A Call

 2025-11
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
  www.goodshepherdfw.org
  by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February  09,  2025
  Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13] ; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 ; Luke 5:1-11 ; Psalm 138

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen

Please be seated.

In case you’re wondering about this little parade that comes down every Sunday while I’m here, it’s so hard to preach front and back, and so it’s just easier to be able to see people when I’m preaching, so thank you for doing that.

I want you to know that I love these four months that I am spending with you. I really enjoy being here, you are so interactive, and aware, and you listen, and you respond, it’s wonderful. I have been for the last 11 years an itinerant preacher at thirty different churches in a year. I never get two or three Sundays in a row, much less four months of Sundays. One of the things that I am especially delighted about is that I have never experienced Epiphany like this! We’ve been going through these Epiphany Sundays for the last six weeks. I used to think of Epiphany as “oh well, another season”, it never meant as much as it has this time. So, thank you for that gift.

Now, you might remember that in Epiphany, we’ve talked about certain major themes of epiphany. I’m not going to test you, but one of those things is that Jesus is made manifest to us, right? And He’s made manifest to the gentiles. Another is that Jesus is made manifest as God through miracles, right? A third one is that we have a job to do with Jesus, that Jesus calls us to join in the work of making our faith manifest to others, to tell of our faith, to share it, to share the stories of our faith, and to talk about our testimonies and things like that, right?

Oh, you’re still saying yes! Good! Because that is often kind of a scary part, and that piece of Epiphany, I haven’t given it so much a name, but it is a calling upon us. We are called to participate in the life of Christ.

Today, we have two wonderful stories of calling. The first one is the reading from Isaiah, and we hear Isaiah, a great, great prophet, he is suddenly in a place where he sees the Holiness of God. There are Seraphs, who are very large, very heavenly beings with lots of limbs, six of them, they have different purposes, and they are there to proclaim, “Holy holy holy is the Lord God”. Isaiah sees this and hears this, and he does, what I think is a pretty smart thing to do, he falls on his face, and says, “God, get away from me, because I am a person of unclean lips, and I am a sinner! I have no business being in this incredibly holy place!”

Then, something rather strange, a little scary, happens, which is that the Seraph takes a coal from the altar and touches his lips, Isaiah’s lips, and says “You are forgiven, you are now clean, cleansed from your sin”. That little piece of scripture always kind of scares me, because I am so thankful that I don’t have to walk up and down the isles touching your lips with a burning coal! Are you thankful for that too? It’s so much easier to say “Your sins are forgiven” than to use burning coals! But, for Isaiah, this is a moment where he is suddenly freed to hear the call of God.

The call of God comes in this form: “Whom shall I send? Who will go out and speak to me? Who will be my proclaimer?” Isaiah responds with the wonderful words, “here I am, send me”, he answers the call, and he writes Isaiah, he writes these wonderful prophecies of what is to come! He answers that call so immediately. In the Old Testament, there are many other stories of call, and they are not always answered the same way. There was Moses, remember Moses?

“Moses, go talk to Pharoh!”

“I don’t think so!”

His excuse was that he had a speech impediment, and he couldn’t possibly go and speak on behalf of God, and God says, “get over yourself”, and Moses says “yes”.  

Then, there’s Jeremiah, who says “I’m too young! Nuh-uh, nope! I haven’t gotten my PHD in theology yet, don’t send me!”, and God says, “get over yourself” and he is sent forth.  Over and over there are these stories, of, Jonah! “Noooooo! People of Ninevah aren’t acting like how I want them to act, and I am not going to speak on your behalf!” God says, “get over it, get over yourself, go do what I am telling you to!” and these people eventually do, for the most part.

But we now come to the wonderful story of Jesus at the lake of Gennesaret, and he is followed by crowds. He’s been teaching, he’s been healing, it’s still very early in His ministry, and he’s too crowded at the shore of the lake, and so he says “Peter, I’m climbing in your boat”, and Peter goes “okay”, and Jesus preaches and teaches and does what He’s doing, and then they come back to shore and Jesus says “now, go fishing.” Peter is a fisherman, this is what he does for a living, he says “You don’t understand, I’m the fisherman here, I know my fishing business, and it’s the middle of the day, it’s not a good time to fish, we tried all last night, and we didn’t catch a thing, why would we fish and catch something now?” and then, without Jesus saying why, like “I’m God and I have a plan”, or something like that, Simon says “hey, I’ll do it”. It’s that first step to “yes”. They go out, and they catch so many fish that they try to sink two boats with that many fish. Then, Peter hears who is actually speaking to him, and so much like Isaiah, Peter falls on his knees and says “Lord, get away from me, for I am a person of unclean lips, I am a sinner, I can’t possibly be even in your presence!”

