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How can God get your attention?
How can God lock eyes with you, literally or otherwise, and truly get you to listen?
I’ve recently told a couple of people in meetings that when I was in seventh grade, my English teacher said to my parents in a conference that “Stephen could be looking directly at me, and I can tell he isn’t listening to a word I’m saying.” This is a cute little story, and yet no one I’ve told it to expresses surprise. I want to hear you. I want to listen to you. But it’s hard sometimes. I have a lot going on. And so do you: sometimes what you’re saying doesn’t come across very well. Sometimes I look up several hours later, maybe while I’m waiting in line for the ferry, and I think, “Damn, what did she mean by that? Did she mean what I think she means?” I want to pay attention and get what I’m being told on the first hearing, but I get distracted. Or you say something distractedly, or indirectly. We’re both caught up in other things, and the connection is lost.
Or – one of us doesn’t want to hear it. Maybe I can’t get your attention because you don’t want to hear what you suspect I have to say. If so, I can relate.
Incidentally, if you feel God is calling you to the priesthood, you have my sympathies, because all of this becomes even more complicated, and overwrought. Lots of people wonder if God is actually calling you, or if your sense of call is just your projection onto God of your own human desires, your own anxious hankerings. You wonder that yourself, sometimes. This self-doubt can actually be a healthy practice: one must be very careful when saying that God is speaking. That belief has all too often led to body counts.
But God is calling us, and the Good News is never, ever just for those with the misfortune of feeling called to be deacons or priests. The call is extended to all of us, in different ways. If only we would listen. If only we would pay attention. If only we would stop, breathe, turn our heads, and get ready to hear what God is saying.
But that’s rarely easy. Often enough, most of us don’t even see the value of listening to God. God seems to be silent; if God is here, God is not visible, and rarely palpably present; most of us are not mystics, and if we’re honest we don’t really think God speaks to us. We live in an era that has diagnostic codes for people who hear disembodied voices, and we are enmeshed in a practical, post-Enlightenment mindset that does not assume that a deity would communicate with us. I expect that scarcely any of us in this room or online feel called, or expect to feel called, by God to do a mission, or serve a specific purpose. I suspect that we are, all of us, co-workers of Simon, washing our nets after a long night of futile fishing, resigned to the grim fact that today is just another day.
I know I’m a valuable person, and I matter to many people, but I often doubt that I am called. I don’t seem to be one to whom the risen Christ appears on the road, dazzling and terrifying. I don’t seem to be one to whom Jesus of Nazareth appears, conjuring astounding wealth from nowhere, wealth that threatens to sink the frail boat of my shortsighted imagination. I’m just… me. We’re just… a church. We sing songs. We often have fun together. We have an open door to the stranger. But called? That sounds a bit… Evangelical. A bit embarrassing, even. It doesn’t sound like us.
But I tell you this: God wants to get our attention. I mean it. No joke. God is calling you, calling me, calling us.
Let’s explore some ways of finding out what God is saying to us.
Let’s start with abundance. Ask yourself: what is filling my fishing boat fit to burst? What is my impossibly stupendous catch of fish? What is my immense gift, my prodigious talent, my deepest joy, the thing I do with ease and delight, the thing that doesn’t feel like work, the thing that makes me feel full, the thing that makes my heart sing? I recently shared with our treasurer, Terry Jones, that an accountant I hired years ago told me that when he traces the x/y axes of a spreadsheet to the corner and discovers that everything adds up, or to use Terry’s term, everything “ticks and ties,” my accountant “has a warm feeling.” This is his joy, and it should not be overlooked or minimized. You’re a poet or a painter; you’re a physician or an accountant; you’re a parent or a godparent; you’re a 12-step sponsor or a city administrator or the world’s best auntie or the most serene and breathtaking oboist… or it’s not something you do, it’s just something you are, like a true, tough yet tender friend. Whatever it is, it’s your boat bursting with fish. It’s God’s abundance overflowing in you.
Then, once you have an idea about your particular abundance, consider what might be going on around you that you can’t shake, you can’t ignore, you can’t stop worrying about or wondering about. It could be a deep and terrible social problem, and if so, God has blessed you with the gift of prophecy: you can show us how to solve that problem. You can be the oboist or the administrator or the godparent who rouses us and empowers us to tackle that problem.
Or maybe it’s just one precious life God is calling you to save, one person Jesus would have you fish for. One addict who needs to be taken to a meeting. One lonely soul who hasn’t yet heard the beauty of your music. One child who needs a strong parent. One parent who needs an excellent babysitter. One co-worker who needs an office friend.
You discern your great gift, and you discern a great need: this can be how you hear God’s call to you, God’s call to the delightful creation that is, uniquely, you. Maybe there’s more than one call, come to think of it. I was an organist before I was a therapist before I was a deacon before I was a priest. (May you not struggle that much!) But through all of that career development, it may be that my first role in life is where God calls me most powerfully into ministry: I may ultimately be called to be a good brother to my siblings. I have faltered in this calling, but it’s one of a very few golden strands that will run through the entire tapestry of my life. (And my boat groans with a bursting net of six siblings!)
God is calling you. God is calling all of us, together. God in Jesus sits in our boat, surprises us with abundance, and calls us into mission.
Does God have your attention?
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Preached on the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C), February 6, 2022, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Isaiah 6:1-13
Psalm 138
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11