Call Me

Lent 2A, 3/16/14
Genesis 12:1-4a

Oh Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might proclaim your praise. Amen.

If any of you are familiar with recent pop music, you’ve heard the song Call Me Maybe, by Carly Rae Jepsen. It was one of the top hits from 2011 – about 3 years old, but still very popular. 

Basically the premise of the song is, this girl is out somewhere and she sees a good looking guy, and even though other guys are flirting with her, she’s only interested in this one guy – so she gives him her phone number and says:

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy,

but here’s my number, so call me maybe.

This song has inspired dozens    if not hundreds    of parodies. The 2012 US Olympic swim team made a music video to the song. So did a group of Marines, and the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders.

My favorite parody was done by a group of Roman Catholic women. They changed the chorus to say:

Hey, I am baptized, and this is crazy,

cuz God just called me, so ordain a lady.

God calls us.

And not just maybe.

As baptized, beloved children of God, each one of us has a calling in life.

Some of us are called to a specific occupation. My pastoral ministry is a direct calling from God. Jean’s composing and directing and career as a musician is a calling from God. Nancy and Rick are constantly responding to God’s call to parenthood and grandparenthood. Betty’s leadership of the quilting ministry is a call from God.

God calls us to relationships, and to activities, and to roles in life.

Jesus’ own baptism gives us a great example. Jesus went down to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, and as soon as he emerged out of the water, a voice came down from heaven saying, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

God says the same thing    to each of us. We are each a beloved son or daughter of God. And God calls us each to a purpose, to a mission, to a ministry of some kind or another.

Abram was called by God.

That’s the story we heard from Genesis today. In the first reading, we listened in on the first time that this man heard the voice of God and responded to it. Abram went from the country that would eventually become Iraq – to the land that God promised would belong to him and his descendants.

Abram, of course, became Abraham, and he is the patriarch that the people of Israel all hold in common. Abraham and Sarah raised Isaac, and out of his descendants, God made a great nation.

In some ways, actually, it’s the descendants of Sarah who were the children of God’s promise. Abraham had other children with other women, but it’s only the children and grandchildren of his wife Sarah who were blessed by God, who grew to be as numerous as the stars in the sky, who were given a land in which to live. Sarah is the matriarch that made it all happen.

But all that history and all those relationships and all those blessings started with today’s first conversation between Abram and God.

Go – says God. Go, leave behind everything familiar to you, and I will go with you and bless you.

And Abram went.

Abram is a wonderful example of a person being called by God.

He had the courage to follow that call and do what God asked, even though it must have been a tough thing to do. Abram had to leave his homeland and all his family except his nephew Lot and his wife Sarai. Even so, Abram said yes to God’s call in the story from today.

But over the years, Abram sometimes doubted this calling.

He and Sarah had to wait 25 years before their promised son came along. That’s a long time to try to get pregnant!

Sarah and Abraham always lived in places ruled over by other people. They were not given political or military power. All those promises eventually came true for the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, but they were many generations in the making.

All the setbacks were enough to make Abraham say to God, call me… maybe.

Sure, it’s nice to have a calling from God – it’s nice to have a direction in life and to know what God wants you to do – but having that calling does not mean it will always be easy. God promises to be with Abram, and God promises that good things will come eventually, but God does not promise that the journey will be easy.

What God does promise is that Abram will be blessed.

Abraham and Sarah were blessed… to be a blessing.

God blessed them, not so that they could enjoy easy lives, but so that they could spread their blessings to other people.

That’s the bigger calling from God in today’s Bible story.

That’s also where we fit into the Bible story.

God called Abraham and Sarah – and God calls us.

We may have a specific calling to an occupation, to a job or to a relationship – but even bigger than those details of our call is the purpose behind it. The purpose of our calling is to bring    God’s    blessing    to other people.

We are blessed    to be a blessing.

Abraham didn’t have much when he was called by God, but he had faith. He had a couple of solid relationships with other people. And he had enough determination to follow God’s call, even when things looked bleak.

We sometimes feel like we don’t have what we need to respond to God’s call.

I mean, really – do Nancy and Rick always know exactly what to do with their grandkids? Does Jean always know the perfect piece of music for any occasion? Do I always know what to do as your pastor? Of course not.

But can we find courage? Do we have the support of a few close friends or relatives? I sincerely hope so. At the very least, hopefully this church community can provide the courage necessary for each one of us to follow our callings.

Each of us has received blessings in life. Maybe we have been blessed financially, or maybe we’re really talented in one particular area – like singing or sewing or listening to other people’s stories.

Thinking minimally here… those of us in worship at Cooksville Lutheran Church today have been blessed with the ability to speak and walk. We can read. We have roofs over our heads. We have food on our tables and in our pantries.

And if you don’t have one of those things – please let me know, and we can work to help you get those basic necessities of life.

Those of us who are part of this worshipping community have each been blessed in some way. We may not always feel like it – life gets hard sometimes and we probably wish that God had never called us in the first place – but we still have small blessings to fall back on.

We have food and shelter and love and community. We are blessed.

We can hope for better relationships, we can hope for reconciliation with loved ones, we can hope for nicer homes or better jobs, and ultimately we can hope for eternal life in the presence of God. We can hope for the future. We are blessed.

Like Abram, God has blessed us.

Like Abram, God wants us to be a blessing for others.

Like Abram, we can bring God’s blessing to the rest of the world.

When God called Abram in today’s reading from Genesis, it was clear that God wanted Abram to show God’s generosity to all the nations in the world.

Well… we can do that, can’t we?

If we have reliable meals… we can help others to have the same. We can donate food to the various food pantries that our church supports. There’s a collection basket located in the narthex, and each month the donations go to a food pantry in either Evansville, Stoughton, or Edgerton.

If we have a roof over our heads… well, we can help others to have the same. We can donate to the roof campaign for the Evansville Ecumenical Care Closet – envelopes are located in the fellowship room. We can donate for the Refugee Resettlement program – all our coffee hour offerings through Easter will be supporting this ministry. We can support The Road Home for homeless folks, or DAIS for victims of domestic abuse – there are countless causes that could use our help to keep roofs over their clients’ heads.

If we have family or friends or at least some sense of community in this church family… we can welcome others into the fold. We can invite our friend or neighbors or coworkers to join us in worship. We can tell everyone we know about the wonderful grace of God – we are loved, and we have eternal life to look forward to.

OK, that’s kinda hard. It’s hard to talk to others about our relationship with God. It’s difficult to bring up eternal life with our coworkers. Fair enough.

But the reality is, we have been blessed by God.
We have been called.

We have a purpose.

Whether we are excited to follow God’s calling or we wish God had only called us… maybe… our proper response to God’s promise of grace is to share it with the world.

We, like Abram, have been blessed to be a blessing.

And what a wonderful gift.

How amazing to think that, through us, others might come to know the wonderful love of God.

We have been called.

We have been blessed.

And our job now is to share that blessing with others.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.