Vocation

A Sermon by Patricia Koons and Nada Sellers

July 29, 2007

Jeremiah 1:4–10 & Acts 1:1-8

PAT:  A number of years ago now I received a letter from my niece who, at the time, was a freshman in college.  She was somewhat frustrated by the fact that she still didn't know what she wanted to declare as a major.  Then she said, "I hear that runs in the family though, so I shouldn't feel so bad!"

Maybe it was just my ego, but I assumed she was referring to my decision in college not to decide on a specific field of study.  My "declared major" was Open Studies, which basically meant I could take whatever classes I wanted to as long as I completed my general education units and so many units of upper–level classes.

I responded to her letter by telling her that she was right, she needn't feel bad about being confused.  In fact, she was not alone in the struggle to decide on a major.  The reality is that at least 90% of the people who do declare a major upon entering college change their mind at least once.  A lesser, but still significant, number change their choice twice or more.  I was one of the 90%, having declared Accounting as my major of choice on college applications.

Deciding what one wants to be when one grows up is at least as difficult as figuring out exactly when it is that one actually is grown up.  Take for example this episode from the comic strip, "For Better or For Worse."  Elizabeth and her friend Dawn are dreaming about their future:

PK - Dawn: "Wouldn't it be cool if we could get our own apartment together, Liz?"
NS - Liz: "Yeah, totally! Trouble is we'd have to get a job first."
PK - Dawn: "True."
NS - Liz: "What do you wanna be when you grow up?"
PK - Dawn: (thinks a moment) "I dunno...What do you wanna be?"
NS - Liz: "I dunno, I guess it sorta depends on what you mean by "grow up"!"

With that the girls go to find Elizabeth's mom, Ely, to get her wisdom on the subject.
NS - Liz: "Mom, Dawn an' I were wondering...How old are you when you actually grow up?"

PK: "That's a good question Liz." Ely responds, "I thought I was grown up when I was 18.  But I was pretty childish compared to the way I felt when I was 20 and living away from home.  Still...I probably never really "grew up" until I got married and had children and learned how to cope with a lot of responsibility."  "Mind you, when I think of it, I don't think I'll ever "grow up"!"

Back in Liz's room the two girls continue their conversation. 
NS - Liz: "So, what do you wanna do when you've achieved physical maturity?"
PK - Dawn: "I dunno, what do you wanna be?"¹

Does any of that sound familiar?  Many of you, I'm sure, remember your own process of deciding on a vocation.  A good number of us still wonder if we really have grown up yet.  For some in our congregation these struggles with vocational choices have already been resolved; still others find themselves smack dab in the middle of it.  Not to mention the fact that we live in a time when people change vocations one to three times in the course of their working lives.

The word "vocation" has rather a dull ring to it, but when one considers what it means, it isn't dull at all.  It comes from the Latin word "vocare," which means to call. A person's vocation is, in fact, a person's calling.  It's the work one is called to do in this world, the thing one is summoned to spend one's time doing.  I've been speaking of a person choosing his or her vocation, but it might be just as accurate to say that the vocation chooses the person, of a call being given and a person hearing it or not hearing it as the case may be.  And maybe that is the place to start, [according to one writer, with the] …business of listening and hearing.  A [person's] life is full of all sorts of directions.  Some of them are voices from inside and some of them are voices from the outside.  The more alive and alert we are, the more clamorous our lives are.  Which do we listen to?  What kind of voice do we listen for?²

There are so many voices to listen to, the desires and dreams of parents, the expectations of friends, the pressures of a society that values us according to what we do.  Then there is the voice that speaks ever so gently; the one that meets you in the silence of prayer; that comes to you in a vision in the temple; the one that calls distinctly to you out of the specific events of your life.  Which voice will you listen to?

NADA: Rev. Peter Gomes, Harvard's Chaplain, and well known author, made the point during his keynote address at the UCC Synod in Hartford, that the United Church of Christ - that's us - for all it's illustrious past and impressive history, has been preserved 'til NOW, for a reason. We cannot simply rest on our collective pasts, yearning after the "good old days" when the church was full and the Sunday school bustled and the Ladies Guild was vibrant!  By the grace of God, our beginnings have brought us up to the present; this is part, as Gomes described, of our "vocation."  We have something more to do, NOW, something more God calls us to do for the sake of the gospel.  And what is it we're supposed to be doing?  That's where discerning God's voice is so very important.

Gomes went on to introduce the following definition of "vocation," as given by the Presbyterian writer, Fredrick Buechner:  "Your vocation, is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." (Wishful Thinking, p. 119)  Where your deep gladness meets the world's deep hunger… If you think of deep gladness as JOY, I think you'll get the picture:  Rather than dreary, stoic, joy-less living, Jesus calls us to REJOICE and be glad, to embrace the kin-dom of God now and in what is to come!  It's this joy, which allows us to meet up with the needs around us.

In one of the personal moments of Dr. Gomes' message, he spoke about his elderly mother living in Plymouth, MA, who decided to receive Meals on Wheels at her home, even though she was perfectly able to cook for herself.  When he asked her why on earth she'd chosen to receive these meals, meals she described as horrible and refused to eat, letting them pile up in the fridge, until they needed to be tossed, his mother explained that she felt she could do something to help the poor Christian woman who came to deliver the meals!  This woman was so dreary and glum; she needed some cheering up and his mother determined that her mission in life was to help this poor woman have some JOY.

