My Vocation

Tomorrow the congregation of believers I have assisted during the past several months, the congregation to which we recently transferred membership, will gather in a voters' assembly to discuss their need for expanded pastoral care. The pastor who has served them will continue, but neither of us is able to devote our full time to this task. Yet we both sense the calling and guidance of the Holy Spirit to serve them in this manner. This leads me to a brief discussion of my vocation.

Here's a definition from Wikipedia:

The idea of vocation is central to the Christian belief that God has created each person with gifts and talents oriented toward specific purposes and a way of life. Particularly in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, this idea of vocation is especially associated with a divine call to service to the Church and humanity through particular vocational life commitments such as marriage to a particular person, consecration as a religious, ordination to priestly ministry in the Church and even a holy life as a single person. In the broader sense, Christian vocation includes the use of ones gifts in their profession, family life, church and civic commitments for the sake of the greater common good.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has a rather ponderous definition that I will not quote here. Suffice it to say the emphasis is upon what that part of the Christian community calls serving God in a religious or ecclesiastical state.

Over the centuries the temptation has been to make the vocation to serve God in the church as a pastor or church worker as somehow a higher calling than serving as a lay member of the Body of Christ. I often hear the phrase, "I'm only a layman." This was an issue in the Reformation of the church led by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century. The matter is discussed in detail in many places in the official confessional writings growing out of that period, The Book of Concord.

It is given particular attention in Article XXVII of the Apology (defense) of the Augsburg Confession. Following are some relevant comments by Dr. Paul McCain on this matter.

"The insight that Luther and his fellow Reformers brought to light once more is the teaching that all of life is an opportunity to serve God, in whatever a person's place/station and calling in life is. Modern Lutherans would do well not to think that monasticism is an issue that is of no immediate application, or relevance, to the church today. There has arisen a new kind of monasticism among us: the view that a person is really only engaged in "church work" if he, or she, is a member of a church committee or taking part in some church-sponsored activity. It would be tempting to regard Sundays as our time to be "religious" while the rest of our week is in the "secular" world, regarding Sunday as the time for sacred things, while the rest of the week we must live in the profane world. This article extols the Christian virtues lived out in all of callings and stations in life: mother, father, husband, wife, son, daughter, employer, employee. Specifically rejected and condemned in this article is the imposition of lifelong celibacy on a person who does who truly does not have the gift of chastity. Forcing chastity on those without the gift is a horrible sin against God's good creation and led many in Luther's time to think that their standing before God depended on the degree to which they could imitate the "holy life" of the monks and nuns."

While I view the tasks that I am about to assume as a calling from God and while I further assume that serving Him in this manner is my vocation, this does not in any sense make me more religious or more deserving of His grace and mercy. This does not make me more holy. As Dr. Melanchthon says in this Article, "callings vary. . .Callings are personal, just as matters of business themselves vary with times and persons; but the example of obedience is universal."

Like you, I have other vocations as well. In all of them I am called to follow Christ. I have been called by Him to be husband to my wife, father and grandfather to my children and neighbor to the people and friends He places before me. In the instance of this Blog I follow His calling to serve you in this small manner with His Word. So we all have various callings to believe and obey. Quoting Article XXVII again, "So it is perfection for each of us with true faith to obey our own calling."