Epiphany 3b.06                                               January 22, 2006

Christians understand life as a journey,
        even an adventure.
Cynewulf, a 7th Century Anglo Saxon poet, wrote:

        “Bold on the mountains            we mortal men
        In our hearts musings              must mount by leaps
        From strength to strength,       and strive for glory,
        That we may ascend               by holy works
        To the highest heavens,         where joy and hope are,
        A goodly band of thanes...

Do you hear the adventure in that?
A quest for something worth risking everything for.
Life is an adventure worth going on
       if it is lived in response to a call

       – an invitation like the one Gandalf extended to Bilbo Baggins
`     or the one Jesus extended to Simon, Andrew, James, and John.

God is always calling.
God called Abraham to leave his civilized home
      and become a nomad in the wilderness,
      Moses to lead a band of slaves to freedom,
      David to be their king,
      and Jeremiah to be a prophet
              delivering messages no one would believe.

When we say God is omnipresent,
      we aren’t just talking about geography.
We mean God is present and active in every situation
      of our lives.
And in each of those situations God is calling,
      inviting us to something better that we have known before.
Calling isn’t just a large scale life plan.
It’s how we deal with each thing as it arises.

We are always faced with issues of going or staying,
      issues of whether relationships should be continued,
              ended, or transformed into something new.
We live only and always in the present moment,
     and each present moment is poised on the brink   
              of an unknown future.

Life is an adventure worth going on
     if it is lived in response to God’s call
     inviting us to do something
              or be somebody.

But hearing the invitation,
     heeding the call, isn’t easy.
I find myself trying to figure out
     what God might me inviting to
             in all sorts of ways.

If two letters arrive in the mail from the same city,
     I wonder if that means something.
If I stumble across a book about something
     that I’ve been fretting over,
     I wonder whether it’s really an accident.
This may not be superstitious and naive.
One of the most skeptical rationalist theologians I know
           is Harvard’s Gordon Kaufman.
And he sees creative serendipity, fortunate coincidences,
     as God’s hand in human history.

Gracious serendipity happens in our individual lives too.
Someone says the right word.
An unexpected opportunity comes along.
The right book falls into our hands
     when we weren’t looking for it.

The problem is how to interpret these things.
How do we tell God’s call from our own wishful thinking
      or our own dark, gloomy, fearful thinking?

King Croesus of Sparta asked the oracle at Delphi
      whether he should invade Persia.
The oracles said, “If you invade Persia,
      a great kingdom will fall.”
He did – but the kingdom that fell was Sparta, not Persia.
It’s all in the interpretation.
And we may not be perfect readers
      of the signs in our own lives.

Another way of discerning our call is to look inward.
You know the expression, “Go with your gut.”
We can check our emotional reactions to things,
      even notice how our bodies react
      when we think of different situations.

If I think of doing such and such,
      maybe I feel warm and peaceful,
               or excited and exuberant,
               or fearful and jumpy,
               or depressed and full of dread.

That is certainly good information.
There is such a thing as wisdom of the body.
But looking inward isn’t really reliable either.
Things that make us grow,
      usually make us anxious.
Looking inward tells us a lot about what we prefer,
      but not much about what God may be beckoning us into.

Another way of planning our lives
       is to regulate them with rules
       instead of attending to calling.
There are norms and customs and social expectations.
Some of them are even written in the Bible.
There were norms and expectations in Jesus’ day too.
Simon and Andrew were expected to keep fishing
       to provide for their families.
James and John were expected to mend their father’s nets.

But Jesus said, “Follow me,” and off they went.
The thing most Christians miss is that Christianity
        is an adventure story – not a set of rules.
In fact the rules forbid the adventure.

So how is this to work?
If we can’t just follow the rules, if we don’t know how to read the signs,
        if we can’t even rely on our own feelings,
        then how do we hear the call?

I wish I could give you an answer neatly wrapped up
        with a bow on top.
But I can’t.

Jesuits and Pentecostals will give you
        a precise step by step method
                 of knowing the will of God.
Maybe they just know God better than I do,
        or at least they think they do.
In my experience, God doesn’t make things clear.
God doesn’t shout commands from the heavens
        or send bold face office memos.

Figuring out what God is inviting us to do or to become
        is guess work.
We will, in fact, be wrong most of the time.
Fortunately God weaves our mistakes
        into better patterns than we could have designed.

So, being open to God’s call is essential.
Doing our best to figure our what God wants us to do or be
        is essential.
But coming up with the right answer is not so important.

As Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple said,

        “When we decide wisely, God rules.
        When we decide foolishly, God rules.”

With all that in mind,
         I do have a few suggestions.
First, we have to be open to it.
If we are stuck in figuring out what’s best for ourselves,
        what will best advance our own goals and agendas,
                  then we aren’t open to God’s call.

We start by praying “Thy will be done,”
        with full awareness God’s will may have to do with our lives.
When we pray, “Thy will be done,” we are writing God a blank check.
We are also opening our hearts to a different way
        of making our plans.

The next key to discerning God’s call
        is to know ourselves.
That’s where looking inward can be helpful.
If we are honest with ourselves, if we pay attention
        to our own feelings right in our bodies,
        we are less likely to be led astray
                 by unconscious nuttiness.

The third thing that helps us to hear God
         is to have our souls in shape.
Regular soaking in prayer, sacrament, Scripture,
         and service to others tones the spirit.
If we are not living the life of faith already,
         it is almost impossible to hear
                  invitations to truth and beauty.
They are broadcast at a pitch
         to which we are deaf.

The fourth part of discernment is we pray.
We talk to God about our lives.
We tell God what we want and we ask what God wants.
We have a conversation.
We are considerably more likely to learn what God wants
         if we ask.

And we talk to another person

        – but not someone who will tell us what to do.
Once they begin prescribing like a talk show host
        we know we are talking to the wrong person.
We talk to someone who will listen to us respectfully,
        ask questions, and share their own stories.
God is not so likely to speak through another person’s advice
        even if it is good advice,
        as God is likely to speak in the silence
                between us.

Finally we remember that ultimately we are called to God
        and we remember who and where God is.
God is in front of us, not behind us.
In Exodus the pillar of fire didn’t follow Israel.
It led Israel.
God calls us into the unknown future,
        not the familiar past.
Life is in front of us, only death is behind.

And we remember that God is the beauty
        which surpasses our apprehension.
God is never banal or trivial.
God is a breath-taking, soul absorbing Beauty,
        the consummation of our deepest longing
                 in perfect peace.

One of tonight’s hymns says,

        “Be thou my vision O Lord of my heart.
        All else be naught to me save that thou art.”
God is that Beauty so engrossing
        that when we have a vision of God
        we can truthfully say

        “All else be naught . . . save that thou art.”

We get no more than fleeting glimpses of such Beauty
        in this life.
But if we spend our years in the quest of it,
        our lives will be an adventure

        “on the mountains” like Cynewulf’s

        “goodly band of thanes.”
                                      

                                                   Amen.