When I first entered seminary, I would often get asked about my “call to ministry.” I always found the question a little embarrassing. My fellow seminarians would tell of powerful experiences or flashes of insight. The model for a call to ministry seemed to be the Apostle Paul, who had a blinding conversion experience on the road to Damascus.
I, on the other hand, had no good story to tell. I didn’t know what to say. I actually thought that becoming a minister was something I had decided to do—not something that had happened to me. In fact, for me it was more like a tiny seed that grew and grew. Ministry was something I thought about from time to time. The more I thought about it, the more fascinated I became. I even felt a little ashamed. I did not say anything about it to anyone, not even my wife Phyllis.
Then one Sunday afternoon after church Phyllis asked me if I had ever thought about the ministry. I was shocked. I told her that in fact I had been thinking about it a lot, but that I was afraid to say anything. Ministry, for me, was more like a gay person coming out of the closet than a conversion on the road to Damascus.
I do take some comfort in the fact that the Bible has lots of stories of people called by God who wanted no part of it. Often we forget this part of the story. When we think of the story of Moses we see him (or maybe Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments) confronting the Pharaoh, turning a stick into a serpent, parting the Red Sea and talking to the burning bush. We remember images of bravery and heroism. We forget that Moses wanted no part of leading the Hebrew people. When God speaks to Moses, Moses tells God that he has picked the wrong guy. Moses suggests to God that he send somebody else.
I especially love the story of Jonah and the whale. The reason Jonah got swallowed up was that God called him to go east to Nineveh to proclaim God’s displeasure. Jonah immediately got in a boat headed west. After he got thrown overboard the whale got him and took him back.
Of course, the real story in the scriptures isn’t about what what individuals were called to be. The real story, the big story that links all the smaller stories together, is a story of a relationship of an entire people to their God—to their sense of what is good and holy. Let’s look again at the what links together the stories of Moses, Jonah, Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, David, Solomon, Ruth, and all the rest. The real story running through the scriptures is about the relationship of an entire people with their God. The prophets and heroes are instruments and leaders, but they are always concerned not simply with a personal relationship with God, but what the people of God are called to be.
Now, please don’t get hung up on the image of God contained in the scriptures. This is language of another time and another cosmology. Yet the human condition expressed here transcends time and culture. This is an experience every one of us shares. These are the fundamental human and religious questions that shape our lives: Who am I? How shall I live? To whom do I owe allegiance? Who are we? How shall we live together? What is required of us?
What are we called to be?
This is a timeless question. How we answer this question shapes our lives. It shapes our relationships. It shapes our politics. It determines the vocation we choose and the commitments we make.
And what can “call” mean to a modern sensibility? I mean, if I hear someone tell me that she literally has heard the voice of God calling her to do something, I am more likely to make a mental health referral than to follow her as a religious leader. If a fellow comes in and tells me that a burning bush told him to lead us on a long and dangerous journey, I would think he’s nuts.
And yet I am convinced that the idea of a call is just as important today as it has ever been. So, who or what can call people like us today? And how can we tell an authentic call from religious spam?
This is what I believe.
I believe that there is such a thing as an authentic religious calling that beckons us and that can guide our lives. And I believe that this call has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are a theist, an agnostic or an atheist. Whether you or I answer this call will make all the difference in our lives. If we follow that authentic religious call our lives will be filled with love, joy, meaning, and purpose. If we ignore this call our lives will degenerate into banality, conflict, and emptiness.
I don’t believe that there is anything supernatural about what calls us. What calls us is hope that is grounded in memory.
(I recall a cartoon I saw a few years ago. It showed a man on his death bed in a huge, opulent room. Seated next to the bed was a woman. The man was speaking. The caption read, “I wish I had bought more stuff.” Actually he did not say “stuff”—but the word on the cartoon is not the sort of word one is supposed to say in church.)
What makes the cartoon painfully funny, of course, is that nobody at the end of life wishes he or she had bought more useless junk.
Think of your fondest memories. Think of times in your life that are most precious. What do you think of? I think of times that I felt deeply loved and in love. I think of feeling fully alive, fully in harmony, fully happy. I think of celebrations and rites of passage with people I care for. I think of times I felt like I had done something good and useful. I remember times I worked hand in hand with others.
What are your precious memories? Feel them again for just a moment.
Those precious memories are the foundation for authentic religion. These memories are our religious bedrock—they are as important as any scripture. Why? Because when we remember these precious memories we touch life’s possibilities.
And once we remember what life can be, when that memory lives within and among us, we want life to be that way again and again. Hope that endures is founded upon precious memories. A religious community, a religious movement, is a community of memory and hope—memory and hope that are bound together.
And hope, a real enduring hope that can shape our lives, is not just some warm feeling.
A hope grounded in a deep conviction of what life can be calls us to action. Hope creates unrest. When we remind ourselves of what is good and tender and loving in life, we can never again reconcile ourselves to hatred, to conflict, to superficiality, to oppression, to the destruction of life, to loneliness. A truly hopeful person is never fully satisfied with things as they are.
A hope founded on memory also reminds us that most of what we truly value in life involves other people. We are most ourselves when we are loved, when we belong, when we are part of something larger than ourselves.
When this profoundly religious hope lives within us and among us, we look around at our lives and at our world and we know things can be better. We don’t have to tolerate violence, starving children and genocide. In a sense, we have all been to the promised land. And once we have been there, no matter how briefly, we want go there again. Memory and hope create a sense of urgency and a deep, gnawing longing in our souls.
What calls us today? Memory and hope call us.
What are we called to be? What are is this beloved congregation called to be and to do? What are we called to be as a religious movement?
We are called to create the promised land right here, right now. We are called to create a place for laughter, friendship, caring and service. We are called to take everything we know about what is precious in life and to make it real, to share it with one another, and to join hands to heal this crazy, broken, frightened world.
Actually, look again at this congregation’s mission statement. It speaks of nurturing our spiritual community, about growing our movement, and about serving the world. It works for me. Nurture, share, serve.
Today, as we all move to a new chapter in our journey, I would have us celebrate all that we have done.
Love thrives here. A stone would feel it. We have done much to nurture this spiritual community — all the way from being a village raising our children to filling this sanctuary with music to caring for the sick to working for justice. We have opened our hearts and welcomed hundreds — and they in turn have brought energy and strength. As I think of the past decade wonderful memories flood my mind.
But we are still called. We want to create a community that does more to weave together the generations. We want to become a truly multicultural and economically diverse community that reflects the growing diversity around us. We need more depth in our spiritual lives, for we live in a world of superficial distractions. We can do all of this. If ever there were a congregation where recent memory should inspire an abundance of hope, it is this one.
And what about us as a religious movement? (As you might imagine, this has been very much on my mind of late.) What are we called to be at this time in history?
We are called to be a religious home for the hundreds of thousands who are seeking a liberal, open, free religious community. We are called to open our hearts and doors. We are called to revitalize this faith and to make it an even stronger force for compassion and acceptance. We are called to bring forth a new generation of leaders that take us into a multicultural future.
Memory and hope demand it. We must not settle for being a tiny, elite enclave trapped by tradition. Our heroes and heroines have always been restless people—people who embraced the future and who saw possibilities. Hope, you see, called to them. And it calls to us today. The possibilities for us are breathtaking.
Our people all across this country and beyond want to recapture this spirit of hope. I am excited and scared to death. We must seize this opportunity.
My being elected president is all your fault, you know. You, along with dozens of other thriving congregations, have demonstrated what is possible. You have given hope to others—and that is precious.
And so I must leave you. Again. I cannot speak the gratitude in my heart.
And yet, as I said in my last newsletter column, I am taking you with me. The fresh memory of the loving, can-do spirit of this church will keep me going. Whatever good will come from my tenure as president will be because you showed me that hopes and dreams come true. And while my work takes me to Boston, Colorado is still our home.
I leave you in good hands. You have lay leaders that are strong and wise. My colleagues on the staff are capable, dedicated, loving people. They are the best people with whom I have ever worked.
And I am delighted that Dave Sammons will be here among you. All over the country I have seen the faces of my ministerial colleagues light up when they hear that Dave will be here during this transition.
I started this sermon with a little story about how I didn’t know what to say when people asked me about my call to ministry.
Well, I know what to say now.
I feel called because I am so filled with hope that I cannot keep still and cannot keep still or keep my mouth shut. I am filled with hope because I have seen, here among you, what love can do.
And I know that what calls me also calls each and every one of us. When we answer that call together, when we let hope and love guide us, we transform our lives and change the world.
This is my prayer for us all at this time of transition.
May precious memory fill our souls with hope. May we experience once again the love that surrounds us; the love that fills this sanctuary today. And may hope stir in us a wonderful, joyful restlessness.
May the spirit of hope forever call to us, and may that spirit continue to pour out its blessings among us.
Thank you. Amen.