January 18, 2026

For my own mental health and well-being, I largely avoid social media these days. I've more or less extricated myself from the variety of different platforms I used to be entangled within. I have occasion every now and again to jump back on certain medias, like Facebook, where I have a group of clergy colleagues that I remain connected to. And so it was just yesterday that I was on and noticed that it was the 16th anniversary of Julie and I joining the Episcopal Church that we did in Arkansas, St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Conway, Arkansas.

As many of you have experienced or know in your own lives, you're able to join the Episcopal Church as an individual member of an individual congregation and then eventually in some form or fashion deepen that connectivity through reception as a confirmed Christian or to be confirmed yourself if you've never been confirmed before. But this was our initial foray into engaging with committing to that specific church and the larger Episcopal Anglican tradition as a whole. Almost from the beginning, a call narrative began to develop in my life. Because not having any family who had ever been in any significant way connected to the Episcopal Church, we were inundated with requests to explain ourselves. Why in the world are you joining the Episcopal Church? What is it that you are seeking or what have you found?

In sputtering and stilted ways, I began to sort of shape and form what it was, because in some sense the first and primary reason was that it was where we felt God calling us. Julie and I had been trying to find a church to join together as part of our budding relationship. And we had visited a Presbyterian congregation, a Baptist congregation, a couple of other places as well. But we stepped into that church that morning in the fall of 2009 and knew immediately that we were home. There was just something about the experience that clicked with us, something about that specific congregation, that specific community, and the way that they lived their lives that spoke to us.

Over the course of my journey into the discernment process, through the discernment process for ordination and on to seminary, that sense of call became more and more fundamental to the way in which I talk about my faith journey. As was observed in seminary and has played out over the course of my life, it almost inevitably is the first question I get asked when I meet someone new. Whether a dinner party or a cocktail hour, when someone finds out I'm a priest, they say, "Why?" But not only why; often I get, "Why did you choose that?" As if it were a choice, as if, like for many of us, it was simply a job that seemed attractive that I decided to pursue.

And I find that an instructive experience because so much of our society and world is shaped around this sense of our own volition—this sense that we guide and make our own decisions in life, that we have an autonomy about how we live our lives, that these things are choices that we make. So much of what we hear today is the importance of call. Going back to our Old Testament reading from Isaiah, we have this great sense that God has shaped and formed us from the beginning. Even before our birth, there is a knowledge of what is to come, how we are to live our lives, and the complexities of the issues we will confront—that God has gone before us in setting that path.

This was particularly important for the hearers of Isaiah. As Pastor Jobi of the South Indian congregation mentioned last night, they also had a reading from Isaiah. Isaiah is the Bible within the Bible because it is one of the longest books of the Bible, and it was also written in three different sections at three different times. It kind of, in many ways, experiences or communicates the arc of our entire faith journey just within the one book. And this section, this last section of Isaiah from which our reading comes today, is in the exilic period as the people of Israel are longing for, envisioning that return from Babylon, and the reestablishment of their identity and way of life in Jerusalem. Isaiah is showing them that path forward—that even in a time of dislocation and disconnection, they are fundamentally still being guided by the God who loves and cares for them. That there is still fundamentally a call on their lives.

It's interesting, too, to have heard Job preach yesterday, because as I was finalizing, shaping, and forming my comments for today, so much of what he preached overlapped with what we encounter in our scripture readings because he talked about the importance of building community. That was central to the text that they had before them last night. Pastor Jobi observed that when we are the church, God does not just gather us. The church is not just about being a people together. He said, "A community with Christ becomes the church, but a community without Christ becomes a club." And so many times we can fall into that trap of simply being a club of people who like each other, who like spending time with each other, but don't have a deeper sense of our call as a community of faith. He said God does not just gather us; He forms us and builds through us. When we are the church, we are shaped and formed to be participants with God in the work that God is doing in the world around us. There is a call on our lives.

The passage from John today is so valuable and rich in that imagery as well: the sense of what it means to be called, what it means to seek and to find. Bishops, both in the Anglican and Episcopal traditions and in the Roman Catholic traditions, often will find or establish a piece of Scripture that they use as kind of their guiding motto or their guiding principle of their episcopacy. One bishop, a deep friend and mentor of mine who is the current bishop of Pennsylvania, has used this section from John, "Come and see," as his guiding light for his ministry. That what we as a people of God are on about is the invitation into the realities that God is unfolding—the work of Christ in the world around us—and to invite people to come and witness that work that is being done in each and every location that the church exists around the world.

But what is that work? It's easy to say "come and see what we're doing," but what are we doing? The bishop that I came into the Episcopal Church under in Arkansas, I think, is instructive because his guiding motto, his piece of scripture which shaped and formed his episcopacy, was Micah 6:8: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." When we are invited to come and see, we are invited to come and see the works of justice, the loving of kindness, the walking with humility.

Today we encounter this invitation into call, as both individual Christians here gathered today and the ways that God is speaking to us in our own senses of call, but also who we are as the larger community of faith. What it means for us to be a church with a call—a church with a call towards justice, kindness, and humility. Pastor Jobi said too last night, "In a world in crisis, we are the repairers of relationship." That what it means to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly is very often the work of deepening and enriching relationship. And that can often be at odds with the way the world works; it can often be a misunderstood reality.

Our life is not just shaped around Sunday morning worship, but also the prayer life of our morning and evening offices, the prayer life I'm sharing during our forum hours at 9 a.m. on Sunday mornings. And this morning's Old Testament lesson in the morning prayer office was from Genesis, where Noah is encountering his call: his call to preserve and abide in the midst of a chaotic and desperate time where the world has gone askew, where hatred and visceral reactions dominate the discourse, where love and charity and relationship have waned. There is a coming consequence of those problems, and Noah is being called to be the one who will preserve, the one who will endure, the one who will see through to the better day. Again and again throughout scripture, that sense of call is often the sense of call to see the light of the new day in the midst of dark and troubling times. That, too, is the context of the section of Isaiah that we have from our Old Testament lesson.

So friends, this morning, as we encounter anew our Lord's invitation to us to come and see, as we encounter anew the invitation to deepen and experience our own sense of call, I invite us to be diligent in discerning it, to prayerfully consider who we are as a people and what we are on about. What are the works of justice, kindness, and humility that we are committed to? Just a few weeks ago, at the very end of our Advent series, I offered a set of resources, and I invite you to look them up through the newsletter and finding the PowerPoint presentation that I've shared. Because in it, you will find all of these groups—from the hyperlocal in Damascus Health and the Up County Hub and even some of our engagement with King Commons, through to more regional, national, even international organizations—of which we are all a part, doing these works of justice, kindness, and mercy, all of that within a humble spirit.

Because as we, the church, live into this call, we are moved beyond ourselves back out into the world to help discern and address and respond to the many needs that the world has around us. That in coming to see what Christ is doing is also a coming to see how we can participate in it. To be people of good work and not just good relationship. That being community together is also being called in that community to do the work of restoring the breaches, repairing the relationships, and building up the kingdom around us. So friends, today, may we hear that call anew in our lives. May we encounter a renewed sense of call as a community. And may we forever walk forward, seeing the work of God ahead of us, and joining with Him in the work that we are being called to do in our own day. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen