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Bob Ericson
Trinity Lutheran Church
Watertown, MN
"WHERE Am I Called? (1/3)
Luke 2:8-20
Let me
guess. As I read the Gospel lesson this morning you were thinking, “What
in the world! Has the pastor gone crazy? It’s not Christmas Eve.
It’s the middle of September!” Am I right?
I’ve chosen part of the Christmas story for our
Gospel lesson this Sunday for a reason – actually a double reason.
First, today we are beginning a three Sunday
sermon series about connecting faith to life. In many churches people
experience a “disconnect” between the world of faith and their vocational
callings. We tend to speak of work done in the church or for the church as
“sacred.” Work not directly associated with the church is often referred to as
“secular.” This ought not to be. We need to help people connect Sunday to
Monday. That’s what I want to address. What better way to start our series
than with a text we don’t expect. It will be easier to remember.
My second reason for choosing this text is that
Martin Luther in one of his sermons makes a memorable comment that leads us very
quickly to the heart of the matter. Luther’s makes an observation about the
shepherds that is classic and raises the issue of how we understand God’s “call”
to us.
The Gospel writer Luke records, “And the
shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had
heard and seen, as it was told unto them.” Luther reflects.
This is wrong. We should correct this passage
to read, “They went and shaved their heads, fasted, told their rosaries, and put
on cowls.” Instead we read, “The shepherds returned.” Where to? To their
sheep. Oh, that can’t be right! Did they not leave everything and follow
Christ? Must not one forsake father and mother, wife and child, to be saved?
But the Scripture says plainly that they returned and did exactly the same work
as before. They did not despise their service, but took it up again where they
left off with all fidelity and I tell you that no bishop on earth ever had so
fine a crook as those shepherds.
“Vocation” is the Latin word for “calling.” In
Luther’s day the word “vocation” or “calling” had become associated almost
exclusively with religious activities. Like Luther’s satirical comment about
the shepherds, if you really heard the “call” of God you did something that
supposedly brought you closer to God. You withdrew from the world, entered some
cloister, devoted yourself to a life of study and prayer. Parental
responsibilities, household duties, manual labor and all other types of
occupations were at the bottom of the ladder. They weren’t even on it. They
counted for nothing. Luther completely reversed this way of thinking.
To take a monastic vow, Luther maintained,
shows that a person expects to win something from God. Because a person
making such a vow was trying to earn God’s favor or draw closer to God, Luther
said, “A monastic vow is accordingly a vow to do evil. It must be broken, even
as a vow to steal, to lie, or to murder.” In the same way Luther held that the
orders of pope, bishop, priest, and monk, “as they are now,” are sinful orders
like robbery, usury, and prostitution. Orders that are ordained by God and not
contrary to God’s will are husbands and wives, boys and girls, lords and ladies,
governors, regents, judges officeholders, farmers, citizens, etc.
How did Luther come to think this way? And why
should we? Luther’s new understanding of “calling” came from his rediscovery of
the Gospel. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ and not by doing good
works for God. Good works have no role in gaining our salvation or in drawing
us closer to God. Christ does it all. He graciously forgives our sins, gives
us the faith to so believe. Through that faith God gives us life and
salvation.
What then is the role of good works? If they
count for nothing with respect to our salvation or drawing closer to God, why do
them? Because our neighbor needs them. God doesn’t need our good works. All
the monastic practices that Luther rejected – the religious exercises, buying
indulgences, saying a thousand prayers, fasting – these don’t do anything for
God. Worse yet, they keep people from doing useful things for the good of other
people. Luther saw what the apostle Paul had been talking about. God saves us
by faith in Christ and not by works so that our works can be directed toward
those who really need them – our neighbors.
And where do we serve our neighbors? We serve
them in our “callings.” Luther removed “vocation” or “calling” from the
religious realm where it applied only to the few and declared that ALL
Christians already had “vocations” or “callings” right where they are:
"How
is it possible that you are not called? You have always been in some
state or station; you have always been a husband or a wife, or boy or girl, or
servant…. Are you a husband, and you think you have not enough to do in
that sphere to govern your wife, children, domestics, and property so that all
may be obedient to God and you do no one any harm? Yea, if you had five
heads and ten hands, even then you would be too weak for your task, so that
you would never dare to think of making a pilgrimage or doing any kind of
saintly work"
Divine “callings” are not the supposedly
“spiritual” work of priests, monks, and nuns. Luther exalts common, ordinary
labor and our roles in life as something God “calls” us to do. Wherever we are,
there we are called. If we cannot serve God there; if God cannot work through
us there to serve our neighbor in love, then we should change. But our
“calling” is nothing less than participating with God in caring for his creation
and getting our neighbor loved. That makes what we do “sacred.”
