May 29, 2026, Summer Ember Day II, Year A, 2026, Friday of Summer Embertide

Matthew 9:35–38, Psalm 63:1–8, 1 Samuel 3:1–10, Ephesians 4:11–16

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you on this second day of Summer Embertide.

On Wednesday we lifted our eyes and saw what Jesus saw — the fields already white for harvest, the Spirit already poured out, the burden already too heavy for any one person to bear alone. We heard Moses ask for help and watched God distribute the Spirit to seventy. We remembered that we ourselves have entered a harvest we did not plant. Today we go deeper: we ask what it looks like when the call comes to a particular person, and what the Church is supposed to do with those who have heard it.

This question has a particular urgency at the opening of the Season after Pentecost. The Spirit has just been poured out. The Great Commission has just been given. The season of ordinary time stretches out before us — not a single dramatic moment but twenty-six Sundays of patient, faithful ministry in the ordinary life of the Church. That kind of ministry does not sustain itself. It requires people who have been genuinely called and genuinely equipped. Ember Days are the Church’s structured moment to pray for exactly that. Continue today with the two Ember Day collects from the BCP, p. 634 — the first in the morning, the second in the evening — and we will say more about prayer before this homily is done.

In 1 Samuel 3, the word of the Lord is rare. The text is explicit about this from the very first verse: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” (1 Samuel 3:1, ESV) The priest Eli is old and his eyes have grown dim. His sons are corrupt. The lampstand of God has not yet gone out, but it is flickering. Into this darkness, into this shortage of vision, into this house where the word of God has grown rare — God speaks. Not to the experienced priest. To the boy.

Three times the voice comes, and three times Samuel runs to Eli, certain the old priest has called him: “Here I am, for you called me.” (1 Samuel 3:5, ESV) Three times Eli sends him back: I did not call you, go lie down. And then, in verse 8, Eli perceives what is happening. He has been in this long enough to recognize what he is hearing, even if he is no longer the one hearing it. And he instructs the boy: “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’” (1 Samuel 3:9, ESV)

Speak, Lord, for your servant hears. This is the posture of the called person — not the posture of someone who has decided to pursue a vocation as a career, not the posture of someone evaluating options and weighing outcomes, but the posture of a servant who has heard something in the night and is learning how to hold still and listen. Samuel does not yet know what the voice will say. He only knows that something has called his name, and that the right response is not to argue or analyze but to be present: here I am, speak, your servant hears.

This is how genuine vocation begins. Not with a strategic decision. Not with a gift inventory or a personality profile. It begins with a voice that keeps recurring until someone — often an older minister, or someone more mature in the faith, an Eli who has been in this long enough to recognize what God is doing in a life — helps the one name what is happening and learn how to respond. The Church’s discernment of vocation is the Eli role: recognizing the voice in another, naming it honestly, and teaching them the posture of the servant.

Psalm 63 gives us the inner life of the one who has heard that voice and is learning to live by it. It opens in the wilderness — a place of genuine thirst and genuine cost: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1, ESV) This is not the well-fed satisfaction of someone who has what they need. This is the hunger of someone who has heard the voice and now finds that nothing else satisfies in quite the same way. Verse 4: “So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.” (Psalm 63:4, ESV) And verse 8, which is the psalm’s quiet crown: “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” (Psalm 63:8, ESV) Clinging and being upheld — at the same moment, by the same God. The called person does not stand on their own strength. They are held.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in chapter 4 tells the Church what to do with the people God has called. In verses 11 and 12: “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11–12, ESV) The gifted ministers are not the ones who do all the ministry while the congregation watches. They are given to equip the saints so that the saints do the work of ministry. The shepherd equips the flock. The teacher equips the students. The evangelist equips the witnesses. The goal, in verse 13, is: “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13, ESV) The whole body growing up into Christ — not a clerical class doing ministry on behalf of passive recipients, but a body in which every part is functioning, every member is equipped and deployed. This is the vision the Ember Days are meant to serve.

And our Gospel reading from Matthew 9. In verse 35 we see the shape of Jesus’ ministry: “He went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.” (Matthew 9:35, ESV) And then in verse 36, Matthew tells us what Jesus saw when he looked at the crowds: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36, ESV)

Harassed and helpless. This is not a picture of people who simply need information. It is a picture of people being worn down — by circumstance, by leadership that has failed them, by the weight of a world that has no shepherd. And Jesus does not look at them with frustration or impatience. The Greek word Matthew uses is esplagchnisthē — a gut-level ache, a love that moves in the deepest place, from the word for the intestines. He is moved in his depths by what he sees. The compassion is not managed from a distance. It is felt.

And in verses 37 and 38 that compassion becomes a command: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37–38, ESV) The compassion does not become a program or a recruitment strategy. It becomes prayer. Jesus does not say: work harder, hire faster, lower the standards. He says: pray. Pray to the Lord of the harvest — because the harvest belongs to him, the laborers are his to send, and the only way to get more of them is to ask the one who owns the field.

And then notice what happens in the very next verse — Matthew 10:1. Jesus summons the Twelve and gives them authority. The prayer for laborers is answered immediately by the sending of the very ones who heard that prayer. “And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” (Matthew 10:1, ESV) This is not coincidence. Jesus is showing us that the prayer for laborers changes those who pray it. We cannot pray earnestly for God to send workers into the harvest without finding ourselves moving toward the harvest.

So what does this mean for us on this Friday of fasting?

First, it means we look at the crowds the way Jesus looked at them — not with irritation at their neediness or impatience at their lostness, but with the gut-level compassion that asks: who will go to them? We are five days from Trinity Sunday, two days from the beginning of the Season after Pentecost. Twenty-six Sundays of faithful ministry lie ahead. The crowds around us — in Hiawassee, in Towns County, in the mountains of North Georgia — are still harassed and helpless, still like sheep without a shepherd. We fast today to feel something of what Jesus felt when he looked at them.

Second, it means we play the Eli role faithfully. Some of us have been in this long enough to recognize what God is doing in a younger life — the recurring restlessness, the unusual seriousness about Scripture, the quiet sense that something more is being asked. When we see that, our response should be Moses’ response, not Joshua’s: not alarm, but blessing. Not ‘stop them,’ but ‘I see something in you — has anyone told you that?’ The Church cannot produce vocation. But we can recognize it, name it, and pray over it.

Third, it means we examine our own equipping. Ephesians 4 is not only about the ordained ministers who equip others. It is about the whole body growing up into Christ. On this Ember Day we ask honestly: what has God given us for the service of others, and how faithfully are we exercising it? Not only the grand gifts — the ordinary ones: the one who listens, the one who shows up, the one who prays by name. These are the gifts that build the body, week after week, through all the ordinary Sundays of the long season ahead.

Here is how to pray this Friday in the Ember Day fashion.

Begin and end the day with the two collects from BCP p. 634, as on Wednesday. Today’s fast continues — let the hunger be the prayer when words run out. Then bring before God by name the harassed and helpless you know personally: the neighbor who has no community, the family member who is lost, the person in your life who is like a sheep without a shepherd. This is not only a prayer for clergy and seminarians. It is a prayer for the crowds Jesus saw. Pray for someone specific today — not a category, a person.

And if you know someone in whose life you have seen the recurring voice — the restlessness toward ministry, the unusual hunger for God — pray for them by name today. Then consider whether the Lord is asking you to be their Eli: to say what you have seen, gently and without pressure, and let God do the rest.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Lord of the harvest, send out laborers. Let our prayer today be the beginning of our answer.

Let us pray.