Groundwork of Vocation
This is a sermon I preached a few weeks back. I didn't edit it at all, these are my notes/manuscript, though it's not written for reading, hopefully it makes sense.
Intro: I think this will be the last in our series on vocation. Today I want to think broadly about our collective vocation as human beings. We’ve heard over the past few weeks about our particular vocation, that it can be tough, but that we are all called to live faithfully toward something. Sometimes that particular and individual vocation is clear and other times in life it is extremely unclear where God might have us serving, working, playing, living our lives. Today, in two of the lectionary passages, I think we’ll see some more insight into a unifying and general vocation that all of humanity is called toward. The basis of our general vocation as human beings is RELATIONSHIP. Today we’ll see three areas of relationships that define humanity’s vocation. We’re going to read two of the lectionary passages and bounce back and forth between them.
Psalm 8
8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
8:6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,
8:7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8:8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
Move: In our psalm passage we first are draw into worship of the magnificent creator. The scriptures often draw us into worship of God through nature. In the scriptures nature is an icon of the creator. The artistic masterpiece created by God is a window into the nature of God, and so we worship God through this icon. I’ll suggest that this may be our first calling or our first vocation. We are called to recognize our smallness, our created-ness, our relationship of lowness to the Creator. From the earliest of the Hebrew Scriptures and theology we learn that God, the ultimate creator of all things, has stooped down to be in loving relationship with God’s creation, especially with people.
Psalm
8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and
honor.
Isn’t this ironic, considering man’s proclivity toward power, strength and dominance? We are nothing in comparison with God, but we are lifted up to be in relationship with God and all that God has created. That’s what worship is, humbling of our selves in relation to God that God may in return lift us up unto Godself.
Another of the lectionary passages goes on to say that through Jesus we are made children of God. In fact, we are made brothers and sisters of Christ.
Hebrews
2:11 For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters
Our relationship with God is made permanent and unquestionable through the humanity of Jesus, the ultimate symbol of God becoming low, even suffering death, so that we might have full access to God. But again, I’m reminded of just how lowly Christ became for the sake of us. And if we are to be like Christ we must take on the humbleness of Jesus. I’ll say that again, if we are to be like Christ, we must take on the humbleness of Christ.
Again how ironic, in light of the American church and it’s current politics of power. How ironic ha we must empty ourselves to be like Christ in light of American leaders.
God never strong arms us into anything. God never uses power to force us to do anything. And Jesus never did either. In the gospels we find a Jesus who speaks to the crowds in parables that subvert the Roman Empire, but never calls for a lifting up of arms or taking up weapons. Jesus was a pacifist, a leader of non violent, spiritual revolution against one of the most violent empires ever. And today, we ask God to “Bless America”, the “Christian” nation that has the greatest military the world has ever seen.
Move: God calls us toward humbleness, toward worship, toward right relation with the ultimate reality in the Universe.
Move: Now, as we get into our Genesis passage, I have some explaining to do. I let go of trying to read Genesis literally and I fell in love with these early stories of creation and existential meaning. I was never a new earth creationist, I struggled to understand how my communities of faith understood these stories. We used words like inerrant, authoritative and infallible. Basically, I ignored these stories as a young Christian because I didn’t feel free to be creative with them. Now, I absolutely love these stories that shed light and meaning upon the human condition. Today I believe that God can speak to us through any and all of the scriptures.
Genesis 2:18-24
2:18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner."
2:19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
AMINALS FOR MAN?
2:20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.
2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
2:22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
2:23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken."
2:24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
This passage is a tough one to get into because of what might be seen as a mysogenistic view point. Like Will said about his scripture last Sunday on the retreat, we’re not going to try to explain anything away. This passage was written in a patriarchal culture where women had very little rights. This passage has been used for harm against women for centuries, equipping men to oppress or put them in whatever “helper” position best suits us. This scripture, like all scriptures, contains both struggle and difficulty in interpretation and also deep meaning and goodness that we might extrapolate. Today, I’m especially concerned about passages like this continuing to be used to subjugate women in our society. The warped belief that men are somehow over women is why we are in a crisis today. That’s why men think they can take a woman in whatever he wants.
Move: Reading the Bible is like pealing an orange or banana. We really need to come to grips with the hard parts peal them away to get to the inner meaning that God may have for us today. Ignoring the patriarchal, violent or exclusivist parts of scripture and just trying to eat the whole fruit, skin and all, is not the way to go. I’ve also learned that rejecting parts of scripture because they don’t sit well with us is also not the way to go. Scripture requires that we study it, struggle with it, pray about it, talk about it and peal away at it until we experience the Divine through it.
Before the woman is created God gives Adam the task of naming all the animals. This is an amazing task that we’ll come back to.
Move: As we begin reading this passage we may focus on God’s desire to make Adam a helper, but lets focus on the second word, partner. In reality, a subordinate “helper” cannot really be a partner, can they? A partner is an equal participant, and equal leader. I think the use of the word partner in place of husband or wife has been attractive to people over the past few years because it gets at this idea that the most meaningful relationships in our lives, the relationship with our partner in life, is not the relationship of a subordinate to his or her master, but rather an equal and respected partner. And within that equal partnership we are both helpers of the other. At times in my marriage I have needed Alyssa’s help. She has come along side me to support me in ways that no-one else could or ever would want to support me. In other times in our marriage I have been her helper, supposing her. But, most of the time we are in mutual partnership constantly looking to help the other.
Move: And this is the second vocation of humanity. We are created for relationship. Yes, relationship with God, yes, relationship with a monogamous loving partner, but also a more general relationship. We are not human without meaningful connections to other people, places and things.
Move: Our psalm passage draws us toward another relationship, our relationship to the rest of creation. At this point we can bounce back to the genesis passage where Adam is given the task of naming all the creatures that God creates. In the Hebrew idea of a name, this is a huge responsibility. The ancient Hebrew idea of a name gave meaning and relational connection. The word for something not only gave a way to talk about a person or a thing, a name granted meaning and gave relational connection. We can understand how deep this could go by thinking about the name of God, in Hebrew they used the equivalent of the letters YHWH when they wrote the name of God. But they never spoke God’s name because it held so much meaning. Adams vocation is to give meaning to the beauty of God’s creation.
As we reflect back upon the Psalm passage we read that all of creation is put under the management of human beings. It is a reality that humanity has the ability to care for, co-create, add beauty to creation and we have the capacity to denigrate, harm and use up the creation. Our vocation is to the care for the creation and add meaning, in whatever specific way God may call us individually, we are generally called to a relationship of care for creation.
Conclusion: General human vocation is about relationships.
Our relationship to the ultimate reality, God.
Our partnership in this life with others through mutuality.
And our relationship with all of creation as those who give meaning and co-create toward greater health and well-being.
In light of these three relationships, our work and purpose on this earth is ordered. If your life is generating greater and deeper relational connections in these three areas you’re vocation as a human being is being fulfilled. That doesn’t mean that you won’t move on to a new job, struggle in your marriage, lose hope at times. But, if you can recenter your life throughout the years toward finding oneness with God, greater mutual relationships with those you love most, and greater care for the creation that God has given to your care, then you are fulfilling God’s vocation for you in this moment, and this moment is all that matters at the moment.
Intro: I think this will be the last in our series on vocation. Today I want to think broadly about our collective vocation as human beings. We’ve heard over the past few weeks about our particular vocation, that it can be tough, but that we are all called to live faithfully toward something. Sometimes that particular and individual vocation is clear and other times in life it is extremely unclear where God might have us serving, working, playing, living our lives. Today, in two of the lectionary passages, I think we’ll see some more insight into a unifying and general vocation that all of humanity is called toward. The basis of our general vocation as human beings is RELATIONSHIP. Today we’ll see three areas of relationships that define humanity’s vocation. We’re going to read two of the lectionary passages and bounce back and forth between them.
Psalm 8
8:1 O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
8:2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.
8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
8:6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,
8:7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
8:8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
Move: In our psalm passage we first are draw into worship of the magnificent creator. The scriptures often draw us into worship of God through nature. In the scriptures nature is an icon of the creator. The artistic masterpiece created by God is a window into the nature of God, and so we worship God through this icon. I’ll suggest that this may be our first calling or our first vocation. We are called to recognize our smallness, our created-ness, our relationship of lowness to the Creator. From the earliest of the Hebrew Scriptures and theology we learn that God, the ultimate creator of all things, has stooped down to be in loving relationship with God’s creation, especially with people.
Psalm
8:4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
8:5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and
honor.
Isn’t this ironic, considering man’s proclivity toward power, strength and dominance? We are nothing in comparison with God, but we are lifted up to be in relationship with God and all that God has created. That’s what worship is, humbling of our selves in relation to God that God may in return lift us up unto Godself.
Another of the lectionary passages goes on to say that through Jesus we are made children of God. In fact, we are made brothers and sisters of Christ.
Hebrews
2:11 For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters
Our relationship with God is made permanent and unquestionable through the humanity of Jesus, the ultimate symbol of God becoming low, even suffering death, so that we might have full access to God. But again, I’m reminded of just how lowly Christ became for the sake of us. And if we are to be like Christ we must take on the humbleness of Jesus. I’ll say that again, if we are to be like Christ, we must take on the humbleness of Christ.
Again how ironic, in light of the American church and it’s current politics of power. How ironic ha we must empty ourselves to be like Christ in light of American leaders.
God never strong arms us into anything. God never uses power to force us to do anything. And Jesus never did either. In the gospels we find a Jesus who speaks to the crowds in parables that subvert the Roman Empire, but never calls for a lifting up of arms or taking up weapons. Jesus was a pacifist, a leader of non violent, spiritual revolution against one of the most violent empires ever. And today, we ask God to “Bless America”, the “Christian” nation that has the greatest military the world has ever seen.
Move: God calls us toward humbleness, toward worship, toward right relation with the ultimate reality in the Universe.
Move: Now, as we get into our Genesis passage, I have some explaining to do. I let go of trying to read Genesis literally and I fell in love with these early stories of creation and existential meaning. I was never a new earth creationist, I struggled to understand how my communities of faith understood these stories. We used words like inerrant, authoritative and infallible. Basically, I ignored these stories as a young Christian because I didn’t feel free to be creative with them. Now, I absolutely love these stories that shed light and meaning upon the human condition. Today I believe that God can speak to us through any and all of the scriptures.
Genesis 2:18-24
2:18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner."
2:19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
AMINALS FOR MAN?
2:20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.
2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
2:22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
2:23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken."
2:24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
This passage is a tough one to get into because of what might be seen as a mysogenistic view point. Like Will said about his scripture last Sunday on the retreat, we’re not going to try to explain anything away. This passage was written in a patriarchal culture where women had very little rights. This passage has been used for harm against women for centuries, equipping men to oppress or put them in whatever “helper” position best suits us. This scripture, like all scriptures, contains both struggle and difficulty in interpretation and also deep meaning and goodness that we might extrapolate. Today, I’m especially concerned about passages like this continuing to be used to subjugate women in our society. The warped belief that men are somehow over women is why we are in a crisis today. That’s why men think they can take a woman in whatever he wants.
Move: Reading the Bible is like pealing an orange or banana. We really need to come to grips with the hard parts peal them away to get to the inner meaning that God may have for us today. Ignoring the patriarchal, violent or exclusivist parts of scripture and just trying to eat the whole fruit, skin and all, is not the way to go. I’ve also learned that rejecting parts of scripture because they don’t sit well with us is also not the way to go. Scripture requires that we study it, struggle with it, pray about it, talk about it and peal away at it until we experience the Divine through it.
Before the woman is created God gives Adam the task of naming all the animals. This is an amazing task that we’ll come back to.
Move: As we begin reading this passage we may focus on God’s desire to make Adam a helper, but lets focus on the second word, partner. In reality, a subordinate “helper” cannot really be a partner, can they? A partner is an equal participant, and equal leader. I think the use of the word partner in place of husband or wife has been attractive to people over the past few years because it gets at this idea that the most meaningful relationships in our lives, the relationship with our partner in life, is not the relationship of a subordinate to his or her master, but rather an equal and respected partner. And within that equal partnership we are both helpers of the other. At times in my marriage I have needed Alyssa’s help. She has come along side me to support me in ways that no-one else could or ever would want to support me. In other times in our marriage I have been her helper, supposing her. But, most of the time we are in mutual partnership constantly looking to help the other.
Move: And this is the second vocation of humanity. We are created for relationship. Yes, relationship with God, yes, relationship with a monogamous loving partner, but also a more general relationship. We are not human without meaningful connections to other people, places and things.
Move: Our psalm passage draws us toward another relationship, our relationship to the rest of creation. At this point we can bounce back to the genesis passage where Adam is given the task of naming all the creatures that God creates. In the Hebrew idea of a name, this is a huge responsibility. The ancient Hebrew idea of a name gave meaning and relational connection. The word for something not only gave a way to talk about a person or a thing, a name granted meaning and gave relational connection. We can understand how deep this could go by thinking about the name of God, in Hebrew they used the equivalent of the letters YHWH when they wrote the name of God. But they never spoke God’s name because it held so much meaning. Adams vocation is to give meaning to the beauty of God’s creation.
As we reflect back upon the Psalm passage we read that all of creation is put under the management of human beings. It is a reality that humanity has the ability to care for, co-create, add beauty to creation and we have the capacity to denigrate, harm and use up the creation. Our vocation is to the care for the creation and add meaning, in whatever specific way God may call us individually, we are generally called to a relationship of care for creation.
Conclusion: General human vocation is about relationships.
Our relationship to the ultimate reality, God.
Our partnership in this life with others through mutuality.
And our relationship with all of creation as those who give meaning and co-create toward greater health and well-being.
In light of these three relationships, our work and purpose on this earth is ordered. If your life is generating greater and deeper relational connections in these three areas you’re vocation as a human being is being fulfilled. That doesn’t mean that you won’t move on to a new job, struggle in your marriage, lose hope at times. But, if you can recenter your life throughout the years toward finding oneness with God, greater mutual relationships with those you love most, and greater care for the creation that God has given to your care, then you are fulfilling God’s vocation for you in this moment, and this moment is all that matters at the moment.
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