I’ve spent this afternoon playing with my young grandchildren. I’d done a good day’s work at church before picking them up from preschool in the afternoon. As a pastor, teacher, and writer, I spent most of the early part of the day writing a sermon, working on an upcoming book, calling shut-ins, and leading a bible study. All of these are part of my call as pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation on Cape Cod. But, equally important is my call to nurture my grandchildren by providing a joyful and stable environment, stimulating activities, and simple play.
Given my care for my grandchildren each afternoon, I have chosen not to involve myself as much in local social concern and political issues as I’ve done in the past. These are all important issues, but right now my call is to join the local and intimate and the global and social on a daily basis in my integration of congregational leadership, service to the wider Christian community, and caring for my family. Jewish mysticism proclaims that when you save a soul, you save the universe. I believe that caring for these little boys is part of my vocation as “tikkun ‘olam” or mending the world.
Mark Labberton in his new book, Called: The Crisis and Promise of Following Jesus Today, explores the nature of call as following Jesus in our varied personal, relational, and global interactions. Our call, he asserts, is not just about fulfilling my gifts or finding my individual flourishing; it is also about responding to the world around us, bringing that same flourishing to the world. Our callings involve the relationship between our gifts and the world’s needs. We are all “called” as the title of Labberton’s book affirms, and our calling is both long-term and moment-by-moment.
Seeking our call involves seeing our lives in relationship with God. God is moving in all things, large and small, and all moments and encounters, the life-changing and the apparently trivial. In fact, there are no trivial moments. All moments reveal divine wisdom and every encounter can be sacred. If God is actively omnipresent in the world, the secular is sacred and the sacred is also secular. As the Zen Buddhists note, before I was enlightened (discovered God’s call in my life), I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment (discovering my calling), I chopped wood and carried water. This is the wisdom of the Rule of St. Benedict, and the affirmation that we meet Christ in our encounters with every creature.
Called is a challenge to wake up to God’s presence right where we are. Our call, I believe, is dynamic, contextual, and constantly changing. Our call emerges from our personal gifts, and thus has a longitudinal character. It is also lived out in the vocation of each moment, what de Cassaude described as the sacrament of the present moment and Brother Lawrence spoke of as the practice of the presence of God. God treasures creativity and agency, and rejoices in coloring outside the lines and innovating on God’s own vision for our lives.
Both Labberton and I see our vocation as emerging moment by moment. God provides possibilities for us every moment of our lives. These possibilities emerge from our concrete context, past history, and personal gifts. Opening to these possibilities awakens us to further possibilities. Our openness allows God to do new things in our lives and our world. Accordingly, it is important to develop a spirituality of call, with practices that nurture our awareness of God’s call in our lives and in our world. God always calls us “for just such a time as this.”
Put briefly – and I have elaborated on the nature of calling in Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry (Alban Institute) – the spirituality of call involves attentiveness to our personal lives and context. God comes to us in every encounter and experience, and we awaken to God’s call through stillness, praying with our eyes open, and seeing the holiness in every encounter. With Gerald May (The Awakened Heart), we discover God’s call through a process of self and other awareness involving pausing, noticing, opening, yielding to the moment and being stretched by our experiences, and responding to the divine vision revealed to us. If every moment is a vocational moment, then every breath and encounter can be a prayer.
We are called, and our actions inspire a divine response which leads to further calls. In that synergy of call and response, we find our flourishing and share in the salvation of this good earth.
For more conversation on Called, visit out the Patheos Book Club here.
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