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As I read this text from Mark the thing that stuck out to me was the question, “Why are you doing this?” That just happens to be the second most important question we as Jesus’ disciples must be able to answer. The most important question we have to ask with respect to Jesus which comes out of Matthew’s version of the Triumphal Entry is “Who is this?” Matthew has all of Jerusalem asking that question after Jesus finished his ride into town. But with Mark, the question that we have to deal with as Jesus’ disciples and that pertains to us as we go about our lives is “why are you doing this?” “Why are we doing what we do?” Can we answer with beaming confidence, “the Lord has sent us to do this” as those two disciples did? Or, are we just floating through life doing what we do and hoping the Lord will bless it?
“Why do I do what I do?” is a question that arises throughout life particularly when it comes to the work life. It’s really great when what we do for a living is fulfilling to us. If you’ve ever had to work a job in which you could not find any reason at all for being there other than the paycheck that barely maybe pays the bills, that’s hard. It’s soul destroying. But, you know, to be quite honest, fulfilling work is a luxury that most people don’t have.
Well, let’s complicate this even more. Let’s throw into the mix the idea that God has a purpose in what we do with the lives he’s given us. In the church we call this our “calling” – what is it that Jesus is summonsing me to do with this life that he’s given me. It is easy to talk about calling if calling is simply about involvement in the ministry of a church. Is God calling you to be a minister, or an elder, or to serve on the Board of Managers, or to teach, or to visit, or to start a foodbank in the church. Calling is easy to figure out when you separate “Church life” from “Real life”. It kind of goes you’re asked by the minister or one of those saint-like untouchables called an elder to do something at the church. You give it little prayer, a little discernment by that we seem to mean a little assessment of how much time you have and how guilty you will feel if you say “No”, and then if you say “Yes” it happens that the job is yours until death does you part. Oh, the institution of the church; how we have gotten it so wrong over the years.
But things are changing. I think it was back in the 80’s that the focus of talk about calling shifted from what one does for the institution of the church to what God is calling you to do with your life. People started to say I feel God is calling me to be not only a minister or missionary, but maybe a banker, a lawyer, and groundskeeper, a mother. Suddenly, any profession became a choice for a calling. You just had to discern what you were good at and go for it and if it’s fulfilling, then it must have been of God. A calling took on the whole scope of one’s life.
This line of thinking came to a head in the late 90’s to early 2,000’ s when the Christian writer and Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner coined the idea that “Your calling is where your deepest passion meets the world’s deepest need.” If you like to cycle, start a ministry involving cycling. If you like to work on cars, start a ministry working on cars. There’s actually a ministry out there called Grease Monkey’s for Jesus.
Well, just as the first way I talked about calling was little off because it seemed to limit calling to the institution of the Church, so also this way of thinking about calling is a little off in the other direction. A calling is not simply anything you enjoy doing turned into an altruistic service. This way talking about calling is highly individualistic and it requires a certain level of affluence and elitism to follow your own pursuits. In the end, for a society to function we can’t all just go do what makes us feel happy that appears to meet a need in the world. There are still those filters at the sewage treatment plant that need to be changed and I don’t think there’s anybody who can say that doing that is their greatest passion.
In my work history which has involved retail, restaurants, and even mucking out barns, the biggest discovery I have made about calling is that it’s not so much the work that we do, but rather the people we work with that makes the work meaningful. Whether it be the co-workers or the people we serve and if we’re management, the people we lead, it’s the relationships that matter.
It's the relationships that matter. So, when we talk about a calling from God, about our calling – for we’re all called – we are primarily talking about who we are and how we are among the people we are with. We are talking about how we can be the ambassadors, the emissaries, the representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ and his reign of love to the people with whom we go through our daily lives. Calling is about how we, the one’s in and among whom Jesus lives and reigns by the presence of the Holy Spirit, how we are the voice, the hands, the pokes, the prods, whom God works through to let others know that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost haven’t taken the last train for the coast, but are down here at ground zero with open arms.
As Jesus’ disciples he calls us to love others as he has loved us. He also calls us to make disciples, which means to teach others to live the Jesus Way, first and foremost by modelling it, and inviting others to follow along in this Way as they struggle with the question that we also struggle with, the “Who are you, Jesus?” question. So, Yes, we are called and gifted for work in and through the work of this organization we call the Church. And, Yes, we are also called and gifted for certain types of work out in the world. But, the calling pertains to whether we look and act like Jesus among the people we do this work with.
When I did retail and restaurants, I was gifted for the customer service side of things. This was particularly so after I felt the calling to the ministry. In fact, it prepared me for the people side of pastoral ministry. In the hardware store that I worked in between university and seminary, I was the one who would be summonsed to deal with the grumpy old lady whose feet hurt so bad she couldn’t stand but for a moment and she was rude about it, but I looked past all that and she would leave happier than we she came in. Calling is about relationship and who and how we are in relationship with others – are we Christ-like or just opinionated rumps?
There’s another thing about calling to bring up. There will be times when we will find ourselves being the right person at the right time to do something very personal and necessary in the life of another and we will know God has orchestrated it all and it’s awesome. It’s like that old TV show “Touched by an Angel” when God sends an angel in human form to do his work, but in our case it’s like we’re the angels. We may get the sense that God wants me to do this right now. Just like Jesus told those two men to go steal – sorry, borrow some man’s donkey, we will get promptings, inclinations to go do and do something specific for a reason we don’t know other than we sense God wants us to do it.
Lastly, there’s another rule of thumb. In the restaurant, we had the expectation that if you saw something that needed doing, do it. Even if it’s somebody else’s job responsibility, just do it. So it is that if we see someone in need of help, help them. That just makes the world a better place and we never know when we might be making the “Jesus Difference” in somebody’s life where we find ourselves standing at somebody’s ground zero in the image of Christ with arms open.
Oh, one other thing. Pray. Always be praying. As you go about your day, look around and pray for the people you see, “Lord, bless him.” “Lord, heal her.” “Lord, provide for them.” That just changes the way you see things, how you see people, how you feel about life. You just might start seeing the world as Jesus does, and that there’s the heart of “the call”. Amen.
