The Second Sunday After the Epiphany
January 18, 2026
At the beginning of our 50th year as a community, separate from our parent Church of the Saviour, we have three different understandings of call. Isaiah is called by God before his birth, while in his mother’s womb. In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, he says that his recipients are “called to be saints” along with all others who claim Jesus as the Christ. And in John’s gospel, we hear John the Baptist announce the meaning of Jesus’ life with three different holy titles: Lamb of God, Son of God, and the Messiah or promised one. John’s role is to bear witness, not to be the savior.
As we enter this Jubilee Year of being Seekers Church, I’m going to explore the nature of our call as a community in light of these readings.
For Isaiah, the 8th century prophet of Israel, call is preordained, built into our DNA. When fertility was understood as a gift from God, call was built into the very tissue of his being. It was his birthright and lifelong obligation to speak what he heard from the Holy One. In some ways, this sounds like the Presbyterian concept of predestination.
I am reminded of James Hillman’s book, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. Hillman was a modern Jungian analyst and not a theologian. But, like Jung himself, Hillman worked with the concept of one’s soul as the essence of being, the core of one’s true self. Unlike some analysts, Hillman saw one’s physical body as an expression of soul and not simply a container. I think that’s what drew me to his writing.
Hillman called this the “acorn theory,” which means that the DNA of a huge oak tree is contained in one single small acorn. So are we here at Seekers. We need to start with our physical and spiritual body to discover the character and call of Seekers.
Elizabeth O’Connor, whose books put Church of the Saviour on the religious map of America, had a similar understanding of call. She wrote in Eighth Day of Creation, “We ask to know the will of God without guessing that his will is written into our very beings. We perceive that will when we discern our gifts. Our obedience and surrender to God are in large part our obedience and surrender to our gifts.”
That is a question for individuals AND for our community. It means we must be asking “What are our particular gifts? What gifts are emerging? What needs to be released?” It also means my inner journey has a lifelong purpose – to discard the various disguises I have developed to protect my inner being and to continue asking what is truly mine to do in this world.
As I get older and older, the question of what is mine to do becomes more urgent and, at the same time, more simple and clear. Here’s O’Connor again: To stand in the silence within oneself is not an easy concept to grasp. It will also be understood differently at different stages of one’s life. (Journey Inward, Journey Outward, 29)
As we consider the spiritual DNA of this community, I think it would be helpful to reread some of the core curriculum of O’Connor’s books to find language for the inner journey that is often so difficult to describe or tend in our frenetic culture.
Turning now to the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Corinth, we see a different understanding of call. For Paul, becoming a saint is a choice, a decision to believe that Jesus showed us God’s intention for human life. He writes “to those who are called to be saints, together with all those who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ….” This sounds a lot like the Baptist focus on conversion or making a choice to accept Jesus as my soul-guide.
My first encounter with Church of the Saviour came in 1965, when somebody handed me an old copy of Faith@Work magazine in which there was an article by Elizabeth O’Connor titled “What the World Needs Now is More Saints.” It blew me away. You can find that article as a chapter in her book, Call to Commitment. In it she wrote:
These Christians are those who will throw themselves into the breach between the peace and healing of God and the loneliness, anguish, and terror of the world’s lost. They stand as a bridge between suffering humans and God, willing to become ground grain, broken bread, crushed grapes, poured out wine. They are willing to be fed upon by the earth’s hungry until those hungry ones can feed directly upon Jesus. (p.160)
I didn’t think I could be such a person, but I wanted to be in a church where there were people like that!
O’Connor’s article set me on a path that brought us here, to Seekers. I’ve since learned that saints are not always saintly, that the inner work of choosing Jesus’ Way does not always mean action in the political realm, and that care for the structures of community (like preaching, teaching and care for the budget) are also needed in a chaotic world where the rule of law is being shredded. The question for each of us becomes “What is the next right thing for me to do?”
Just yesterday, I spoke with a friend, a former nun and active spiritual director, whose cleaning lady needs a safe place to stay with her two children. Knowing that she herself could go to jail for harboring someone without papers, she is deciding to do it. “With no children to worry about, I think I can do that” she said.
That’s how saints are made. Choosing to take the next right step.
In our third reading, John the Baptist is preaching what the authorities considered heresy. He proclaims Jesus as the Lamb of God “who takes away the sin of the world!” And that Jesus “existed before me.” In other words, here is the cosmic Christ, who was with God and in God from the beginning of time. And further, John had been told that he would recognize this Holy One by seeing the Holy Spirit “descend like a dove” so he could bear witness to that anointing. John’s message was revealed to him.
These miraculous pronouncements point to John’s inner journey, his deeply committed prayerful life sharpened by living in the desert without the usual trappings of family or community. John is a symbol of clarity and certainty, of prophetic purity. Like Isaiah, he was born to that role. Like Paul, he left a priestly home and lived in the wilderness, seeking God.
Speaking truth to power calls for a deep well of courage. I am thinking here of Bishop Marianne Budde, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and, more recently, political figures who have become the target of the President’s ire. I hear that prophetic clarity in some of the commentators that I most admire, but I shrink from that myself.
There is a certain similarity between John and the unarmed demonstrators in Minneapolis. They are calling out hypocrisy and terror, naming injustice and bringing attention to what needs to be changed. And for me, those are compelling images. Bearing witness takes on many forms.
Death threats and unarmed resistance truly frightens me, but in this community, I can offer the gifts that I have and be grateful to have a place in this small body of Christ.
All that brings me back to the question of call. How do we know when to act and when to keep still? What does it take to say “No” as well as “Yes?” And where do we fit in this particular collective body of Christ?
I think the answer is a combination of our readings for today. First, like Isaiah, there are qualities built into our genetic makeup: physical size, emotional makeup, family, church and school experiences that shape who are are, what we do well, and how we relate to others. Did we have people who listened to us? Reflect back who we are? Encourage our gifts? Or did we learn to hide our natural gifts? Learn to cheat or steal in order to survive? Did we trust the world as a safe place? Or did we start from a place of distrust and despair? Grow up feeling marginal or lost? There is call woven into that heritage too.
Then, like the Apostle Paul, who started his adult life as a brilliant young Pharisee, dedicated to persecuting those who followed Jesus, did you hear a call to change? To leave one way of being in the world and choose another? Many 12-step participants claim this path to sainthood.
The choice to change does not happen just once. My experience is that it happens again and again, spiraling through our lives. At every stage of development, we need to choose what brings us alive and leave behind roles that once might have been a path of call. God is always revealing the way toward wholenesss, for individuals and for our community too.
Finally, like John the Baptist, call may further be revealed by the inner voice of God or an outer crisis to which we must respond. Like John, we may be called to witness the grace and greatness of Jesus – as Bishop Budde did.
Our role may be to recognize and name another who is called to lead when we must step back to let others step forward. Knowing truth and naming it is not an easy call. But if we are to be part of God’s liberation movement here on earth, the call to bear witness to what we know is John’s gift to us in this time and place.
Taken together, these three readings suggest how we might examine our collective call as Seekers in this Jubilee year.
May it be so.
Amen