No one said it was easy to be a Christian. Luke’s gospel is full of what we call ‘hard sayings’ — those statements of discipleship that Jesus utters that call on hopefuls to give up their all in order to follow him.
Wannabie disciples will discover that their commitment to Jesus will become their life. They, as we, struggle with commitments, whether ‘all’ is their life or their possessions. Yet, when people finally do give themselves over to discipleship, they will find an unexpected treasure, liberty. They come to realise that the larger picture of discipleship, and the grace of God far surpass whatever goods they have in hand.
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The first line from Collect for Peace from Morning Prayer danced through my head all week as I thought about this reading from Luke’s gospel:
O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom….
Service to God, following God, putting God foremost in our lives, rather than being a duty, is a delight and ultimately frees us in ways we never thought possible. Taking on a set of vows, rather than being burdensome, gives structure and design for one’s life and helps continually turn the soul back to God.
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This past week, the Centre of Theological Education of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador sponsored a series of talks about vocation. My colleague, Jim, and I spent two days with the clergy where we talked about what it meant to be a priest (there are no deacons in El Salvador, though the church is beginning to explore that order of ministry), time management, how to take care of oneself (always a problem with clergy here as there), and how to return to that initial innocent moment when one felt called to ordained ministry. We talked under ceiling fans that helped with the sweltering heat at a retreat centre 1 h 40 minutes outside of the capitol city. Together the clergy’s years of ordination equalled 149 years! Bit by bit, we got into the depths of being called and what that meant for each priest.
Friday night last week Jim and I, along with a young US priest living in El Salvador, held a vigilia, an overnight vigil, with aspirants to ordained ministry on the theme of vocation. (These overnight vigils are quite popular and can end anywhere from 1.30 in the morning, as did this one, to 5.00 a.m. as the next night’s was supposed to.) Thirty-seven people, all ages from 14 to probably their late 50s, from old and new congregations, came to reflect on vocation.
In my opening remarks, I gave them two definitions of vocation I have always found useful. The first definition comes from Church of the Savior in Washington, DC. They say that one’s true vocation is that which is simple, persistent, impossible and good for everyone.
If you think about how that breaks down, it makes sense:
A call at its roots is simple. There’s one crystalline ministry to which God calls each one of us. If one gets to the roots of what God is calling us to do, one can identify one ministry stripped of all the extra stuff that goes with it.
Call to follow Jesus is persistent. Perhaps those wannabies kept hearing God’s voice calling them again and again. I certainly heard God’s voice many, many times before responding. Likewise, the church had to hear God’s voice equally before admitting me to the ordination process and then throughout the ordination process until I was ordained priest. (All in all, my process start to finish took nine years.)
When one thinks about God calling one to following Jesus, it seems impossible. Look at what Jesus asks the wannabies in this morning’s gospel to give up: no home, letting go of the dead and finally letting go of the past.
Lastly, one’s vocation is good for everyone. When one finally ‘comes down right’ (in the words of the Shaker hymn), in what it is that one is called to do, the vocation doesn’t just enrich the individual, it enrichens the community around the person, whether it’s doctor, nurse, teacher, farmer, furnace repair person, plumber, journalist and so on.
The other definition I use comes from Fred Buechner, who says that vocation is where God’s deepest desire (for each one of us) intersects with the world’s deepest needs.
I think of my brother’s international group of liver pathologists with whom I had the privilege of having dinner on Friday night in Hanover, NH and how all of them devote their lives to exploring the mysteries of the liver so that they might find cures or palliative care for persons suffering from liver diseases. For many, their vocation and spiritual lives are deeply integrated.
The persons who met with us on Friday night a week ago in El Salvador were exploring ordained ministry but those who showed up the next day, Saturday, and on Sunday out in the country where our bishop spent his sabbatical were lay people wanting to explore how their lives in the church and their daily lives meshed together.
Sunday afternoon, we explored that connection in small group discussion. When we went around our small group of four Salvadoran women, we found out from one woman that she felt her vocation (besides singing in the choir) was to raise properly her grandchildren because her daughter had pretty much abandoned them. Her 14 year-old granddaughter had just been diagnosed with epilepsy and the grandmother saw that she was treated properly so she could lead a full life.
Another woman does exquisite embroidery and finds that in making and embroidering stoles (such as mine) or embroidering scrubs for hospital personnel in Central New York she also prays. Others said their vocation was being nice to the neighbours. One said for her, following Jesus meant not yelling at the person who shoved her on the crowded bus. It was clear they understood what it means to live as a follower of Jesus and integrate that discipleship into daily life.
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What about you? Where do you see your vocation, your following Jesus both within the church and outside of the church? Where do you find the integration between your daily life and the time you spent here each week? How do you manage to deal with the sacrifices that following Jesus demands of you? The gospel, in part, asks us these questions.
Lastly, where do we get the structure in our lives to hold fast to a holy commitment?
Most of us here this morning are already bond fast to a set of holy vows, a set of vows we periodically renew. Even for those of us who were baptised as infants, we have grown with a Church that, in the past thirty years, has more and more affirmed the importance of baptismal vows — placing them as paramount to ordination vows.
Those vows are not a fetter around our hearts — instead, they open us up to God’s perfect service, that service where we find utter freedom. If we live as people of Christ’s light, walking in the way of discipleship, our hearts will find the peace of God. If we walk with God, we will find our deepest thirst slaked.
In all honesty, I cannot imagine living any other way — free in God.
[photo: Chinchontepeque as seen from San Juan Letran, department of Usulután, to the east of the Rio Lempa]
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