What's Your Vocation

Isaiah 6:1-8   Luke 5:1-11

What is your vocation.

Most folks respond to that question with an answer that names their “job”, or the work they do which sustains them and/or their family financially. “Vocational training schools” teach students some “trade” in which they can find employment.  But living into one’s “vocation” is not necessarily the same as living out one’s employment or job.

The word VOCATION comes from the latin word, voco meaning “call”, and voce, meaning voice.  One’s vocation in its true sense is living out of the voice that calls us to be and do a particular something.

Recently I met a woman, named Tonya Rund.  She worked for FedEX driving a deliver truck.  She tells of a few of her regular stops, delivering art supplies to artists in their home studios.  She wished she could do what they did, create beauty in the quiet of a home space.  One day she asked one artist if she could stay a bit and watch the artist at work.  She did.  The artist encouraged to sign up for an art class somewhere to explore art, which she did.  Listening for her own inner longings, she began to hear and respond to a call, a voice encouraging her toward art.   After some time of blending the FedEx job with her call toward art, Tonya now creates beautiful clay art pieces and her vocation, as well as her employment, is art.  (You can visit her at www.tonyarund.com)

Today’s lectionary passages are “vocation” stories.  They invite us to listen to the voice of God’s calling and responding to call that comes both within and outside, toward vocation beyond employment.

Listen to Isaiah’s story.  We know Isaiah to ‘a prophet’. It was not his primary “job”.  His primary job was as a ‘priest’ serving in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Most likely he continued serving as a priest, but also became a prophet after listening to the voce, the voice of God calling him to that vocation.  Read  Is 6:1-8

As a priest, Isaiah was a mediator between people and God.  He spent his life in ministry, offering incense and performing the sacrificial rituals in the Temple spaces. This ordained priest had a vision in the context of his daily work.  He hears voices, and he feels the earth shake around him.  This priestly man says,  ‘Woe is me…I’m ruined, (or I’m gonna die!) because I am a sinner, my mouth doesn’t sound like ‘holy, holy, holy’.  No one can be in the presence of such holiness and live!’ The vision continues with the angelic seraph purifying his mouth, purifying his being, with that symbolic coal.  Isaiah is forgiven.  The priest receives absolution, was made pure, had God’s gracious cleansing.    Then, his own unworthiness made worthy, he heard and recognized the holy voice and presence of God, calling him, asking him:   “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  God invokes, invites Isaiah to a new vocation.  Isaiah says,  “Here I am. Send me!”

Isaiah, already a priest, was still open to hear a new word from God’s call; a vocation, a voice perhaps from outside his being but resonated within his being.  Did you notice that this priestly Isaiah’s first response was,  “I’m not worthy!”  (Not me!)  This is like so many who were called by God in other Biblical stories whose first response was, “Not me!”  “I’m not worthy.”  “It’s too much for me to do.”  Moses was one, Gideon, Jeremiah also.  Later we know Mary, the mother of Jesus also when invited into a special calling said….How can that be!?  Common responses are surprise and disbelief that we might hear clearly or have the ability to be used by God for a particular something.  Only when we listen carefully as the external call resonates, vibrates, stirs within our own being, can it join with our own inner voice to respond.

Listen to the story of Simon Peter and his fellow fisherman as they hear the voice of vocation.  Fishing was their employment, the family business.  Doing the daily task of fishing, just as Isaiah was doing his daily task, the voice of vocation came calling.  Both the prophet priest and the fisherman disciples are in the midst of routine, unsuspecting, when God’s voice calls into a new reality.  Read:  Luke 5:1-11.

The end of the reading says the fishermen “left everything” and followed Jesus.  Common thought is that they never returned to fishing, now their “career” was discipling.  Well, let’s think about that.  From other stories in the gospels we know that they still had their boats and they still went fishing, and most likely not just for the sport of it.  There are stories of crossing the sea in a boat, of Peter climbing out of the boat to walk on water, of storms, and even after Jesus resurrection Peter declares, “I’m going fishing”.  These were family men and they needed to provide for their families.  Most likely, they “left everything” for that day.  Most likely they kept their occupation of fishing which provided the resources for them to focus on learning from Jesus and being trained for servant ministry, to trust, to be grace-filled, to grow in God.

Like Isaiah, Simon was amazed and frightened that he was in the initial moment, in the presence of holiness.  “Go away from me!”  ‘I’m not worthy’ or ‘I can’t deal with this!’  Like Isaiah, there is a word of consolation, or comfort, of forgiveness or grace that relaxes the anxiety and fear.  “Don’t be afraid”… of me, or yourself, or your frailty, or of what you are called to become.  Jesus invites a new vocation of people catching, of bringing people into the realization of God’s realm.

God is still calling individuals, us,  into vocation, to listen for clearer focus and direction or reason for living.  God speaks through dreams, longings, and visions, through hardship and miracles, through senses, and often in common and in uncommon ways, always unpredictable, calling us to act, to be, to participate with the work of God in the world.  Are we listening?  Are we awake in the ordinary tasks of a day in which God might have a word for us?  And perhaps God’s direction and invitation is not to “leave everything” but in everything be and act from a God-centeredness.  Perhaps God’s calling  to a new vocation is to simply be attentive to God’s agenda within our daily lives.

The Bible’s stories are not only stories of God and people long ago.  The Living Word is that it is OUR story as well. Teachers, farmers, business women, politicians, parents, salesmen, young and old together, all receive God’s whisper, thunder, invitation, prompting to be God’s prophet, minister, disciple, person in this time and place.  How quickly do we say,  “Whoa!   Wait a minute, not me!  I’m afraid.  I’m afraid I don’t understand.  Find someone else!  Go away from me.”  Can we stop our anxious blithering long enough to hear God say, ‘Don’t be afraid.  My grace frees you to be all you need to be.  Will you go for me, will you participate with me, taking your part in transforming my people and my world whom I love?’

 Dare we say,  “Here I am Lord, send me”?

Dare we listen for the Word of the Lord?

Has God a vocation for you?