Reflections on "A Personal Call Story" Isaiah 6: 5-8; I Corinthians 1: 17-31

Either of these texts could have been explored more fully in the sermon. They each had a reason for being connected to the sermon, but that probably had more to do with what I was trying to do with the sermon than a detailed interpretation of the texts.

It was a fun sermon to preach, although I worried about it being too personal.  In my initial brainstorming, I was going to open with the comment about Peter Marshall and then spend the sermon telling my own call story in more detail that is found.  I decided along the way to the sermon that I wanted to broaden the topic in hopes of not being too egocentric in the sermon and to be more intentional about inviting others to see themselves in the sermon.

I made two changes after the Chapel service.  I took out the Tom Are, Jr. quote because I decided it needed more unpacking. While I agree with him at one level, I also want to cling to the idea that God calls us to specific tasks as well.  I also took out the Buechner quote as the conclusion. Again, it felt like a pretty significant quote being used as a throw-away comment.  Either of those quotes could be the basis for a full sermon.

I also found myself free-lancing from the sermon text quite a bit, so the following is not as close to what I actually preached as it sometimes is.

“Grab Bag:  A Personal Call Story" Isaiah 6: 5-8; I Corinthians 1: 17-31; FPC, Troy; Sept. 1, 2013

Introduction: Peter Marshall, the renowned preacher and chaplain of the United States Senate, reportedly preached his "call" sermon every year on the anniversary of his call to ministry.   Perhaps he used that sermon each year both as a guide for those who were seeking to hear God’s call in their own lives and as a reminder to himself of how own call.

When I was began seminary, I read his biography, A Man Called Peter, and then as each fall semester began for the next five years.  In part, to be reminded of the strong sense of call he fell to ordained ministry.

This morning I invite you to reflect on your own call story, and I will share a bit of my call story as we consider how God calls us.

Move 1:  First of all, I encourage you to tell your call.

Story.

a. Learn to tell others about how God has called you.

1. Put it in your back pocket to be pulled out when you need it.

2. Not to brag, not to make you seem holier than others, but so that you share about your life in the context of your call to follow Christ.

3. When you tell it, you claim it.

            b. Telling our call stories also shapes how we respond to God's call.

1.       When I was a young boy, I drank the last little bit of a bottle of Drano that I had taken out of the trash to use as a canteen.  My mother found me next to the bottle in the back yard spitting up and rushed me to the emergency room.  I remember drinking something (maybe orange juice) in the car on the way to the emergency room to try and counteract the poisonous Drano. 

As my parents tell the story, the doctor was astonished that there was no damage. He told them that the day before another young child had swallowed a similar liquid and had burned his voice box and would have trouble talking.  This story became part of my call story -- I understood that the ability to talk was a gift from God and I had to use my voice -- maybe as a lawyer arguing cases or, as it turns out, a minister preaching every week.  

2.      That story is also one reason I have always gravitated to the Isaiah call story -- the burning coal touching Isaiah's lips as he hears the call to go and prophesy.

3. That story has followed me and shaped decisions I have made about how I heard God’s call.

Move  2:  Clues as you listen for God’s call.

a.  The signs of God’s call may change.

                        1.  When I was interviewing with the Pastor Nominating Committee in KY, I walked into the sanctuary there and immediately had the sense that this was the place where I was called to lead worship and preach.  From that first step into the sanctuary, it was a done deal, at least from my side of things.  

2.  When I arrived in Troy to interview with the Nominating committee, I anxiously looked forward to walking into the sanctuary to see if I would get the same sense of call.  When I walked into the sanctuary, however, I looked down at the carpet (understand, I had never been in a church with a pattern on the carpet in the sanctuary) and was so caught up in their being a pattern that I had no sense of this being the place where I might be called to lead worship and preach.  

3.  Perhaps the hardest part of hearing the call to come to FPC, Troy was convincing myself that God might be calling me here even though I did not have "call" experience in the sanctuary.

4.  Moses heard God’s call through the burning bush – once!  God still communicated with him in other ways.

5. If you heard God’s call through the comment of a person in Church school, it does not mean that is the only way you will hear God’s call.

b:  Be wary about linking God’s call with worldly success.

1.  There is a lot of what we call prosperity gospel being shared this days.

2. The idea that if we are really following God’s call, we will find ourselves inundated with worldly riches and success.

3.  When Paul challenges the Corinthians to consider their own call, he reminds them that their call is a call to boast in the Lord, not in their own riches.

4.  In fact, he describes the “foolishness of the gospel” that they choose to follow as judged by worldly standards.

5. Our calling connects us with what God is doing, which often does not mean worldly riches and success.

c:  Do not limit your sense of call.

            1. We often only think of God’s call as it relates to church activities – is God calling me to be an elder; or is God calling me to participate in a mission trip.

           

            2. This is how it is described in Wendell Berry’s wonderful novel Jayber Crow. As a child, Jayber lived in The Good Shepherd orphanage. He describes it this way. “For as

long as I could remember, I had been hearing preachers tell in sermons how they had received “the call.” … Not one of those [preachers] had ever suggested that a person could be “called” to anything but “full-time Christian service,” by which they meant either the ministry or “the mission field.” The finest thing they could imagine was that an orphan boy, having been rescued by the charity of the church, should repay his debt by accepting “the call.”  Wendell Berry. Jayber Crow, pp. 42–43

3.  The God who engages all the world calls us to a wide range of tasks in lots of different places.  We do not check our sense of call at the church doors.

            4.  Used in Chapel service but cut from Sanctuary service sermon:  [ IN fact, Presbyterian minister Tom Are challenges our sense of call to link with the way of life to which we are called.  He notes:  “The call is not to be a preacher or teacher or doctor or mother or father or elder or deacon or orthodontist or floor manager at Macy’s — even if you are any of these things. The call of Jesus is not to a particular job, but to a way of living life, no matter what job you have. When Jesus calls, you don’t get a new job; you get a whole new life. Tom Are, Jr. 11/11/12 Sermon “It's a Whole New Life”]

            d. Do not limit by your sense of what God is calling you do by your own lack of expectation.

1.      I am reminded of what Catherine Marshall, Peter's wife, wrote about him:  "Always Peter felt inadequate for the tasks to which God called him,”

2.      It is sometimes easier to find reasons we cannot do that which we believe God calls us to do than risk ourselves by following God’s call.

3.      But as Catherine Marshall went on to note about her husband – “because he knew God had called him, he also knew he would get the help he needed" (The Best of Peter Marshall, Catherine Marshall, xi).

4.      Do not limit what God is doing with your life.

Conclusion:   [This one is from the Sanctuary service]  The sermon is entitled “a Personal Call Story.”

It is your call.  Amen.

  

Conclusion from the sanctuary service:   [Frederick Buechner once described calling this way: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  Frederick Buechner. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973), p. 95

Listen for God’s call and follow.]