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Sermon 02/05/2006
Discovering a Ministry
~ by Tom Kinder
February 5, 2006 Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont,
UCC
Isaiah 40: 28-31, Mark 1:29-39
Frederick Buechner is an ordained minister and
a beautiful and versatile writer who lives in
western Vermont. Buechner is the author of novels,
memoirs, essays and works like the book Wishful
Thinking: A Theological ABC, in which he gives
short definitions or discussions of various topics.
Today’s sermon is about vocation, about discovering
our ministry—as a congregation and as individuals.
Here is how Buechner describes vocation in the
book Wishful Thinking:
[Vocation] comes from the Latin vocare, to call,
and means the work one is called to by God. There
are all different kinds of voices calling you
to do all different kinds of work, and the problem
is to find out which is the voice of God rather
than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest.
By and large a good rule for finding out is this.
The kind of work God usually calls you to do is
the kind of work (a) that you need most to do
and (b) that the world most needs to have done.
If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve
presumably met requirement (a), but if your work
is writing deodorant commercials, the chances
are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the
other hand, if your work is being a doctor in
a leper colony, you have probably met requirement
(b), but if most of the time you are bored and
depressed by it, the chances are you have not
only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping
your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will
do. The place God calls you to is the place where
your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger
meet. (Wishful Thinking, p. 95.)
People occasionally share with me that they do
not know why they are here on earth. They do not
know what God wants them to do. Buechner’s
answer is as good as any I know—although
he is careful to qualify it by saying it only
usually applies: “The kind of work God calls
you to do is the work (a) that you need most to
do and (b) that the world most needs to have done
. . . The place God calls you to is the place
where your deep gladness and the world’s
deep hunger meet.”
What this means is that if you want to know what
your calling is not only in the big picture of
your life but in any moment and situation, you
need to look in two directions at once. First,
you need to look within you at what gives you
joy to do. Joy, gladness and a sense of the right
fit can be inner signs of the Spirit. Enthusiasm
means literally God within – if you feel
enthusiasm it can be a sign of God’s calling.
As Buechner points out, though, it could also
be a voice other than the Spirit. It could be
the voice of society or ego or selfishness creating
a feeling of excitement. We need to be aware of
that and not blindly follow the 60’s adage,
“If it feels good, do it,” or even the
Joseph Campbell wisdom, “Follow your bliss.”
Enthusiasm or joy or an inner sense of rightness
for an activity means that it is within the realm
of possibility for our calling. It is a good beginning,
because, as another Vermont writer, the late Wallace
Stegner, wrote in his book Crossing to Safety,
“Do what you love; it will probably turn
out to be what you do best.”
But then we need to look in the opposite direction,
away from self, at the world around us and its
needs. If we draw a circle that represents all
that we most love and need to do and another circle
that represents all that the world most needs
done, where those two circles overlap we will
find our calling, according to Buechner’s
formula.
This sounds mechanical, whereas our idea of calling
is often more mystical. Mary was visited by Gabriel
and Joseph had a dream. Moses had his burning
bush and Samuel heard a voice in the night. There
may not be anything so dramatic in Buechner’s
formula, but even there you could find an element
of the mystical or mysterious. There is a movement
of God within us that is manifested as enthusiasm.
There is the coincidence of our gifts matching
the world’s need in this time and place.
Coincidence is exactly what we would call a miracle
by a higher power that we did not recognize. But
whether we experience our calling as a mystical
process or not, every calling is decided in real
times and places and situations. We need to make
practical decisions here and now about what to
try to do. We need to choose which calling we
will make a reality out of all the possibilities
and impossibilities we see.
Some of the gospel stories make it seem as if
Jesus was an exception to this. They make it sound
as if he knew everything that was going to happen,
and all that he was going to do, long beforehand.
The beginning of the Gospel of Mark allows us
to imagine it differently. The first chapter shows
Jesus joining the masses being baptized by John.
There is no indication that Jesus was anyone special
as he went down in the Jordan waters. We can imagine
that he was just an ordinary person with the spiritual
impulse to change—to repent and try to live
a more God-centered life. This was what John’s
baptism meant. Jesus went down into the water
opening himself to something new. He came up and
the heavens parted and the Spirit flew down on
him and he heard God bless him, and next thing
he knew he was deciding to go on a forty day retreat
in the wilderness.
