Imagine you woke up one morning with the telephone ringing,

You pick up the receiver, 

or click on the little green icon if you have a smartphone,

You answer sleepily: “Hello?”

And on the other line 

you hear an otherworldly voice: “Hello, this is God calling!”

How would you respond if God would actually call you 

and you could hear God’s voice as clear as you hear 

my voice this morning?

Maybe you might pinch yourself and think: 

boy, what a crazy dream I’m having…better try to wake myself up,

Or maybe you might think, what did I eat or drink last night to cause this?

What does it mean to say: we are called by God,

And what could a call by God look like, or sound like, or feel like?

—

There are many voices that call us in our day-to-day lives.

Both literal and metaphorical voices,

Voices that belong to actual people, 

and voices that belong to companies, or other non-personal entities.

Loved ones, co-workers or neighbours might call us on the phone 

or on the street or in another room,

The voices of loved ones who have passed into eternal life 

might still ring in our ears from time to time.

Voices from the media call us through print, online content, TV and radio,

And these various voices might want things from us, 

want us to spend money, spend time, make choices,

These voices might call us to concentrate our attention 

on a specific cause or issue.

These voices might remind us of things, or help us understand.

But how does God call us?

In what ways can God call us?

In church-land, 

we most often refer to pastors having a call by God to ministry,

But as Lutherans, we remind ourselves again 

and again that we are all called by God through Baptism 

into our various vocations, 

we are all called by God to our various tasks and relationships.

But how does God call us? 

It unfortunately is not as obvious as an 

imaginary telephone call from God.

Usually God’s call is even not like in our Gospel reading, 

Where God called to the Samaritan woman through the words of Jesus sitting next to her at the well.

Even in that story, for the woman, 

Jesus was at first just another man talking to her.

 

—

Jesus had stopped on his journey at a well in Samaria and asked a woman there for a drink of water.

Jesus then promises the woman "living water”, 

which seems like a good deal, 

and the woman replies that she would indeed like some of this living water, 

so that she might never again be thirsty. 

The woman is impressed by the encounter and tells her friends: “He told me everything I have ever done, he cannot be the Messiah, can he?”

—

What happened in the unnamed woman’s mind, 

that suddenly the voice of the Jewish man at the well was recognized as the voice of God?

The reason the text gives is that she is astonished by Jesus’ prophetic knowledge that she has been married 5 times, 

a fact that would be impossible for a stranger to know.

But there must be more. 

Perhaps it’s less about the words Jesus says, 

(but the way in which he says them,) 

and how the voice is received in her heart.

Because you see, the words Jesus say to her are really not that earth-shattering, he’s going off on a monologue about “living water” that’s barely comprehensible,

Rather, what’s key is that she’s in this ordinary place 

(this meeting-place), and at a time in her life where she’s really receptive, a time where she’s searching, 

and willing to be open to God’s voice.

—

And this gives us hope too, and a way to help us understand how God can call to us as well,

Because God didn’t only talk to people who lived 2000 years ago.

God calls us today, esp. when we are feeling unfinished, 

unworthy and un-callable,

Esp. when we feel that God is far-off from our lives.

Just like how that woman likely felt, 

perhaps shunned by her community for her non-traditional lifestyle, 

she likely was feeling like an outsider, yet Jesus talked to her, 

and offered her life and a new purpose for living.

The woman’s story was unfinished, it was rough, 

it was broken, it was patched up,

And you know what?

All our stories are unfinished too.

Our lives are unfinished as well.

>>

Like the Samaritan woman, we are all in these unfinished spaces…

We’re no longer living pre-pandemic life 

but we’re not quite over the pandemic yet,

This wilderness COVID experience is an unfinished hell for many, esp. for those who for various reasons can’t get back to “normal life” while it seems like the rest of the world has moved on.

Most folks are in an unfinished space of their lives.

Some people are living that fine line between the older senior age and assistive living,

Some are coping with medical issues and still managing to be independent, but can see at some point the threshold being crossed to medical dependence,

Some of us are dealing with hidden or not-so hidden scars from mental, emotional or physical trauma,

Some of us are living in the unfinished space of broken relationships and longing for reconciliation and forgiveness.

For some of us, we might not know what is unfinished in our lives:

Sometimes our actual problems are unclear, 

or we have unresolved learnings, things we never discovered, 

or even knew we were supposed to know.

The good news is that Jesus meets us in our unfinished places and spaces.

Jesus calls us in everyday life.

