Epiphany 2, Year B, Sun Jan 15, 2012

1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 1 Cor 6:12-20; John 1:43-51

Well, here we are, the Sunday morning after the first visit by Bishop Waldo to All Saints Beech Island. It was truly a great day in the life of our congregation as we welcomed six new members and reaffirmed three, and our beautiful new altar was blessed. I’m also glad that the service last Sunday included a “Celebration of New Ministry” rather than an “Installation”, which traditionally has been the name of the service at which a new priest was officially welcomed in a congregation. Not to be disrespectful, but that has always reminded me of installing some kind of hardware, like a faucet, which is fixed and locked in place, and can be turned on and off as needed.

“Celebration of New Ministry” sounds much more collaborative and more open to all kinds of moving of the Spirit and new possibilities. “New Ministry” also suggests that our spiritual life isn’t installed and fixed in place, here in the church, but is expansive enough to suggest movement into a new life together and a new connection to the life and spirit of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, and even of the universal Church.

On the day itself, I think I felt a little like a deer in the headlights. Now, a week later I’m reminded of an inspirational poster, which showed a lovely, sweet photograph of a very young kitten. The kitten was lifting one paw, and beginning to take a very tentative step forward. The caption read: “This is the first step in the rest of your life”.

And so, here we are, on the first Sunday of the rest of our spiritual lives together as a church family. The readings appointed for today all have something to do with discerning a call by God, and each can tell us something about moving forward in this new step.

The first reading, from the 1st Book of Samuel, is a delightful story of the young boy, Samuel, and his elderly mentor, Eli. We can assume that the boy Samuel was like many children who think up all kinds of excuses for staying awake just a little longer: I need a drink of water; please tell me one more story; there’s an octopus under my bed. If you have ever lived with a young child – or been a young child – you know how it goes. No wonder it took Eli some time to realize that something unusual was going on.

“The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Eli himself may never have had a spiritual experience of God, but he perceived that God just might be calling the boy, and he was generous in guiding Samuel to go back and listen. Samuel did listen, and God didn’t start him off with something easy. God gave him the difficult message that his mentor wasn’t properly supervising his sons, and that Eli’s family would not continue to be priests in the house of the Lord. God may call, not the one we expect, but someone we least expect.

What God calls us to do may be a thing that we never expected to do, and never expected that we could do, except with God’s help.

In the reading from the Gospel of John, we hear Nathanael say, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” As many others of his time, he had specific ideas about who the Messiah would be, what he would look like, where he would come from, what he would do and say. Yet here is this person, from the insignificant village of Nazareth, of all places, and Phillip says this person must be the Messiah.

God may call someone we least expect, in a way we least expect, from a place we least expect. The only way to know is to “come and see”.

Now, what about Paul? In this passage from 1st Corinthians he seems to be all wound up, as Paul often is, about sin and misbehavior of one sort or another. His point is that Christians should set themselves apart and hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior than the pagan peoples among whom they live. In this there is the good news that all people could be temples for the Holy Spirit, since they were all created and loved into being by God. All may be worthy to receive a wake-up call from God to turn their hearts and lives and to listen for God’s call.

So, God may even be calling us, here in Beech Island, to hear and believe that we too are worthy, we too may be temples of the Holy Spirit, and we too have within us and among our members all that we need to fulfill our calling. It does seem to me that our calling, here at All Saints, is not to do more ministry or get busy with more work. But I do believe that we have a special calling -- into spiritual friendship.

This past week the Church celebrated a saint named Aelred, who lived in the 12th century and who became the abbot of a monastery. He is best known for a book he wrote entitled, “Spiritual Friendship”. He wrote that spiritual friendship should be sought both for its own sake and as a way to deepen a connection and love of God. Spiritual friendship, he wrote, “is a stage bordering upon that perfection which consists in the love and knowledge of God.”

He wrote that spiritual friendship can only develop among those who acknowledge that they are equals before God, and he added that while there can be love without friendship, there cannot be friendship without love. Aelred concluded that in mature spiritual friendship it is possible to forget oneself for the sake of the other.

I believe that here at All Saints, we are “all saints” and all temples of the Holy Spirit, and that we are called into developing and nurturing further the spiritual friendship that is already among us. I believe that God is calling us by a gentle nudging, encouraging, luring us into gentle compassion for one another, in Christ’s name.

Spiritual friendship can carry us forward in all that we do in ministering to one another, serving our community, and striving to fulfill our baptismal covenant. Last Sunday, in renewing our baptismal vows, we all promised to turn towards Jesus as our Savior, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.

We may not be able to fulfill these vows perfectly, but even if we think ourselves unlikely and unworthy, still we have at one time been washed in the waters of baptism and sealed through the Holy Spirit as Christ’s own forever. And God, who has searched us out and known us so thoroughly, in all our imperfections and shortcomings, still sent God Jesus to live among us in his full humanity, to show us the way of love, and to give his life that we might live and love in his Name.

And this is a way of life that is so good and rich, that we might well invite others to “come and see”.