Who does God call you to be?

Address given at Templederry, St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 14th January 2018, the 2nd after Epiphany.

Today’s readings are mostly about people hearing God’s call and how they respond to it.

I believe that God calls each and every one of us to be the person he means us to be. But how can we be sure that a voice we hear is truly God’s voice? And how can we be sure what he is calling us to be and to do? The technical, theological word for this is ‘discernment’, and discernment is difficult. Most of the time, in our busyness, wrapped up in our own thoughts and desires, we may not even hear God’s voice. If we do, it is often so much easier to ignore it. And sometimes what he asks of us seems so difficult that, like Jonah, we try to run away from it.

Today I’m going to reflect a little on the readings, because I think they can help us get to grips with the problem of discernment.

In the OT reading (1Samuel 3:1-10, 11-20) Samuel hears God calling to him.

You may remember that Samuel’s parents Hannah and Elkanah had dedicated him to God as a child, and left him in the guardianship of Eli, the priest at the pilgrimage shrine of Shiloh.

The boy Samuel is confused when he hears God’s call. Three times he hears a voice calling his name. He thinks it is Eli calling for him, but it is not. At last Eli realises the voice Samuel is hearing must be from God. He prompts Samuel to respond, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’ – only then can Samuel open himself to God and understand his vocation. He will grow up to be a great prophet and a leader of Israel.

Notice Eli’s role in the story, helping Samuel to understand what is going on. When we are trying to discern what God is saying to us, we often need someone else to encourage, support and guide us, to enable our discernment.

I have experienced this personally. I began to ask myself whether I should offer myself to lead worship, at a time when otherwise there would be no one to lead services. I had watched a diocesan reader I admired and trusted do so. But it was not until a priest recognised that God was calling me, and encouraged and guided me, that I could begin to understand my call to diocesan reader ministry. Fostering discernment is an important role in ministry.

Turning to the psalm, Psalm 139 marvels at how completely God knows and understands us.

In beautiful poetry the psalmist tells us that God comprehends us completely, we cannot escape him, even if we wish we could. This is because God has made us: ‘I thank you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made’, says the psalmist.

Indeed, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We have been made as souls with conscience and intelligence, capable of love, able to tell good from evil, truth from lies, beauty from ugliness. And it is these innate capacities, given us by God,  which enable us to hear God’s call and discern what it is he wants of us.

In the Gospel reading (John 1:43-51) Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael to follow him.

Notice that Jesus calls Philip directly, but it is Philip who then invites his friend Nathanael to meet Jesus, just as previously Andrew had gone to fetch Simon Peter. This is the way that many disciples of Jesus were made at the very beginning, by one disciple passing on Jesus’s call to follow him to another. And it is the way that disciples have been made ever since.

Notice also how Nathanael initially resists the call from Jesus, passed on by Philip.  ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’, he asks cynically. I suppose the rivalry between Bethsaida and Nazareth must have been a bit like that between Tipperary and Galway in the hurling! It is only when Nathanael accepts his friend Philip’s invitation to ‘come and see’, and spends time in conversation with Jesus, that he gives in, finally confessing, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God’.

How like the way that many of us try to evade God’s call when it comes! But God does not give up on us – he knows us from the inside out, and he will not let go of us easily if he wants us for a purpose.

Philip goes on to be a great apostle, the first apostle to the gentiles, even before St Paul took on the role. Acts tells us that he was the first to bring Samaritans into the Church, and he goes on to baptise the Ethiopian court official who is a eunuch. But what of Nathanael? We hear nothing else about him in the Bible - though perhaps he is the same as Nathanael of Cana to whom Jesus appeared at the Sea of Galilee after the Resurrection. We do know that Nathanael responded to Jesus’s call. As Jesus promised, he must have seen ‘heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending’. But God calls only a very few to great tasks, and Nathanael may not have been one of them.

I said at the start, I believe God calls every one of us to be the person he means us to be.

There may be some here who are called to great work, as priests, perhaps even bishops – maybe even prophets or apostles, God help us. But almost all of us are called to much more modest tasks in ordinary places. Yet these too are tasks which God needs us for in order to build his Kingdom of peace and justice.

They may be official jobs in the church, jobs like being a church warden, or serving on select vestry. Or they may be specific ministries in the parish - there are so many, aren’t there? - reading, singing, church cleaning, washing linen, helping with flowers or refreshments after services – even volunteering for the Christmas tree festival! We do not give enough recognition to those who take on these jobs, I think – but I am sure God does. God calls different people at different times to different ministries to build up Christ’s body, the Church, so that the church can continue his ministry in the world.

But just as important, they may not be 'churchy' jobs, but tasks of service to others in the secular world. Tasks like being a carer, teaching children, healing the sick as a nurse or a doctor. Tasks that build and protect community, or conserve the beautiful planet we have been given. Tasks that feed the bodies and nourish the spirits of our neighbours. God needs people who will carry out all these tasks, and so many others, to build his Kingdom. Those called to them are just as blessed as those called to church ministries.

I suggest to you that each one of us should ask ourselves these questions: How has God called me? and How have I responded? I suggest we should do so regularly, because who it is God wants us to be, and what he wants us to do, is ever changing through the course of our lives. I suggest the beginning of a new year is a good time to do so.

And as we ask these questions we should pray, pray that the Holy Spirit will help us to discern what God wants of us. Because it is precisely when we respond to God’s call as he wants us to, that we, like Nathanael, will see ‘heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending’ and experience the joy of his Kingdom.

