Whiteboard: Calling

With Pentecost behind us we enter now into the extended period of time in the worship life of the church where we don't have a high holy day. We call it "Ordinary Time" in the life of the church and it takes up about half of the year. In fact, the next liturgical season is, well, Advent...which won't come until the last Sunday of November!

During "Ordinary Time" we have an opportunity to grow in the faith. In the coming Sundays our worship services will revolve around central tenets of the Christian faith like the Kingdom of God, living together in community, and worshiping a God who does amazing things.

So it makes sense that this coming Sunday we kick off our extended sojourn of Ordinary Time with the story of Isaiah's calling. After all, we too are called to follow the living God and commissioned to go out into the world in his name. Even if our stories aren't quite as remarkable as Isaiah's (his involves seraphs and hot embers and a hem of the robe of the Lord that is so big that it fills the entire temple), it isn't the details of the call story that make it remarkable. Rather it is the fullness of the response ("Here I am, Lord. Send me.") that makes it truly remarkable.

Come and join us this Sunday and help us to live into that divine calling with our own faithful response -- "Here I am, Lord. Send me!"

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Isaiah 6:1-8 -- A Vision of God in the Temple

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’ 

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ 

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ 

And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’