WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS

Jonah 3:1-5, Mark 1:14-20

As I studied the scriptures assigned for us to read in worship today, I found that they seem to point to a definite theme, which I'd like to reflect on with you this morning: what does it mean to be "called"? How do we discern what we might come to understand as our "calling" in life?

In today's text from Jonah, we read in that familiar story about how Jonah resists God's call, and how God's purposes are accomplished through Jonah, even despite his resistance to them. Such a story seems to point to the fact that God's call is inexorable; we can't avoid it, though we might try to resist it.

And the gospel lesson for today is the story of Jesus calling Simon-Peter and Andrew and James and John, who heard the voice of Christ by the lakeshore: "Come and I will make you fishers of men and women."
So, how do we discern what we call in theological language our vocation, not just our work? That word vocation, by the way, comes from the Latin word vocare, which means, "voice." How is it we are to hear that voice, which discloses to us our unique purpose and mission in life? How do we hear that voice, which asks us that same question in Mary Oliver's poem, which is printed on the front of our bulletin this morning: "Tell me what you plan to do with our one wild and precious life." (I think that's such a wonderful question--I think we should wake up each day and ask ourselves that, don't you? Tell me what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.)

I think that's a real edge for people living in this culture, living in America right now--there may be some of us here this morning who are really struggling with that question, whether we're "working"--getting paid for what we're doing--or not. And I often talk to people who struggle with that question most when they retire, or when they stop working for whatever reason.

So, how can we begin that task--of discerning our vocation? Let me start by sharing some words that have been helpful to me in my own vocational discernment, words that seem to continually come back to me. They are words spoken by the African American theologian and activist Howard Thurman, when apparently someone asked him this same question: how do I figure out what I'm supposed to do with my life? Now keep in mind as I read these words, that Thurman was steeped in the tradition and work of social justice and civil rights during his life. This is what he said to that person: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

OK--so. There's a start. To ask ourselves the question: what makes us come alive? But then how do we get there--how do we begin doing that thing, with all the exigencies of life amidst house and kids and mortgage? What practical steps can we take to figure that out?
I'd like to offer just a few thoughts that I hope will seem really practical ways to begin that--to begin discerning what you might come to know as your calling. I have three, actually, if you want to keep score.

The first point I want to lift up has to do with how we think about vocation. And that is to say that our vocation--our calling, what makes us come alive--may not be what we do for a paycheck. It may not be our job. In fact, if we look at work for the vast majority of people on this earth, it may seem quite a luxury to expect that what we do for work is what we love doing. It is work after all, and most people work to live, rather than live to work, even though in America, I think there's a great deal of pressure to do the latter--to live to work.

Apostle Paul was a tentmaker--that was his day-job--but his real vocation, of course, was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, which he never got paid for. Paul isn't known as a great tent-maker! It's just what paid the bills.
Jesus didn't offer Peter and Andrew a job when he called them by the seashore; in fact, he called them out of their jobs. We read that they "dropped their nets and followed him." They quit their jobs, what they were doing to make a living. Or, perhaps it might be more accurate to say that Jesus transformed their work. Because they are still fishing--still using that basic skill they had acquired in life. But, it's a different kind of fishing: "I will make you fishers of men and women." The presence of the Christ somehow transforms that work into vocation; into their calling.

And yet--that said, I think we also need to look at the fact there's a good bit of statistical data (I've been reading a lot of statistics about this this week) indicating that the majority of Americans don't like their work. What the market is calling forth from people most of the time doesn't match what makes them come alive. And so part of discerning our vocation does have to do with figuring out what work is faithful for me in light of my total vocation, my whole life; and that all of it, both what I do for pay and what I do with the rest of my life-energy--is part of God's call to me.

So...our calling may not be what we get paid to do. Second point: a very simple idea, almost stupidly simple I guess. If discerning our call has to do with listening for a voice, with a kind of oral/aural process, then the first step in the process is...to listen. It may sound simple, and yet, isn't it true that life is so often governed by inertia, the grooves of our life are so well-worn that it's almost impossible for us to imagine any other possibilities than those that are part of our present experience? We don't listen, but often live that unexamined life that Socrates (quoted by Plato) said isn't worth living.

