February 11, 2007: CALL AND RESPONSE
Luke 6:17-26, Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1
Eileen Parfrey - Springwater Prebyterian Church

Most of us are in the same boat as Kathy Scott when she says she's still waiting for a clear, direct message from God with the specifics of her call as a Christian. Kathy left us after her Moment for Mission with a sense that call wasn't easy, but that it was holy. In fact, discernment is holy listening, a way of figuring out how to follow Jesus. Easier said than done. In an effort to do further research on the topic, I went to America's favorite new reference tool, Google. Google, as you may know, is the mind-boggling computer tool for looking things up. You can type in any subject on the Google website, click "send," and within seconds, have a list of potential resources to consult. I googled "discern call" and came up with thousands of resources, none of which included a step by step recipe for doing it. The best I could manage was a definition. Discernment, as regards call as a Christian, is "a focused endeavor to identify God's Spirit, to trace the Spirit's movement in one's life and to determine where it's pointing." Focus is meant to be a kind of prayer that engages one's whole self: intellect, sense, intuition, imagination. It requires relationship and context.

That still wasn't anything I hadn't already guessed. The most practical help I got on discerning call was the bottom line: you figure out your call by doing it. Trust God, give yourself away in love. Just do it. And you wondered why I read The Quiltmaker's Gift this morning. Action, trust, love. That's about it for step-by-step call discernment. The troubling thing about call is that it applies to everyone. Not just elders. Not just Ministers of Word and Sacrament. Not just professional Christians. Everyone claiming the title "Christian" is the subject of God's call. Not that God's purpose stays the same for you all your life. Not that there's just one purpose for each of us. Not many of us are called to find a cure for AIDS or to solve global warming or to broker peace in the Middle East. Noble as those these may be (and somebody's going to do them), most of us are going to live out our lives in the realm of the ordinary, in mundane contexts without worldwide recognition for our faithfully fulfilling God's purpose for our lives.

When I first heard the call to go to seminary, in the very same week one of the other women in my church heard the same call. Our daughters, in fact, were close friends. But my family circumstances were such that I needed to remain an Inquirer, investigating the validity of my call while earning a living in construction, serving as a deacon and on various mission projects, being fed and growing in a small covenant group. My friend found out that she was pregnant, which threw a major wrench in the works for her. She postponed going to seminary to raise that baby, chairing the worship committee at the church, which eventually placed her in the position as lay worship designer on-staff. We'd both been advised, "Leap and the net will appear," but for us the obvious next step was not to drop everything else.

She and I accepted the same call in different ways, both of us remained in place, open and listening to the implications of God's call by serving in our local congregation. God's spirit leading us to act while we honed our listening skills. Not all calls lead to seminary, but all calls lead to God's kingdom. Which puts things in a different perspective. Providing childcare during worship as call. Singing in the choir as call. Bringing snacks for after church as call. Hosting in-home fellowship dinners as call. Inviting visitors home for lunch as call. Measuring beans at the Food Bank as call. Praying that God will guide this congregation into mission as call. Making phone contacts as call. Bringing saltines and toothpaste to the red tub as call. Washing up after a potluck as call. Vacuuming the sanctuary as call. Inviting your neighbors to a church event as call. No longer "jobs we gotta do," but living into the call to be the people of God. Together. In concrete ways. In ways that are true to ourselves, true to God's purpose for our individual and congregational life.

I heard another way of illustrating the volunteering philosophy of "Leap and the net will appear." I assisted this week in the Clackamas County homeless count at the St Aloysius food bank in Estacada. I was talking with the volunteers from the church about their Good Samaritan policy, because our two congregation's often share referrals. Their approach to providing financial assistance is, "The sooner we give the money away, the sooner we'll have more to give."

Responding to God's call may not be comfortable at first. Today's Meditation Before Worship is a quotation from Father Keating, who warns us to expect a crisis of trust and love on our journeys of discernment. Crisis! Trust? As in, potential for failure, potential for not being right. The good news is that we're not called to be successful; we're just called to be faithful. Success belongs to God. Success is defined by God. Every single thing we volunteer to do in church is an invitation to listen for God's call and claim on us. As you listen, expect to experience peace, joy, comfort, clarity of purpose. But probably not until you've also experienced fearfulness, disorientation, discomfort, a crisis in love, a crisis in trust.

Our call as Christians is to follow Jesus, not merely to worship him. That's why it takes more than an hour on Sunday morning to be a Christian. Church community is the place that gives us opportunities and relationships for following Jesus as well as worshiping him. Because the church is the one organization in the world that exists for the sake of those outside it. Becoming active in the life of the congregation is never about "things I gotta do" embracing the martyr's, "someone's gotta do it, so it may as well be me." This is about following Jesus, whose only interest in our giving ourselves away is so that we can be blessed. Believe the good news.