One of the challenges for every Christian, is learning to listen, learning to discern the voice of God in the winds of the Spirit and the patterns of Christ.  Often, not always but often, the Holy One will call us to be more than just useful or helpful - although we should be these anyway.  No, being a decent, respectable Christian will get you nowhere when it comes to identifying our Christian vocation!!   The world is full of decent Christians, but God calls us to do MORE! 

We belong to the eternal God, and we belong to something that will last forever: the Church of Jesus Christ!  We are meant to be in the world and yet not of this world; able to stand against the grief and sorrow and drabness of the fallen world, sharing the light and JOY of God's amazing grace!  In fact, the power of our sacred imaginations, to see new worlds beyond our current horizons, is something that inspires and empowers us to get going for today and tomorrow!

PAT: A number of years ago, a woman in her mid to late thirties came to me looking for advice.  She was married and the mother of two wonderful children.  Before she married she had begun work on her bachelors degree a class or two at a time.  When they decided to have children, she and her husband agreed that she would quit her job and put school on hold.  Her own childhood had been rough and her mother difficult and negligent.  This having been so, her desire was to be a very present and great mother – both of which she'd succeeded in doing.

When the two kids were finally settled into the routine of grade school, she went back to college.  Her reason for doing so, however, wasn't so much because she wanted to as it was just to get her bachelors degree.  She wanted the degree because all of her friends had one and she didn't.  It made no difference to her that the very friends she wanted to keep up with were themselves stay–at–home moms who didn't care one way or the other if she had a college education.  She still felt inadequate because she didn't have her degree.

The problem was, that she was miserable being back in school.  She suffered from anxiety attacks and insomnia.  She came to me and asked, "How am I supposed to know what God wants me to do?  Should I quit school or continue?"

I came back at her with a question of my own, "What gives you the greatest joy in life?"

She looked at me a little puzzled and asked, "What?"

"You heard me," I said, "What is it that gives you the most enjoyment in life?"

"I love being a good mom to my kids. Helping out in their classes, going on field trips, cheering at soccer games and being there when the kids come home from school."

She ultimately realized that her vocation, her calling was to be a stay–at–home mom, one without a degree.  That was the best way for her to express herself and find fulfillment.  It was certainly the best way for her to serve God and her family.  Where other mothers thrive on balancing professional and home life, she was better suited to the stay-at-home model.  Each person has to figure out for her or himself which calling fits them the best.

We are not meant, as God's people, to live for status, position, or money alone.  Christ has called us first of all to be his own.  Our lives are precious and what we do with them does matter.  Our life together as the church also matters, as it strengthens us and glorifies God!  Since we only have one life we need to make the most of it, and the choice we make of what to do with it needs to be our own choice, not one that the world or anyone else tries to make for us. 

NADA: Jeremiah heard a voice calling to him and he knew it to be the voice of God.  For each of us there are many voices calling after us; which one is God's voice?  Unfortunately the voice of God doesn't usually come to us as clearly as it did for Moses with the burning bush or Paul being struck blind or to Peter and Andrew hearing the real live Jesus bid them leave their nets.  So how do we know which voice to follow?  Where should we go?  Listen again to Fred Buechner's charge:

...we should go with our lives where we most need to go and where we are most needed.

Maybe that means that the voice we should listen to most, as we choose a vocation, is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness.  What can we do that [gives us the most delight], what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north and of peace, which is much of what gladness is?  Is it making things with our hands out of wood or stone or paint on canvas?  Or is it making something we hope like truth out of words?  Or is it making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirit?  I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives.

And also, [we need to ask] where we are most needed.  In a world where there is so much drudgery, so much grief, so much emptiness and fear and pain, our gladness in our work is as much needed as we ourselves need to be glad.  If we keep our eyes and ears open, our hearts open, we will find the place surely ... If we keep our lives open, the right place will find us.³

PAT: God told Jeremiah that he would go where God would send him and speak the words that God would give him.  He would be a prophet to nations and kingdoms to bring a message of despair and hope.  The risen Christ gave the disciples a similar charge when he told them that the power of the Holy Spirit would come upon them and they would be his witnesses to the furthest parts of the earth.  They would go where he wanted them to go and they would speak the word of his saving gospel to all people everywhere.

NADA: Would it be possible for us as a church, the United Church of Christ here in North Amherst, to become a more joyful, energized, even passionate group of Protestants, looking for ways to brighten our world in Jesus' name?  What would it mean to take up the challenge Peter Gomes laid before listeners in Hartford, to "become a dangerous community of irrational, passionate Protestants… who cease being "respectable" and actually "DO SOMETHING dangerous and risky!"  Part of achieving this shift from "respectable" to "passionately active" is the recognition that we already KNOW about many of the needs out there - we have been brought up on the needs of the world, we have been taught to care about the needs of others … Question is what can we do about it? What can we bring?  Do we hear a calling to be joyful, hopeful people, bearing the Good News of forgiveness and love and encouragement?  Will we live up to our heritage of seizing the opportunities of the moment, moving boldly to speak up or reach out?

Our first vocation is to be disciples of Christ.  To be Christ's very own in whatever way we are able to be.  To be his with whatever gladness or JOY we have, in whatever place we are, with whatever people he calls us to live with.  That is the vocation we were called to before we were born, before we were even conceived.⁴

Notes

¹Johnston, Lynn; For Better or For Worse, LA Times, Sunday, January 22, 1995.
²Buechner, Frederick; The Hungering Dark, San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins 1969, p 27.
³ibid, pp 31–33.       
⁴ibid, see chapter three, The Calling of Voices, which was greatly helpful in the building of this sermon.