“WHERE DID THAT CALL GO? Living a Holy Life in an Unholy World (4)

Readings: Psalm 147 :1-11, Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY on Feb 5th 2012

A printable PDF file can be found here

There’s a hymn composed by George Herbert that is titled “Teach me My God and King, In all things Thee to see”. The fourth verse says, “A servant with this clause, Makes drudgery divine, Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, Makes that and the action fine.”

The thought behind the words is that whatever you do in life, whatever is your calling, however you make your living, you can do so to the praise of God. A job worth doing is worth, not only doing well, but worth doing to the Glory of God. Such an attitude can give even the most mundane of tasks meaning and worth.

That hymn was written back in the 1500’s. Times have changed. Dramatically changed. There’s been a huge shift from the idea that work is a calling to the notion of work as a career. There was a time when everything from medicine to teaching, from the Law to the Military was seen as being a vocation, a life choice that God had guided people to, rather than simply a way of making money.

Nowadays the bottom line in career choices:-
1. How much does it pay?
2. What are the benefits attached?
3. What will I personally get out of it?

Somewhere the notion of our work as a “Calling” has been lost.

The church is no exception. In recent years many “Business Models” for the church have been proposed. Their motive is admirable. The idea is that in order for the church to progress then professional models of leadership need to be promoted. Through such a process then the nations brightest and best would be attracted to a career in the church and congregations under their inspired leadership would flourish.

“A Job in the Church” was presented as a viable career opportunity, particularly if a person had an aptitude and concern for helping people and did not consider financial reward as their highest priority. Some even saw the church as a “Second Career”. Having made themselves financially stable in one field, they could retire earlier than planned and take on a church as a way of seeing out their working lives in a meaningful way.

Kenneth J McFayden, Professor of Ministry and Leadership Development at Union Seminary, presented a paper a couple of years back called, “A Vocation in Crisis?” As part of his work in ‘Career Development’ he felt that he had worked with too many pastors who felt trapped in pastoral ministry – lonely, isolated, burnt out, victimized and hopeless, and became poignantly aware that theywere simply hanging on until they could retire. He comments, “How tragic for them and how tragic for the church.”

Sometimes it seems the church mirrors society, but I think it also works the other way. Because you and I come across people almost every day, in almost every career path in life, who are in a similar position. Be it teaching or medicine or social services or ... well you name it… there are people who, in the face of changing times, have lost hope. Who are just sitting it out. How tragic for them and how tragic for those their work serves.

Now in each case, be it in the church or the workaday world, you can identify factors that cause people to feel that way. Changes in working practices. Changes in the world around us. Economic changes. Significant changes in the priorities of leadership, politics and policy.

Often there is the feeling that when a person entered a particular working situation, there was a definite game plan. But now the goal posts have been moved and it doesn’t even seem to be the same playing field anymore. The job description has changed so significantly that it doesn’t even seem to be the same job anymore. The pressures that are being exerted are not the ones that they had been trained to face.

I’m continuing today on our theme of “Living a Holy Life in an unholy world” and I want to ask the question, “Where did that call go?”

Chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians has Paul dealing with issues that relate to the church and those who work for the church. As is often the case with Paul, the particular issue he deals with outlines principles that apply to many different situations. In chapter 8 he used the controversy over people eating meat offered to idols to offer a lesson in living in a way that looked to the interests of the church community rather than individual freedom. In chapter 9 he deals with issues of career and calling.

The part we didn’t read this morning, the first part of the chapter, has Paul speaking about how a local church should take upon itself the responsibility for seeing that those who relied on them for support were adequately compensated. There was a problem in Corinth. Paul and Barnabas had never received material support for the spiritual fruit that they sowed in building up the church.

Even though they would be quite justified in claiming it, and even though the church was wrong in not providing it, Paul uses the situation, not to call on the church to do the right thing, but to give a lesson about the difference between a career and a calling.

He begins this lesson in verse 16, the first we heard read this morning. “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel”. ‘Preaching the Gospel’ was not Paul’s chosen career path. On the contrary he had spent most of his life trying to destroy the church, before his experience of salvation on the Damascus road.

He preached because that was what God had called him to do. He would preach if it paid him a million dollars and he would preach if it paid him not a cent. He would rather die than not preach, a fact he demonstrated by laying down his life. His calling was not about compensation. He was a free man. Set free by Jesus Christ who died for him.

If, in some way he could use the fact that the Corinthian church had not given to him and Barnabas the compensation that they should, if he could use that situation as a teaching moment, then that’s what he was going to do. He was prepared to go to tremendous lengths to fulfill his calling. To the Jews, he would be as a Jew, to the Gentiles, as a Gentile. Verse 22 “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel”.

I remember how my own calling to full time ministry in the church came about. I was in a mission meeting in a Pentecostal church. An overwhelming impression formed itself that, right there and then, God was calling me to offer myself as a candidate for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church.

I had a whole lot of sound reasons why God was making a mistake, and when I shared these with the Pentecostal pastors they were pleased about the calling, but less than enthusiastic about my entering the Presbyterian Church as it was, in their view, only a few steps away from the abyss of eternal destruction. Undaunted by their theological observations, I decided to visit my home pastor, the Rev Barrie Redmore.

I knocked on his door, stood on the doorstep. He opened the door. “I think I’ve had a call to Presbyterian ministry” I told him. “Well”, he told me, “Go away and think about it and if you’ve still got the Call in a years time, come back and tell me.” And that was the end of the conversation. I went back a year later. I still had a call!

The lesson Paul is offering us is not just about the vocation of serving a church, but applies to whatever occupation in life that you may be led to. The Reformation Church believes in a concept that’s called the 'Priesthood of all Believers'. Briefly stated, Presbyterians believe that your work place, (or wherever you spend most of your time if you are out of paid employment or retired) is your place of ministry, be it through the tasks you are doing or through the relationships you are forming.

You have to put bread and butter on the table, and of course anybody who gives any kind of service is entitled to adequate compensation for that service. That’s what the first part of chapter nine is about. The second part, the part we have been considering, is about how you view that occupation.

You can see work as simply 'work' or you can see it as a calling. To see it as a calling places everything in a different framework. It touches on the whole area of our working ethics, what we are prepared to put up with and what we will not go along with. It touches upon whether we are just going to sit it out as long as we can or ask the question, “If the ball game has changed, Lord, what are you now calling me to do?”

Paul demonstrates that a sense of calling sets us free. Free to see whatever we do, as a place to find God’s Grace. So I ask the question; “Where did that call go?” I encourage you to recapture that sense of vocation and calling that our society has sought to erase.

God may well have things in mind that you have not put on your personal agenda. Money really isn’t everything. You truly can’t take a cent with you. Only serving Jesus Christ has benefits that are out of this world. Presbyterians believe in the priesthood of all believers.

So again, I encourage us to be out in the world, but not of the world. To be about our business in a way that glorifies God. Whether it be sweeping a room, doing algebra homework, teaching a class, setting right a wrong or designing a new hat…. to God be the Glory for the richness of His Creative Work that enables us to get through another day.

AMEN.

Rev Adrian Pratt