Hearing Your Vocation

Lectionary Passage: Matthew 3:1-3, 13-16

One of the neat structures in the Old Testament is the many forms of poetry that exist between the pages. There are acronymic poems in proverbs and psalms (each verse starting with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet in succession), cuplets, doublets, and something very close to the idea of a sonnet. However, that poetry isn’t just found in the pages of the people of Israel. The New Testament has some poetic elements in it as well. Matthew 3 is a perfect example. It starts and ends in a circular pattern. It begins with John’s voice calling (Latin – “vocatio” or “de voco”) and it ends with God’s voice calling (Latin “de voco”). The first call is fulfilling the scripture “Repent. Prepare the way for the Lord”, the second call is “This is my son, whom I love.” (in another text we are also called to listen to him). It is clear in the beautiful circle of God interacting with people that we are called. We are invoked (invoco). But to what?

It’s not hard to see how we get confused. The same word used in these scriptures is the root of the word we use for the word “vocation”. But the meaning of the word “vocation” has been irreparably damaged by both secular and religious language. It is up to us, in the story of Jesus’ baptism to find its true meaning.

Vocation: It’s not your job!

In the secular world “vocation” (verb of invoco) is a word we use to describe the job we have. We even use it to describe a type of schooling that teaches job skills over academic accomplishments. Remember Grease? “If you can’t pass high school, there’s always hair school!” We have begun to think of the word “vocation” as an every day working word or descriptive of “career”. This brings us into great confusion – suddenly we mix our identity with our job and lose huge chunks of our self, our time and our sanity. I’ve heard it from many professions:
“Nursing isn’t what I do, it’s who I am!”
“I don’t teach for a living, I’m a teacher!”
“The accountant in me doesn’t rest, even on Sundays!”
and something I was told after I retired from pulpit ministry
“How can you retire from who you are?”

But vocation – the call of God - isn’t about that thing we do because we have a contract, or a pay check, or a schedule. Vocation is to be called of God and hear that voice telling us who we are – defining us by our relationship with God. It is not telling us to define who we are by what job we do. Jesus comes to John the Baptist as a rabbi – a teacher. But just as John’s first call was to “repent!” – Christ’s response is to come to him for baptism – to repent of the past, and start anointed with a public witness of the fact he is a child of God, first and foremost. Although John points out Jesus doesn’t need to repent, Jesus says he needs baptism and as a child of God wants to start out like the rest of us.

Notice God didn’t say “This is my teacher” or “This is my healer” or “This is my minister”. God said “This is my son, whom I love.” Jesus would be a rabbi, healer, minister, savior and so many other things but first his vocation was to be God’s son.

So it is with you. You are God’s daughter. You are God’s son. You are beloved of God. That’s your calling. That’s your identity. That’s your job. The places God puts you, the jobs God will give you, are guided and blessed because you are God’s child.

This may sound like semantics, but in our world it can have very serious consequences. Mixing up your identity with your employment can have lasting and bitter effects. I have known many people who lost their jobs, and nearly lost their minds. Suddenly without their work they seem to lose so much of themselves that they begin to treat their partner/husband/wife with hostility, they either ignore their children or become hyper-critical of them – pressuring them to “do better than I did” or “go into nursing/teaching/computers/funeral directing so you will always have a job”. They sink into depression, despair, and chaos. Why? Because they have lost a part of themselves. In counseling folks in that situation, I have frequently used this scripture of Christ’s baptism to bring them back to the starting point – to who they are. God's child. Don’t lose that. Don’t forget it.

Vocation: It’s not your religion

The clergy have done just as much damage to the word vocation as the secular world. We throw that word around to mean “religious life” (if you’re catholic), or to have a calling to work in the church – minister, missionary, youth worker, musician. We talk about ministers being “called” without remembering that teachers, nurses, army folks and the unemployed are also “called”. I have a friend who is very proud of being a pastor. He talks incessantly about it and claims, sometimes unaware he’s doing it, “pastoral” privileges. I once heard him start a sentence by saying “Jesus was talking to the pastors…” My first thought was “who the heck are they?” Jesus talked to fishermen, tax collectors, lawyers and gatekeepers. There weren’t any “pastors” until much much later. The problem with such thoughts is it creates a hierarchy that destroys the common beautiful witness of God’s people.

Being called to a “religious vocation” makes you no more holy, correct, or spiritual than any one else. Relying on and triumphantly praising professional ministry gives people an opportunity to ignore their vocation as God’s children and bearers of Christ’s light. “Well, I wasn’t called to the ministry so I don’t have to witness,” we say. Or one of the more interesting things I was told once in regard to a person misquoting the bible and causing damage to her family in the process, “Look, Rev. correcting scriptural issues is your job, not mine.”

But we are all called of God, and we are all responsible to shine the light of love and mercy to one another. Don’t downplay your part in bringing the kingdom of God to earth (as it is in heaven). John doesn’t really want to baptize Jesus. It seems silly to him to use a symbol of repentance on someone with no sin. But John is called to baptize and Jesus wants not only to fulfill his ministry but fulfill John’s as well. Jesus didn’t need to be baptized half as much as John needed to baptize him. Supporting the mission and witness of a pastor is a beautiful thing, and clergy add a lot to the spectrum of faith. But the job doesn’t belong simply to the clergy.

One of my favorite old hymns is “Softly and Tenderly” – it reminds us that invocation (which is the act of calling to someone, not just the prayer we say before a fancy dinner or religious event) is not only coming to us from God who calls us son or daughter, and the Holy Spirit who calls us to our job, our gifts and our worship but also from Christ who offers us the greatest vocation of all: coming home.

“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
calling for you and for me;
see, on the portals he's waiting and watching,
watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home;
ye who are weary come home;
earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
calling, O sinner, come home!”

May we hear, live and love our vocation, now and always. Amen.