Scripture: Psalm 27; Isaiah 9:1-4; Matthew 4:12-25

Sometimes it takes an earth-shattering event to make us stop, take stock of our lives, and turn our attention and our energy from business-as-usual to something that really matters. I think that’s a universal thing I have noticed, as I have been privileged through the years to be with people who are confronting life-threatening illnesses, sudden disasters, shattering relational circumstances. People begin to listen to their lives and decide what’s really important, when crisis strips away the same-old-same-old comforts of our ordinary-time lives. People who survive a serious accident, a natural disaster, a bout with cancer: they know what it is to have what we take for granted threatened—and after that, they live life like it counts.

I saw this in a letter I received from Pat Walker a couple of weeks ago, reflecting on the tsunami that has taken 200,000 lives in Asia. Pat, who is herself radically changing her own life and priorities due to the developing chronic illness of her mother Betty Howie, described how heartsick the devastation of the tsunami had made her; and how it caused her to reflect on her work as an emergency room nurse, and the thousands of families she has accompanied through the years as they faced sudden death, or the devastation of a life they had until then taken for granted. She said that these events do not seem to her to come from God, but that she finds God in them as crisis or catastrophe drive her, and others she has witnessed, to deepen their spiritual connection and focus the gift of their lives’ days on what really matters, on living intentionally in Love.

Most of us have moments of living in this way — instants of grace and glory, that bring our hopes and our loves and our hours into a sharp and precious focus. A job is lost, and we suddenly know how much we appreciate the dignity of work, the steadfast support of a spouse, who after all loves us for who we are, not what we do. We begin to realize that much of what we believed critical, essential, was mere window dressing around the heart of our life, our family…. A relationship ends unaccountably—and the pain of honest reflection and empty hours remind us how little we paid attention to keeping love alive, or maybe, how much time we wasted nourishing something that was far less than Love. A disaster sweeps away villages throughout Asia, a mudslide buries a small affluent town in California, and we see our own village with new and grateful eyes. We read of a child lost to her parents, and we clutch our own little ones close, vowing that we will never take them for granted again…but of course, we do—and sooner than we would like to admit. Ordinary time covers us like a blanket of contented oblivion, and we forget how it is for some people, and how, too quickly, it might be for us.

It takes a great deal of effort to live life on purpose.

And how do we know for sure what choices in life are going to give our days meaning, anyway? What work should we do? Which friendships ought to be nourished? How can you tell what matters and what doesn’t, until it’s too late?

Reading the gospel text for this week, I’ve been astonished at the flat-out brazen guts of the disciples and Jesus—who packed up their lives, abandoned the ordinary, took off after a dream without a second thought or, apparently, a glance backward. I’ve read it again and again, looking for some kind of program, some evidence of divine guidance or signs from the heavens—but there’s just nothing there. How did they do it? How did they know? Doesn’t a person need more to go on, when so much is at stake? The Spirit descending like a dove, maybe, or an angel visitation, or at the very least, the handwriting on the wall or stretched across the heavens, written in the clouds like the Wicked Witch of the West did in the Wizard of Oz: Surrender, Dorothy!

But there rarely seems to be a sign in the sky…nor even as much, it seems, as some reasonable formula for figuring out what we’re supposed to do — what God wants us to be — as earnest and as willing as we are to discover God’s will in our lives.

When Jesus decided it was time to pack up his carpentry tools and become an itinerant seeker of the kingdom of heaven, what propelled him? Was it the dove who rested on him at his baptism? The Voice from heaven?—though even that was more than likely a private prayer vision of Jesus’, and not the supernatural public witness we seem to make of it– Or was it something much more pedestrian and humane? The Matthew story says, simply, that when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he knew it was time. He withdrew to Galilee—packing up shop, as it were; he left his home people and his home ties in Nazareth, and he took up the work of proclaiming the kingdom of heaven. Interestingly, it does not seem to be the magical confirmation of the baptism story that sent Jesus on his way; not at all. Matthew separates the story of the baptism from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Between the magic and the calling, there is, according to Matthew, a long season of indecision and confusion: a temptation, if you will. Jesus is not sure of what he is to do. He is, figuratively and perhaps really, in the wilderness: struggling with his calling, examining his possibilities, searching for some clear sign or direction—he is tempted, he is hungry, he is lost: he needs something to show him the way.

How strange, really, that the something that pushes him over the edge and into the kingdom of heaven is not a sign for him, or even specific direction he might have derived from his life-ritual of baptism, his wilderness season of prayer. Rather, the story says, he heard that John had been put into prison. There was a footnote on the local news, and suddenly he knew what he had to do. And he did it.

And as he did, he found others, companions who, like him, were available to be God’s person in a certain way at a certain time. People who were willing to hear a message in the daily newspaper; read meaning into the expression on the face of a stranger, listen to a friend and be a companion along the way. People for whom what they were was always more important than what they did.

The reformer Martin Luther made a distinction between Christian vocation and Christian office. No “office” — be it clergy, lay person, bishop, elder or deacon—is any dearer to the heart of God than another. In our offices, we exercise the diversity of our gifts, and play out our particular circumstances. Our office is determined by a whole host of circumstances — people, families, community possibilities, whatever.

Our offices may change with our circumstance.

But what remains the same, what is the center around which our offices are played out and our decisions are made: that is our vocation.

And our vocation is, simply, to be God’s person in the world. That is all.

That is what Pat Walker was describing when she spoke about the tsunami, and reflected out of the context of a hand injury and the pressing need of her mother, and drew upon the experiences of a lifetime in the “office” of nursing: she discovered what is, for this moment and this time, her vocation. What she does, doesn’t matter. What she is: God’s person in the world, makes all the difference, and shapes her daily choices for Love, as I hope it might, and does, for each of us.

I know we all wish we could have more clear direction. But really, we already have all we need — what Jesus had, and what his disciples had. We have our vocation as God’s own person in the world: and what we do with that is up to us, and determined by a whole host of circumstances that are at first one thing and then, maybe another.

Many “calls” throughout our life. Not just one, and not just for always. One vocation, always the same, but around that, many calls. In and out of jobs. To and from different places. In and out of relationships. The one true thing is to know whose you are, and if you trust that, the rest will sort itself out.

The author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor talks about vocation in her book The Preaching Life:

Over the next five years I struggled with the ordination question. I read books, prayed, made appointments with my bishop and cancelled them. I entered diocesan programs and dropped out of them. I worked as a seminary administrator and a hospital chaplain. I took part time jobs at churches. I moved a thousand miles away and back again in eight months. I listened for voices in the night and searched the sky for signs. If lasting preoccupation with the church constituted a call, then I was called, but called to what? To be a priest, or to be a Christian? One midnight I asked God to tell me as plainly as possible what I was supposed to do. “Anything that pleases you.”

That is the answer that came into my sleepy head. “What?” I said, waking up. “What kind of an answer is that?”

“Do anything that pleases you,” the voice in my head said again, “and belong to me.”

Let us pray:

May our feet rest firmly on the ground
May our heads touch the sky
May we see clearly
May we have the capacity to listen
May we be free to touch
May our words be true
My our hearts and minds be open
May our hands be empty to fill the need
May our arms be open to others
May our gifts be revealed to us so we may return that which has been given
Completing the great circle. Amen. (from the Terma Collective)