Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from August 6, 2006

“Our True Vocation”

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

John 6:24-35

Ephesians 4:1-16

What do you want to be when you grow up?  It’s a question we were probably asked by our elders when we were young, and a question we may ask of young people from time to time now that we have inherited that dubious role. 

Children often still answer the question with gender-predictable, archetypal roles like fireman, police officer or astronaut for boys, and teacher or nurse for girls, though there is the occasional pleasant surprise of a girl who says she wants to be a doctor and a boy who says he wants to be a teacher.  Naming helping roles that are valued by society is no coincidence; it points to a desire to do work that is meaningful.

As adults, life cycle events or change of decade can signal a time to revisit the question of what we want to be when we grow up.  It is a way of asking the question of what it means to do work that is meaningful.

Staring down the line that points to the 25^th anniversary of my ordination and my fiftieth birthday occasions such a time for me, and I am reasonably sure that if I had to make a decision today about changing what I do with the rest of my life, it would have nothing to do with a bicycle. 

25 years to think about it and to live it confirms that most days I’m pretty sure ministry is where I belong, though I never cease to be surprised by the particular way it unfolds, including the little bit of musical chairs I have played here in the chancel as our shared ministry changes. Many of you have heard me repeat one of my favorite sayings, “If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.”

Whether you are five or fifty, eighteen or eighty, if you have ever wondered what you want to be when you grow up, this is a text for you.  It asks the question about vocation, which is different from the question than about work.  It is a consequence of modernity that livelihood, profession and career eclipse the conversation about vocation, and that vocation, at least in religious circles, is understood as something that belongs to the small, odd group of us who take up residence in religious roles.

It hasn’t always been that way and, if we read Scripture carefully, it’s clear that it is not how it is intended to be.  Vocation is not the domain of those whose livelihood is connected to the church.  Vocation is the call to meaningful work, the deep sense that we are doing what it is that we were put on this earth to do, and that what we do matters.  As Frederick Buechner writes, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  Vocation is the work to which God calls us, and it is found in the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. 

It is not always found in the work that pays the bills, which is why I think those of us who choose or, more accurately, are chosen by religious life, take the easy way out.  As Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “We step into prescribed roles that seem to meet all the requirements, and take up full time residence in the church.  We forego the hard work of straddling two different worlds, while those who sit in the pews have no such luxury.  Those in the pulpit may know where we belong, but everyone else holds dual citizenship.”

It is the call to live in but not of the world.  The call, as Paul urges the church in Ephesus, is to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we are called, a verse that is often eclipsed by the more familiar verses about discovering and using our spiritual gifts.

Since Paul was writing about it two thousand years ago It is clear that this tension between work and vocation is nothing new.  From the very beginning, being a Christian has meant being a sojourner in a strange land, redefining life and it’s purpose by a sense of God’s call, which is the meaning of the word vocation. 

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “It’s more than having a job.  It means answering a specific call; it means doing what one is meant to do.  In religious language, it means participating in the work of God, something that few lay people believe they do.  Immersed in the corporate worlds of business and finance, and in the domestic worlds of household and family, it is hard to see how their lives have anything to do with the life of God.”

When work folds into retirement and the sense of identity and value attached to what we “do” is gone, questions about purpose and plan and meaning shift once again. 

Paul reminds us that somewhere we have misplaced the ancient vision of the church as a living organic body where there is a place for everyone, where the gifts of the Spirit are poured out on everyone.  We are, by virtue of our baptism, a priestly people, set aside for ministry, confirmed and strengthened in worship, made manifest in service to the world.  (Barbara Brown Taylor)

“Minister” has come to mean ordained person and “lay person” someone who does not engage in full time ministry.  It may be fair enough from an employment understanding but it separates work from vocation and turns clergy into peddlers of religion, and lay people into consumers who shop around for the church that offers them the best product.

Paul reminds us that we are all in this together, and that each person has a role, a part, a gift a vocation in the truest sense—meaning a call from God to be and to do on behalf of the Kingdom.

I prefer the more acerbic observation of some wise person who commented that the work of the church is far too important to leave to the clergy.  Somewhere along the line, we have developed this bizarre notion that clergy are the only ones who can be trusted with the ministry of the church.  Read the newspaper, you might want to rethink that.

The truth is that, as ministers, we are not set above anyone else.  We are set apart, entrusted with an office, a role that is no better, no more special, no more important than anyone else’s.  In each of our respective offices, whether as teacher or musician or shopkeeper or mechanic, we use our talents and gifts for the ongoing life of the world.  Whatever office we are entrusted with is ours to live out with integrity, faithfulness and transparency. 

Beyond that, and more central to our days, is our common vocation … that to which we were called to at our baptism.  Whatever our individual offices in the world, our mutual vocation is to serve God through them.

Taylor continues, “What we have in common is our baptism, that turning point in each one of our lives when we were received into the household of God and charged to confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection and share in his eternal priesthood.  Our baptisms are our ordinations, the moments at which we are set apart as God’s people to share Christ’s ministry, whether or not we ever wear clerical collars to have the title Reverend in front of our names.  From the moment we are baptized and the sign of the cross is made on our foreheads, we are marked as Christ’s own forever.” 

The baptismal vows that parents take on behalf of their children set the mark and seal for that child as a partner with God in the work of peace and reconciliation, pointing to a time beyond the moment yet within any given moment where God’s realm of justice and joy can be known.  As partners with God we sometimes help create it and sometimes merely point to it.  It makes us all preachers and teachers in our own way. 

In our tradition, we celebrate two sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  What they share is basic; both point beyond the moment to a deeper truth about what it means to live as God’s people in the world.  If baptism marks our vocation as God’s disciple, the Lord’s Supper is our reminder that each day, and all that is common in it, can occasion awareness of the holy.  The most ordinary things are signs of grace.

Through the sacraments, we are invited to see the world through god’s eyes, to hear with God’s ears, and speak with God’s words so that the distance between God’s ways and the world’s might be shortened if only for a moment.

As pastors we are called to lead the services of sacrament, but the sacraments do not belong to us.  They are, in the words of the old catechism, the gifts of God for the people of God. 

At the font and the table, we discover and we are reminded what it means to be God’s people—that we share a common vocation regardless of our work. 

And if we do our work here well, and by work I mean Liturgy (from the Greek liturgeia which means work of the people), then we leave here with a clearer sense of our vocation, regardless of our office.

We gather to hear and to handle things holy … and in the process, the holy handles us, our spirits are tuned to recognize the holy as it is hidden in things beyond this place, in moments that are like what happens here, in words and meals and gifts and graces that are shared in the sacrament of life.

We are, each of us, ministers of those truths, preachers of that gospel with a shared vocation to be God's people in the world, witnesses to the glad good news.  Amen.