Let me finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word

Eternal God,

whose Son, Jesus Christ, is now exalted as lord of all,

and pours out his gifts upon the Church:

grant it that unity which only your Spirit can give,

keep us in the bond of peace,

and bring all creation to worship before your throne;

through Jesus Christ our Redeemer,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Let not our hearts be troubled. Let us believe in God and also in Jesus.

Address given at Templederry, St Mary's, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 14th May 2017, the Fifth after Easter. In St Mary's it was a joyful day of baptism for Jack Robert, son of  Robert Nevin and his wife Sharon née Gloster, accompanied by a host of relatives and friends.

I wonder how Thomas and Philip felt when Jesus responded to them the way he did in today’s Gospel reading (John 14:1-14).

Did they say to themselves, ‘Duh – I should have known that’? Were they embarrassed? Did they blush like school children who have asked their teacher a silly question? Or were they happy that their words had prompted Jesus, their friend and teacher, to speak plainly about difficult ideas?

The reading comes at the start of what is often called the ‘Farewell Discourse’. This makes up the whole of chapters 14 – 17 of St John’s Gospel, describing in more detail than anywhere else in the Bible how the 3 Persons of the Trinity relate to each other and to those who believe.  

Jesus has just eaten his Last Supper with his disciples. He has washed their feet as if he were a servant, as an acted parable to show them that they, like him, are called to a ministry of service. He knows that the end game is upon him - the forces of evil are pressing in all around. Soon he will be arrested, subjected to a show-trial, condemned and brutally executed. He does not have much time, but he is determined to take this last chance to prepare his disciples for what will unfold. His words are dense with meaning.

In this short extract Jesus teaches the disciples about the relationships between Jesus himself and the God Jesus calls his Father, and between them both and his disciples – not just those first disciples present at the Last Supper, but through them us as well.

Jesus begins, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me’.

Then he goes on to say that there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house – this is heaven, of course, where God is. He tells the disciples that he is going there to prepare a place for each and every one of them. And he promises that he will return to bring them there to be with him and with God.

Theologians have puzzled over what Jesus meant by the many dwelling places in God’s house, but perhaps it is as simple as this: that heaven is as wide as the heart of God and there is room for everyone there who believes in Jesus, no matter how unworthy they might feel they are. It is a lovely comforting thought, isn’t it?

Jesus says, ‘You know the way to the place I am going’, prompting Thomas to respond, ‘We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ I like Thomas. Thomas is always questioning – the awkward student who asks the questions others are ashamed to ask. He doesn’t accept anything without owning it for himself – just as he will doubt the resurrection until he sees the wound in Jesus’s side.

So Jesus explains to him and the other disciples, in words that echo down the centuries to us, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life’. The way to find God, says Jesus, is by following him. Those who know him will know God. And because they see and know Jesus, because they see and know the truth and the life in him, they have seen and known God.

These words must have been very shocking for the disciples, because it was an article of faith for Jews that it was impossible to see God. When God showed his glory to Moses he said, ‘You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live’.

At this point Philip blurts out ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied’.

And Jesus gently chides him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works’.

The truth that the disciples have to grasp is this: because Jesus is in God and God is in Jesus, if you have seen Jesus you have seen God. To see Jesus is to see what God is like – and to know what God is like is to know what Jesus is like. Those first disciples were privileged to see Jesus in the flesh and know what he was like. But we too can see and know Jesus, through scripture, through church tradition and through our God-given reason – and we can experience his presence in our hearts. All it takes is to believe in him. When we do so, we see and know God too.

Jesus calls his disciples to continue his ministry of service, as he says:

‘The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to my Father.

Disciples who believe in Jesus will not just minister as he has done, but will do greater things, says Jesus. How can this be? How can they possibly do greater things than God’s own Son Jesus? Well, look at it this way. In his earthly life Jesus’s ministry was limited to the towns and countryside of Palestine. But his first disciples built a mass movement of followers who believed in Jesus. They and their followers brought Jesus’s ministry to the whole world. We call that mass movement the Church. In all its wonderful diversity the Church continues Jesus’s ministry today, and as Jesus’s disciples we are a part of it.

We are made part of the Church by baptism. Today is a day of baptism, a joyful occasion, a day for celebration. For many it is a day of family celebration as Sharon and Robbie bring their son Jack Robert to be baptised in the presence of so many of their relatives and friends, who share their joy in him. But it is more than just a family celebration, because we are all here to welcome Jack as a new member of the Church, a fellow disciple of Jesus. His baptism marks the beginning of a journey with God which will last for the rest of his life. As we renew our baptism vows in a few minutes, let us reflect on our own journey, and let us be determined to support Jack’s parents and Godparents as they guide him on his journey.

And Jesus promises to answer his disciples’ prayers: ‘I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son’. But we must understand well - Jesus only promises to answer prayers asked in his name. We cannot honestly pray in the name of Jesus for personal revenge, for personal ambition, or for anything unworthy or un-Christian – such prayers will not be granted. But our prayers prayed in Jesus’s name will be answered - as God knows is best for us, not necessarily as we desire - and that reveals God’s glory to us all.

So to finish, let us echo the words of Jesus

Let not our hearts be troubled. Let us believe in God and also in Jesus.

As we finish in prayer:

Everliving God,

whose Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life:

give us grace to love one another,

to follow in the way of his commandments

and to share his risen life;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen