Being On Call

 

Being On Call

March 3, 2023

 

Many people of faith believe that, at some time in their lives, they have heard a call from God for them to do something they weren’t doing when they heard the call. God calls people to a great many different kinds of activity. Perhaps it’s a call to help a particular person. Or to work for some nonprofit agency on an important cause. Or to take up a particular profession. Or to go to seminary. Or to do a great many other things as well. People have attributed any number of things they’ve done to a call from God. I’ve done so myself. Yet the understanding that God is calling you to do something raises a lot of questions. They include, how do you know it is God calling and not just your ego trying to justify your doing something you want to do anyway? Have you heard a voice? Or had a dream? Or just had a sense you couldn’t explain but of which you have been as sure as you have ever been sure of anything? How does what you think God is calling you to do relate to you and your life as they are now? Does the thing you think you’re being called to do make sense to you? It’s not necessarily that there are right and wrong answers to these questions. They do however point to a truth about calls from God The notion of divine call is unavoidably complex even if the person claiming to hear the call doesn’t realize the complexity of what is happening.

There is a solid biblical foundation for the notion of God calling specific people to specific tasks. Abraham, Moses, and Jeremiah all have call stories. Abraham’s is the tersest. We read that the Lord, that is, the Hebrew God Yahweh, “said to Abram [later on called Abraham], ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Genesis 12:1. God promises Abraham that if he does God will make of him “a great nation.” Genesis 12:2. So Abraham “went as the Lord had told him….”

That’s all Genesis tells us about Abraham’s call, but it’s not hard to imagine how more of the story would go if Genesis told it. There are questions about this call we’d like to have answered, but Genesis doesn’t even ask them. Our text says that the Lord “said” to Abraham to pack up and go. Does that mean Abraham heard a human-like voice speaking to him? Or, did he just have an inner sense that God was calling him to go, so he expressed that sense by saying the Lord “said?” Was the call really from God, or was it just Abraham’s ego wanting to get out of Haran to find something new? Did he argue with God about the call? The text doesn’t say he did, but prophets often did when they heard God’s call. All of these are valid questions that Genesis doesn’t answer. They also are questions many of us who believe God has called us have asked. Let me use my own call story as an example.

Back in 1994 I was a practicing attorney, but I wasn’t doing well at it. I was burning out though I didn’t realize it at the time. One day I did a psychological exercise I knew about to see if I could get some clarity about what was going on with me and the practice of law. I asked myself why I was having so much trouble practicing law. As I did that exercise, a voice either completely outside of me or from deep, deep within me said, “You’re not a lawyer!” I was surprised to say the least. I said of course I’m a lawyer. I am, after all, sitting here in my law office. The voice said again, “You’re not a lawyer!” I thought that voice, whatever it was, was nuts. Still, I asked, “OK. What am I?” Immediately the voice said, “You’re a preacher!” At that point I knew the voice was nuts, so I ended the exercise. I know now but did not know then that this experience was the beginning of God’s call to me to quit law and go into ministry.

In the spring of 1997 I learned that the Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry had worked with representatives of several Protestant denominations, including mine, to set up something called the Institute of Ecumenical Theological Studies as a way for that Roman Catholic university to train Protestants like me for ministry. We would be able to earn a fully accredited Master of Divinity degree without having to travel to Berkeley, California, or Vancouver, British Columbia, which were the closest alternatives at the time. We’d never been able to do that before.

I knew I had to go. I just knew I had to do it. I was still miserable trying to practice law, but I had no idea why I had to go get an MDiv degree. It didn’t make a lick of sense. I didn’t, and don’t, know how I knew, but I knew. I didn’t hear a voice speaking words to me. I hadn’t a clue why I should earn an MDiv or what I would do with one once I earned it. I didn’t know how I was going to pay for it. Yet it all felt like more than a call. It felt like I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it, and I did. I entered the Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry in the fall of 1997. I got my MDiv at the end of 2000. I got my first call as a parish pastor in March 2002. I was ordained to the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ in June of that year. After I started my work as a pastor my wife (now sadly passed away) said to me, “I’m so glad you finally are who you really are.”

