16th January - Canon Stephen Carter

EPIPHANY 2    2011

ISAIAH 49:2

The Lord called me before I was born,

While I was in my mother’s womb he named me.

It is a great gift in life if you find fulfillment in your work. It is a great blessing to do something that you feel you are meant to be doing. To have work where your personality and gifts are in harmony with how you spend your time.

There are too many people who find their lives tedious and unrewarding. Though in the present economic climate, there are many who are just grateful to have a job. There was a time when most people continued in their chosen profession from leaving school till retirement. But we live in a world where we now have to be more flexible. Many people have a number of career changes before they reach retirement.

There can be all sorts of things that influence their choice of work. Parental pressure, advise from schools: for some people a sense of vocation: the sense that this is what you are MEANT to be doing. This was certainly my experience. From my early 20s I believed that I was called to be a priest.

I had no dramatic revelations. Unlike St Paul, I had no blinding lights nor visions. But I did have a gradually growing sense that God was leading me on to be a priest.  I’ve had one or two wobbly periods in the intervening years. But in the main, I have never lost that sense that God has called me to this life.

However, it is not only the clergy who have a sense of vocation: a sense of being called. Doctors, nurses, teachers, people who work in the emergency services, all of these, and many others, can have a sense of calling. Christians working in offices, shops and factories, can have that same sense that God has set them apart for a special task.

In the Bible, those called by God often respond very reluctantly. They feel that they are not up to the task God has given them. They do not have the skills or the courage. Isaiah in the Temple feels unworthy.

“Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” His vision of God’s holiness shows up his own frailty. But so compelling is the call, that he can only respond.

“Here am I, send me”

Jeremiah and Ezekiel feel they are only like children and will not have the words or the wisdom to speak on behalf of God. And yet God calls them as they are. Jeremiah and Isaiah and later Saint Paul, feel that God has set them apart from the womb. Even before birth he knew them and had identified what he was asking of them.

Today’s Gospel reminds us of how Jesus called the first disciples. This was more than an inner sense of vocation. More than the still small inner voice. This is a summons loud and clear. Follow me. Walk with me. And I will make you fishers of men: or in the pc language that the church now expects of us, “I will make you fish for people”.

So today, we pause to ask the question, “What is God calling me to do.” Have I responded to his call. Is there more he wants from me? And what of us as a church?

Whenever I drive into Maldon, and I see All Saints looking out over the valley, I am reminded of those words of  Jesus, about a city set on a hill, that cannot be hidden.

Much of our energies over the last year have been taken up with building work. And this is all good to equip us for our mission. But perhaps this year, is a year to listen: to listen to the call of God. To listen for the voice of God, calling us to the tasks he has for us as a church.  Like Samuel, to pray, “Speak Lord for your servant is listening”