Sermon - January 14th, 2023 - The Rev. Emily Collette

I speak the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Let's be seated.

So I was just 18 years old when someone told me for the first time that I should consider

going to seminary and becoming a priest.

I had grown up in the church.

I loved it.

I loved exploring my faith.

I loved learning more about God.

I loved being involved with various ministries.

And in retrospect, I probably should have known that something was up because there

are not a lot of teenagers on Ultra-Gild, but that was where I found myself when I was

18.

But it wasn't until one Sunday morning in May of 2009 when I heard the first whisper

of God's call to this particular ministry at the priesthood.

I had just preached the senior sermon from Youth and Children Sunday, and I was standing

at the back door shaking hands with people as they were leaving, and a retired priest

from Nativity came up to me and put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye and

said with such conviction and such earnestness that he had clearly heard God tell him to

tell me that I should be a priest.

And it terrified me.

But it also changed my life.

And here I am.

And this lightning strike, his words were, and from that moment that one minute-long

conversation, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was right, that I should consider

becoming a priest.

Unfortunately or unfortunately, depending on the day, people agreed with that.

And here I am.

And all the years and committees later, I'm following this strange and wonderful calling

from God.

This is my call story, and it's personal and important to me, but it's not unique.

Every single person has a call story.

As many people as have ever lived will have their own call stories.

You have your own call stories, even if you've never put voice to them or given them words.

God is constantly breaking into the world, breaking into our very lives and calling each

and every one of us to use the gifts and the talents and the resources that only we have

to meet the needs of the people here on earth.

And how we choose to respond to God's calling not only shapes our lives, but it shapes the

world around us.

Our readings today deal quite literally with God's call to us.

In our Old Testament reading from 1 Samuel, we hear the story of God calling to the young

Samuel again and again as Samuel is lying in the temple next to the Ark of the Covenant,

the Holy of Holies, the closest to God that he can get on earth.

He hears a voice calling for him, Samuel, Samuel.

And again and again he gets up and goes to Eli, a fellow priest and mentor, and asks if

it's his voice that he's hearing.

Eli though is the first to perceive that it is the voice of God that Samuel is hearing.

And only then after they correctly identify that the voice is from God can they begin

to hear the message that God delivers to Samuel.

In John's Gospel, God's call to humanity takes again center stage in the story of Jesus

calling his first few disciples.

Today's Gospel reading is a continuation directly from the story of Jesus calling Andrew and

another unnamed apostle who will then go and call his own brother Peter to follow Jesus.

But today's Gospel reading, Jesus calls Philip and Philip calls to Nathaniel.

And likewise we see this similar story playing out, Philip calling to, if you'll find Nathaniel,

Nathaniel goes and hears from Peter this lovely and bold message that Jesus just might be

the person who Moses and all the prophets of Israel have been foretelling.

A prophet whose ministry, whose teachings will eclipse all others, whose works and actions

will be the very basis for the redemption of the world, the means through which we will

receive grace and hope and mercy and love and life that lasts the eternity.

Philip believes.

Philip spends barely any time with Jesus before he believes.

Nathaniel on the other hand is a little bit harder to convince because when he hears Philip's

extolling of Jesus, Nathaniel's snarky responses, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Which is really just a biting comment.

Funny.

But Nathaniel is eventually won over when he meets Jesus and interacts with him and he

hears the stories of Jesus firsthand when he sees Jesus' miraculous powers of perception

for himself.

These stories from the Bible uncountless others orient us towards a God that is always calling

to us.

A God who knows intimately what the world needs and who knows fully what gifts that

you and all of us have to meet those needs.

That God is constantly calling us to build up the kingdom of God here on earth.

That you are called is not in question.

I can promise you that you are being called by God.

The true trick for us is figuring out how to answer that call, figuring out how and

where we hear God calling us.

What do you feel that persistent pull towards?

What are the things that you can't let go of?

What keeps you up at night?

When and where have you been in your life that it feels 100% right and not just right

but truly and deeply and spiritually fulfilling where your soul feels like you have been in

the exact right place at the exact right time.

That seems like a good place to start listening for the voice of God more fully.

The miracle in these gospel stories isn't that God calls to us, though it is a miracle

that God does want to work with us as imperfect as we are.

The miracle is in our hearing of God's call.

Our readings today show us people who are confronted with the voice of God and however

stiltedly they learn to follow.

So our job in our own time then is to learn how to more fully hear that voice of God calling

us into all sorts of things.

Some of them are big and some of them are small.

Some of them are temporary and some of them are permanent.

Some of them will consume your life and some of them will last only for a season.

Perhaps you hear God in that still small voice in your heart like Samuel in those moments

between waking and sleeping in that liminal space with God.

Perhaps you hear God when you're sitting in silence.

Perhaps you hear God here in this space, in this very room, worshiping the Lord together

with our siblings in Christ.

Perhaps you are hearing God now in the midst of a very difficult season in your life.

God is reminding you that hope still remains, that with God the best things are always still

ahead.

Perhaps you hear God best when you've come through challenging seasons in your life,

when you are stronger and more capable and more sure of yourself.

Perhaps you hear God when you are experiencing joy, when you're with the people and the things

that make you happiest.

Perhaps like the priest who told me that I should go to seminary or like Samuel learning

to listen to God from Eli or like Nathaniel being called by Philip to come and see, you

will hear the voice of God and the people around you, your fellow human beings who are

also navigating love and loss and faith and life.

And finally, all that is left is for us to learn to have the courage to say yes, the

courage to leave behind the things that we think we want and to follow God into something

bigger and better and more meaningful than anything we would have planned for ourselves.

Learning to listen to God is a lifelong process.

God is always calling us into new things to use our gifts to help build up God's kingdom

on this side of heaven, to help those in need to speak up for and lift up the oppressed,

to share love with the people the world has forgotten.

How we are called and in what ways and in what capacities is up to us to find and we

can do that discerning together.

But Philip's words to Nathaniel echo Jesus' own words just a few verses before.

Come and see.

God calls to us to come and see.

Come and see, God says to each of us what we can get up to together.

Come and see what we can heal together.

Come and see what we can fix together.

Come and see who we can love together.

And I pray that each of us in our own day will have the courage to answer that summons

like Samuel did.

Thank you Lord for your servants are listening.

Amen.