There are several things about this call story of mine that are common to many call stories, and a few that aren’t. I heard a voice. It was in my head not my ears, but I heard a voice. I thought that what the voice said was crazy, so I ignored it. For three years I ignored it. After those three years I knew I had to go to seminary. I just knew. When I finally did what I knew I had to do, I became who I really am.

The call was for me to do something that made no sense. I’d already spent more years in post-graduate studies than most anyone I’ve ever met what with my PhD in history and my JD degree. I had a profession, though I was struggling mightily with it. I was a person of faith of a sort, I guess. I had read a lot of good Christian theology. I had given one sermon at the church I attended, filling in for the pastor one Sunday when he was away. It was well received, but it didn’t lead to anything. I’d never thought of myself as a cleric.

It made no sense. Yet along the way, after I said yes, God did some things for me that really helped me out. When I entered seminary I closed my law office. I knew I would need a parttime job while I was in school. One day I looked in the help wanted ads in the Seattle Times. I knew the experts say that’s not how you find a job, but I looked anyway. There I found a listing for a halftime attorney to work with a legal services agency. I applied. It turned out to be the Legal Action Center, an agency of Catholic Community Services of Western Washington. The pay wasn’t great, but the job came with full medical coverage and even a small retirement benefit. I got the job. And I learned after I took the job that because I worked at least halftime for a Catholic agency, I would get at 25% reduction in my tuition at Seattle University. I don’t think the Legal Action Center ever expected to hire an attorney who had been a senior litigation associate at the fourth largest law firm in the country like I once had been. I sure never expected to find such a perfect job. We represented low income tenants in eviction cases. I was finally doing law that felt worth doing. I still thank God for that job that fell into my lap twenty-six years ago. That job is the closest thing I’ve ever had in my life to proof of divine providence.

My getting that job probably isn’t typical of most call stories. That the call made absolutely no sense to me is. God’s calls frequently make no sense to the people God is calling. People usually resist accepting the call. In the new student orientation I went to at the School of Theology and Ministry it became a joke how many people said, “God called, and I hung up.” Moses tried to get out of his call. He said I can’t speak well. Exodus 4:10. Jeremiah resisted too. He said he was only a boy and therefore couldn’t speak well. Jeremiah 1:4. Yet Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, and those fellow students of mine eventually said yes. They conceded the point and followed God’s call. So did I. Perhaps you too have heard a call from God and are resisting accepting it. Don’t despair. You’re in good company.

There are some questions we all need to ask when we think we’re receiving a call from God. They include: Is the thing I think God is calling me to something I’ve always wanted to do? Did I want to do it when I first heard the call? Do I want to do it now? Sometimes the answers to those questions can be yes, and the call can still be authentic. I had a parishioner who had always wanted to be a high school science teacher, but she’d never become one. She was sure God was calling her to that sacred work, and, after working with her a bit, so was I. She resisted her call harder than anyone else I’ve ever known. Finally she gave in, got her Master of Teaching degree, and has now been a high school science teacher for many years. Like I did, she became who she really is only after she accepted God’s call.

Far more often, however, our answers to those questions about wanting to do what God is calling us to do are going to be no. It seems that most of the time God calls people to situations and work they had never thought of doing on their own. Situations and work they had never thought they wanted to do and couldn’t imagine doing. That was true for Moses and Jeremiah. It was true for me too. We all said no. God kept saying yes. God was right. God knows us better than we know ourselves. When God calls, God is always right.

There is at least one great danger we face when we think we are hearing a call from God. It is the risk that what we’re hearing isn’t God at all. Sometimes people think a call is from God when it really is only a call from their ego. Discerning the authenticity of a divine call isn’t easy. There are some things you can do to help. Pray. A lot. Talk to your pastor if you have one. Get one and talk to them if you don’t. Talk with sympathetic friends and family members. Don’t try to make a final decision about a call on your own. Discussing the call with others who will actually listen to you and not jump to quick conclusions can only help.

So if you think you’re hearing a call from God that makes no sense, don’t let that reaction of yours lead you to shut God out. Keep listening. Keep praying. Keep discerning. God may indeed be calling you to something that makes no sense to you but makes perfect sense to God. God’s always right, of course. If what you’re hearing is an authentic call from God, God will be right about you too. If that call is authentic, you’ll be right when you stop saying no and finally yes. I pray that those of you who are hearing a call from God but resisting it will find the wisdom and the courage to say yes at last.