Second Sunday after the Epiphany (Year B, RCL)

If the world is a gift, then all the things to which you relate—and many to which you don't—are also God's relation to you.

One time at a women’s retreat, I was asked to tell my call story. I told this woman the whole, convoluted story—about serving as a missionary in Japan, about being restless in my work and volunteering for leadership roles in my church, about discovering old journals where I had written about my desire to study theology, about my memory of sitting in church as a teenager and hearing the pastor give the sermon and saying, “If I was a man, that is what I would want to do.” I told her that it had taken me a long time, but I finally realized that God was calling me to be a pastor.

She was not impressed.

I used to think that the end of Samuel’s story was when he learns to listen to God. I wasn’t curious at all about what God has to say.

While Christian scholars have long questioned body-soul dualism, it remains common in church circles. This may finally be changing.

It's hard to believe that any preacher would choose to preach on this week's epistle reading. There are words here rarely spoken in our sanctuaries, and using this text might get a preacher sent to denominational reform school.

I often feel that my whole time in ministry has been one when the word of the Lord is rare and visions not widespread.

Here in Tidewater, Virginia, we make our way from city to city via a series of tunnels. As we approach each tunnel a series of signs warn us: “No HAZMATS” and “HAZMATS must exit here.” Trucks carrying hazardous materials of one sort or another provide a danger anywhere, but in tunnels the risk is magnified.

John Calvin grounded our need to know God in our createdness: "What is the chief end of human life?" he asked, and answered, "To know God by whom we were created." This yearning is not the same as our need to "know" other human beings.

From where does Nathanael's confession, his insight, come?

If you’re Eli, you’re not sleeping that well when the boy comes trotting in to disturb you with his nonsense.

Reading the call of Samuel, one wonders why the lectionary confronts us with such a dread epiphany.