The Doctrine of the Calling

Back This sermon is in three parts: biblical, then church historical, looking especially at Calvin, and then illustrating our current dilemmas with a movie Calvin would not have approved-but which I hope will help us understand how God seeks to work with and through us in this world.



The doctrine of the calling implies choice of work. Paul's words to the early Christians in our passages first emphasize the believer's inner freedom from any form of servitude-this in a time when slavery and gross inequality were the rule. "If you were a slave when called, and can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity" But do not let your condition, even of slavery, block you from the new life in Christ. So your calling to be saved, to know God's love and purpose, knows no obstacles-in fact, can work through all obstacles, including the cross. In that chapter 7, Paul emphasizes people remain in the station where they have been put, because in the light of Christ, all our posts are relative: whether we are Caesar's deputy or a laborer in a quarry or galley. Especially because God is moving powerfully and quickly within history, Paul does not want the believers distracted with material ambition and even social change.



In the second passage, Paul's sense of justice comes out, first as indignation, then as a fight for principle of equality among the early evangelists. All had obviously left their original work, fishing or tax collecting or scribing, but now as the first generation was growing older, distinctions were being made. From the Protestant point of view, the RC church stops here, looking at the distinctive nature of the calling of the priest or evangelist whose life is entirely dedicated to speaking and teaching the Gospel. But Paul's argument concerns fair remuneration for all tasks, not least the ministry-even the ox can eat the grain it is threshing or harvesting. Though Paul then goes on to note that he does not like to depend upon the new churches for his living-he works as a tentmaker-which was probably work far below his Pharisaic station as an educated man.



It is interesting to note also that Paul mentions that most of the early apostles, like Peter, were married or accompanied by "a sister as wife," which may have meant independent women travelling for protection with a male disciple. The big points of Christian teaching, freedom and fairness-perhaps even for those women, clearly come out in the passage. So this radical social movement, the communists of their day, were already deciding not to challenge everything all at once. But the doctrine of equality before God, being created in the image of God, being called to create as God creates-is going to transform the world. This is not social change for its own sake, but change so that everyone may someday be able to experience God's love in living out their callings.



This is a Labor Day sermon. Tomorrow, a special sabbath from work, is a day won by the early union movement. This sermon focuses on the purpose of work and its relation to human fulfillment. In earlier years, the minister in a pulpit such as this one might have either attacked or defended the rights of workers to organize. The Presbyterian Church was not always an enemy to the labor movement, and over time we have come recognize the enormous power imbalances of capitalism require unions and other regulatory measures to keep us from new forms of serfdom. This Church is the beneficiary of major gifts from the grand-daughter of one of the most powerful of the captains of industry so we are clear about some of that history.



Not preached: (We all know abuses of union protections as well: while I was at the Department of Motor Vehicles recently, it was hard to know whether or not the employees drifting about were engaged in a work stoppage. We also know that unions often resist change and that our part of the global economy moves quickly. Unions went along with the car-makers in defeating the increase in fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, for example. Unions have not been able to help people in many Third World countries where dictatorships and outside interests override the needs of the people. But we know that any preaching about the calling has to encompass the lives of laborers as well as those of us with better choices, lest we narrow the scope of the Gospel.)



The doctrine of the calling, or its Latin word, vocation, is a key emphasis of Protestantism and especially our chief theoretician, John Calvin. In the 1500's medieval society was undergoing great disruption, especially in the free city of Geneva, flooded with refugees. Calvin encouraged a clothing factory of sorts to provide useful employment. As we know, he encouraged the City Council to shut down indecent activites and gambling, which denied the dignity of the human being and the integrity of work. Something for nothing for one still means nothing for something for the many, and creates a moral disorder-a world of chance-and God's world is a world of providence. Your individual life in Christ does not always grow in a steady, unbroken line, as transformation and repentance deepen us, shift priorities, add dimensions to our world and to our selves. But in a spiritual light, nothing that is true about your life is lost-as Paul says, "you were bought with a price, do not become slaves of other human beings" ( I Cor. 7: 23).

Calvin's doctrine of the calling gave courage to individual believers and also addressed the questions we have-of what to do, our restlessness faced with obstacles outside and inside ourselves. There is also the question of order-not primarily for productivity's sake-though Max Weber and others noted that result-or for control, but order for peace and contentment in living the Christian life. I excerpt inclusively from Calvin's Institutes, Book III, Chapter 10, section 6.



"...the Lord bids each one of us in all life's actions to look to his or her calling. For God knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. Therefore, lest through our stupitdity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, God has appointed duties for every person in their particular way of life. And that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his or her limits, God has named these various kinds of living "callings." Therefore each individual has their own kind of living assigned by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that we may not heedlessly wander about through life. (This sense of purpose includes)... No deed is considered more noble, even among philosophers, than to free one's country from tyranny. (Yet this is not within the usual limits of citizenship)...



...the Lord's calling is in everything the beginning and foundation of well-doing. And if there is anyone who will not direct him or herself to it, they will never hold to the straight path in their duties. ...Besides, there will be no harmony among the several parts of one's life. Accordingly, your life will be best ordered when it is directed to this goal. For no one... will attempt more than his calling will permit, because we know it is not lawful to exceed its bounds (this includes greed and actions against civil law, which Calvin based in God's law).



...Again, it will be no slight relief from cares, labors, troubles and other burdens for a man to know that God is his guide in all these things. The magistrate will discharge his duties more willingly; the head of a household will confine himself or herself to their responsibilities; each person will bear and swallow the discomforts, vexations, weariness and anxieties in their situation when they are convinced that these are part of the assignment laid on them by God. From this will arise also a singular consolation: that no task will be so sordid and base, provided you obey your calling in it, that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in God's sight."

(Translation of Ford Lewis Battles, Edited by John T. McNeill: Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960, pp. 724-5. Library of Christian Classics).



Not preached transition: (This week I met someone who got the dream job, and someone choosing a new career, even while having felt creative and effective in the old one. I also pray daily for those without gainful work of any kind, and sometimes I dream about enterprises-like making Christian symbol cards for our Sunday School, which could be marketed more broadly in the church and world....)



Now the movie I have chosen to illustrate some of our modern challenges and obstacles to calling are from the movie, Monster's Ball. Calvin would not have liked it because of the nudity included that he would have seen damaging the self-hood of the actors, and hence over-burdening their callings-but of course he didn't care for theatre in the first place. (There was little time in his steady life of struggle, predeceased by his child and wife and then dying at 44, having produced since age 20 the equivalent of a book every 4 months on top of his other duties). One well-known Black actress turned down the female lead role for its excesses in depicting an underpaid waitress who loses her house as her long jailed husband finally goes to the electric chair. The movie is about the relationship that develops between her and the man who flips the switch.



My focus is on that prison guard and his son, who also tries to be a prison guard. The grandfather was also a prison guard, racist, despising weakness, pushing his son and grandson to that occupation-which is a legitimate one, though Christians debate whether the death penalty can ever be justified. Here it clearly represents the transforming crisis, not only for the man executed, but for the father/son duo who carry it out. The father, Billy Bob Thornton, takes the work very seriously and despises his son who partly screws up attaching the wires to the victim. The victim, almost in his moment of grace and prayer, is an artist as well as a criminal-so much that he sketches the executioner father and son before going unresisting to the chair. When the father and son get back home, without giving away the whole film, the son kills himself: being an executioner was not his vocation. But what happens is that the father then transforms-he resigns and buys a gas station-and falls in love-unwittingly at first-with the widow of the executed man.



None of us grow in straight lines, like trees adding a ring a year-though the movie's picture of this change of vocation shows the total change of life that accompanies it-abandoning the false vocation of racial superiority, the limitations of a vocation that gave a family a terrible identity. Our vocation-and we also share a vocation with our church and our country and other bodies-is partly to see that people are not crushed by false and misshapen vocations, like the people in that film. But that film also speaks to each of us in our vocations and lives. We don't know if they live happily ever after. And their relationship is not simply about love, because neither character ever gets really free-and neither do any of us. Frederick Buechner speaks of the calling as where our deep love and the world's deep need meet. May we live up to our fullest callings. Amen.

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