2024 Sun Jan 14

I.Theme –   Discipleship and calling

 "Calling Disciples" –He Qi (2001)

The lectionary readings are here  or individually: 

Old Testament – 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)
Psalm – Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
Epistle –1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Gospel – John 1:43-51

Samuel – calling Samuel
Paul – call to honor their bodies. 
John – calling Philip and Nathanael

From Bruce Epperly  "Process and Faith"

"Today’s readings describe the many faces of revelation. God’s presence and activity is both intimate and global. The heavens declare the glory of God and God’s glory is also revealed through the chanting of toddlers, nocturnal whispers, beating hearts, and adult inspirations. God is as equally present in our cells as in our souls. Our universe is omni-centered, that is, all things exist as a result of God’s energy and inspiration coursing through them.There are no God-forsaken places or persons – we are challenged to experience, honor, and support God’s movements in all creation. While this may complicate our ethical decision-making, it opens us to a world of wonder and beauty, appropriate to the Season after the Epiphany.

"Despite our turning from God, God is always turning toward us. There is hope for transformation in the most dire situations and most despicable people. 

"The call of Samuel reminds us that children as well as adults can be God’s messengers to the world. God is moving through boys and girls listening to a children’s sermon or having their diapers changed in the church nursery. Samuel is both an unlikely and likely candidate for divine inspiration. He is a child and hardly expected to hear the voice of God, and yet he does. Yet, from the beginning of his life, he was a child of promise – his mother dedicated him to God and her fidelity to her promise may have opened unexpected pathways of divine presence in his life. 

"In seeing and honoring God’s presence in our children – and that means all children! – we awaken energies of growth and inspiration within them and ourselves. 

"The call of Samuel reminds us that divine inspiration requires a community to be fully understood. After all, God’s voice comes in the context and through the many voices of our lives. It takes a process of discernment to discover which of the voices in our lives is most authentic to our vocation as God’s loving and beloved children. Samuel seeks the guidance of Eli. 

"We all need mentors who, in non-possessive ways, call forth our ability to hear God’s voice and movements in our lives. Samuel’s call in not just personal or individual, it is contextual. Our calls, accordingly, draw us deeper into our own experiences and yet lure us toward care for the larger community. The journey of revelation is always both inward and outward, and needs a community of discernment to mature and find direction. 

"Psalm 139: 1-18 places each life in a divine environment. We live and move and have our being in relationship to God. God’s care and character determine God’s presence, action, and awareness of us. God is not out to get us or use divine knowledge to punish us. God fully knows us and fully loves us. This inspires both wonder and gratitude. More than that, God’s love leads to creating us as awesome and wonder-full from the moment of conception. Questions of “when life begins” are foolish from the Psalmist’s perspective and should not enter the political conversations of right and left, nor Christian arguments for the legality or prohibition of abortion. 

"The Psalmist is clear that God cares for the fetus, and that shouldn’t be a matter of controversy even for those who support abortion rights. We cannot devaluate fetal life to affirm the lives of women. Both are valuable and cherished by God. This makes life and death decisions more complicated – and involves weighing contrasting values – but in the complication we may discover broader community and individual answers that honor both women and unborn children. (For more on ethics in the context of divine omnipresence, see Bruce Epperly, Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed, Continuum and Emerging Process: Adventurous Theology for a Missional Church, Parson’s Porch.) 

"Divine activity sustains all things. Divine knowledge embraces all things. Divine presence supports all things. I purposely added verses 7-12 to today’s readings to render a more holistic reading of the Psalm. It is a Psalm of wonder and gratitude, of insight and inspiration, that has profound implications for how we view ourselves and others. We are wonderfully made – we are beautiful – and so is every other God-loved child. 

"Today’s readers need not get bogged down on the minutia of I Corinthians 12. The passage speaks of temple prostitution and spirituality and sexuality, but it is really about the affirmation and care of our bodies. There is no mind-body dualism here: when Paul speaks of the body as the temple of God, he is clear that the body is connected with the spirit – each shapes the other. The spirit is embodied and the body is inspired. Our bodies are temples, that is, shrines to divine wisdom and deserve both affirmation and care. Glorify God in your bodies implies that we are to treat our bodies as expressions of divinity – this applies to our diet, sexuality, and lifestyle. 

"It also applies to our care for the bodies of others. Recent allegations of child sexual abuse in major university sports programs remind and challenge us to support the safety of every child. More than that, we are called as churches to honor all bodies and perceive and affirm the goodness of all creation. This involves feeding hungry bodies, restoring broken bodies, healing sick bodies, and affirming all bodies as beloved by God. 

"There are no perfect bodies. Nor are a culture’s standards of beauty absolute. Rather, the church is called to be counter-cultural: to promote wellness, but also to see God’s wonder in every body. We are all awesomely made. We need to see and bring forth beauty where others see ugliness. 

"The gospel story presents Jesus’ call to Philip and Nathaniel. While the details of Jesus’ call are sparse, the scripture points out that God calls people in everyday life. Adults can open the doors of perception, experience divinity, and come to God in child-like spirits. John’s gospel describes a community of call in which our experiences of call and vocational inspiration inspire us to invite others to be part of the Jesus’ movement. There is no compulsion here, just invitation. “Come and see.” For those who respond, the heavens open up, new horizons emerge, and our lives are forever transformed. 

