The youthful Jeremiah we encounter in our text for today had not set out to become a prophet of God. He came from a family of priests and if there had been any assumptions about which direction his life would take it would have been in that direction. In many respects Jeremiah was ill suited for the prophetic office—young, quiet, perhaps even a bit shy: not a personality exactly consistent with the role of prophet with its up front, even in your face kind of profile. No, Jeremiah was far better suited for the priesthood, but God had other plans for him, plans formed before the youth himself had been formed. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” It was for this that he had been born. It was to this that he was now being called. Beyond the circumstances of your birth, whatever they may have been; beyond the hopes and dreams of your parents for you and the mold into which they may have tried to cast you; beyond even your own aspirations and goals for your life is a purpose anchored in the will of God for you. Discovering that purpose is one of life’s more important priorities. It is often said that ministers are “called” by God to the work of ministry, and I, for one, believe that. This is more than a profession that one chooses for one’s self. It is a work to which one is summoned by the work of God’s Spirit. People will occasionally ask “when did you know that you were called to the ministry?’ I honestly cannot say when. It’s something that more or less evolved for me. Others recognized gifts and abilities in me and encouraged me to consider whether God might not be calling me to this life work. There were ups and downs along the way, times of question, times of doubt, times of struggle, and there have been second thoughts from time to time over the last three decades, but again and again it has been confirmed for me. This is what I am called to be about. This is what I am called to do. Ministers, though, do not have a monopoly on “call.” Everyone of us has a calling, a vocation, which is a part of God’s plan for our lives. As someone might ask me “when did you discover that God was calling you to be a minister,” I might also ask you “when did you discover that God was calling you to be a teacher, or a doctor, or a scientist, or a social worker, or a groundskeeper, an administrator, a financial advisor, an engineer, a homemaker, a whatever? You see, one’s vocation is more than a profession, more than a way of making a living. It is a way of life through which one’s own sense of purpose, indeed the purpose to which God has called you, finds full expression. John Calvin, the great reformer of the 16th century, wrote: “The Lord bids each one of us in all life’s actions to look to his calling. For he knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is born hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. Therefore, lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, he has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. And that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his limits, he has named these various kinds of living ‘callings.’ Therefore each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander through life. . . .It is enough if we know that the Lord’s calling is in everything the beginning and foundation of well-doing. . . .Accordingly, your life will then be best ordered when it is directed to this goal. No one should attempt more than his calling will permit, because he will know that it is not lawful to exceed its bounds. A man of obscure station will lead a private life ungrudgingly so as not to leave the rank in which he has been placed by God” (The Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.X.6). For Calvin one’s “calling” in life was equated with the “station” into which that person was born. For the Reformer the stability of one’s life and that of society as a whole rested upon every one knowing his or her divinely ordered place in the scheme of things and obediently submitting to it. A peasant should not aspire to a higher place in society. A nobleman may weary of his responsibility, but it was to that responsibility that he was born. There was no escape, no opportunity for change, no potential for advancement. The arrogance of the upper classes, as well as the subjugation of the lower classes was thus legitimized. The concept causes the ire to rise within me because it has been used in generations past to prevent not only individuals but whole classes of people from finding and fulfilling their God-given vocations in life. And while it may seem that in our modern, democratic order we have moved far beyond that, the truth is that in both subtle and not so subtle ways it still shapes our corporate life and our personal assumptions. Women, people of color, the physically handicapped, and others in our society again and again come up against walls of human making that stand between them and their calling in life. In very subtle ways they are reminded “that’s not your place.” In fairness, it happens with men as well. I have a friend, a pastor and educator, who once told me that his greatest professional aspiration was to be a kindergarten teacher, but men in those days simply didn’t do jobs like that. On the positive side, though, Calvin’s words remind us that God has a purpose for all of us in life and it is in finding that purpose, and pursuing it that we are most authentically the people God created us to be. Some of us are fortunate, or perhaps blessed, to discover early in our life’s journey God’s call for us. We know what we are supposed to do, give ourselves to it, and never look back. Others of us may take more time and even flounder about a bit before discovering our vocational identity. Some of us may find ourselves called to several different vocations over a lifetime. And some of us may find that we must work at one job or another simply to be able to afford to fulfill our vocational calling. All too often that is the case for artists, musicians, poets, writers, and others. There are also those who discover their passion, their reason for being, in the volunteer sector working with children, with the mentally ill, with those who struggle with addictions, in efforts to protect the environment, the list is as diverse as we are ourselves. Whatever it may be we know that it was for this that God called us. For us as Christians, vocational choice is shaped by a prior and higher calling in life—the calling of Christian discipleship. That is our primary vocation. Before we could know God, God knew us. Before we could love God, God loved us. Before we could claim God as our own, God had already claimed us and marked us as his own in Jesus Christ for the work of Christian ministry. Privilege is always balanced with responsibility. Ron Byars writes: “God has not chosen us to lord it over others, or to have an exclusive claim on God’s love. God has chosen us in Christ for special service. Scripture says of the church: ‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light’ (1 Peter 2:9). When God chooses us, God enlists us, ordains us, and equips us to be part of a priestly people, having the interests of the whole word at heart. It is not true that God loves only the baptized, or only those with robust faith. The work God chooses us to do is to exhibit God’s wide-ranging love in places where w live, vote, think, discuss, choose allies, and act” (Christian Worship: Glorifying and Enjoying God, p.56). That is our primary vocation. Faithfulness in that calling is what prompts us to seek to know and to follow God’s purpose in the rest of our lives including our vocational choice. You would think that when you manage to line the two up and do your best to live faithfully in both that you might be able to expect both a sense of satisfaction and pretty smooth sailing in your life, and most of the time you do. There are, though, those other times when doing what is right, following God’s will, brings you not the fulfillment you expect but pain and conflict. Jeremiah knew about that. At more than one point in the journey it seemed almost unbearable for him. “Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed!” he lamented. Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying, ‘A child is born to you, a son,’ making him very glad. Let that man be like the cities that the Lord overthrew without pity; let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon, because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great. Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow and spend my days in shame” (20:14-18)? Kathleen Norris writes of a time in her life when she struggled with the cost of faithfulness in her own vocation: “All of us, I suspect, have times when we’re made to suffer simply for being who and what we are, and we become adept at inventing means of escape. . . .But Jeremiah reminded me that the pain that comes from one’s identity, that grows out of the response to call, can’t be escaped or pushed aside. It must be gone through. He led me into the heart of pain, forcing me to recognize that to answer a call as a prophet, or a poet for that matter, is to reject the authority of credentials, of human valuation of any kind, accepting only the authority of the call itself. It was as a writer that Jeremiah spoke to me, and it was as a write I listened. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion” (The Cloister Walk, p. 38). Faithfulness can be incredibly painful. We may encounter obstacles and opposition we never imagined, sacrifices we never dreamed possible, tasks to accomplish that seem far beyond our reach. It can be daunting, overwhelming, and we too look for ways of escape. Like Jeremiah who protested “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy,” we too protest, “O God, not me; anyone but me.” And the Lord says, “I will be with you.” I will be with you. The life that you live, it is not entirely your own. It is God’s gift to you to be enjoyed, to be shared, to be lived for his glory. The way to find fulfillment, to find satisfaction, is not to make those your aims and to set your sites on them, but to discover through prayer, self-assessment, conversation with others, and reliance upon the Holy Spirit God’s will and purpose for your life and to set your sites on that. Are you doing with your life what God wants you to do? J. Dudley Weaver |