Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, November 24, 2024.

Last week the choir sang a song I was really sorry to miss. Even though I wasn’t here, that song has been in my heart all week. It’s a song about listening for your calling in life and responding positively to it.

For a long time I thought a calling was something you had to seek and find, like it was something outside yourself, that you had to search for it. And if you missed it, you missed your chance, and it was gone. Like it was a one shot deal. Kind of like some of those fish that I missed as they swam by me this week, when I was away on a fishing trip.

But I was wrong about callings. I've always believed that we each have our callings, both everyday ones, and bigger callings too. But I no longer think they are one-shot deals. No, if you miss a call, whether you say no to it or if you just don't hear it, I believe that if it is a true calling then it will come back to you, multiple times if necessary. I can tell you that even fish will sometimes circle back around and give you another chance to meet them!

Around the time I turned 40. I found myself being pulled toward the ministry, which I resisted because I feared where it might lead, what I could lose. So I tried to get out of that calling. But that call, which I understood as God’s call, was nothing if not persistent. So when I finally dropped my defenses and opened my heart, and said “What do you want me to do?,” that fear was replaced by a sense of peace; the sense that I was at last getting on the way that was mine to travel. Instead of trepidation, I felt an openness and hopefulness about the adventure that lay ahead.

One of the things I learned in theological school that has stayed with me, was that song the choir sang last Sunday, called “Here I Am, Lord.” One morning we were in chapel, and sang that song. Given the struggles I’d had with saying yes to the call that brought me there, the words of that song pierced 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.”

These words are from the prophet Isaiah, and the story of his response to God’s call. “Here I am, send me!” the text reads.

But you know, most people don't respond this way, at least not at first. The call to go somewhere new and strange, the call to be changed, can be scary, right? In many of the stories of God calling to people in the Hebrew Bible, and there are a number of them, people don't usually respond with yes, send me! At least not at the start. They often try to get out of it, or negotiate with God; they say they aren’t worthy, or question what God is thinking, sometimes they even run away. And I love how very human these responses are.

But in those stories there’s something that almost everyone says when they hear that calling; it’s the Hebrew phrase hineni, which simply means “here I am.” From Abraham to Jacob to Moses to Samuel to Isaiah to Mary, when the angel appeared to tell her she was pregnant in a very unusual way, they each said hineni, “Here I am.”

And this is what I want to offer you this morning; that the starting point for hearing any call is this simple posture of openness, the affirmation that you are listening, at least. It doesn't mean you’re going to say yes right away; but you are here, present in spirit, which counts for something.

Do you remember the story of Jonah, who ended up in the belly of the whale? That misadventure did not begin with Jonah saying hineni. No, he ran away from his call and ended up on a boat sinking in a storm, and then in the belly of a big fish. And only then and there, in that deep dark place, did he say yes to God's call. A word to the wise – this symbolic story teaches that we deny our callings at our own peril! And that it will find us.

Back to this idea of callings as external. Does seeing a calling as coming from somewhere else, from somewhere outside yourself, does this make those nudges that won’t go away more threatening? That was how it felt to me. But an essay by Elaine Prevallet helped me navigate my own stormy sea: in which she wrote, “God only calls us to be who we are.”

This doesn't mean it's easy to say yes. Even Moses, who led the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt, tried really hard to get out of that call. He asked God "Who am I to go to Pharaoh? “ He said, “You must be a mistaken, because I am slow of speech.” Moses is saying that he stutters. But the one calling persists, and Moses finally whimpers, “O Lord, please send someone else.” (Exodus 4:13)

A critical part of human development is what Carl Jung called individuation. That is, becoming conscious of your own unique selfhood, and through that consciousness finding your meaning and purpose in life. In short, becoming yourself; who you were born to be. Isn't this our life's vocation – that word which has the root, vocare, which means call. Your vocation isn't as much what you do for work as who you're meant to be.

Doing the work of individuation is about working with and through the shadow and the limitations that family and society have laid upon you, to get down to your true self. It's a journey that requires perseverance and grace, that takes time, that involves both solitude and companions. Could this be what the Grateful Dead were singing about: “Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been.”

I put these words from Parker Palmer at the top of the order of service: “Vocation at its deepest level is, ‘This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself…’” This trick is being willing to head off toward that unknown destination when you’re not sure about it at all, and do know where it will lead.

This is what Mary Oliver describes in her poem The Journey”:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

No one can tell you what your calling is. But it does help to have people, soul friends, with whom you can share your hints and guesses and longings, who can help you find your way. A community of fellow travelers. I truly believe that we are all invited, we are all called, in our own ways, to carry forward the work of the Holy. To be modern day saints, doing our part to help heal and bless our world.

You know that we are living in perilous times, and our neighborhoods and our world need all the love and compassion and justice-making we have to offer. None of us can do everything. None of us, all alone, can save the world. But can you trust, can you know, deep in your bones, that you are here for something? Can you trust that, even if you can’t exactly explain or describe it, it that you do have your own calling, your own way to be awake, alive, and of use on this earth?

In these days, can we take heart and take courage from the stories of those who have gone before us; those who, when they heard the call, turned the faces and their ears and their hearts not away, but toward that source. Who answered, simply, humbly, “Here I am.”

Isn’t this openness, this becoming more fully yourself, putting your gifts to good use, resolving to be a force for good: for liberation and against oppression and injustice—isn’t this what in ages past was seen as sainthood?

This is my prayer, for each of us in these days, that we will listen carefully for our own calling, that when it comes we will stand in the openness of “here I am,” that we will have the courage and the grace to follow that call where it leads. That we will be people traveling the way together, supporting and exhorting one another: “Come and go with me to that land, where we’re bound.”

Now and always,
Amen