Day 61 - A Job and A Calling

A sermon delivered Feb. 3, 2013 at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN based on Jeremiah 1:4-9 and  1 Corinthians 12:12-25, 27.

        I find it ironic that shop and auto mechanics classes in high school were (and still are) called vocational training and that they still call schools dedicated to vocational training, “technical schools.”
         I used to drive by one in Richmond near the seminary where they teach “vocational training.” The lot is full of old automobiles the kids repair to learn automobile mechanics.  We also used to call two-year colleges like Chattanooga State, “vocational schools.” 

Vocation comes from the Latin word for calling. I always wondered what we ought to call the 4 year colleges and universities, I guess they did not think they were training us for a vocation.  (Of course, at one time Georgia Tech was called a "technical school.")
For some reason educators must think being a good auto mechanic, carpenter, or radiology technician is a “vocation” and by implication not as sophisticated and the jobs for people trained in 4-year colleges.

I’m entirely not sure how that kind of thinking came about, but I have my suspicions it came about in the early part of the twentieth century when science and technology began to have such an impact on our world and th demand for people who understood it grew. It takes a particular type of mind to be a good scientist or engineer. You need to have an ability to understand and use mathematics; you have to like and learn chemistry and physics; and you have to have a gift for a particular kind of problem solving. Those are special abilities not everyone possesses. 
         But those abilities are not in any way intrinsically "better" than another person's skill at creating an artistic painting, for example. Some who do find their way to other avenues to use their capability. I know a highly regarded author of a scientific textbook who worked at MIT but quit and spent the rest of his life making violins.

What about the liberal arts? Science and technology created telephone, radio, television and radio-communication and figuratively made the world seem a little smaller. The demand for people who could learn and understand new languages became greater, not just for translating foreign journals but for communicating with people in and from other countries. It became important for proclaiming the Good News of Christianity. Sociology helps us understand other cultures so we can make informed decisions. Like science and technology, it takes a particular type of mind to easily learn new languages and to teach them, especially if you are an adult and to learn sociology.  Some of us just can’t do it very well.

When I was in college I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a co-operative work-study student to pay for college. I was fortunate in two regards. I worked for a brilliant guy who grew up in California in the 1950’s with all the cultural baggage that implies. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Ph.D. in metallurgy. He shaped my ideas about science and engineering and pointed me towards people who helped me learn enough to have a successful 30 year career in engineering.

While I worked at Oak Ridge there was a senior scientist who managed the lab next door. He too was really smart and at the same time very down to earth. He grew up in Appalachia near Oliver Springs, TN. He managed to graduate from high school but never went to college. After a few years working as a technician at Oak Ridge the management realized was a very good scientist and soon he had his own research group. So you don’t necessarily have to have a B.S. or Ph.D. to prove you are smart. I could give you a very good example of a brilliant person right here in Chattanooga who worked as an engineer without that college degree 

As a final example, I used to own a Swedish car called a Saab. It was a racy little car and I really liked it but it had some quirky engineering with a lot of unusual features concocted by some smart mechanical engineer at Saab that made it aa nice car but complicated to repair. 
You may know sometimes it is hard to find a good, trustworthy auto mechanic. From my college days I could hardly afford a car, so I ended up with a good set of tools and every time I got a car I bought the repair manual for it and got pretty good at diagnosing problems but never much better than average at repairing them. I could do good enough to keep the car running but often made mistakes along the way, stripped bolt, take twice as long, etc. 

So, I came to really value a good, trustworthy automobile mechanic. I found one after I bought my Saab but I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania where most folks drove American cars. The mechanic did not know much about my Saab but if he knew what was wrong, he could fix it quite proficiently. He and I made a good team, I’d figure out what was wrong with my car and tell him, then he would order the parts and fix it.

I was glad to pay him for a good job, and he enjoyed working on my car because he was learning something about “curious” cars.

I think our educational system is not justified or proper in labeling any education as only vocational. We have confused what a person does in a job and what one does as a vocation. The humor in this to me, is that vocation comes from the Latin word to call. So, in a school for vocational training who is doing the calling? Can you only be called to be an auto mechanic but not a scientist??

