"Voices In The Night: Our Christian Vocation"
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Fritz Kristbergs
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Text: 1 Samuel 3:1-10
Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us listen to the word of God as it is written in the First Book of Samuel, Chapter Three:
Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 2At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4Then the LORD called, "Samuel! Samuel!"" and he said, "Here I am!" 5and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. 6The LORD called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. 8The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. 9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
Gracious God, let your Holy Spirit open our hearts and minds to your call, so that your perfect will may be done even through the imperfection of our speaking, our hearing and our working. We pray this through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Well, what would you do if you started hearing voices? My guess is that your first reaction would not be one of joy and thanks that God is speaking to you! Would you answer directly, as did the young boy Samuel, "Speak, for your servant is listening?" You are doubtless all good Christian folk, but I suspect that if you started to hear voices calling you in the night, you would probably start to have serious concerns about your mental health.
And imagine what your reaction as a good and caring parent would be, if your child, as did the young boy Samuel, came to you in the middle of the night and said that she had heard voices speaking to her.
A little boy had heard how the young Samuel had heard God's voice in the night, and had really liked the story. He told his father that he, too, heard God speak to him in the night. With great anxiety, his father asked, "Well, what does God tell you at night?" He was greatly relieved when his young son answered, "God tells me: Robert, go to sleep!"
But, if your child told you that she heard the voice of God in the night, would you be proud that God has chosen your child as the recipient of this particular Divine call? Or, would you try to comfort your child, send her back to bed, but spend the rest of the night in sleepless concern, and resolve to seek some early preventative counselling for her?
Passages like the calling of the young boy Samuel confront us with the reality of our calling as Christians. How seriously do we take the fact that God has called each and every one of us, and in our baptism has put a sign on us, to show that we belong to God?
A call such as the one Samuel experienced - a voice in the night, a directive from God, such a call would be met today with a great deal of anxiety, if not open hostility. It is probably true that in our culture, we would explain such voices as a psychological and medical problem to be solved, rather than a legitimate spiritual experience to be heeded.
Because we have, unfortunately, been made aware in the news of the acts of demented and troubled persons who have killed innocent people or done other acts of violence because they have heard voices telling them to do so. And it is a particular burden for Christians to bear when such a person claims that the voice he heard was the voice of God, commanding him to do such acts of violence and hatred.
A more subtle but nonetheless contributing factor to a reluctance to accept the validity of a call from God is, what the American professor of law at Yale University, Stephen Carter calls The culture of disbelief that trivializes religious ideas in contemporary culture. Carter maintains that our public culture more and more prefers religion as something without political significance, less an independent moral force than a quietly irrelevant moralizer, never heard, rarely seen… Or, as the Lutheran Church historian Martin Marty observed: The public sphere does not welcome explicit Reformed witness - or any other particularized Christian witness. In such a "culture of disbelief" the idea of an ordinary person being called by God to witness with words and deeds is simply not taken seriously.
Yet the challenge - even the offence - of this call as experienced by Samuel, is that we do assume that good Christians actually do experience a call from God.
Primarily we assume that our ordained clergy have received a call from God to preach the gospel of Christ. Our churches have elaborate and thorough education and examination procedures to insure that this is just so.
And in the process of calling a pastor to serve in a particular church, we assume that the call is issued not just through the human whims of the congregation, but that God himself has spoken to the congregation through the inspiration of His Holy Spirit. And even then, the call of God may not be quite what we want to hear.
A young minister was being interviewed by a church board for the position of pastor. One old hard-working member of the board looked at the young man sternly and asked, "Young man, did God send you here?"
He replied, "Well, I don't know if God sent me here. I am here trying to find the will of God and find out if you would like me for your next pastor."
The board member replied, "Young man, did God send you here?"
The young minister was somewhat at a loss for words and came back again, "Well, I just stopped by to talk with the board."
The board member interrupted again and said, "Young man, did God send you here?"
Finally the young pastor said, "Well, I guess God didn't send me here. I just stopped by to see about whether we could get together."
The old board member leaned back in his seat and said, "That's good. The last four said that God had sent them, and we have had nothing but trouble with all four of them!"
Indeed, when God calls, people respond in a variety of ways. And the Bible's stories of God calling his people give a wide variety of responses. Some, like Samuel and Philip in our Gospel lesson, answer and obey immediately. Some, like Moses, think of excuses why they should not accept God's call. Some, like Jonah, try to run away. And some, like Saul, need to be struck down and incapacitated, for God to get their attention! In the church today, some answer that call by pursuing ordination, others respond to the call by ignoring it. But the vast majority of Christians seek to answer that call and discover what God wants them to do with their lives and what it means to be a Christian in a post-Christian world. How is one to respond to God's call? By becoming a more spiritual person? By being more involved in charitable and volunteer work? By changing relationships? Finding a new job? How does a Christian answer God's call?
In many ways, those who are ordained to the ministry have taken the easy way. They have followed a prescribed series of steps, and taken up a definite role, and have become "professional Christians." And implied in this definite role is the understanding that this person, this minister of the Gospel, has a definite vocation in the true sense of the word - that God has called them, and they have responded in a definite way.
But many Christians do not have this sense of vocation - of being called by God to a particular role.
The word vocation itself means a call or summons, so that to have a vocation means more than just having a job. It means answering a specific call, it means doing what one is meant to do. In religious language, it means participating in the work of God. And that is something that few lay people believe they do. Indeed, many believe that is what we hire pastors to do!