WHERE does God call you? Right where you are!
And where is that?
- Are you a teacher? You
help shape and form young lives. You equip students to be productive
citizens. You help form positive self-images. You discern a person’s gifts
and encourage students to develop them. You teach values. Being a teacher is
a sacred calling.
- Are you a retiree? You
have new found free time to volunteer at the hospital, church or in the
community. You can share the skills learned in your vocation with younger
people who are just getting their start. You have time to learn new skills
and pursue new areas of interest. Being a retiree is a sacred calling.
- Are you a construction
worker – electrician, drywall hanger, plumber, carpenter? You help give shape
to a community. You build a home for another to live in, a building for a
business to operate out of. You make sure the wiring is safe, the
construction sound, the plumbing works. You cooperate with God in providing
shelter for his creatures. Yours is a sacred calling.
- Are you a medical person –
a doctor, nurse, lab tech, physical therapist? You cooperate with God in
healing others, relieving pain, giving a better quality of life. Yours is a
sacred calling.
- Are you a salesperson –
insurance, cars, real estate? As you deal with others in integrity matching
customer to need, you are cooperating with God in making the economy work, in
pursuing fairness and justice, in helping distribute products. Yours is a
sacred calling.
- Are you a public safety
person - I think of the firemen, policemen, and rescue workers who put their
lives on the line in the World Trade Towers in New York City – God calls
public safety persons “right where they were” in their occupation to help and
serve the neighbor. Many in New York City made the supreme sacrifice for the
benefit of another. Theirs was and is a sacred calling.
We are tempted to think of “vocation” or
“calling” as pertaining only to occupations. Martin Luther called people’s
occupations “vocations” or “callings” in opposition to monasticism’s downgrading
of ordinary work. He made the point that ALL the Christian’s activities in the
world can be places where we serve God, not just our occupations. We have
sacred “callings” as we seek the common good in EVERY place we find ourselves.
This includes being a spouse in marriage, a parent in a family, a student at
school, a neighbor in a community, a citizen in the world. Listen to the value
Luther gives to the “call” to be a father.
"Our natural reason takes a look at married
life. She turns up her nose and says, ‘Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its
diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up all night with it, take care
of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my
wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this, take care of
that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of
bitterness and drudgery married life involves.
What then does the Christian faith say to
this? It opens its eyes, looks upon these insignificant, distasteful, and
despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are adorned with divine
approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am
certain that thou has created me as a man and has from my body begotten this
child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I
confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its
diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of this child and its mother. How
is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being
certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will?
Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead
and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone
ridicules him as an effeminate fool – though the father is acting in the
spirit just described and in Christian faith – my dear fellow you tell me,
which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his
angels and creatures, is smiling – not because the father is washing diapers,
but because he is doing so in Christian faith."
As through faith we understand our situation or
station in life as a place where God calls us to serve our neighbor, we can
label that as our “calling” or “vocation.” This is not to say that a
non-believing person doesn’t also serve God by doing good for a neighbor. He or
she is simply not aware yet of being “called” in that situation. Faith enables
us to recognize our calling and also motivates us to do it as unto God.
Luther’s insight into “calling” and “vocation”
erases then the distinction between “secular” and “sacred.” The shepherds
didn’t leave their sheep and start a monastery. They went back to their divine
calling, being shepherds. Luther quotes 1 Corinthians 7:20 – “Each one should
remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.” By referring to
this passage Luther doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t change jobs or switch
vocations as we go through life. What Luther is getting at is that one
occupation is not more “sacred” than another. We don’t have to do something
religious to serve God. We are all saved by grace and are called to love God by
serving others. We fall into the same error as the people of Luther’s day when
we think that to really serve God means that a person will become a pastor or
missionary or that such a “calling” is worth more and brings us closer to God.
Not on your life!
Listen again to what Luther said about the
shepherds.
"The
shepherds returned.” Where to? To their sheep. Oh, that
can’t be right! Did then not leave everything and follow Christ?
Must not one forsake father and mother, wife and child, to be saved? But
the Scripture says plainly that they returned and did exactly the same work as
before. They did not despise their service, but took it up again where
they left off with all fidelity and I tell you that no bishop on earth ever
had so fine a crook as those shepherds.
Listen and then return to the station in life
you presently occupy. WHERE does God call you? Right where you are!
See your “calling” and “callings” for what they are, sacred callings. It
can also be said of you, “No bishop on earth ever had such a fine place from
which to serve God.”
Amen.
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