Mark makes it clear that this was not what Jesus
had planned. Mark says the Spirit “drove”
Jesus into the wilderness. A month from today
on the first Sunday of Lent we will look more
closely at that passage, but for now we can imagine
that in that landscape of rock and sand, Jesus
took a long hard look at his new inner landscape.
He got to know his new self well, including what
his deep gladness now was. Then he came out of
the wilderness and began to look in the other
direction, at what the world most needed to have
done.
Jesus knew that building houses or tables was
no longer the deep gladness God was calling him
to pursue, but maybe he was not sure that his
calling included being a healer until he stood
beside his friend’s mother in her sickbed
and felt compassion for her suffering. His deep
gladness and the world’s deep hunger met
there – his yearning to relieve that suffering
and her desire that it end. He reached out and
discovered in that moment both his vocation and
his surprising power as a healer – a power
that he found only after accepting the calling
to heal.
The next morning Jesus again went out into the
wilderness to pray. He went to a deserted place
outside town and prayed for hours before Simon
Peter found him. Jesus had seen the deep hunger
people had for his healing and teaching, and he
looked within and saw the deep gladness he felt
to do it, and he put them together as God’s
calling. But as with any calling, it did not come
clear all at once how and where and for whom –
all the questions that kept Jesus going out to
a quiet place to pray regularly throughout the
gospels.
When Simon finally found him and said, “Everyone
is searching for you,” Jesus may only then
have gained the clarity he sought. Maybe Jesus
found his calling on his own lips when he said,
“Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so
that I may proclaim the message there also; for
that is what I came out to do.”
We can imagine that when Jesus said, “For
that is what I came out to do,” it was a
moment of discovery. He was discovering his ministry
as he went along.
In the Jewish tradition of midrash there are not
right or wrong interpretations of scripture, but
only useful or not useful interpretations. I think
this is a useful interpretation because it gives
us hope that if we follow Jesus, combining inward
reflection with outward encounters with the world,
we will discover our ministry. We will find our
calling, our vocation. We do not need to wait
for a burning bush to speak to us. We need only
to have the self-knowledge of our deep gladness
and then get up and meet the opportunities the
world presents.
We may try doing what we believe will both give
us deep gladness and meet the world’s deep
hunger, only to find out that we were wrong. It
may actually make us miserable, or the world may
yawn and show complete indifference to what we
dish up. This should not dismay us. It means only
that we need to look again at our need and the
world’s need. The answer may be to try the
same thing again, or to try something else in
the range of possibilities. It may be that we
were right at the time, but now things have changed.
Jesus was praying, trying to discern God’s
will right up to the Garden of Gethsemane. This
is a constant practice, and a process of trial
and error. It is a process of discovery as we
go along.
Looking back over my life I can see that my discovery
of my calling to this form of ministry took a
long and winding process. I see that steps I took
thinking I was arriving at my final vocation were
actually steps toward this very different vocation,
which may or may not be my final one. I see that
what was important was that I was looking both
within and out at the world, and that God was
part of the conversation. I don’t see how
a person could go too far wrong that way. As Paul
said, all things work together for the good for
those who love God.
The other thing I see, looking back, is how fear
sometimes stopped me from fulfilling my deep gladness
and the world’s deep hunger, how faint-heartedness
or self-doubt or anxiety blocked me from choosing
the path I knew on a deep level was right. I know
I am not the only one here who has experienced
that. I know that we as a congregation may experience
it as we go through our strategic planning process
in the months ahead.
To myself, to you, and to us as a congregation,
I offer the words of the prophet Isaiah. He was
speaking to the people of Israel who had been
held in captivity in Babylon for fifty years.
He was trying to embolden them to respond to God’s
calling to be God’s people, and not to despair,
because God was about to do a new thing, and their
vocation was about to shift dramatically.
Isaiah said, “Have you not known? Have you
not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the
Creator of the ends of the earth . . . . Those
who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they
shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and
not faint.”
Let us pray in silence, an asking and listening
prayer, asking God to lead our hearts and minds
to our own deep gladness and to the corresponding
deep hunger of the world.
Let us not pray for tasks equal to our powers,
but for powers equal to our tasks. Let us pray
in silence, asking, and listening for God’s
response…
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