02/04/01 Vocation 01/02

Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8

Luke 5:1-11

"But Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on it is people you will catch.’ Then, bringing their boats back to land, they left everything and followed him."

Luke 5:10-11.

When I gave Rosemary the title of this sermon over the phone from South Africa she thought it was that key word in real estate, "Location" as in "location, location, location." That may have been due to the faintness of the telephone connection, or my own mumbling, but I take it also as a sign that the word "vocation" is somewhat out of date, not the one that comes to mind first. These days most of us have jobs not vocations. Even the professionals among us seem to have a more modest, less pompous view of our work than "vocation" suggests, as having "marketable skills" rather than lifetime commitments. In the end, however, I don’t think it matters much what we call our daily activities as long as we do them with the right attitude, and that attitude is what our lessons for today address.

They are narratives of vocation, in which God calls people to do the special task that God has in mind for them and needs them to do. (Vocation and call are the same thing - vocation is the Latin derivative, from vocare = to call, while call is the Anglo-Saxon word). God calls Isaiah to do the work of a prophet, and God calls Peter and Andrew, James and John to follow him and do the work of disciples. Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple included the question, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" And the prophet answers, "Here am I send me!" The divine call takes the form of a question and the human response the form of a self-offering. The disciples’ call is somewhat different in that it occurs not in the temple but in the workplace, and calls them away from daily work to a special task. Nevertheless, their skills as fishermen would not be wasted; from then on they were to catch human beings not fish. We shall return to this story of the call of the first disciples, but first we might put the idea of vocation in historical perspective.

At certain times in our Christian history the term "vocation" has been limited to the positions of priest and pastor, monk and nun, missionary and religious teacher, that is, to the strictly ecclesiastical functions, and still today when we have "vocations" emphasis events in the church the focus is on church authorized positions and functions. I understand what the church is doing in this case and do not in any way criticize this use of the word and concept, nevertheless we must understand it properly. To enter the professional ministry of the church one must have a special call from God, and it is right for the church to try to help people discover whether God is calling them to the ministries of the church or not. By the same token God calls others to other professions and functions, and they too might be helped to clarify their vocations. This is the main point I wish to make today, God calls every one of us to the work that God has for us to do in this world, at this time, in this place. Vocation is not just for church positions. Vocation is something every Christian must listen for, and listen to, and obey. Vocation is God calling us to do the thing that God created us to do.

Let us consider this point: God calls every one of us, not just the ministers of the church. The bedrock of our humanity and well-being is God’s call to every one without exception. Listen! God says, "Come, follow me," and when we say yes and get up and get going, we enter into the fullness of our life. This divine call is firstly to a relationship and then to a task, although the two are so integrally bound up that it is impossible to separate them. God calls us to be the person he created us to be in relationship with himself, and the lived reality of that relationship is fulfilling the task he has for us. Only in relationship with God can we fulfill the task he created us to fulfill, and only by fulfilling that task can we be in a right relationship with God. We must do what God commands if we are to be who God wants us to be.

To return to the historical perspective: it was the Protestant Reformation of the 16^th century that brought the belief in a universal vocation to the fore. Max Weber, an early 20^th century sociologist, argued in a seminal book titled, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," that the Protestants of Northern Europe in emphasizing the biblical idea of the priesthood of all believers also recovered the biblical conviction that all believers are called to co-operate with God in saving the world. The divine vocation is to participate in God’s work in the world, which we do by performing the tasks of our professions and trades conscientiously, as if our work were God’s work. So instead of stopping work when they had produced enough to live on, these people, our Protestant forbears, went on working and generated surpluses of value, which they invested in new enterprises, and the rest is history. The divine vocation to all of us, therefore, is to a relationship of cooperation through our own work with God’s saving work in the world. That vocation is the highest honor and deepest self-fulfillment imaginable, and it produced formidably strong characters. It is the foundation of our Protestant individualism; God himself calls me myself to help him do his divine work in the world. I am doing God’s work! I am an essential link in the chain of grace the pulls the world from chaos to order, from waste to productivity. Surely this is a noble self-understanding, despite the evils of its excesses, which we cannot deny. Vocation is one of our special Protestant words.