"The call of God goes forth – everywhere. The doctrines of omnipresence, omniscience, and omni-activity (omnipotence) are not stale era pieces, irrelevant to our lives, but invitations to adventure – to see God everywhere, to experience God in our daily lives, to honor embodiment, and welcome revelation whenever and wherever it occurs. We are to be discerning and ask questions of ourselves and others when we have had mystical experiences. In the questioning, inspired by a sense of holiness in all moments and all creatures, we will discover God’s voice amid the voices, and God’s pathways amid the pathways we travel individually and as communities. " 

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Former Lutheran seminary president David Lose writes the following this week about "Come and See":

"These words, this invitation, form the heart not simply of this opening scene but much of John’s Gospel. John’s story is structured around encounters with Jesus. Again and again, from these early disciples, to the Pharisee named Nicodemus, to the Samaritan women at the well, to the man born blind, to Peter and Pilate and eventually Thomas, characters throughout John’s Gospel are encountered by Jesus. John structures his story this way, I think, to offer us a variety of possibilities, both in terms of the kind of people to whom Jesus reaches out and the kinds of responses they offer…and we might offer as well. And so across the pages of John’s Gospel there are women and men, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, powerful and vulnerable, people of all shapes and sizes and varieties that Jesus meets. And to each one, in one way or another, he says the same thing: come and see. Come and see God do a new thing. Come and see as your future opens up in front of you. Come and see the grace of God made manifest and accessible and available to all."

This is the Sunday to invite someone to come to Church.  Is St. Peter’s a "good fit" for them ? Come and see. As Lose writes "the number one reason people give for coming to a church for the first time is that someone invited them personally. Just as Philip said to Nathaniel, that is, someone said to them, “Come and see.” Which means that the future of the church depends greatly on ordinary, everyday Christians summoning the courage to invite someone to come and see what they have found in the community of the faithful that is their congregation." Go and Tell.

From SALT Blog

What does God’s Calling mean ?

Several possibilities:
1. Exploring what should I do with my life
2. Organizing Getting my bearings in the new year.
3. Be still and reflective. Listen for God’s calling.

“(1) God’s calling can be about “what I should do with my life,” but it also can be about getting our bearings, especially in times of trouble and disorientation. In fact, the word “orientation” comes from the Latin orientem (“east”), the direction of the rising sun and also (for Europeans and North Africans) the direction of the Holy Land. In times of turmoil, God reorients us, bringing us back to what’s truly most important.

“(2) How do we hear and follow God’s call? When we sense a prompting, an encouragement, or a tug on our sleeve, how do we recognize its source? From Samuel’s story, one mark of a divine summons is repetition, and so we might ask: Does the prompting persist, or is it fleeting? Another clue is in Eli’s advice to be still and deliberately, thoughtfully listen, making time and space for reflection (“Speak, for your servant is listening”). And a third potential sign is those “tingling ears” (v. 11): the Spirit’s work in our lives will challenge and stir us, and that inspiration can mean we are moving in the right direction.

“(3) Likewise, from John’s story we can glean that God’s calling typically meets us where we are. Andrew gets a trusted recommendation and a day with Jesus; Philip jumps aboard right away; and Nathanael engages in skeptical debate. In short, there’s no one right way to respond to God’s call. There’s plenty of room under the tent of discipleship, both for those ready to take the plunge and for those who’d rather put a toe in first…

“(4) One of the most celebrated definitions of vocation is Frederick Buechner’s: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” It’s a lovely definition — but it sometimes doesn’t seem to fit. Moses, for example, doesn’t demonstrate much “deep gladness” when God calls him at the burning bush (Moses sums up the discussion with, “O my Lord, please send someone else!” (Ex 4:13)); nor does Samuel particularly glad when God calls him to deliver difficult news to Eli. In the Gospels, too, the disciples eventually experience their calling as leading them into struggle, not away from it. In the end, Buechner’s formula is still a valuable discernment tool, but so is its complementary opposite: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep discomfort and the world’s deep blessings meet.” Especially in times of trouble and trial, this definition of vocation can be illuminating.

“(5) Finally, Jesus’ words (and Philip’s echo of them) — “Come and see” — stand out this week as a witness and a challenge. For both Andrew and Nathanael, and for many of us besides, second-hand reports just won’t do. We want to come and see for ourselves. For John, this is the primary mode of spreading the good news and growing the community of disciples — and churches today are wise to do the same. Try this line of questions with your community: If we were to invite a friend to experience the best of our congregation’s life and work with this simple, three-word invitation, “Come and see,” to what specifically would we invite them? A worship service, a service project, a small group meeting? Where and when do we most vividly, experientially embody the Gospel we proclaim?

by Rev. Mindi Welton-Mitchell

For many church leaders, in the past and present, we have been called to speak out for God’s ways of righteousness and justice, and sometimes we have to speak out against the very institutions that have nurtured us in our call. We have had to overcome the voices of fear inside us or the voices of doubt outside of us that tell us we haven’t heard God’s call and we should go lie back down. It’s not an easy call to follow. As we honor and remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this month we remember King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, in which he writes to some of the very clergy who have supported him but have also tried to stop him, in an attempt to avoid conflict. Prophets are called to speak to conflict, to address it and not run from it, to speak and act out despite their fears and the fears of others. Dr. King certainly did this in his life and ministry. While one can argue for or against calling Dr. King a prophet, it is clear the Dr. King lived his life as many of our Biblical prophets did, speaking and acting out for God’s ways of justice and righteousness. I call him a prophet.

As we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this month, the Call of the Prophet Samuel is an appropriate reading for today. In reading Samuel’s story, we can find the story of all prophets who have been called to speak out for God’s ways of justice and righteousness. We find the story of many who have heard the call of God but have had that call questioned by others (in this story, Eli questions the call, but not God, and when Eli is certain it is God calling Samuel, he encourages Samuel to listen to God). God calls Samuel to do something that is not easy: to speak out against Eli’s own sons, that they can’t skate by doing whatever they want to by offering sacrifices afterwards, that they can’t get off because their father is a priest. Samuel has to stand up to the family of the very person who has taken him in and cared for him, the very person who has instructed him how to listen to God’s ways. It is not easy to follow the call of the prophet.