"In a world where people fly airplanes into buildings for the sole purpose of killing innocent people, a job [like mine] seems incredibly irrelevant," Leno said. "This job is like a cookie or a glass of lemonade to those firemen in New York."

Leno then told a story about being a 12-year-old Boy Scout in his hometown of Andover, Massachusetts.

"I wasn't a very good scout," he said. "I'm dyslexic, as many of you know. I couldn't tie knots very well. But I had pretty good teachers. My scoutmaster was a terrific guy and he believed that every scout should get something [special to do in the troop]. So, after everyone else received their merit badges, he said to me, 'Leno, you're going to be the troop cheer master. Your job, when you see another scout who's a little depressed or a little upset, is to go over and tell that scout a joke or entertain him to make him feel better.'

"I thought, that's a pretty good job. I loved doing that job. And through some bizarre twist of fate, I still have that job. I don't pretend that it's the most important job, but we all can't be at Ground Zero digging through the rubble - but we can give blood, we can help in some way. We can help one another get on with our lives.”

Today’s scripture is Jeremiah’s account of how he got to be a prophet, a religious leader in Israel. This whole thing was God’s idea, not Jeremiah’s. “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah,” is how the story begins (v. 2). Which is hardly ever how most of our leaders get born.

In Donald McCullough’s monumental biography of Harry Truman, though young Harry failed at just about everything he undertook, he had an indomitable sense of destiny. He had in his head the odd notion that this kid from Missouri would one day be a Hannibal, a Caesar, or a Lee. Jeremiah had, so far as we know, none of this on his mind. I think, from the text, he must have been about say, eighteen. And you know what most eighteen year olds have on their minds and it’s not, “How can I grow up to become an abrasive prophet who goes up to the palace and tells the king that he’s a fool and that his kingdom will be destroyed.”

To underscore the divine origins of Jeremiah’s vocation, God tells him, “Before I formed you in the womb, while still in utero, I knew you as mine, I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (v. 5). This whole thing was God’s idea, from the first. Jeremiah’s ambition, his sense of destiny, his alleged skills had nothing to do with it. All of this is from God.

When told of his call, Jeremiah protests, “I’m no public speaker! I’m only a kid. My SAT scores on the verbal section were terrible.”

Most eighteen-year-olds whom I know are always trying to appear older than they actually are. Jeremiah, on the other hand, though he is a young adult, says, “I’m only a kid!”

And it is then that the voice of God moves from call to rebuke: “Don’t pull that,’I’m only a kid’ business. You’ll go where I’ll send you. You’ll speak what I tell you. I’ll watch over you.”

Again, this whole call thing is God’s idea. It is not based upon a savvy assessment of potential professional skills or personal attributes but rather upon the inscrutable gracious choice of God. It has much more to do with a call than a career.

Let me tell you what I mean. It is interesting to note that the root of the words. car and career both come from the same Latin word, carrera, meaning "race track." Kind of revealing is it not? The word, vocation, on the other hand, comes form the Latin word vocare, meaning "to call." A vocation is a calling.

Where a career demands intelligence to learn a skill, to learn how to get from
here to there, a calling, by contrast, demands a certain amount of inner quiet.
It's about listening to a voice within. These often manifested themselves as questions we ask ourselves, quite naturally.

"Is what I am doing really worth all the trouble?
" Why do I bother?
“ What difference will it all make?

It has been said that life can be defined as a process of calls and responses, as opposed to being "just a bunch of stuff that happens." Calls are seldom loud resounding calls from the heavens, a divine subpoena. They are instead quiet reminders; often they are recognizable visitations-- we sense them in serendipity, a line from a movie that comes back to us for weeks, or a paragraph from a book that says, " Hello?"

Calls are essentially questions. They are not questions that you need to answer outright. They ask us merely to entertain them. Sup with them. Acknowledge them.

In fact, you don’t want an answer you will just put in a box and store on the shelf of memory. You want a question that will become a chariot to carry you across the breadth of your life, a question that will offer you a life-time of pondering, that will lead you toward what you need to know for the preservation of your integrity.

Greg Levov says that there are two essential questions for us to ask ourselves
In this regard: What is right for me? And, where am I willing to be led?

I happen to believe that discernment demands that we ask these two questions continually and devotedly. That way providence might manifest itself enough times so that the answers will eventually find us.

In sculpting stone sculptors continually test the stone by tapping on it. If the tone becomes dull you sense a fault in the area in which you are working, which demands imagination lest you make it crack. A clear ring, one that hangs in the air, means it is true, has integrity and will hold up to repeated blows. This is what we are looking for when we are tapping on our lives.

Again, it takes devotion. Lots of tapping. Lots of questions:

If you are bored with your work today does it mean you need to leave it or change it? If you don’t get the job you were looking for does it mean you weren't meant to pursue that career or is it a test of your resolve.

Sometimes we have psychic agendas that we hide even from ourselves. We find out that what we were pursuing was not pursued for itself but because we wanted to prove something -- to ourselves, to our parents, whatever. When we sense that we are doing something for the wrong reason there is the challenge to get out of it. This is not an easy business, but it can be critical for us.

Most times people experience a voice within that calls them to go deeper into a place they already are. There they hope to receive what I believe we all long for: the call within the call. The thing within the wider context that fits precisely with who we are.

But this is a tricky business and one moves forward never sure where one may truly be going. Hear this from a young man named, Tom Anstead –

I first thought about becoming a Hollywood director when I was in the navy. I had been assigned to the public affairs department and was involved in making videos. When I got out of the service I applied to several film schools. I was aware that only one in a million people made it to the big time, but I felt sure I would be one of the few.

Rejection letters came from Columbia and NYU, but I was accepted at USC and Boston University. The choice seemed simple: USC was the top film school on the west coast, the alma mater of many top Hollywood directors. Boston University, however, offered me a scholarship. I put money ahead of my dreams and went to BU.

I quickly fell in love with the city and the curriculum, which focused on independent films rather than Hollywood blockbusters. On my way to classes I often walked passed well-dressed business students talking on cell phones. My friends and I made fun of them. Sure, they would make a lot of money, but there was more to life than that. They had no passion. My student loans grew, but I didn’t care. I was going to make films, express my humanity, and make the world a better place.

Four years have gone by since I graduated from film school. I live in Michigan with my wife and dog. Twenty VHS copies of my thesis film sit in a cardboard box in the basement.

I’ve worked t a few companies since graduating, and each new job has taken me farther and farther away from the film world. I have ended up a technician who works on digital equipment. Since I do more work in business than in entertainment I recently decided to make the best of it and apply to business school.

Last fall I began working toward an MBA t the University of Michigan. Sometimes when I’m standing outside on a beautiful day, I wonder if the film students are making fun of me.

Calls and calls within our calls keep surfacing until we deal with them. And even then they will not let up on us. They are like repetitive marital arguments, or a symptom that recurs and recurs; or a fantasy that won’t go away. In the Bible God often calls, repeating the names of the called one, Abraham, Abraham, Moses, Moses. And we get these all life long.

On Monday morning Nikki told the Bible story of the call of the child, Samuel to our Vacation Church School kids. There they were all chanting, “Samuel, Samuel.”

I think the most oft-repeated advice on callings in my lifetime has come from Joseph Campbell who said, "Follow your bliss." Greg Levov, in his book, CALLINGS, says of Campbell’s advice: "Unfortunately' follow your bliss' is more about following than it is about bliss." Certainly our movie director wanna be would say that.

But what people normally miss about Campbell’s injunction is the rest of the injunction. Campbell said, “follow your bliss and doors will open for you where you didn’t even know there were doors.”

Matthew Burton tells it perfectly --

As a moody London schoolboy of fifteen I discovered acting through the mentoring of an inspirational English teacher, himself a former actor. I began going to the theatre, and saw a play by Harold Pinter called NO MAN’S LAND, acted by Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. The play left me disturbed, thrilled, baffled and hungry for more.

I followed the bliss of theatre and the mystery of the ritual of storytelling. I acted, sang, and went to drama school. I was also a keen sportsman and one summer’s day the year I began studying, a friend asked if I could deputize for him in a game of cricket. I said ‘no’. Then he said: “Harold Pinter will be there. It’s his team you’ll be playing for.”

That’s how I met Pinter, 23 years ago. After a few years of playing cricket in the same club he invited me to work with him on a new play. He directed. That’s like a musician playing a new piece by Schubert, with the composer conducting.

Last year I stopped acting to train with the BBC to be a TV director. I have just completed my first project as producer/director: a filmed Masterclass featuring Harold Pinter (aged 75) collaborating with a colleague (me) directing a group of actors as they rehearse extracts from three of his plays, including NO MAN’S LAND.

The poet, David Whyte, put it this way, "Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you."

Sometimes it’s just so right that nothing can stand in the way – as Annamaria Smitherman will tell us. I’ll end with her story.

I sat in the principal’s office with a wry smile on my face. I wasn’t there to be reprimanded. I was 26 and interviewing for a job. A plastic crucifix hung over the desk. I imagined Jesus looking down on me, a lapsed Catholic hoping to teach 8th grade in a Catholic school. He’d have spun in his grave, if he’d had one.

Sister Michele bustled back in, a bundle of energy in sensible shoes. “I’m sorry for the interruption, but that’s the way it is here. Parents and students need you when they need you.”

I smiled. I had left a lucrative career to enter teaching because I wanted to make a difference. I wanted this job in this unsafe neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, among people with much darker skin than my own who spoke English with accents from Mexico, and Nigeria and the Philippines, and Haiti and the inner city.

So far the interview had gone great. “There’s only one question left,” sister said.
I sat up a little taller expecting her to ask when I could start.

“Why don’t you tell me about your relationship with God.”
My relationship with God? I shouldn’t have been so surprised. This was a Roman Catholic school, after all.

“Yes, we stress that everyone in the school community work on their personal relationship with God. Eighth graders, in particular are looking for role models. As their teacher you’ll be a primary example for them.”

I had been so sure I was going to get this job. There were bullet holes in the windows for heaven’s sake. Where else was she going to get someone with my credentials to teach in this neighborhood?

“I try to see the face of God in the people around me.” I began. “I’m not always successful, but that’s where I look for God.”

“And Jesus?” she prompted.

“Well, he’s the best role model, right? In the face of great cruelty, he chose love. But as for him being the only son of God, I don’t believe that. I think we’re all children of God; Jesus just did the best job of showing it. “ Taking a deep breath I said, “And you should probably know that I don’t think the resurrection is the point of the story.”

“What then is the point?” she asked.

“Love, forgiveness, kindness.”
Her expression betrayed nothing. “And your relationship with the church?”
“ My relationship with the church is ambivalent,” I said. “I haven’t attended mass in years. I don’t like the church’s attitude about women in the clergy. And I don’t agree with its stand on birth control. It’s just a way to limit women’s options. It’s not what Jesus would do.”

“You said you were ambivalent,” she replied. “What about the other side your feelings?”

I choked up. I felt the job slipping away from me. Sister Michele waited expectantly as I tried to pull myself together.

“Well, I said, “I do respect the work the church does with the poor. And I like the music.”

Sister Michel nodded soberly, gathering my resume and transcripts into a neat pile on her desk. She stood up and held out her hand. I too, stood searching frantically for something to say that would keep me in the running for this job. Sister Michele spoke first.

“I think you’ll fit in here just fine.”

Amen.