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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
16 January 2005Ps. 40/Jn.1.29-41“Wonders and Plans”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
We often hear people remark that life is "complicated."
And one part of modern life where things get really complicated is the matter of careers. In past times, most people didn't bother much about what they would "do."
Women worked in the home or on the farm; men took up the professions of their fathers. Some scholars assume, for example, that Jesus was a carpenter because tradition held that his father, Joseph, was a carpenter.
Even young people from wealthy families didn't have a lot of choice about what they would do. Noble women had to marry whomever their parents told them to marry; the oldest son took over the estates of his father, while younger sons went into the army or the church.
People were named by their family professions: "Millers" ground wheat, "Smiths" worked with iron.
Today, things are different. Not only do sons and daughters often choose other careers from their parents — but those leaving school and beginning to work have no assurance that they'll be able to practice the same profession for their whole lives.
Corporations merge and disappear. Whole occupations come and go — many people who used to get paid to "enter data" now do other things because computers take care of this data task.
But for religious people, there is one element that still unites us with the past: the belief that God has plans for us. Today's Psalm, for example, has the following verse that is addressed to God: "How great are your wonders and your plans for us."
And in today's Gospel, Jesus himself serves as a kind of "career counselor!" Peter and Andrew meet Jesus and quickly find themselves his disciples.
Peter and Andrew give up their work as fishermen to join Christ's new religious movement — although this would be their only "job change," since they would live and die as disciples of Jesus.
This story is known as the "calling" of Andrew and Peter. They were given their a new "vocation" of disciple.
The word, "vocation" — means "calling" — and it has come to be used in the secular world. We speak of people finding "vocations" as doctors, or teachers, or investment bankers.
The difference is that while Peter and Andrew were unusual back then in having two vocations, being first fishermen and then disciples, people today often have more than one job. Even stable careers like being in the clergy are reached only after one has done something else first, like teaching.
The psychologist, Robert Jay Lifton, published a book in 1993 called, Protean Self. For Lifton, the modern worker is like the Greek sea god, Proteus, who was able to change himself into different forms.
"Protean" men and women today metamorphose from computer programmer to marketer; rare are the people who discover their "life's work" after they finish school.
No wonder so many people spend so much time thinking of their career. (One hidden benefit is that lack of jobs has created new jobs like "career counseling," "resume writing" and "interview coaching!")
But if this is now how things are, is there such a thing as a "true calling?" Or are all callings provisional?
Well, for Christians, this unstable situation can actually be a blessing in disguise. For we're forced to consider the original meaning of vocation: being called by God. And we're compelled to look for the "wonders and plans" God has for our lives.
Since "vocation" means what God is calling us to, it may have little to do with how we earn money to pay the rent. Many Christians with dull jobs find their true callings in the volunteer work they do after they leave the office.
And even dull jobs can be vocations, On this weekend of Martin Luther King Day, we may recall that King died while he was in Memphis, Tennessee, and he had come to Memphis to encourage the mostly black garbage collectors there to demonstrate for the fair wages they would have earned if they had been white.
King wasn't telling them to stop collecting garbage; he was inspiring them to work with the pride of human beings, created equal to other human beings in the sight of God.
So the sanitation workers in Memphis came to see themselves not as passive sufferers but as active participants in history. And Martin Luther King challenges us to think how God might be giving us an expanded view of "calling."
Remember when you were a child and someone asked you, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Your adult answer today as a Christian might sound something like this: "whatever I do in life, I want to be a follower of the way of Christ."
It's not what we do but who we are. And we can remain who we are — the men and women God wants us to be and take up different jobs and volunteer activities.
This doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a "true" calling. You might have several true callings.
Or while you may be contented with your job in a corporation, you may also find that you are "called" outside of your paid work to do other things for God's Kingdom.
So, too, you may find different "vocations" at different stages in your life.
And as we recognize how Martin Luther King challenges us to look for God's "wonders and plans" for us, we would also do well to remember how much King's own vocation cost him.
When Martin Luther King was 27 years old and living in Birmingham, Alabama, his telephone rang one evening, around midnight. The person on the line called King a racist name, and then said, "we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren't out of town in three days, we're going to blow your brains out and blow up your house."
Writing about that call years later, King remembered comparing the lovely smile of his newborn daughter with the prospect of someone killing her. Then King summoned up the power that would help him follow God's plan for his life.
As King said, "I had to know God for myself. I bowed my head over that cup of coffee. I will never forget it. I prayed ... and I discovered that religion had to become real to me ... I could hear a voice saying, 'Stand up for peace. Stand up for truth.'"
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.