Most good Christians are immersed in their jobs, in their business and profession, and in their domestic lives of caring for households and family. They participate in the activities of the church to which they belong, but few would say that this is their vocation.
I think it would be fair to say that we have lost the vision of the church as a priestly people - a people of God set apart for ministry in baptism, confirmed and strengthened in worship, and made known by service to the world. In my Lutheran tradition, we often trumpet the dogma of the priesthood of all believers but too often define that universal priesthood as lay readers in worship, or assistants in our sacramental life, or in some other participatory function of church life.
(As I was writing this sermon, at this point I misspelled vocation, and instead wrote vacation - and perhaps that is what some Christians really want from the church - a comforting vacation from our vocation.)
And it may be just this kind of version of the priesthood of all believers that scares a lot of people. Because it sound like just more work - and most of you have all the work you can do! We usually think of the call to the priesthood of all believers as an invitation to do more - to teach Sunday school, to serve on committees, to lead every member canvasses and so on.
As a result, we have forgotten to remind our church members - and pastors have forgotten to remind themselves - that a Christian ministry might involve just what most of our people are doing already in their profession and occupation, in their homes and in their families. But with one important difference: Namely, that they understand themselves to be God's people in and for the world.
And as a Lutheran, I am proud to call to your attention that it was Martin Luther who called for a renewal of this understanding of our Christian vocation. Luther made a careful distinction between a Christian's vocation and a Christian's office. Luther suggested that our office is what we do for a living - banker, manager, teacher, homemaker, priest - and that all are equally vital to God's work. In our office, we demonstrate the diversity of our gifts, contributing to the ongoing life of the world. But, whatever our office, our common vocation is to serve God through that office.
Luther put it this way:
"Look only to your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel (it is Luther, remember!), your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this saying written on them. You will not be able to look anywhere where it does not strike your eyes. None of the things with which you deal daily are too trifling to tell you this incessantly, if you are but willing to hear it; and there is no lack of such preaching, for you have as many preachers as there are transactions, commodities, tools and other implements in your house and estate, and they shout this to your face: 'My dear friend, use me toward your neighbour as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his.'"
Perhaps we should take more seriously Luther's vision of the priesthood of all believers, who are ordained by God at baptism to share Christ's ministry in the world - a body of people united in one common vocation, which they pursue through the rich variety of their offices in the world. It is a vision of God's people that requires the ability to see in a different way. To affirm one's own priesthood is to see the extraordinary dimension in an ordinary life, to see God's hand at work in the world and to see one's own hands as necessary to that work. Whether those hands are cleaning a house, working on an assembly line, or signing a corporate business deal, they are God's hands, claimed by God at baptism for the accomplishment of God's will on earth.
This also means that as Christians we are true priests when we all - ordained and lay persons - represent God to humanity and represent humankind to God.
The priestly ministry of the ordained clergy is but a pattern of our common ministry as God's people. An ordained minister in our reformed church tradition has the responsibility of preaching God's word and administering the sacraments. But the common ministry of our Christian vocation is a broader exercise of that particular priestly function.
The vocation and ministry of preaching, for example, is not confined to the twenty or so minutes of preaching from the pulpit on Sundays. The most effective preaching will be done by you and all the people in our churches as you go about your life in the world, witnessing to Christ with integrity, compassion, love and courage wherever God has called you to be. I am convinced that the Word of God becomes alive for the world through the lives of His people in the world, not necessarily through the formalized proclamation of his ordained servants.
Likewise, the sacraments of the church and their priestly administration are symbols of a deeper understanding of God's working in the world and in our lives. The bread and wine remind us that the most ordinary things in the world are signs of grace. And if holiness is to be found in bread and wine, it may also be revealed in the tools of our trades when we exercise these occupations in God's service and in affirmation of our vocation as Christians. Then the carpenter's power saw, the doctor's stethoscope, the manager's telephone, the soccer mom's mini-van, they all can become means by which God's grace is revealed through the ministry of those whom He has called to use these seemingly common elements. As the Catechism of the Anglican Church says about the sacraments: God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us.
And it is in these countless ways that God also calls us. And it is in the church where we learn to discern that call. It is in the church where we learn who and whose we are, and it is in the world where we are called to put that knowledge to use.
In George Bernard Shaw's play "Saint Joan," Joan of Arc is always hearing voices from God, and the king is angered by this. He complains to her, "Oh, your voices! Your voices! Why don't your voices come to me? I'm the king, not you."
"They do come," she replied. "But you do not hear them. You've not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the Angelus rings, you cross yourself and have done with it. But if you prayed from your heart and listened to the trilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do."
"Hearing the voices" is a dangerous thing. But it is the danger that opens up the world of the sacred. It is the danger and adventure to which Jesus called Philip in our Gospel lesson with the simple call: "Follow me." It is the adventure of a lifetime to which he continues to call each and every one of us.
For some, that call may be a longer, quiet dialogue with God lasting years and having many periods of silence; or, it may be a sudden and unmistakable life-changing voice in the night. It may come with the wisdom of age, or, as with Samuel, it may come because of the naïve exuberance of youth.
God has called each and every one of us, as he called Samuel, as through Christ he called the disciples, and as though His Spirit working in His church today, he continues to call us all to the vocation of "Christian." Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.