience of God. Does that surprise you? But the majority also reported that they had never told anyone about it-- and that the last person they would tell about it would be their pastor. Why? Because they were afraid their pastor would think they were crazy. Does that surprise you?

For the record-- I don't think that people who've had visions of God are crazy. I do however, think that such experiences are fairly rare. Why? Maybe in our day of scientific wonders and media overload we've become dull to the divine. Sometimes we only see what we're looking for-- and not everybody is looking for or listening to God.

Maybe the real reason that such experiences are rare is because in our day and age at least, God's call is usually transmitted through other people, or a book, or an unexpected challenge or opportunity, or some other sort of back-door event—a TV show, a book, something on the news, the Internet. The story of the dove descending at Jesus' Baptism is thrilling-- and curious because it's so unusual.

You can read the different Gospel accounts in such a way that it can be interpreted that everyone on the scene heard the voice, or that only Jesus heard the voice, or that everybody but Jesus head the voice from heaven.

In his comic gospel Lamb, Christopher Moore portrays Jesus coming out od the water and saying something to the effect: 'What? God spoke? All my life I've been praying for a word from God, and when it finally comes , my head is under water and I can't hear it!”

However we read it, the thing that's striking about the story is how unambiguous God's voice is.

“This is my son. I am pleased.” Period.

Most of the time, for most of us, the voice of God is usual, mundane, mediated and downright ordinary. Most of the time, for most of us, there's no great thiundering voice from above-- it's a still, small voice from within. The voice can speak so clearly that you know you've heard something, yet it tends to speak so softly, so ambiguously that there are often dozens of ways to explain it as other than the voice of God. As a result, you and I end up having to respond to the voice on the basis of faith, rather than certainty.

Right now the seminaries of this country, Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox, are full of people who have gotten on the road to ordained ministry from some other career path. They were computer programmers, or community organizers, or speech therapists, or teachers, or full time parents, or something else. Then somehow or other, they gave it up to study History, Theology, Bible and Church and Community.

And if you were to ask them, "How did you get here?", you'd be surprised by their answers-- by how every-day and mundane and unspectacular were their calls. Somebody came up to them after church and told them they ought to be a pastor. They read a book that challenged them. A teacher made an off-hand remark. A grand-mother was praying for them. They got a divorce. They got married. They got fired.

A national executive with one of our larger denominations recently shared the story of his call.

"Ruben, how did you decide to become a minister." He was asked.

"I didn't decide." He said. "I was told that I should be one."

"By God? God told you?" they asked.

"By some of God's people. " He replied. "I must have been about nine or ten years old. Some of us kids were standing around in the hallway between Sunday school and church and some of the elders came by and got to talking about us-- what we would be when we grew up. 'Now Sarah,' they said, 'Sarah is going to be a teacher. She's good with books. Jonathan is a carpenter. He can make anything he likes.'"

"'What about Ruben?' somebody asked. 'Oh Ruben, he'll be a preacher. He's got the head of a preacher. Look at that head.'"

Ruben said, "they took my head and everybody examined it and said, 'You're right. He's going to be a preacher.'" He added, "I was twenty-four years old and a student at Boston University School of Theology before I found out that everyone hadn't gotten to seminary the same way that I did."

God's call, the Divine response to that "Who am I" question doesn't usually fall out of heaven and light on our shoulder. So we have to listen. If I were to ask you today, "Who are you? How did you get here?" I expect that most of you would explain your presence in church, your effort to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, your response to the call of God in your life, in terms that were just as everyday, just as commonplace and mundane as the story of Ruben's head--although maybe not as funny.

Let's be clear. "Call" or "vocation" is not something that happens only to clergy-people. We all have a vocation. At our baptism, each and everyone of us was called to be a disciple of Jesus. Through our baptism, each and everyone of us is challenged to try to live out God's will, to pray and search for God's plan for us in our life. All Christians are called to be ministers. As Peter says in Acts 10 this morning. “God shows no favoritism”.

He’s talking about Divine Grace—but it’s just as true in the context of God’s calling of us.

. Nelson Mandela was born the son of a chief, educated in Methodist mission schools, worked as a civil rights lawyer, got involved in politics, and spent over twenty-five years as a political prisoner before being released and being elected President of South Africa. William Wilberforce found his vocation in politics, fighting against slavery.

