Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, February 20, 2022.
I love that song our choir just sang—it takes me back to my early days in seminary, which for my class began on September 11, 2001. The events of that day, and what followed after, made what was already going to be an intense experience even more so. I was there because of a call that compelled me to go, but it was a call I couldn’t adequately understand or explain, not yet anyway; I was there in a place I had not planned to go.
So maybe you can imagine what it was like, one morning in our seminary chapel, when we were gathered for worship, and we sang that song. I’d never heard it before, and those words, they cut straight into my heart:
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
It was clear that most of my classmates knew the words, and before long, so did I. For those of us who had set off on what seemed like an improbable journey, that song was an affirmation that maybe there was some depth and meaning and goodness in all the upheaval and uncertainty.
That song is based on words from the prophet Isaiah; God is looking for a prophet, and asks, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah says, “Here I am, send me!” Isaiah is unusual; in the Hebrew Bible, most people who hear the call either run the other way, like Jonah, or they try to get out of it, like Moses, who said, “Could you please ask someone else?” I love the humanness of these responses; the reluctance to say an immediate “yes.” Isn’t that how most of us would respond? “You want someone else, don’t you? Certainly not me!”
But in those stories of calling in the Hebrew Bible, when God calls someone by name, there is a response that even the reluctant prophets give. Abraham and Jacob, Moses and Samuel and Isaiah, each of them, when they heard that voice calling, they replied with the Hebrew word hineini, “Here I am.”
We are living in our own intense time. The future is uncertain. I guess it always is, but these two years have amplified that uncertainty, haven’t they? And yet, isn’t there an invitation in these days? To wonder about how we are going to live our lives. Are we going to spend them on what matters? Are there changes you want to make? Are there things that you are going to take on, or that you want to stop doing? These are questions about vocation, about calling, and they are particularly good ones to be asking in these waning winter days.
Most of us are pretty good at listening to the messages we get from the wider culture, and those voices can be loud and persistent, can’t they? Most of us are good at listening, at least some of the time, to those we live with—our spouses, our parents, our children, yes? But how good are we at listing to ourselves? And how good are we at listening to the voice of the Spirit?
That inner voice can easily get buried under the noise and busyness of our lives. One of the gifts of our weekly gathering for worship is that it’s a time to be still and listen, not just to those of us leading worship, but, more importantly, for what comes up from within your own self. There is a voice within, that can be so quiet and and reclusive that you may only have hints and guesses that it is there. But that is the inner voice of vocation. It is your North star, your guiding light. Carl Jung said “the inner voice is the voice of a fuller life, of a wider, more comprehensive consciousness.” I believe it is the voice of the Holy.
Every spiritual tradition says if you want to be in touch with that inner voice, then you need some time for silence. Some time for being still, and listening. Some time for waiting and wondering. Some of us write in journals, some of us meditate or pray or practice yoga or go out walking. There are so many good ways to listen for your inner voice, and these winter days are a good time for this listening.
There certainly are some callings that come like thunderbolts, that would be hard to miss, but in my experience, most callings are more quiet and subtle than that. They are these subtle but persistent urges and longings that are pointing us toward a different way; they are calling out our names, and waiting for us to listen; waiting for us to respond, “Here I am.”
When I got that calling to head off to seminary, what my wife Tracey lovingly called my version of a midlife crisis, that call scared me. We had had a good life, and little children. I’d never wanted to be a minister. Had I? At first I tried to run away from that calling, but it didn’t go away. And that’s some good news—if it’s a true calling, it will keep coming back, will keep asking you to listen, and to respond.
Part of me tried to get out of that calling, because it scared me. But another part listened, and tried to respond. I asked for help; I reached out and found people who became companions and guides, who helped me to hear and respond to my call. That’s another aspect of this way of vocation: it draws us into deeper connection with others.
One of those guides was a nun whose wisdom about vocation was in an essay she wrote. I feared this midlife course change could cause me to lose myself, or my family, and this nun named Elaine Prevallet share this truth, based on her own calling, that has been with me ever since: “God only calls us to be who we are,” she wrote.
Whenever we listen for our inner voice of vocation and then try and follow where it leads, that voice will only call us to become more fully ourselves, more of who we we born to be. There is only one of you on this earth. Isn’t this your vocation: to live deeper and deeper into who you are, while you are here?
Another of those companions from a distance was the writer and minister Frederick Buechner. I’ve read him for years, and just last week I pulled his book Now and Then off the shelf, the one Bonnie read from a few minutes ago. I was having one of those days when I felt rather stuck and lost. Who among us hasn’t felt that way sometimes, especially in these past two years? Let’s listen to some of Frederick Buechner’s words again, about finding himself feeling stuck in a dead-end kind of spot:
“If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. What I started trying to do was more and more to draw on my own experience as a source of truth.”
There is a source of truth that is in you, and in your life experiences, that is just waiting for you to listen and pay attention to, and draw strength and solace from. It’s not selfish to listen to your inner self; it’s essential, really, if you want to live a fuller life. And more deeply knowing your self will actually draw you into deeper connection with others and with our world.
There’s a song we sing that expresses this invitation and this truth: “there’s a river flowin’ in my soul.” That river is there, it is always there, and it’s calling out to us, it is calling your name just like in those days of old, when God called out to Abraham and to Jacob, to Moses and to Isaiah. Like them, we always have a choice. How will we respond? When you hear the river calling, when you hear the Spirit calling, inviting you to be who you are, who you can’t help but be; inviting you to live more fully and deeply this life you have been given, what are you going to say?
May we be people who know how to listen to that voice within. May we be people with the heart to respond, “Here I am.”
Amen.