Jesus says, “don’t be afraid”. Boy, those are important words! Saying yes can be fearful, don’t be afraid, I’m sending you out and you will not be a fisher of men, as you have heard so many times, probably, but a catcher of people, my people, they aren’t going die, well they will, but. Peter and James and John become those three disciples, the closest ones to Jesus, and they drop everything and follow Jesus! They leave the two boatloads full of fish behind, and follow Jesus, they say “yes” to the call of Jesus.

This week I was at two retreats, the vestry retreat, a wonderful event, and then the clergy retreat in Bremerton. Our new Bishop preached on Wednesday the closing Eucharist, and he said, “all of you have been a this retreat all week, you don’t have to prepare a sermon this week, just use my sermon.” I couldn’t do that, because he said, “you cannot change a word of my sermon”, and I don’t know how to read sermons, but in this sermon, he preached on these lessons, and he said a wonderful thing. He said “where, how, when, have you been called by God to follow? When was that experience of hearing the call and responding to the call?” Bishop Phil told the wonderful story of how, when he was a little boy, he got out some ritz crackers and some tuna fish and served communion to his parents. He said, “when were you called, and when were you called deeper? How did God call you further in?” And again, with that image of “Oh god, get further away from me, I am not worthy.”.

And so, I thought about it this week, and I have two stories of my early call in life. No ritz crackers and no tuna fish, I’m pleased to say, but I want you to not only listen to my stories, but to think about your own story. Where has God called you?

My first story, I was seven years old, I was in a summer camp for children who were recent immigrants to Canada and the United States. I was the youngest at the summer camp, and I had a call at that summer camp, that was that there were a lot of dead garter snakes lying around in the yards, and in the streets, run over, and I thought that they needed a proper burial, so I organize the other children in the camp, and we created little wagons, and put our stuffed animals in the little wagons, and one wagon was the hearse, which was for the snake. We picked dandelions and other flowers that we could find, we strewed them, whatever the word is, along the path, and we sang songs as we walked with our little wagons and buried that snake. We dug a hole, buried the snake, and I said a prayer for the snake.

I want you to know that I thought that was an easy sense of call to ministry, no one has ever guessed that that was my first call to ministry, that was part of a women’s retreat opening event, “let’s tell your early call to ministry”, and no one thought that was mine.

That was my first call, I then grew up a little bit. At age 36 I came to know Jesus, in a personal, wonderful, renewed way. I went to a dinner at church about three weeks after that happened, and at this dinner there were about 50 people, they had all been to Cristillo, I had been to Cristillo, and I was waiting for the grace to be said over the food, and a man turned to me and said “Carola, will you lead us in prayer before the meal?” and I said “Out loud?! I don’t have a prayer book! What am I going to do?” and he said, “God has a call on your life, and you’re going to have to know how to pray, so get started”. And so, I said some brilliant “God bless this food please, Amen” prayer over the food, but it was a call. There was something behind that and having someone point out “you are called” helped that, but also that “do not fear”.

So, I share these stories not because I am called, but guess what? We are called. We get to respond with “Here I am Lord, send me!” We are called in different ways, Martin Luther, the great reformer, said “It is the priesthood of all believers”. It’s not just a time in history where those who have studied the most, or know the most, get to do the special stuff and God loves them special, and everyone else is just sitting in the pews. We are called, we’re called to proclaim, we’re called to serve, we’re called to suffer, we’re called to be the Word of God in our communities.

I ask you to go home this week, you might be, the two of you might be burying snakes, or doing something that might not sound that important, but all of us have an important call on our lives. May we hear, and like Peter and James and John and Isaiah, leave everything and follow the One who Calls us.

Amen.