Cesar Chavez was a migrant worker. Dorothy Day was an unwed mother. Fred Rogers

student working part-time as a camera man at a local TV station, when he got drafted in to climbing into a clown suit and playing “Clarabell” on a kids' show.

The truth is that God will use any handle that God can get to change this broken world. And God has always used all sorts of people with all sorts of vocations to accomplish God’s Will—whether or not they professed any faith at all. The Hebrew Bible Books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us that God used Cyrus of Persia--a pagan, gentile king to end the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrew people and restore them to the promised land, “God shows no favoritism” G

Remember Steve Erwin, the “Crocodile Hunter”? The guy was nuts. But he was absolutely in love with what he was doing. He was fascinated by nature and reptiles in general. He gladly dedicated his life to preserving, studying, and protecting it. He was killed through a freak accident by the sting of a jelly fish. But Steve died doing what he absolutely loved, and no doubt would gladly have lived his life over again in the same way—albeit a bit more carefully.

Why? Because crazy or not, whether he realized it or not, Steve Erwin was a man who’d found his truest and highest vocation. Isaac Asimov was a non-practicing Jewish college professor, who wrote books popularizing science for the average person, as well as science fiction. He wrote close to a thousand books— a fairly good indication that he’d found his vocation

Of course, finding your vocation doesn’t automatically make you a saint or even a hero. Frank Sinatra wasn’t a very nice man in many ways—but he certainly found part of his vocation as a singer. Who knows how much more happiness and satisfaction, how much more he might have accomplished in his life if he’d sung in God’s name? Until we discover and offer our vocation to God, we’re never going to be truly happy or satisfied with our life in this world.

There’s a distinction between doing ministry and just doing good —when we reach out in love to those in need in the name of God—it gives God the glory—and may well lead others to Christ through our witness. And it’s only when we discover and offer our vocations to God that they—and we reach our very fullest potential.

Who am I? Among other things I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, called to minister in His name. Some of us minister as pastors and priests. Others of us minister as cops, care-givers, carpenters, physicians, nurses, teachers, secretaries, accountants and parents. That some of us function as ordained, or full-time ministers doesn't change the call of all of us to minister in the name of Jesus Christ. “God shows no favoritism”.

Full time, or part time, or over time--paid or volunteer—actively working or active in your retirement—we all have a vocation—sometimes different ones at different stages of our lives, If what you do for a living, or what you do as a volunteer, is satisfying, useful, ethical, fulfilling and interesting—if you’re making a positive contribution to your community and to the happiness of those you love, odds are you’ve already found your vocation. You are exactly where God wanted you to be all along. You just need to start giving God the credit.

But if not don’t be surprised to wake up some morning with the vague feeling that God has been speaking to you in a dream. . Don't be surprised if you feel that God is speaking to you through a twist or change in a formerly predictable relationship. Don't be surprised if you feel that God is speaking to you through a sense of restlessness with what you have accomplished so far in your life.

Don't be surprised if you feel that God is speaking to you in a possibility that suddenly opens up, an unexpected challenge you must face, or the unexpected opportunity to pursue a dream you thought had died years ago. Don't be surprised if you feel that God is speaking to you in some crisis in your life, just when you feel most confused, most uncertain, least sure of what you ought to do. God will use any handle—whatever it takes to get to us.

Whether we're twenty-one, forty-one, sixty-one or a hundred and one, Our Maker is not through with us. The Creator has an on-going plan for each of us and for our lives. When you and I think and pray and struggle with what we ought to be doing with the rest of our lives, what God wants us to do, who God wants us to be--let us remember this. Where the small or the great needs of the world intersect with your God- given gifts, there lies joy. There is your call. (Even if you never in your life imagined doing such a thing.) God shows no favoritism. God will use any handle that God can get.

Let us pray,

God of Grace and Glory, through our Baptisms, you have called each of us to share the ministry of Jesus Christ to the world. You have called each of us to proclaim the gospel wherever we find ourselves; and to live, not for ourselves alone, but to your praise and glory. Establish us in our individual vocations. Give us each the gifts that we need to be worthy ministers with Christ. Empower us through your own Holy Spirit to live in such a way that others might see the truth of Christ demonstrated in the way that we live our lives during this coming new year. Amen.