Vocation
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.”
Colossians 3:23
“When were you called to ministry?” Friends and new acquaintances often ask me this. There is a story there, but today, I would like you to consider your answer to the question.
So, “When were you called to ministry?” I suppose many people do believe only those of us who don the collar or who answer to the title “pastor” are “called,” but you know, all who follow our Lord Jesus, all who are part of the Body of Christ, are “called” to ministry. Even more so, we are all called to realize ministry is not limited to those things one does in “church,” but anywhere, at any time, in any profession or, perhaps better, any “vocation.”
Martin Luther used the German word “beruf” (translation “occupation”) to point beyond one’s work as a mere “job,” to more of a vocation. The suggestion was that whether one be a baker or candlestick maker, horse trader or priest, homemaker or barber, each could, in and of themselves, have a “vocation” or a “calling.”
One of his first precepts was to reject the idea only clergy had a “calling” on their life. Indeed, there were those called to special and ordained orders in Luther's times, such as monastics, deacons, priests, bishops, virgins and widows. Yet, pointing to several places in Scripture, Luther made the point, in reality, all people who follow God in Christ are priests. Among those passages, Luther would have included I Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”
During the reign of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, one major critic of Christianity was the self-proclaimed intellectual Celsus, who wrote of Christians, “...If you really wish to know the truth, leave your teachers and your father, and go with the women and the children to the women's quarters, or to the cobbler's shop, or to the tannery, and there you will learn the perfect life. It is thus that these Christians find those who will believe them.”
The dig Celsus was making at the early Christian movement was that it was not necessarily in their churches, Bible studies or prayer gatherings that Christians shared their faith, but in their everyday life and work. Offering ourselves to the new birth Christ gives empowers us to live out an increasingly energetic and selfless vocation of service in whatever arena we find ourselves.
While I may be called to be a priest and that is, for now at least, where I intend to live out my commitment to working for the Kingdom, others are called to the vocations such as real estate, medicine, homemaking, landscaping and engineering.
Frederick Buechner (I paraphrase here) writes the definition of vocation is the place where your great gifts and the world’s deep need come together, and God’s response is one of great joy. If that meeting point is how you are living out your work in the world around you, give thanks to God. If not, pray for insight into what your real calling may be. When you find it, I invite you to live out Paul’s words to the Christians of Colossae, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord...” (Colossians 3:23) and come to know the real joy of your calling.
A Prayer
“Remember, O Lord, what Thou hast wrought in us, and not what we deserve; and as Thou has called us to Thy service, make us worthy of our calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
From The Leonine Sacramentary
7th Century, A.D.