Let us return now to the story of Jesus calling the four first disciples, Peter and his brother Andrew, James and his brother John, the two sons of Zebedee. Jesus asks them to let him into their boat so that he can maintain some distance between himself and the crowds he was teaching. Peter welcomes him into his boat, and after the teaching session Jesus tells him to sail out again to a certain spot and drop his nets. Peter remonstrates that they have been fishing all night and caught nothing, so it is hardly likely they will catch anything during the day. The fishing on the lake was clearly nighttime fishing. Nevertheless Peter does what Jesus tells him and hauls in a great catch. He calls others to share the bounty, and they all turn to Jesus in awe. Peter gives a characteristic human response, of fear and the feeling of unworthiness; he asks Jesus to go and leave him alone in his unworthiness. Jesus reassures him that his fishing skills will from henceforth be used by God for a special purpose, and the four fishermen leave their nets and boats and walk off following Jesus. Poor old Zebedee is left with the hired hands to carry on the business.

What might we learn from this story? Firstly, when Jesus asks to use our boat we had better let him. He asks to come into the place of our work and to use it for his own purpose of spreading his teaching to the world. If we refuse him access we lose the chance of finding the true vocation in our work. Second, when Jesus tells us to do something we had better do it, even if we think we know more than he. Peter the fisherman on lake Galilee knows that you can’t catch fish in broad daylight, especially when the night before has shown that the fish are not running. But when he obeyed Jesus his efforts were amazingly fruitful, contrary to all expectation and worldly experience. Third, we should not use our sense of awe and inadequacy at the promise Jesus brings to our life as an excuse to send him away. We all feel ambivalent when we are told that Jesus in our boat can bring more fish than we can deal with, but we must be sure that our apparent humility is not really laziness, the reluctance to do more than is necessary just to take care of ourselves. Finally, if he tells us to jump ship altogether, to change jobs as it were, we must trust him. Peter says, ’Go away and leave me Lord to return to my old comfortable way of life. I am just a simple fisherman and I rather like it that way. In any case fishing is all I know so what use could I be in other spheres of work?’ Jesus persuades him that even his simple fishing skills will be subtly modified if he allows Jesus to make him a "fisher of people" and to enroll him as his disciple.

If Peter had said no at any stage of this story we would never have heard of him; since he said yes, he is the Rock on which the whole church is founded, in the sense that the church is made up of those who say yes to Jesus as Peter did, who put their faith in Jesus and follow him, whether as fishermen or as fishermen turned apostles.

This brings us to a very important conclusion. Not all disciples leave their work to follow Jesus; according to the Gospels only twelve did that. Most stayed where they were and followed him there. They found their old work transformed by Christ’s Spirit into the new work of God for the salvation of the world. It is not necessary and clearly not practicable for most of us to change our jobs in order to follow Jesus. There is a vocation in whatever we do and wherever we are, working, retired, family raising; a way of doing things that nurtures people and brings joy and peace. Let Jesus into your boat and he will make your life fruitful, just where you are.

On vacation I read the autobiography of Lance Armstrong the champion cyclist. It’s titled, "It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey back to Life." The subtitle is puzzling until you know that he was stricken mid-career with testicular cancer that metastasized to his lungs and brain. Astonishingly he recovered through draconian chemotherapy and returned two years later to win the Tour de France twice, in fact the last two times it was run. He is not an attractive character –brash is the most polite way they describe him – but his story is a strong story of vocation. He had great difficulty getting started again after his illness and was on the verge of retiring when a friend took him in hand and began training with him. The turning point was a long hill in North Carolina called Beech Mountain. As they rode up it in the rain he discovered his name still visible in the road from previous races when fans had painted it there. " I looked at the ground as it passed under my wheels, at the water spitting off the tires and the spokes turning round. I saw more faded painted letters, and I saw my washed out name, Go Armstrong. As I continued upward, I saw my life as a whole. I saw the pattern and the privilege of it, and the purpose (read vocation) of it too. It was simply this: I was meant for a long hard climb" (p.202). Here is a strong story of vocation where the person does not leave his profession because of a pivotal experience but remains in it, but is deeply changed, in fact, is much better at it than ever before.

God will make us fruitful where we are, or he will take us to something else. Whatever God wills for us is good. Every place of life, every stage of life, has it own blessings and its own opportunities. I’ve been telling my old mother that for the past three weeks, but I think she has more difficulty than Lance Armstrong in believing it. I don’t think she’s as keen as he on the "long, hard climb" idea, although old age might seem just that. And who can blame her? Nevertheless, it is true, Jesus calls us to a relationship with himself whatever our stage of life, and that relationship is always fruitful. We can always be "fishers of people," always witness to the nearness of God and God’s call to us to work with him to save the world. In the end our vocation is to a right relationship with God, and that means, to cooperate with God in the divine work in the world. That is our challenge, our joy and our imperishable dignity as human beings.

Amen.