Trinity Sunday, The Call, Isaiah 6:1-9, May 26, 2024
Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock
The phone rings in the early morning. Your heart stops beating for a second, and you jump out of your skin. You pretend it is not ringing, /but it continues to ring. You recognize the caller ID. It keeps ringing. You finally pick up. The voice on the other end fires back. “Something has happened.
We need you. For God’s sake, can you come?”//
You walk along the beach as the sun is coming up. Walls of pink clouds streak across the horizon. The constant rhythm of the waves calms your soul. A blue heron lands next to an early morning fisherman looking for a gifted meal from his new friend. A squadron of pelicans silently flies by in precision,/ so close to the breaking gulf waters that their feathers must be getting wet. The lone osprey makes a magnificent dive for his first catch of the day. A pod of dolphins majestically glides in and out of the waves. The calmness, the wildness, and the magnificence of the spectacular morning are overwhelming. You long to sing or write or paint about it. You live out the rest of the day in a way that somehow is true to the marvel you have seen.////
You have great difficulty with someone at work. You don’t understand why she does what she does. She must be incompetent. Then, she becomes sick, and you must do her job. Overnight, you understand her. It is like the phone call ringing at night/ or the early morning sunrise at the Gulf. It is a call, a call to a new relationship, a new way of living and working. When she returns, you want to work together as a team instead of discounting each other.//
In the year that King Uzziah died, or the year John Kennedy, or Robert Kennedy, or Martin Luther King, or someone you deeply loved died, you go to the chapel to pray. You fill your lap with tears and finally cover your face with your hands. If you are not careful, you may hear a voice whisper, “I know you have experienced deep pain. Unfortunately, you now know what pain is like. Whom may I soon send to heal others in pain in this world?” After multiple visits, you reluctantly reply, “Send me.” A voice lovingly reverberates in your ear, “ You are a wounded healer. You are needed. I will be with you.”//
The work we do, our call, is what we are summoned to do in the world. We may think we choose our vocations or callings, but more accurately, they call us. Calls are given, and our lives listen or not listen. We hear all sorts of voices calling us in all directions. Some voices come from inside, and some from outside. Which voices do we listen to? Maybe both.///
For many people, Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer. But this weekend, thousands of volunteers are busy placing American flags on the graves of men and women in National Cemeteries. Tomorrow, all over our country, people will honor and mourn those who died while serving this country. Each of those who died heard the call to go, and they went. What must it be like/ to hear a call/ that will likely/ cost you/ your life?
I hear MLK again in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at the Bishop Charles Mason Church in Memphis as a storm rages outside the night before he is killed. He had awareness that the call to go was stronger than his fear./ This is the last paragraph of his sermon that night.
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead.
But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place.
But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.
And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land.
I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.
And so, I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”1///
There is also a sad game we sometimes play. We go through our high school, college, law, medicine, seminary, or advanced degree yearbook. Buechner2 calls it a game of solitaire. We look at the friends we best knew, remember their dreams, and then recall what they are doing now. More than a few are spending their lives not using their gifts. It is easy to ponder if we also are in that group but are too blind to see.
When we are young, without responsibility,/ where there may be fewer voices, we may better hear our true call. We may better listen to the voice of the silent pelicans or the rising sun, but we may also succumb to the banal voice of mass culture of money and status, and only feel gladness on weekends away from work. We may hear the voice of our Puritan forebears that work is not supposed to be joyful, but is a penance for working through the guilt we accumulate while we are not working!
There are many plays and novels about men and women who realize they have listened to the wrong voices and are engaged in a vocation where they find no pleasure or purpose. They wonder if, instead of choosing status and salary, they could have better supported their family in a calling that was fulfilling with purpose. One such novel is Point of No Return by John Marquand. I disagree with the author’s title, however. The people I work with keep telling me, “It is never too late to change.”
To Isaiah, the voice accompanied by Se/raphs (seh·ruhf)
said, “Your sins are forgiven. Now, whom shall I send?”/ How do we know that voice? Buechner2 writes that we should go where we most need to go, and where there is the greatest need: Where our deep gladness meets the world’s great need.” What can we do that makes us feel the most joyful and leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north with a sense of joy and peace? Where does our great joy in living meet the world’s greatest neediness?
How do we know where we are most needed? The world is so full of deep needs,/ grief,/ emptiness,/ fear,/ and pain even before we walk out of our house. I promise it will happen if we stay open and keep our eyes,/ ears,/ and hearts open. The phone will ring, and we will not jump out of our skin as much as we jump into our skin. If we keep our lives open, the right place will find us. Ultimately, our callings should be/ to be Christ in the world. To be Christs with whatever gladness we have in whatever place/ among whatever people we are called to./ That is Christ’s call to us all,/ even before the beginning of creation. And the great promise is that he will be with us, beside us all the way. Christ’s presence may be with us in the love of another friend, or in beauty in Nature like the sunrise or pelicans or dolphins… or maybe like Isaiah, we will be surrounded by six-winged Se/raphs (seh·ruhf) as we become the person God created us to be! ///
1 CNN, Wednesday, April 4, 2018, 10:07 A.M. EDT.
2 Frederick Buechner in “The Calling of Voices,” Secrets in the Dark (HarperSanFrancisco 2006), pp. 35-41.
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com