So how then do we do that--listen? Writer Susan G. Farnham,¹ who writes a book about spiritual discernment, has what I think is a very good and simple idea about how to hear the voice of God calling us in our lives. She writes that God does speak to us, every day, in this way: using the language of everyday events. We find clues to the voice of God in the concrete evidence of ordinary occurrences.

Think again about the story of Jesus call to these first disciples. They weren't called through some apocalyptic event, some theophany in which God speaks from the clouds. Their call came because some guy wandered by; some ordinary guy, who says, "come follow me." In college, we'd say, "road trip." And they dropped their nets, their everyday life, to follow him on that risky adventure.

So, we get clues as to the voice of God through the language of everyday events, of everyday life. Some who do vocational counseling say, for example, that a good clue as to our true vocation, to what truly makes us come alive, is what we loved to do in junior high--at a time in life when you usually have sufficient efficacy in the world and life skills to maneuver in it, but before the world, and your parents, impose their agenda onto you.
I imagined that parents of some of the youth I got to know in Palo Alto, where I served before coming here, would get mad at me because when those young people would return, say for Easter or Christmas, I would catch up on their lives. And they'd tell me what they were doing, sometimes guilty that they were not settling down to a "real" job--doing creative writing or art or playing in a band. And I'd tell them, "Good! Don't get a real job! Don't start working for THE MAN!" Because it's so hard to get that time back--to go back and do what really makes you come alive later in life, when you've got the job, the family, the mortgage.

So--first step is listening. But we should say that it's what comes out of our listening that is the hard part. Because listening is not just about observing. Listening is about obedience as well. Hearing entails heeding. In the story, it says that they dropped their nets.

I find it interesting that the Latin word from which we get the word obedience is the word audire, which means "to listen." Now I realize that the word obedience has--for very good reasons--taken on a very negative connotation for many in this culture, especially for women, and especially around religion, when it's so often been used so coercively, to control people. But, if we look at this idea of obedience it in its true context, obedience represents not necessarily some external demand placed upon us, but rather a discipline of listening to and following that voice that leads us toward our truest selves.

So--if we really listen, it will change us. It will transform our lives. We will find ourselves leaving our nets, and following. What would that mean for you? For some it really might mean quitting your job, and risking economic security; for others, it might mean getting a job, going into the work force. But, whatever it is, listening is risky, because if we really listen--not just hear, but also heed, obey--it will change us.

OK, so...our vocation may not be our day-job; finding it requires this process of listening, and heeding, the voice. Last point has to do with the need to test our vocation. And so, here's the way that I would suggest to test for whether that voice we're hearing is truly worthy of heeding. It is to ask ourselves the question: does this call me to live for some cause greater than my own? Is it calling me to live for some greater vision and purpose?

In the book What Color is your Parachute?, a book about vocation that's been around for decades now, you find this definition of vocation: it is the intersection between the world's deep needs and my own deep gladness. Perhaps we might also define that as the point of Christian obedience--where my obedience leads me into the deepest expression of myself. But, I want to emphasize, after having lifted up Howard Thurman's wonderful quote, that an important part of this equation is what the world needs.

You'll notice in the gospel lesson today that Jesus' call of these disciples comes right after he announces the Kingdom of God: "The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is come near!" This vision of God's purposes for the world is being fulfilled right now. And it's that vision, that purpose, into which Jesus calls these four people--a vision of God that they're being called not just to live for, to leave their jobs for. But in the end, also to die for.
And see, I guess there's the kicker. Here's the paradox: that if we are to find our true calling, what makes us truly come alive, we might find that it's also that thing that calls us to risk ourselves. We might find that that intersection between my own deep gladness and the worlds deep need takes the form of a cross. And that all of a sudden, the good life is not what we thought it was; the good life consists in giving ourselves to that thing, that vision, that purpose, that great life that goes even beyond death.

I want to end with these words, written by George Bernard Shaw; words that, I think, indicate what this kind of life, living out of that sense of vocation, is like. He writes:

This is the true joy in life, to be used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty cause; to be a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of grievances and ailments complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. Life is no "flickering candle" for me; I believe it is a splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as I can before handing it on.

What makes you come alive?

Amen.

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¹Susan G. Farnham, Listening Hearts; Discerning Call in Community, Morehouse Group, 1991.

January 22, 2006

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