This sermon was delivered at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Bellevue, Nebraska as my 'farewell' sermon to them after serving for nine months as an intern in their parish through the Resurrection House program in Omaha.
A friend asked me the other day, "What does it feel like to have a calling?"
As I come to the end of nine months spent reflecting on that very question, I wanted to share with you my own understanding of calling and how I have experienced that in my life.
Frederick Beuchener, an American Presbyterian minister and one of the most prominent theologians of our day, has written that one's calling is found "where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need." The wisdom in this statement is that finding one's calling is not just a personal quest, not just a matter of making ourselves happy. It is a matter of finding where our gifts and talents might best be put to use in the world to benefit others. God does not call us to sit at home on the sofa watching television -- even if we find "deep gladness" in that. God calls us to address the "world's deep needs," and Buechener says we have found our vocation when we find that the thing that brings us great gladness and joy is also addressing one of those deep needs of the world.
Now, this is a nice thought, and perhaps for some people it might ring true. But my own experience of calling has not always been so pleasant. Oftentimes what I perceive to be a call from God comes to me quite apart from any sense of "deep gladness" in doing something, and instead comes as a mandate, a sense that I MUST do something, often accompanied by a sense of urgency.
For two years now, I have been involved in work with people who are homeless, first through an outdoor church community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and for the past 9 months, through Siena Francis House, which many of you know is a shelter and residential drug and alcohol recovery program in downtown Omaha. This is work to which I have felt deeply called, but it was not a nice, warm fuzzy call, a call in which "my deep gladness met the world's deep need." I didn't reach out to care for the homeless because I WANTED to or because I felt JOY in doing so, I did so because I felt that I HAD to, that I MUST.
My experience of calling has been less about Beuchner's idea of finding my "deep gladness" in doing work that also happens to address the world's needs and more about a discomforting, unsettling encounter with God that shakes up my world and prods me to step out of my comfort zone. Singer/songwriter Susan Werner gives voice to this experience perfectly in a song called "Did Trouble Me," from her recent album, The Gospel Truth. Just a sampling of the lyrics: "When I closed my eyes so I would not see, my Lord did trouble me. When I let things stand that should not be, my Lord did trouble me. When I held myself away and apart, my Lord did trouble me. And the tears of my brother did move my heart, my Lord did trouble me." The chorus of the song describes how exactly God does this troubling: "Did trouble me, with a word or a sign, with the ringing of the bell in the back of my mind. Did trouble me, did stir my soul, for to make me human, to make me whole."
This perfectly illustrates "what it feels like to have a calling" to me -- it feels like God "troubling me" to become a more whole and human person through recognizing the humanity in others, rather than allowing me to "close my eyes" or "hold myself away and apart" from my fellow human being and their joys and sufferings. This call has not always been about feeling any "deep gladness," but about a struggle -- a struggle "to make me human, to make me whole," a struggle against my own selfishness to live out the radical love of God for all people as exemplified by Jesus in the Gospel texts.
For me, knowing WHAT the call is is not difficult. In fact, the basis of our calling as Christians is actually quite similar no matter who we are. The source of our call is the life and example of Jesus as set forth in scripture. As I read and study about the way Jesus lived his life -- reaching out with compassion precisely to those people that the wider society said were sinful, unworthy or unclean -- I know how I should be living my life. That inner nagging is loud and clear, and often takes the form of various scripture passages ringing in the back of my mind -- "If you love me, feed my sheep." "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Whatever you did to one of the least of these, you did it to me." Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian, put it well when he wrote, "The matter is simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly."
The difficult part is NOT in knowing what God requires of us, what God expects of us. The difficult part is deciding whether or not I am going to say "yes" to God's call or ignore it and continue along my own path. And the question, then, becomes not "what is God calling me to do?" but "where and how is God calling me to live out that call?"
In my own life, this has meant a question about whether or not my response to God's call necessarily involves ordained ministry. Over the past nine months, I have made a point of talking one-on-one with as many ordained people as possible, to hear their own stories of how they figured out that they were called to this ministry. I sat down with them and asked them, essentially the same question my friend asked me a few weeks ago: "What does it feel like to have a calling?" And on some level they all gave me the same answer -- they spoke of this sense of necessity, of feeling that they HAD to do this. In fact, the advice they all gave me was fairly similar as well -- don't go into this line of work unless you really feel that you HAVE to do it. This advice was far from a denigration of the ministry, but an acknowledgment that the ministry is not something to be rushed into, not something to do for the power or the status or even the pretty vestments.
When I first set off on this journey, as I left Boston to spend a year thinking about the possibility of ordination, the minister at the outdoor church where I volunteered, who was a dear mentor to me, sat me down and told me that the process of discernment for the ministry was tricky. "We are ALL called to ministry," he told me, "the trick is to figure out whether you primarily see yourself as a minister or you primarily see yourself as something else."
At the time, I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but as I reflect back on it a year later, I now understand. And interestingly enough, it was my volunteer work at Siena Francis House that really brought this home to me. Because of my strong sense of calling to work with the homeless, I had thought that perhaps this was an indication that I was called to a career working in this arena, potentially in social service work. But this year, I found that volunteering in a largely secular shelter context did not feel as deeply fulfilling and meaningful to me as my work with the Outdoor Church had been. I realized that I feel called not just to help others, not just to reach out to those on the margins, but to do so in an explicitly ministerial context, to call people into the kind of relationship and community with one another that I feel is possible only through the bonds of faith, in God's name, appealing to a higher standard than human potential can ever reach on its own. I realized that I DO see myself as a minister. Not as a volunteer, not as a social services worker, but as a minister.
I am not yet sure whether I feel that I HAVE to be ordained, but I do know that this is the first vocation that I have explored where I feel truly at home. I have explored several other possible careers -- journalism, teaching, research or non-profit work -- and while I enjoyed doing all of those things and was generally happy with my work, it seemed there was something missing, that something wasn't quite right. And after spending nine months immersed in the life and work of a parish, it just seems to fit. It feels like I've finally found a round hole for my round peg after trying to make it fit into a bunch of square holes.
If I am called to ordination, I am not yet sure to which form of ministry I am called -- does my sense of urgency about reaching out to the world outside the walls of the church lead me to the diaconate, or does that urgency coupled with my deep reverence for the Eucharist and for the sacramental elements and rituals in the church, as well as a strong desire to sustain and deepen the bonds of the community inside the walls of the church lead me to the priesthood? I would appreciate your continued prayers for my ongoing process of discernment as I leave Omaha for Atlanta, Georgia in a few weeks, where I will continue doing work for the documentary film I've been working with and do some part-time work for my dad's website company. I hope to find a church community there that will eventually sponsor me for the formal discernment process for ordination in the diocese of Atlanta.
Although a number of things are not yet clear to me in my future path, I am confident that God will continue to guide and direct me as I journey. I am reminded of the famous prayer by Thomas Merton: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does indeed please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right path although I may know nothing about it."
Thank you, beyond words, for all you have done for me this year to support me in the discernment process and in realizing and affirming my fledgling sense of calling to the ministry. I pray that the Spirit would continue to be your guide as you journey with the future interns in this parish to help them answer their own calls, however "troubling" or full of "deep gladness" they may be.
In the name of the One whose Spirit is at work within us "to make us human, to make us whole," Amen.
