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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Epiphany 2 B - The Call
St. Andrew's Church
15 January, 2006
Both the Old Testament reading and the Gospel reading are about how God Calls us. In the first lesson Samuel is just a boy and it says that "The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread." It sounds much like our day. In our scientific, proof-based cultural paradigm, people have forgotten to listen for the word of the Lord or to look around for visions.
It is similar to the opening of the Gospel story. When Philip tells Nathaniel they he has found the one of whom Moses prophesied, and that he is from Nazareth, Nathaniel sneers, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" We have become a society that doesn't expect anything of God to come from anywhere.
But even in the midst of times like ours, Samuel and Nathaniel, when brought face to face with the Divine, were able to see and to hear the Call.
Today, I want to tell you the story of a call which I heard a few years ago.
There was a woman who had the best in life really. Her name was Susan. She and her husband were quite wealthy. They lived in a wonderful neighbourhood full of lovely houses along tree-lined streets. Susan didn't work outside the home, but spent most of her time with social engagements with other women with a life situation like she had.
Both Susan and her husband were members of a very well-appointed Anglican Church. All of Susan's friends who went to Church went there. Susan would never have wanted to change her life, but then, how often is change our choice?
Susan's husband died in his mid-fifties of a heart attack, and her life situation changed drastically. Her pain was so great that she decided to move away from her big house with so many painful memories, and find a smaller place more central to the city.
This was the big shift for Susan. For the first time in her life, Susan saw some unpleasant things in her environment. There were poor people who lived in the streets downtown. Sometimes they would even look at her as she walked by doing her shopping. Sometimes, they would ask her for money, and being a Churchgoer, she felt that she really ought to give them something.
For that matter, even her new Church was such a big change from the last one. There was such a mix of people. There were still the people like her, well dressed and well-spoken. But there were so many others too, who looked like they were just a step or two from living in the streets themselves.
For the first time, Susan began to have questions in her heart about her faith. It seemed that the problem of the homeless only got worse and worse. Was God really all-powerful like she had always believed? Did God really care when there were so many people living in misery?
One day after the celebration of Holy Eucharist, Susan decided to just see what went on in the soup kitchen which her new Church ran. It was lunch time and just like any other day of the week there was a crowd of street people in the dining hall of the soup kitchen. People of all descriptions - Mostly men, but some women, and even some children as well. The one thing they had in common, was that they didn't have enough to feed themselves. Many of them lived on the streets. She had never seen so many street people at one place before. That staff who ran the soup kitchen were so friendly and caring, and seemed to be having a good time with each other, and with the people whom they served.
Susan decided that she had to get involved. Perhaps it was out of her own loneliness and need for belonging. She started to work two days a week with the soup kitchen. As well as working at the kitchen, she did some home food deliveries with another widow who had worked at the kitchen for years.
All of Susan's old friends and relatives started to worry about her. Imagine Susan with all her upbringing and genteel manners, with her pearls and her twin sets actually working with people who lived on the street. Many of them missing teeth for Pete's sake, and most with grubby clothes and grubbier hands.
The real crisis came for Susan after about three months when one of the street people, an old woman who she had come to know was reported to have been found dead the night before by the Police. A heart attack, they said.
Susan was devastated. All the pain from the loss of her husband came back to her, and it seemed that all of the pain of every street person in the world was in her own heart at that time. The old nagging questions she had for God returned instantly. How could a loving God allow such misery in the world?
She ran around to the main doors of the Church and through her tears, she silently railed against God for his lack of care for his creation. How could you allow this she asked. But there was no answer. Why are there so many who have nothing she asked, but there was no answer. Finally, in a rage she asked, why don't you do something about it? And suddenly there was a quieting in her heart. She heard God's calm and peaceful answer. "I have done something, she heard, I have called you."
