I think that by this point many of you have heard at least part of my call story, so forgive me if I am retelling it at this point. But, for those of you that don’t know, I did not want to be a pastor growing up. In fact, it was probably the farthest thing from my mind. By the time I was thirteen, I was determined that I was going to be a civil engineer. I was going to go to NDSU, get my degree in Civil Engineering, and then thanks to a middle school engineering class could tell you which firm I even wanted to be hired in. Preferably their Minneapolis office, but I thought I’d be fine with the Bismarck location too. Even though my first job was making coffee and lemonade at church on Sundays, and I was jokingly called “future Pastor Sara” by our current Pastor Sarah and others, I had my dream set on building bridges. That is, until the 35W bridge collapsed in Minnesota and my rock-steady confidence in this dream began to become shaky. That whole story is a longer one for another time.
But as I went through college, changing my major every other year, the two things I kept coming back to were my love of English Literature and my excitement for my Religion classes. I remember a presentation that I gave as part of my training in Interfaith Leadership about what it meant to me to be a Lutheran. Even though I struggled to articulate that in my first round of candidacy interviews, there must have been something there because after my presentation I had three Union Seminary graduates come up to me and asked me when I was going to Seminary. Which of course I politely responded with “never, thank you very much for your kind words though.” As much as I might have felt a call to be a pastor, I kept thinking that I would go into teaching either English or Religion, maybe even both, at a college level. It’s hard to say if that hadn’t happened whether or not I would still have made the decision to begin looking at Seminaries more seriously, but I can say that it was the reason that I finally stopped fighting this call that had been inside me for years. We’ve always joked in Seminary that when we make plans, God laughs, and also that you can’t run away from the Holy Spirit because it will just keep coming back!
Now, if you’re wondering why I told this story again today it’s because for me, those Union Seminary graduates offered me a “Come and see” moment. Just like in our Gospel today, we have Philip who has accepted the call to follow Jesus, but when he invites Nathanael into this too, Nathanael is skeptical to say the least. I always chuckle a little when I hear him say, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1: 46b). It’s his automatic defense, like he’s trying to find any reason he can to ignore this. He hears the call to be Jesus’ disciple and he basically says, “no thanks, I’m good.” It starts to sound a little familiar to me!
Yet, instead of telling Nathanael about all the ways that he is wrong, I love the way that Philip responds: “Come and see” (John 1:46b). He could have simply started talking at Nathanael about all that he knew of Jesus, but he knew that wasn’t going to change his mind. He had to witness Christ first-hand in order to truly experience what Philip was trying to tell him about. Today’s Gospel and first reading are centered around this call to mission and ministry, and the different responses we might have to that. It’s a primary emphasis in this time after Epiphany when Christ begins his ministry at his baptism, and we are called to see too how our faith is lived out in the world as Christ’s disciples.
Today’s readings also include the call story of Samuel, one that I find particularly interesting because it seems like Samuel is one of just a few prophets who actually seems excited to receive his call to be a prophet. Well, I don’t know if excited is exactly the right word, especially when he hears that his first proclamation is God’s wrath against the house of Eli, his mentor. But, unlike the other prophets, Eli responds with “Here I am” and “Yes, [Lord], I am listening” (1 Samuel 3: 1-10). He approaches the Lord with awe and reverence in his response and showing his openness to God’s will. It’s just so different from the other prophets who come up with reasons why they are not worthy of being prophets of the Lord, like Isaiah and his unclean lips or Moses and his speech impediment.
I love that both of these stories show up in our readings today because I think it helps to highlight the variety of responses to feeling God’s call in our lives. Because, sometimes like Nathanael we want to dismiss it or try to ignore it, while other times we are ready to respond with willingness and eagerness. I talked last week about how we have all of these different vocations in our life, whether that is in regard to family/personal life, our work, our civic life, and our life in the church. Some of those calls can be easier to respond to than others, especially depending on the time when we receive them. For example, I think one of the most interesting parts of my Seminary experience was my ability to learn with people from all different ages. Some of whom felt the call to ministry for just a short time, and others who had felt it for decades but went to work in other fields first, feeling that their life situations or other circumstances made it unfeasible to go to Seminary. Just in my Seminary class, when we graduated, we ranged in age from 25 to 72 years old!
So, as you hear the call stories in today’s readings and you witness the different reactions to them, I invite you to think back on times in your life when you’ve felt called by God to do something. How did you respond? As we move ahead with our ministry in 2024, God will continue to call us individually and as the church. May we be open to hearing those calls, no matter what feelings they bring with them. Trusting that God remains with us in those calls, whether we are afraid, excited, nervous, confused, or unsure. And may we trust in the discernment of this community, to follow God’s call and be with us through the ups and downs of what that means in our lives. It can be scary to respond with “Here I am” (1 Samuel 3: 4). But the invitation still remains because just as Philip says to Nathanael, “Come and see” (John 1: 46b), so too are we invited to come and see what God is up to in the world and how we can be a part of it.