What’s in Kelvin’s Head

Now, the boy Samuel was ministering in the temple.

And he hears God’s classic call.

So familiar are we to the call of God in the stories that we can become immune to it. Perhaps, we think, God has called all these other people to do special things, perhaps that is only for special people.

God called Abraham to leave his home and found a nation.

God called Moses from the burning bush to lead his people.

God called Mary to say Yes to God and bear his Son.

God called St Paul from his wicked oppression of the early church to serve it instead and spread the gospel of Good news.

In our bible reading, we find Jesus saying, “Come follow me” to Philip and Nathanial and the other fishermen.

And God, as we heard called Samuel in the temple.

It might be easy to put all these people together and take no further notice. For it is clear that they are special people. Holy people. It is easy to say, well,  I am not Abraham, I am not Moses, I am not Mary or Paul or Samuel. And I’ve never seen a burning bush or been thrown from a horse at the sight of the Lord. I’ve never heard an audible voice calling in the night and I’ve never had cause to say yes or no to an angel.

But that would be to miss the point.

For the call of God that is described in so many ways by the biblical writers does seem to follow something of a pattern. And by discerning the pattern, we may be able to discern our own sense of what God’s call is about.

The first thing to note is that it tends to be the very ordinary people whom God calls. The fishermen by the lakeside; the child ministering in the temple. There is no reason to think that they were specially gifted. They were simply ordinary folk.

·        God calls ordinary people.

But that leads to the second thing – God calls them to extraordinary things.

All the people who were called in the bible were given something to do which was surprising. They seem always to proclaim a vision or a message or a truth which seems to come from outside themselves, though I guess it was in there all along.

·        Yes, God calls people to extraordinary things

Another thing that they all had in common is a sense of reluctance or unworthiness. Sometimes it manifested itself as sheer panic.

What! Me?

God’s call is consistently the same – “Come follow me…”

The answer that people give is consistently the same – “What! Me?”

·        That sense of incredulity is first part of answering God’s call.

And the final common thread in the pattern of God’s calling is that it all had ultimately to be confirmed by someone else.

People sometimes forget that. We sometimes thing of prophets being lonely figures from outside a community. However, I don’t think that is entirely true. You have to be a part of a community in order to speak the truth to it.

Moses had to come down the mountain and have his call confirmed by the people. Paul had to wait and work for many years before the early Christians accepted that he had really been changed. Philip had to go and find Nathanial and get a second opinion. And Samuel had to run to Eli for help in working out what was going on in his head.

·        God’s call is confirmed by others.

And that is the pattern: God calls ordinary people. God calls them to do extraordinary things. They tend to be surprised and reluctant. That call is confirmed by other people.

The ordinariness of the people whom God calls makes me convinced that God calls everyone. I think that God calls us all to be most truly ourselves. God calls us to tell the truth about who we really are and to find ways of building a mature identity and living with ourselves.

The challenge of God’s call to each of us is the same. To find a way of living with whom we really are, forgiven, loved and set free by God.

God calls us in the night time, when all is still, just as he called Samuel.

God calls us on from wherever we happen to be, so he called the disciples in their familiar place by the lakeside.

And God calls us on. Ordinary people called to extraordinary things. Incredulous people called to discover with others the amazing joy of being completely loved.

For, God who is within us has put his grace all around us that we can be and feel whole and loved and free. And that, is God’s calling for all of us.

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