The Call.

In the First Week we reflected on "Getting Free." We now turn to consider what are freed for in "Something Worth Living For."

Between the First and Second Weeks of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius inserts the exercise traditionally called the Kingdom Meditation. In this exercise, retreatants consider the call Christ makes to everyone to collaborate with God's work in the world. This exercise prepares them to hear that call in the future and to consider now, beforehand, what a fitting response might be. (Brackley, p. 60)

A few Sundays ago we heard several readings about Calls: the call of Isaiah in a terrifying throne room, the call of Paul the persecutor, the call from Jesus to Peter and the first disciples. Today's chapter from Brackley invites us flesh out our idea of the Call. (In place of "Call," we might also use the word "Invitation," a sense suggested by the Greek word used in the New Testament.)

The aim of the exercise is not to experience the invitation during the exercise itself but to prepare for it (61).

The first thing Ignatius surprises us with is that before we hear a Call or Invitation we prepare. We are not necessarily expecting to hear a divine Call/Invitation this week - or this season of Lent - for we cannot control when such things happen, after all. Rather, we want to put ourselves in such a state of mind that when the Call/Invitation does come we will respond in the best possible way.

How do we do this? Personal spiritual exercises like our Examen from last week are part of the story, to be sure, but there is more to it than that. Our journey, after all, is not simply an intellectual exercise that we can pursue on our own, by ourselves, in a little room somewhere. Brackley suggests that we must be with people among whom such a call can emerge.

We discover our callings in response to the world. Mothers and fathers discover theirs in response to their children. Couples call forth from each other their vocation of spouse and lover. Martin Luther King discovered his prophetic calling during the Montgomery bus boycott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany and Dorothy Day in Depression-era New York grew into their vocations in response to their turbulent surroundings. Our surroundings shake us, sift us, and draw our vocation from us.

A lot depends on where we place ourselves. If King had spent his youth hanging out by the pool, would we remember him today? The crucified people are a privileged place for hearing the call to service. They provoke the crucial question: What will we do to take them down from their crosses?

Faith recognizes the call to love and serve as the voice of Christ. Christ invites people of every time and place to participate in the Reign of God (59).

I find this idea particularly striking as we are preparing to hear a Gospel story on Sunday about Jesus' desire to gather us together as a hen gathers her chicks. (And, I should mention, as we prepare to study the Gathering part of our worship during Adult Forum this Sunday.) Must we be gathered together by God in order to hear our calling in the world? Must we be gathered together in the way God gathers - without regard for class or race or even personal creed? Is this a crucial part of the way toward the life God intends for us?

And if so, it presents us with all sorts of other counter-cultural implications. Becoming part of a community is not something that happens overnight. It happens over time. And if becoming part of a community happens over time, maybe hearing our Call, our Invitation from God doesn't happen in one "a-ha!" moment, but maybe it happens over time, too.

Gather us together, Lord, and prepare us to hear your Invitations in the ever-changing contours of our lives. Amen.