What does this have to do with Jeremiah?  Let’s look at Jeremiah. In our reading he professes to God only to be just a boy:

v6: Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the very first verse of Jeremiah tells us he is an adult priest.

The statement, “but I am just a boy” was a common way to show humility, or even to dodge a duty. We know from the first verse of Jeremiah he was already a priest.  King Solomon had just married the daughter of the Pharaoh to seal an alliance with Egypt, and when he went to sleep, he had a dream in which God visited him. God told Solomon that because he loved the Lord he deserved a blessing and invited Solomon to voice it. Solomon replied with the same words, “I’m just a boy” before he asked for “wisdom.” (1 Kings 3:5-15).

Jeremiah ‘s faint-hearted argument shows he was not too excited about God’s call to the dangerous task of bring unpleasant news to the Jewish king. To tell the king that God intended to pluck up and break down, to destroy and overthrow his kingdom, and to build and to plant was serious business. You usually didn’t live too long in those days when you talked to the king that way. This passage gives us a poignant view of the universal Jewish view of humanity that we are all stubborn individuals who encounter God and may well refuse or resist his call as well as follow it.

In this case God did not give Jeremiah much room to argue. This passage also shows the clear difference between his job as a priest and a calling as a prophet. Paul makes this point in 1 Corinthians and goes beyond it and to spell our our call.

Paul uses the analogy of the parts of the body. That is why I used my mechanic friend and my Saab as my example. If there is a good example of working together for a common end, he and I did it with that car.

Paul says ALL Christians are called to be the body of Christ in the world; to live in mutual support using our special gifts to carry the Good news to the world, listen again:

“(12) For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. (13)For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (14) Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many… (15) On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, (23) and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; (24) whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, (25) that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. (27) Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

We ought to recall the humble response of Solomon and Jeremiah, regardless of our age or education.  We ought to be prepared to say, “I’m just a child,” and listen for the Holy Spirit’s guidance and follow it.

This is why I think my work with the homeless is so important. Some of them are tired of arguing with God, in fact, some of them are so much imprisoned by their mindset of homelessness they do not even realize they can argue with God about a vocation.

We find many of the people without a home are so preoccupied with finding a place to sleep, finding the $200 for the next week’s rent at the rent-by-the-week hotel they live in, they have never thought about what their strengths and skills are, much less tried to listen for God’s words, for the holy spirit calling them to use their strengths as Paul describes.  When we talk to them about gainful employment we spend most of our time talking about how to identify and achieve their vocation.

I ask our participants who come for a meal (with no strings attached) if they will fill out a short questionnaire. It has these questions:

1.      What do your friends and family say is your best character strength and skill?

2.      What do you think is your best character strength and skill?

3.      Given your answers to the first two questions, if the sky is the limit what do you want to do with your life, what is your dream?

4.      How can your dream help other people’s lives?

5.      Do you want to get there?

6.      What is the major barrier stopping you and can we help you remove it?

For many, to ask them to voice their dream of vocation only draws a blank look. They cannot put their dream into words, much less say how it might help others. To me, this is the worst crisis of faith that can befall a person, to never have or take the time to dream and listen for God’s call. 

In this work with impoverished folks, getting to the answer to these six questions and helping them find ways to make that dream a reality is our vocation.

As Christians, our vocation is clearly evident; to walk in the World as Christ’s representative until he comes again. It is invite the world to live as we do. To do that we have to be able to answer those 6 questions ourselves:  What do your friends and family say is your best character strength and skill?  What do you think is your best character strength and skill?   Given your answers to the first two questions, if the sky is the limit what do you want to do with your life, what is your dream? How can your dream help other people’s lives?   Do you want to get there? What is the major barrier stopping you and can we help you remove it?
 How we use our particular blessings, our skills and knowledge in concert with our fellow believers to do that is between Christ and each of us.

I hope you have had a dream about your vocation as one of Christ’s children, or will have one. When you do, I hope you will say to the Lord in total humility, “I’m just a child of God,” and then in the stillness of prayer listen to what the Holy Spirit asks you to do. If we resist, we are misleading the world and putting a millstone around our neck. When we get to that understanding and act, God will smiles upon us and give us peace in every way. The choice to respond to the calling is ours to make.  AMEN