Last weekend the Al-Hidaya Islamic Community Center of Troy and Latham had an open house in their new facility in Latham. It is beautiful space. They’ve been thoughtful about everything. The intersections of ancient symbolism and modern convenience were pretty astounding. In the large gathering space that serves as an entrance to the worship space there are 5 pillars holding up the ceiling to represent the 5 pillars of Islam. There are archways with circles and half circles showing the phases of the moon. The doorways into the worship space are intricately designed with 99 distinct wooden pieces, a reminder of the 99 names of Allah in the Qur’an. Because people enter the holy space without their shoes on, the heat radiates from the floor. There is one of those cool water fountains that exists only to refill reusable water bottles and a nifty machine for making donations to the facility with your credit or debit card.

While at the open house a friend and I were approached by two young women willing to answer any questions we had. So, we asked! Somehow we ended up with the undivided attention of 6 young women, I believe they were all between 16 and 22. I asked them who among them wore the hijab every day, and half of them did. So I asked them why and why not.

Their answers struck me as being remarkably similar to the language of “call” that gets used as part of the ordination process that I know. They spoke about wanting to be visible as representatives of their faith and of reminding themselves and others God’s desire for human kindness. They discussed with each other the issue between wanting to be “good enough Muslim” before wearing the hijab, and wearing it without feeling like their faith was enough but as a process of becoming a more faithful person. They spoke about fitting in – or not – and about norms of behavior in their families. They talked about how their families felt about their choices, and yet how certain they were that the decision was between them and God. They were thoughtful and articulate and incredibly committed to their faith.

Through it all, I was struck by how similar their language was to how I’ve heard clergy speak in Christianity. As I’ve experienced it, the “culture of call” suggests that God particularly picks out people to be clergy and lets them know – usually through a mystical experience, sometimes through the affirmations of others. The call is then assessed through multiple levels of church structure. It is assessed first for a sense of validity and then to see if the “call” lines up with a person’s gifts and graces. At every stage of the process toward ordination there is a conversation about call.

In addition to those young women who got me re-obsessed with call, there are the scriptures this week. The passage from Jeremiah is Jeremiah’s call story. The passage from Luke is Jesus claiming his call, and has Jesus talking about others who were particularly chosen for tasks from God. It seems that the church is justified in its assumptions about call, as they’re well established in the Bible. If God wants a person do to work, God calls that person… or at least that’s how it works in the church… or at least that’s the way the culture of call talks about it.

Having had enough time to move past my naivete with call, here are my concerns about how I’ve heard the church talk about call, particularly with regard to ordination:

1. It assumes that God has a “plan” for each of us. Or perhaps, only the clergy ;). But I don’t really believe God has a plan, or at least not a stagnant one. We change as we go through life and God adapts to where we are. I don’t believe that God sets us on one particular path in expectation that 30 years later we’ll land somewhere particular. Rather, I suspect that God looks at us where we are and notes where our gifts and skills might be of use, and nudges us towards those places if we listen.
2. It elevates clergy as somehow “above” laity. To be particular, it suggests that the highest form of faithfulness to God is to become clergy. No experience I’ve had supports this. The church exists because of the faithfulness and commitment of the laity.
3. It suggests that God cares more about clergy than any other means of building up the kin-dom of God. That is, we usually only talk about call when we are talking about church work. There are A LOT of jobs that need to be done in order to bring in the kin-dom. This whole Jesus-following thing would be useless if all anyone ever did was preach and run churches. If there is such a thing as call it must apply as much to teaching fields, medical fields, administration, sanitation, art, music, caregiving, legislation, supportive work, retail, etc.! The world and the world’s needs are incredibly diverse. God’s work with all people may be to help us find the ways that we can build the kin-dom, but it doesn’t seem reasonable that this happens differently for clergy.
4. It all sorts of mucks up the difference between God and church. If serving God is about being ordained by the church, that’s a disaster. As amazing as this church is, I’ve always found that when I conflate God and the church I get annoyed with God. Churches are imperfect, struggling, and often beautiful organizations trying to work together to build the kin-dom. But they’re fallible, and they are institutions. Clergy are functionally CEOs of non-profits. God is much bigger and better than that. And, just as a reminder, I suspect that if God does “call” people, the vast majority of those called are called to work outside of churches.
5. It assumes that God has a “will,” a defined preference for how things go, and our goal is to “discern” it and then “obey” it. This is probably the biggest issue I have with call language. Earlier in my life I believed this, and I’ve struggled to find my way out of it. (#ThanksChrysalis #Sarcastic) These days because I believe that God is present in all places and with all people I believe that God is WITH all of us. Then, the way to access Divine Wisdom is through bodies. Sometimes I access Divine Wisdom through myself (body, mind, and emotions) sometimes through others. If I want to find the “right” or “best” way to act, I need to get quiet enough to listen to my inner wisdom, and trust that God is working in me. This is harder, I think, than it was to externalize the divine. Yet, when I trust that God is at work WITH and IN us as humans, the I’m able to take us more seriously.  When the goal was to conform to an external will, then what I cared about was irrelevant. When the goal is to listen to the deepest whispers in myself and remember they are the intersections of God and myself, I become relevant – and you do too.

