Thirty years ago this past summer, full-time ministry began for me as a hospital chaplain at Kenmore Mercy Hospital outside Buffalo, NY. One of the most striking memories of that summer was being called on a Code Red—cardiac arrest for a patient. I found myself being swept along the corridor as doctors and nurses converged, equipment noisily rolling along, everyone shouting at one another with the clamor from the TV program, ER. Very abruptly the family members of the patient were rushed out of the room, displaced by the hectic team that got to work with pounding his chest and injecting his veins, all amid the lead physician virtually screaming orders into the ears of the team. There I stood, quietly praying toward the back of the room, seeking to create a quiet space for prayer, confession and surrender to God—within me, at least, since it wasn’t offered right at the bedside of the patient.
The procedure turned out to be unsuccessful. More and more there were gaps in it, silence between the orders as the team began to realize that this man was not going to make it. There came a moment in the process when it was obvious to all present that the end had come for this man. Yet the procedure continued until the final order to stop was given. One of the nurse’s responsibilities had been pumping in an out with the “ambo bag”. This is a black inflatable rubber bag about half the size of a basketball that is inserted into the patient’s windpipe. Persistently and rhythmically she kept pressing in and out on the bag. As the procedure began to wind down, she kept on, waiting for the call from the lead physician to stop. But until the call came, she kept on pushing in and out, in and out, gradually losing attention at what she was about, doing it as though she was on automatic pilot, just doing her job. In the midst of the expanding silence in the room, she kept her hands on the bag, but her eyes turned to the nurse on her right as she began to speak: “Well, how was your weekend!" Somewhere in the core of me I was shocked and irritated at her. It’s as though the nurse was bored. Here we were—the ones blessed to have been called by the side of this wondrous mystery of human arrangement of clay and breath which is a human person. The silence of the group began to reveal, not the grief of the passing of a loved one, but a kind of professional disappointment that “this one” didn’t make it. We—and not the ones that loved this man in his life—were the ones with him for this man’s final minutes of life. The man’s family had been wrenched from his side about five earlier. I was like a Monday morning quarterback as I wished I taken charge at that point and called the group of doctors and nurses to a quiet, respectful pause for prayer before they simply walked out in disappointment. And who knows what the dying man was feeling, hearing and experiencing as he witnessed his life fading before his own very eyes, wishing his loved ones could be with him hearing their words of comfort and support and hope and his words to them, instead of someone beginning a banal conversation with: "Well, how was your weekend!”
What makes up weekends across this hurting earth of ours? How is this weekend for you? Let me share with you something that happens this and every weekend in the quiet hearts of those alert to the power of God’s Word. In the twenty-four hours that it takes for the morning time of worship to make its way across the globe on Sundays, and in the twenty-four hours it takes for the morning service in synagogues on the Sabbath to make its way around the world, two passages from God’s Word are lifted for a countless number of congregations. Yesterday, for example, Jewish people around the world and those that follow The Bible Through the Seasons were listening to what happened after the crossing of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus, chapter 14 to 16. After that wondrous miracle that brought a whole people to safety, the first thing on the minds and heart of the people was to complain that water didn’t taste like the water back in Egypt. The people began to wish they were slaves again in Egypt, making bricks for Pharaoh’s next project thought up from his ego trips. And today—like the passing of a torch from one time zone into another—countless numbers of churches have been listening to this Gospel. The call to Philip and Nathaniel—like the call of the Gospel from one time zone passing into another—this unique passage has the disciples experience Jesus’ call by receiving it, not from Jesus himself, but from the one who had just received it.
Remember the game we played as children called “Telephone”? You know, the one where someone rapidly whispers a phrase into the ears of another and then that person tries to catch what was said and then whispers the new version into the ears of the person alongside, passing it around till the last person says to everyone what the person heard. It used to get all garbled up, didn’t? Well, deep in the heart of Philip and Nathaniel, something authentic, clear and expanding was received, greater than what they heard with their outer ears alone. One of the persons, Nathaniel, is permanently honored in our church in the east side, clerestory window, “Godliness.” (See the image in the “Slices of Life” photo album at http://groups.msn.com/WesleyWithoutWalls) Like the sunlight that first shines through these east windows every morning, he was one of the first disciples to hear the call to be a disciple of Jesus. Way beneath the movement of their lives, these first disciples were open to the Holy Spirit and received a fresh understanding and experience of the new master that was going to take the place of John the Baptist. The torch was passed from John to Jesus, and then from Peter to Philip and then to Nathaniel. There was a call waiting for them in Jesus. They listened while the meaning of who Jesus was, grew in authenticity and power as each disciple passed their experience of Christ to the next.
