January 18 | Epiphany 2, Year A
Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 40:1-12
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42
Calls change things—especially if they are answered. Phone calls evoke changes because information, insights, demands, complaints, and requests all cause us to think and act differently. The simple act of answering the telephone entails turning away from your personal agenda and engaging with a new and different one. Whether the content of the call is that you have won a million dollars or that your neighbor has cancer, your life thereafter is never the same. To receive a call is to allow another agenda to invade and possibly take over your life.
In our lessons today, we have the accounts of three calls, each issued by God. In Isaiah, we read of the call of the Suffering Servant—the descriptive image for both the people of Israel and the Messiah. Through the call of St. Paul and the church in Corinth, we learn that the faithful are called into fellowship with Jesus Christ. And then in the Gospel we hear that the call of the disciples is to come to the Messiah and be changed.
Through his servants, God calls every person in every nation. Just because Israel, Jesus, and the Church exist in the world, the world is different. It is different because Israel, Jesus, and the Church present the world with a choice. Regardless of whether the decision is to reject or accept God’s offer, the world is changed.
That was the way it was in the times of Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul, and the way it is today. Unlike the shattering ring of the phone in the middle of the night or the blinding flash of a Road to Damascus experience, many calls are quietly persistent—the breathy chase of the great Hound of Heaven (Francis Thompson).
Every person who has ever been conceived in the womb has been called. As Isaiah said, “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me” (49:1). God calls us into existence and by doing so changes what is not into what now is. But he also calls us by naming us. That means he gives us a function and a purpose—all while we are still in the womb.
From our birth God calls each of us into the world as an individual within a family and a society. As we grow and develop, God calls us to himself by letting us see his creative hand at work in our lives and the world in which we live. As we encounter God’s Church and the Bible, he calls us from being self-serving individuals into the body of believers in Jesus Christ—the community called to serve others as Jesus served us.
God calls us from being citizens of this world into being subjects of his kingdom. We are called to move beyond an assent to God’s existence and into the discipleship that is dedicated to living according to the Master’s will. As disciples we are called to a vocation as vehicles of God’s call to our neighbors—near and far. Every stage along the way—at every call—we are changed by God’s call from that which is not into that which is and ultimately will be forever.
Look It Up: Psalm 40
Think About It: Ritual, whether sacrifice or liturgy, exists first not to please God, but to help us remember our call to obey his will.
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Alley, former rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, teaches anatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School.
