RECENT SERMONS

Sermon for August 28, 2005

By The Rev. Portia Mather-Hempler

"You have called us by name and we are yours"

May I speak in the Name of the One who calls us each by name.  Amen.

The first time I remember God calling me by name was when I was on a retreat at Mercy Center during my seminary days.  I was wrestling with two major decisions at the time.  The first was whether I should continue my seminary education and the second was whether to accept the opportunity to study in England.  25 years ago I had no tangible hope of being ordained to the priesthood (so my Bishop told me) or, if I were to be ordained a deacon, all I could ever become was a secretary in the Bishop¹s office (which is also what my Bishop told me). At the end of my second year of seminary, I was given the opportunity to spend a year studying in England at Ripon College Cuddesdon.  I was trying to decide whether to take this opportunity or not.  It would mean leaving my friends and family and all that I knew and go to a new place.  It felt like both an opportunity and a burden at the same time.  What was I to do?

What did God want me to do?  Then, during the retreat, as we were gathered together as a group, the retreat leader started calling out our names one at a time and inviting us to come to the center of the room and dip our hands into a bowl of water as a symbol of renewing our baptismal vows.  When I heard my name called and invited to come to the center to the bowl of living water, I knew that my answer to the questions I had been struggling with was a bold YES!  Yes, I will continue my seminary studies, wherever they lead me and YES I will go to England for the year.

I felt that God was inviting me into a new life and all I could say was YES, YES, YES, I will follow where you lead me.  Here I am Lord, I will go, Lord, carrying your people in my heart.

Since that first experience of hearing God calling me so clearly, I have learned that God is continually inviting me to follow God¹s call if I will only stop and take time to listen, really listen.  That was what I have been doing this past week at the annual retreat at Lake Tahoe with Companions on the Inner Way.  Lake Tahoe is a beautiful place to stop and reflect and listen to God with a very supportive group of Christians – each of us listening to the voice of God in our own lives.  We each hear God¹s voice in different ways – sometimes I heard God speaking to me through what our keynote speaker was saying, sometimes I heard God¹s voice speaking through the other person I was talking with, sometimes just looking at the lake, or through the words of the songs we sang and sometimes, just being still and quiet and not doing anything.  I heard God speaking to me through the insights I gained.  Anything and anyone can be a vehicle for God to get our attention and invite us into a deeper relationship with our God.

Through this past week I have come to understand Jesus¹ words, ³Take up your cross and follow me² as an invitation.  I used to hear these words as a burden – that to take up my cross was to take up a heavy burden that I did not want to take on.  Now, I hear these words as an invitation – an invitation to new life with Christ.  I remember Jesus¹ words from earlier in Matthew¹s gospel:  ³My yoke is easy and my burden is light².  I realize that what I perceived as a burden was of my own making – the shoulds I put on myself. 

Jesus' call to us is an invitation to live life more fully – to grow in our relationship with God - and we can say yes or no to that call.  And even if we misplace the invitation and fail to respond, or if we say "no" at one point in our lives, Jesus keeps inviting us daily to follow where he leads.  Sometimes, yes, the call may lead us to go through suffering.  But I learned again this past week that we do not enter suffering alone – God is with us, Jesus is with us, and the whole Christian community is with us if we but ask them to be with us.

It was a telephone call to my best friend in Reno that called me to leave the retreat and take time to visit with her.  She was in a time of distress because her ex-husband was in the hospital with congestive heart failure.  She and her ex-husband have a beautiful daughter who is entering her senior year of high school.  My friend and her ex are still bound together through their daughter.   Because of her distress and her desire to get together in person, I heard the call, the invitation to drive down to Reno to be with her.  I was a little anxious about it, because at the time we talked we did not know if her ex-husband would make it through the night.  I told the leaders and my small group members that Jim and I would be leaving on Wed. afternoon and would probably miss the evening program and healing service, which we always enjoy.  So, we went to Reno.  Our visit turned out to be wonderful experience for me.

  I felt surrounded by the prayers of the Companions community which gave me the peace to be able to listen to my friend and to just be with her and her daughter.  Her ex-husband did make it through the night and has been released from the hospital with specific directions on how to take care of himself. 

Yes, I missed being at the retreat, but I was so very glad that I answered the call, the invitation to spend time with my friend and her daughter.  To enter into her suffering with her, was not a burden, but a time of grace when I felt God¹s love surrounding all of us.  That for me is one of the greatest gifts of the Christian community -–the power of prayer to lower our resistance, our thresholds that we hold between ourselves and God, to lower our thresholds so that God¹s besieging love can enter us and flow through us to others.

God's invitation to relationship to be with God comes in many ways.  I now invite my husband Jim to share his perspective on God¹s call, God¹s invitation to us.

Selections from The Summons
by John L. Bell, Iona Community     

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown, Will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I'll go where your love and footsteps show.

Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

Jim's part

How do you feel when you see a sign outside a room of obviously happy people having fun? 

Do you wish that you had been invited?

Because God's invitation to me is universal and particular, constant but ever gentle,  I often fail to reflect on the various metaphors of what He is inviting me to. 

Recently I have been aware that I am thirsty and he is inviting me to drink the pure cool water from His deep artesian well of living water,  that I am hungry and he is inviting me to His great feast with fantastic food and wine. 

That I love adventure and beauty      
And he is the master of adventure and creator of beauty,
I renew my determination to say an emphatic "YES" everyday to His daily invitation to adventure and life lived to the full.

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