Wherever we are, esp. when we don’t have things all tied up neat and nice,

esp. when we are in a bit of a wilderness time 

where we can’t quite see our destination, 

but are stumbling from oasis to oasis.

The good news is that though we are unfinished people, 

we are cross-marked and spirit-sealed, and we are not left alone —

God is here each and every day, calling to us, accompanying us, 

renewing and recreating us over and over.

Which brings us back to that tricky question: 

how do we know if it’s God's voice calling to us?

That is the big question, isn’t it?

In these unfinished, fractured spaces of our lives, 

when we hear a voice telling us something, 

how do we know it’s God’s?

Is this call really from God, we might wonder?

How do we discern?

—

There was a woman who had been single for a long time, 

and she finally found “true love”, and she was overjoyed…the man in question seemed to be so perfect, 

and they were very happy together. 

One night, she woke up, in a half-sleep, 

with a voice calling to her “He’s the one!”

As she was a pretty devout Christian, 

she took those words seriously, 

and decided that this was God telling her that her boyfriend was the man she was supposed to marry.

She couldn’t really believe it, 

and she doubted herself because it was the first time 

she had heard God’s voice in such a clear way…

it wasn’t a booming voice, 

but rather a pointing out out of a reality.

But she was still convinced that it was God’s words she heard.

Months went on and the relationship deepened and it seemed like marriage really was going to happen at some point.

However, difficulties kept creeping up, 

The couple had arguments, and couldn’t see eye-to-eye on some key issues. Finally, the relationship was over and they broke up.

The woman had a crisis of faith. 

Had she been wrong to interpret God’s voice as saying “He’s the one” to mean her boyfriend was the man she was to marry? 

Would God lie to her? 

Maybe it wasn’t God’s voice after all, perhaps the devil’s? 

Could God be trusted?

After much soul-searching she came to realize that perhaps it had been God’s voice all along, but maybe she just mis-interpreted it. 

She so desperately wanted to find the man to be the one “until death do us part”, that she maybe jumped to a conclusion.

Perhaps, she eventually realized, 

God had been telling her about her boyfriend: 

“He’s the one…

for now!: 

Go further with this relationship, 

and he’s someone you need in your life right now, to learn about loving, 

to learn about what it takes for a committed long-term relationship, 

and to take it to the next level in your own life’s journey.”

—

You see, when God calls us, 

we need to discern what God is actually saying.

Perhaps our own biases and expectations are clouding what we are hearing, and what we interpret is not actually what God means…

because often God doesn’t speak in fully-formed sermons or monologues to us, but only in promptings, 

God sometimes speaks in images, in pictures, or realizations,

And God sometimes speaks to us through words that are spoken by another human that touch us in a way 

that goes beyond the words’ original intent.

—

I sometimes get a little glimpse of this in my sermons, 

where I might preach on a specific topic on a given Sunday 

(and it might not be a too good sermon and I forget about it) ,

and months later, a parishioner comes up to me and says 

how a specific phrase was so meaningful to them. 

Likely I didn’t even mean those words originally in the way they were heard, but God was able to take those words, 

and touch people’s hearts on that day in ways I could never have imagined.

>>

In the week ahead, I invite you to take some time to ponder these questions:

What voices called to me today? 

How do I decide which voices to listen to?

I invite you also to think back whether you’ve had an experience of being called by God.

Probably it wasn’t something dramatic, 

maybe it just was a quiet realization, a word from Scripture, 

a word you heard somewhere, a word from a friend.

What difference did God’s voice at that time make? 

Or was is it something you only made sense of 

at a later point?

As we try to discern how God calls us, it’s important to remember that

Jesus meets us in the unfinished places of our lives, 

Jesus calls us in everyday life.

Jesus often doesn’t call us when everything is under control 

and we’ve got it all figured out. 

When we rely on our own abilities to have it all mastered, 

we’re not listening for God’s voice anyways.

It’s in our brokenness, our vulnerability, our unfinished spaces, 

that God can find a way through the cracks in our lives to shine through, 

to give us the living water when we’re thirsty for life, 

when we are weary, worn and sad.

And that is good news indeed, 

that when we are feeling at our worst,

that we might experience God’s voice nudge us towards life, 

ultimately towards the source of living water, Jesus the Messiah.

Let us pray:

Inspire me O God to trust in your call upon my life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

--

Resource used: Lent in a Box 2023 (churchanew.org), by Dr. Char Cox