That phrase—“call waiting” . . . sounds familiar, doesn’t’ it? It’s one of the many features in modern telephone technology. You are listening to someone and then either you get a beep to let you know someone is taping on your shoulder to get a word in, or you are on the other end and there is that little silence that interrupts the conversation that we have come to know as the moment when another is requesting time from the one with whom you are talking. I don’t know about you, but I find Call Waiting impolite. We don’t have that feature on our phone. Gina and I have decided that we are going to do one thing at a time—listen to the one we are talking with on the phone at that moment. The busy signal is a reminder to the next person to please wait their turn. The operator can always interrupt if there is a real emergency.
I’ve been used to thinking of Call Waiting as a negative thing. But today’s gospel and the movement of God’s Word across the land invite me to think in a very positive way about this feature. My dear friends, I cut to the chase. There is a call waiting from God at this very moment, right inside the depths of your heart—a call to open yourself to a wider and more sweeping experience of the Spirit of Christ in your life. Instead of your life being like on billiard ball of events bouncing into the next, instead of life being a confused jumble of misunderstood conversations, defined by looking forward to the coming weekend when life will really begin, and bemoaning Monday morning when life seems to comes to an end, your life can be an exciting response to the divine call evermore increasing in clarity and volume in the depths of your spirit. You can get in touch with the deep movement of this call as its sweeps across the globe, not only every weekend, but everyday and every moment through God’s Word constantly calling out to you.
From your mother’s womb, you are called. There is a unique call upon your life that is waiting for you and waiting for me. If you and I don’t answer this call, there will be a break in the link of the passing of God’s word of love and forgiveness to the next person. Suppose Philip had blown off the call he received from Simon Peter? The call would never have reached Nathaniel! Jesus did not directly call Nathaniel, but through Philip who in turn received it from Peter. Thanks to Peter’s faithfulness to affirm Jesus at that moment, and not to deny Jesus as he did at that other moment in his life, Philip got the Word!
We are all called from our mothers’ womb. However, there happen to be five people in the Bible whose birth story is told in miraculous, wondrous ways—called from their mothers’ wombs. They are Isaac, Samson, Samuel, John the Baptist and Jesus. Take Samson, for instance, from our first reading in Judges 13. What is the first thing he does in his adult life after such a call? He goes up to his father Minoah one day and says, "Hey Dad, get me one of those Philistine women, will you?" Samson is crass, proud, arrogant, misusing his call and its power. . . and he sleeps with the enemy—pagan women who only worship themselves and their cheap gods. One of these is the infamous Delilah. Samson’s insatiable lust for women has him fall asleep in her lap one day. She is quite awake, though, with a sinister smile on her face as she cuts off Samson’s hair, symbol of his power. Take a look at Gerrit van Honthorst, in his painting of 1615, “Samson and Delilah.” (See the album, “Sacred Art” at http://groups.msn.com/WesleyWithoutWalls) Feel the contrasts in the painting, contrasts which Honthorst makes with his use of light. In the center is Delilah, not Samson—flooded with an eerie, gentle glow of light. Asleep as meekly and weakly as our little Maltese dog “Coco” on our lap, is Samson. Look what has become of the powerful and precious call of God upon his life! He has ignored and abused this sacred call to pull God’s people out of the quicksand of infidelity and pride that spiritually became the soil of the Promised Land into which God’s people were called. He goes down the tubes with them all as everyone is crushed by a temple. God’s people lie in smithereens and chaos by the time we get to the end of the book of Judges.
Here’s a comparison and a question for us: is not Samson like Uncle Sam, that stern figure rising from the time of World War I? (Recall the message, “Samson and Uncle Sam” posted on the Tuesday message board at http://groups.msn.com/WesleyWithoutWalls.) Is there not something of an abuse of our nation’s power over the few brief centuries of our existence—slavery, military and economic might with an arrogance and perhaps even a blasphemy that says that we, and not God, will save the world? Something to think about as we see our fists raised high in the Persian Gulf. Is there not a call for us, as for every nation to bear witness to a love and power that is not from us, but from the God who has created every creature on this earth from their mother’s womb, and has endowed each with a unique call? Are we hearing that call . . .or are we like children who hear the words of this call passed from one child to another with all the distortions that come along when we don’t really listen to one another and to God?
What about you, dear brother and sister in the Lord: will you give yourself time to clear away the Code Red teams that scream at you all the time, even when there is no real emergency? I’ll show you a deeper emergency: what will happen if there is not enough quiet in your life and you miss the call waiting of God—the call of Jesus to come and live with you, inspire you, love you and fill your life with the God who created you? But there is such a call waiting for you in the silence. There are many beeps in your telephone line (I hope that today’s message is one of them) that invites you to let go of the unholy conversations and activities in your life, and get in touch with the God of your mother’s womb who is beckoning you to yield to that call. There is a call waiting for you—a gentle beep in the silence, calling you to know of how wonderful God finds you to be, how lovely, and how special and dear you are to God. May we listen to that call that comes to us from each other to be a close, intimate disciple of Jesus, and then go and be part of the call waiting in the heart of the other persons in your life. These persons may never come to know Jesus, unless you live out this call upon your own life and share it with others.
How was your weekend? Tell them!
Pastor Nick
