Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Perhaps you don't think about it as applying to you, but today our scripture readings focus on God's call. God calls Samuel. Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael. Calls come to us all.

Now, I don't know about you, but I can really identify with Samuel. Young Samuel, destined to be the last of God's prophets, was in the service of the temple, working with Eli. Three times he thinks he hears Eli calling him, but is told that he's wrong and sent back to bed. Only on the fourth try, with Eli's instruction, does Samuel recognize that it is the Lord who speaks to him.

Now I identify with that. Sometimes I think I hear the voice of the Lord all over the place. Sometimes I think it's from someone in the congregation, in the need that isn't being met. Sometimes I think I hear it in the words of politicians that I just happen to agree with. Sometimes I imagine that the Lord is speaking to me from some organization or movement. Sometimes, of course, in prayer.

The trouble is, I'm never quite sure whether it's the voice of God or the voice of my own desires, my own wishes, my own visions. Often I wish that I too had an Eli to give me direction. I yearn for the sage advice of a particularly holy man who speaks with authority and can know beyond my knowing where the voice of God is to be found.

And I find it refreshing that Samuel doesn't assume that he knows the voice of the Lord. I mean, it would be somewhat presumptuous for him, assuming that God had never spoken to him before, to act as though he were so familiar with God's voice that he could recognize it in a moment.

I find it refreshing that Samuel does not recognize the voice of God. And I wish everyone were just as unassuming and naive about God's voice. People do many terrible things when they think that they are on a mission from God. This text helps me to see that we need to be careful if we start hearing voices. They may not be from God.

It seemed the end of an era to many of my generation who grew up in the 60's when John Lennon was murdered. Mark David Chapman killed the former Beatle because he said a voice inside his head kept saying, "Do it! Do it!" And so, heeding the voice, he pulled a .38 caliber pistol from his pocket and pumped five bullets into Lennon's back.

Even Nathanael's skepticism is refreshing. When called by Jesus, Philip immediately seeks out Nathanael. Upon hearing about Jesus, Nathanael asks "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

Such skepticism, healthy as it is, can be carried to an extreme. Some ministers and many lay folk seem to think, for example, that only the pastor of a church is called. Certainly, I did receive (as do all Lutheran pastors), a letter which substantiates my call. In 2003, this congregation sent me a document which reads as follows:

In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Reverend Lyle McKee, with prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to do God's will, St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America meeting on September 21, 2003, extends to you this call to serve as pastor...

We call you to exercise among us the ministry of Word and Sacrament which God has established and which the Holy Spirit empowers:...

With this call, we pledge our prayers, love, esteem, and personal support for the sake of the ministry entrusted to you by God and for our ministry together in Christ's name.

Now, it may be a bit easier for me to experience confidence that God has called me with the benefit of a piece of paper attesting to the concurrence of a congregation within Christ's Church; but let me assure you that doubt and skepticism like that of Samuel and Nathanael are not the sole prerogative of the laity.

I have often thought that every member, at baptism or at confirmation, or both, ought to receive that same sort of document. That might enable us to avoid the common misconception that only pastors are called to the ministry. As did Luther, I consider baptism to be the royal sacrament—the place at which God called us all to be disciples and ministers. We are all called. All are called to the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A call is certainly not merely a matter of being ordained or being paid by the church or working full time for the church. I do consider my call to be more sacred than others, nor do I wish to denigrate it. In the church, however, we must affirm the fact of the call that each of us has. There is no qualitative difference between your calls and mine. It is too easy for folks in the church to see their calls as secondary or subservient to that of the one chosen as pastor. One of the ways to avoid that is to recognize the significance of our various calls. Mine is to be a minister to ministers.

This is one of the reasons that we in the church shy away from overly hierarchical language. The one chosen to be pastor to the congregational pastors used to be called the President of the Synod. In recent decades, we have used the title "bishop" because it's more descriptive. Yet, we acknowledge no qualitative difference between the 'calls" of anyone in the church, from national bishop to synodical bishop to pastor to president of the congregation to Sunday School pupil. The call we recognize as coming first and that we honor most reverently is the call that began at our baptisms. That is the most important "rite of ordination."

Most of us learned, but perhaps did not take to heart, the truth of all this during our confirmation instruction. In Martin Luther's Small Catechism, the explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles Creed, he writes, "I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel..." And a few lines later, "In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth." The whole Christian Church, not a part of it, or the leaders of it. All are called.

Our call has three different parts. The aspect that I have been talking about so far might be referred to as the "general call", the call that comes to all to be God's child, to belong to God, and to serve God. This "general call" is sealed by the sign and sacrament of Holy Baptism. There is also a "specific call," that we often refer to as our "vocation." The third part of our call is the "day-to-day" call to the work of the Lord.

In order to get at the nature of the specific call, we might look again at the story of Samuel and of Philip. God calls these people personally. God calls them by name. God does not ask for volunteers. No notices are posted, nor advertisements. God selected them and called them by name. Jobs needed to be done and God called individuals to do those jobs.

Sometimes, it's easy to feel that God doesn't know us, that in the mass of humanity we don't really matter as individuals, that we are lost in the crowd. But we ought never make that mistake. God knows each of us individually. Normally our call is not one that, as for Samuel, is audible. Still, the call to us is no less certain and no less personal. God calls us through opportunities that come our way, doors that open, challenges, problems that need to be solved—and perhaps even through our own preferences, inclinations, and talents.

The "specific call" is for an individual to serve God in a specific vocation at a specific time. God calls people to be husbands and wives, parents, singles, citizens, neighbors, bankers, teachers, laborers, farmers, etc. Martin Luther said it is just as important for a community to have a good cobbler as it is to have a good bishop. Both are called by God and both do God's work.

In essence, "God calls us to be who we are and to remember from where we came. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians: "You are not your own; you were bought with a price." And again, in the following chapter, Paul tells us: "(to) let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him...Every one should remain in the state in which he was called...in whatever state each was called, there let him remain with God."

Besides the general and specific call, I find that there is another experience of God calling. It is that day-to-day force that draws us to the needs of others.

There is a humorous story that illustrates what I'm talking about (Swindoll, "Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life" 1983):

A missionary was sitting at her second-story window when she was handed a letter from home. As she opened the letter, a crisp, new, ten-dollar bill fell out. She was pleasantly surprised, but as she read the letter her eyes were distracted by the movement of a shabbily dressed stranger down below, leaning against a post in front of the building. She couldn't get him off her mind. Thinking that he might be in greater financial distress than she, she slipped the bill into an envelope on which she quickly penned the words, "Don't despair." She threw it out the window. The stranger below picked it up, read it, looked up, and smiled as he tipped his hat and went his way.

The next day she was about to leave the house when a knock came at the door. She found the same shabbily dressed man smiling as he handed her a roll of bills. When she asked what they were for, he replied: "That's the sixty bucks you won, lady. Don't Despair paid five to one."

Obviously an act of love, an act of service, an act of commitment doesn't always have a five-to-one payoff. Sometimes it's much more.

The call of God comes to us in many and varied ways. There is not one call and it is not only a few who are called. All are called-to ministry, to vocation, and to acts of compassion-to general, specific, and day-to-day service to the Lord of all. Amen.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord unto eternal life. Amen.