4 Pentecost Yr A

About a year after we were settled in Rapid City, I got a phone call from a woman I graduated from high school with. She married a man who calls Rapid City home and they are missionaries near Hong Kong, home on furlough. I hadn’t seen her or spoken with her since the day we graduated, but we share a common friend. She and this friend had been talking and she learned that I was here in Rapid City, so she called. We had lunch, and she wanted to know how I got to this place doing this work. Thirty years was a lot to catch up on, but I found it fascinating that our conversation was about call, her call to missionary work, and my call to the priesthood.

Her story and my story are very different. She had a conversion experience, a coming to Christ moment, and shortly thereafter she knew she wanted to be a missionary. I, on the other hand, spent many years saying no to a call that was quite clear to others in my life. The call we hear about in the gospel of Matthew is a call much like my friend’s. Quick and decisive. Jesus said, “follow me” and Matthew got up and went. Jesus said, “follow me” to my friend, and she got up and went, all the way to Hong Kong no less.

So today I thought I’d talk a little about call. I have already said that it took quite some time for me say yes to this call in this way. I finally said yes to a particular call, this call to ordained ministry. But I do think that all that led up to finally saying yes to ordained ministry, was a calling as well.

I was baptized into and I have always been a part of a community of faith. Baptism is the foundation of call. As a child, I attended the Catholic Church with my mother and with my siblings. When we all went together, which was most of the time, we took up a couple of pews, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary in those days in the Catholic Church. Because I attended public school, not catholic school, I went to religious instruction classes on Saturday mornings when I was really young, and on Wednesday afternoons as I got older. When I was in high school, we were in small groups that met in the homes of our adult mentors. These were very healthy, formational experiences for me. I suppose I was rather odd, I really enjoyed the learning, and when I was in high school I looked forward to our Sunday night gatherings. During college I continued to attend my home church, and when I lived at the University of Minnesota, I attended the Newman Center there, it was specifically for college kids.

Shortly after that time I joined the volunteer staff at the Minneapolis Catholic Youth Center. I was part of the youth ministry staff there for about six years. My time at the Minneapolis Catholic Youth Center was also very formational. I learned and experienced intentional Christian Community.

All of this is important to call, because during these years I was able to talk with others about ministry, about how you live in the world as a Christian. As I look back on these years, I realize that I was always discerning this call, at the time I would not have used those words, but in fact that is what was happening.

Rick will tell you that when he met me, and when we decided to marry, that he knew I would eventually be an ordained minister, it was a matter of when, not if. We got busy with our lives together. I attended the College of St. Catherine and earned a Masters Degree in Theology, we had Tom and Willie, and I was busy being a wife, mother, and working at various jobs, teaching some, it was clear I was not meant for the classroom, and I sewed for an interior designer for a time.

In the midst of all this Rick and I were called, in a way, to the Episcopal Church. I was in my friend’s wedding at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the priest at St. Luke’s ministered to us in a way that we found inviting and nurturing. I’m not sure that I’ve heard anyone describe being in a friend’s wedding like that. So when we decided that it was time for us to find a church home for ourselves, we went right back to St. Luke’s. When we got there, George Martin, the priest, said to us, “I’ve been waiting for you to come back here.” We never went anywhere else. Shortly after returning to St. Luke’s, George approached me about considering the priesthood. I knew it was inevitable, but I was too busy doing other stuff to pay much attention then. George left St. Luke’s and another rector came and went.

We were happily participating in everything at St. Luke’s, and the Christian Education director left to take a job at the Cathedral. I was hired then to be the Christian Education director. And with the rector’s support, encouragement, nourishment, the ministry I undertook grew and flourished. I was in a place where all my skills, experience, and leadership really grew up. The priest at St. Luke’s, Frank, said to me one day, it’s time for you to seriously consider ordained ministry, you can’t say no any more.” And I finally said yes, it was time.

We spent a year in formal discernment, I had a committee that met with me, and with Rick, and over time with Tom and Willie and even my mom. In the midst of that we decided that we would move to Austin Texas and I would attend seminary full time, and then return to Minnesota to be ordained a priest.

After returning to Minnesota, ordination, and working on the staff for a time at a couple churches, we got a mailing from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Rapid City South Dakota. We were not at all sure when we first heard from St. Andrew’s that we were interested in moving to Rapid City, but we responded, just to see where it would go. And you know the rest of the story.

As you all know, responding to God’s call is not easy, and at the same time doing the work God calls each of us to do is the path that reveals the meaning and the purpose to each of our lives. And I think that is what each of us is looking for today, that is what brings each of us here, meaning and purpose.

I tell you this story because it illustrates one way that call works, one way to live out a baptismal promise, but also to tell you that is only one way that call works.

When we ask questions of meaning, when we ask questions about our purpose in this life, these in fact are questions about call, and to what do we get called. The answers are many and varied. I think we all have a calling, and it is important for each of us to consider how we live that out. I lived out my call before I was ordained, as daughter, sister, wife, mother, teacher, friend, in the church and in the secular world. All that has changed is that I live out all of that as a priest, I continue to be all the rest as well.

Each of us has a calling. Each of us has a ministry. The foundation of our call is our baptism. We are called at our baptism to be a follower of Christ in the world and in the church. Ministry is what we all do. Sometimes I think we think that only special people can be ministers, but that is not true. The case in point is Matthew, tax collector, sinner, saint.

Matthew, not one of the chief tax collectors, but a lowly employee of someone else. Matthew, someone who took a really lousy job in which he handled everybody’s stuff looking for what ought to be taxed, someone who took a position that shut him out of respectability because he knew that nobody would ever let him in anyway. Matthew is so much like so many of us, working in a job in which we do yearn for, hope for, meaning and purpose.

And then Jesus invited him to his table, to his companionship, to his friendship, to his vocation, to come with him as a disciple. God’s perfection is shown most fully not in perfect people or perfect disciples, but in his extravagant embrace of flawed people, in his extravagant embrace of people just like you and me. Jesus invites us today to this table, to companionship, to friendship. Jesus calls us today into discipleship, into ministry. Jesus who is Lord, calls us into a life of meaning and purpose, a life that reveals the God who creates, the God who has called us, and marked us as God’s own forever, delight of God’s life.

Alleluia. The Spirit of the Lord renews the face of the earth:
Come let us adore him. Alleluia.