Sacred Calls

Sermon on Sunday, January 18, 2026

Dear church,

The Verizon Man loomed large in the church’s Wednesday message, an apparition from the past. “Can you hear me now?” The Verizon man smiled into our inboxes and hadn’t aged a day, still the same baby face after all those years. He appeared just before Verizon had a huge outage that affected millions of customers in the United States. Hopefully we didn’t jinx anyone. But seriously, that brilliant piece of advertising, “Can you hear me now?” lends itself to the Scripture readings for this Sunday, as people are being called into ministry left and right. There is a distinction between calling and being called, an important distinction in the spiritual world. We make most calls in life ourselves, or we think we do. “I want to retire next year.” Martha Heinze already has a date for 2027. “We want to get married next year.” “We are looking to have children now.” We make those calls based on good reasoning (I hope), based on intuition and feeling, based on circumstances and needs, based on a number of factors. But the calls that the Scripture readings reference are not our calls. They are God’s calls. And while we have some say about how we respond to the divine voice in our souls, fact is, we are being called.

Some people have come to faith surprisingly, unexpectedly, reluctantly, almost against their own will. At some point, for some reason, they experienced a stirring of the spirit, an emerging hunger and thirst for more, a quest for spiritual meaning in their lives. Their horizon opened in a direction they hadn’t considered before or taken seriously. In fact, some people in this church have had an experience like that. God said to them, “Can you hear me now? I need you.” “Yes, you!” And some of us paid attention to it. Lives were changed. Those are sacred moments. 

Let me tell you about one such call. When I grew up, the name C.S. Lewis was very popular in Christian circles. His books were widely read: “Mere Christianity,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “The Chronicles of Narnia...” Perhaps you are familiar with some of those titles. Well, C.S. Lewis came to faith from the outside looking in. He was called. And not by the Verizon man. He was called by … we have no better word for it… GOD.  

Lewis didn’t have one particular moment of conversion. He was a prominent Oxford Professor for philosophy and had sworn off the Christian faith after his mother died. (Watch out, mothers!) He embraced atheism for many years. His turn-around was gradual, mysterious and bumpy, one crack in the interior intellectual armor at a time. It culminated in 1931 with his formal acceptance of Christ after many conversations with friends, some of them Christian authors. He later described himself as the “most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.” It clearly wasn’t his call. He had been summoned. As he responded though, it became his calling in life, and he helped countless people understand the Christian faith on an intellectual level. 

In our readings for today, we hear of several people being called. In the poem from Isaiah, God’s servant proclaims, “Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the LORD called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.” It was a very common idea in ancient times that people were chosen before they were even born. We find that idea in a number of psalms and prophetic texts. It makes you think about destiny. Some people are born a certain way, and their parents will be the first ones to tell you, “This kid has always been that way. We don’t know where she came from!” (My father claimed I was from the milkman.) The truth is, sometimes those callings defy genetics, culture, the behavioral sciences, what one would expect…    

In this poem we also hear God’s servant proclaim, “He made my mouth like a sharpened sword… he made me into a polished arrow and conceived in his quiver.” This makes me think of the servant we remember this weekend across the United States. Brother Martin Luther King had a mouth like a sharpened sword. He spoke inconvenient truth to people in this country. At some point in his journey toward ministry he heard and responded to a call from God.

Finally, in the gospel for this Sunday, there are all kinds of callings. John the Baptist calls Jesus the “Lamb of God.” Andrew calls his brother Simon, saying “we have found the Messiah.” And Jesus calls Andrew’s brother Cephas or Peter, famously calling him to be the rock on whom the church will be built.

With so much calling, you may wonder whether you ever hear God speaking to you. “I don’t hear God speaking to me like that.” I would encourage you to keep times of silence and to practice listening. Sometimes you have to listen hard or maybe just be in touch with your own soul, which sounds simple but isn’t. The soul often takes a backseat to all the tasks at hand on a given day.

I recently had my first comprehensive hearing test done as an adult. Some of you will question the results: my hearing was deemed to be good. During the test there were some very fine, subtle noises. I was hooked up to a machine and was supposed to click when I heard those noises. It took concentration. How much more might we hear if we paid attention to God like that? God’s version of the Verizon man is still looming large. “Can you hear me now?” he asks. Listen!

Amen.