Now, to be honest, I have a “call story” and I think it is pretty good! It seems only fair to tell you the story that I told hundreds of times on the way to ordination so you can judge it for yourself. It may be shocking, but it was at Sky Lake. I was 13 years old, I had just finished 8^th grade, and I was at music camp. I feel the need to tell you, as I’ve told many others, that I didn’t realize when I went to music camp that EVERYONE was supposed to sing. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gone. (I’ve done music camp 7 times.) The first night of camp we sat by the lakeshore and the director led a footwashing service. She talked about how Jesus was a different kind of leader than any other leader in history. She talked about how usually important people get served, and how Jesus was the important person who served others. I wanted to be a part of THAT. I wanted to turn the world upside down and redefine what “important” and “leader” meant too. Both the director and the woman she’d invited to wash feet with her were clergy. I therefore assumed, without having language for it, that foot-washing was a sacrament and you had to be ordained to do it.

That’s the point where I’ve traditionally made a joke about God “using my ignorance against me.” Anyway, I had this really intense internal conversation about wanting to be a part of the Jesus foot-washing thing, and not wanting to give up my dreams of being a scientist like my mother and owning my own house. That was the first time it occurred to me that I might want to be clergy.

Well, music camp sang at the ordination service of Annual Conference in those days, so nearly a year later I was present when the Bishop did an altar call at the end of the ordination service inviting people forward to respond to the call to ordained ministry. I felt a strong almost magnetic pull toward that altar, and I remembered that night by the lakeshore, but I wasn’t an impulsive sort of teenager. I decided that I’d wait another year, think about things, come back to Annual Conference, and if I still felt that pull, I’d respond THEN.

I talked to my pastor – but only about my desire to go to Annual Conference, and we set it up. The following year at the ordination service I sat with my friends and felt a magnetic pull to the altar. I was crying, and trying to hide it. The hymns were listed in the order of worship, and I knew when the last one ended. I said to myself (or maybe to God… I’ve usually told this story as if I was talking to God), “Oh well, too late, maybe next year.” Bishop Susan Morrison said, “Its not too late.”

So, I responded, making public and visible the experience I’d had of wanting to be a part of the turning the world upside down Jesus movement, one that I’d been privately contemplating for nearly 2 years. At that point I was sure, and I defined my life based on my experience of call. Sometimes I’ve told the addendum. 8 years after that first lakeside foot washing experience I was back at music camp as a pretty senior staff member at Sky Lake. The same clergy women were there. The director was sick that summer, and after she’d washed feet for a while she asked me to help her stand so she could take a break.

Then she asked me to take her place. I was the only staff member invited to wash feet, and it was the first time music camp had done a footwashing in the intervening years. By that point I was ready to apply to seminary. I loved washing feet in that service, I love it every time I get to do it. As wonderful as that experience was though, I knew in those moments that the call which had started as a desire to wash feet and ordination had been a means to an end had become a desire to serve God as a clergy person. Oh, and the director – she had NO idea that my call to ministry had been set in place in the last footwashing service. She just needed a break.

It’s a good story, right? I suspect if you’d spent years perfecting it, many of you could tell one just as good about your profession.

I have wondered if the idea of call comes out of a deep human need to be special. One of my college professors once pointed out that all fairy tales exist in the struggle between the human need to be special and the human need to fit in. It may be that call is exactly the place that fits that need: all are called (to something and usually many things), but all are called uniquely. We are, after all, all uniquely gifted in the world. And God is willing to work with us all to build the kin-dom. The more of us listen to those subtle whisperings within, the faster the work will be done. So, beloved, I believe YOU are called to build the kin-dom. And thanks be to God for that! Amen

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Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 31, 2016