EASTER 2003
From the editor…
Vocation
If I were to ask you what your vocation is, how would you respond?
Likely you would answer: Your job. Such is the entry given in recent
dictionaries, after all, and it fits with American pragmatism and activism.
We have all had that experience at a party where you do not know anyone,
and a stranger asks one of the only safe queries: “What do you do?”
Yet something is missing here. The word vocation comes from a Latin
root meaning a bidding or an invitation, and it was used for the summoning
of a witness to a law court. Seen in this context, vocation is not
simply one’s job, but the whole of one’s life lived before God. The
central Scriptural passage is the baptism of Jesus, in which the Father says
to the one coming out of the Jordan River: “This is my beloved Son, with
whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).
Our vocation then is who we are as well as what we do, as the beloved children
of our heavenly father, who adopts us by his grace to be his own.
The implications of such a theology of vocation are nothing short of revolutionary.
In terms of our weekly experience, it means that we do not “go to church.”
Rather, we go to worship to be sent out to be the church. The
real test of our faith in Jesus Christ is who we are on Thursday afternoons
and the connection between that lived out life and the gospel.
This means vocation is about more than our job, it is about all we do.
Readers of this column have vocations that include as part of God’s summons
the call to be a husband, wife, parent, lover, prayer, player, friend, steward,
community servant, and on and on the list could go. Vocations can change;
the spirit blows where He wills (John 3:8). A friend of my parents
turned forty whereupon his wife gave him flying lessons for his birthday,
and a new part of his vocation was born.
Our Christian vocation isn’t just about all we are and do, but about the
connection between that being and doing and the gospel. We are called to
“lead a life (a life!) worthy of the calling to which we have been called”
(Ephesians 4:1). I remain amazed about the way in which the Holy Scriptures
seem to have less and less to say to more and more parts of our lives; it
should be vice-versa. It is hard enough to have an effective marriage, but
it is quite another thing to have a good Christian marriage. Without the
same Holy Spirit that descended on Jesus, we cannot live into such an awesome
challenge.
Jesus said that he came to the earth to give “life, and to give it more abundantly”
(John 10:10). My prayer for us in this Easter season is that more of the
depth of that life may be given to us as we embrace our vocations more fully.
The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon
Contact Dr Harmon by e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com
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