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Monday, January 24, 2005
Who's Calling?
They were fishermen, all four of them. Doing their usual stuff with nets and gear after a long day's work.
Then along came Jesus, who put it plain and simple to them: "Fishermen, eh? Follow me and I'll turn you into fishers for men and women."
That's called a "call."
They answered it immediately. Just dropped their nets and never looked back. (Read the story in Matthew 4:12-23.)
Now, I'm a church pastor. I answered Christ's call before I had enough life experience to know what I was getting into. Young, energetic, idealistic. College, seminary, then off and running into who knew what. Sure only that I'd heard in my heart a similar calling to serve the Lord full-tilt.
All these decades later, I remember just one short season in mid-life when I thought maybe I'd made a mistake. Counseling and personality testing only proved I was a textbook case of ministerial material.
Onward and upward I went, on the path of clergy calling.
Wait a minute! I really don't like this clergy/laity divide. Makes it sound too much like only minister types are called to serve God. Or at least have a higher calling than everyday believers.
But that's not how the Bible puts it. Instead, every person is uniquely gifted with some special abilities, temperament, opportunities to serve God and serve people.
For example, "There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit... varieties of services, but the same Lord... varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone." (See 1 Corinthians 12:4-6)
In other words, each of us contributes something special for the common good. And it's not so good when any of us drops out or gets left out in the process.
Church people know from experience that it's volunteers who make the whole thing work. As a pastor I'm privileged and responsible to do church work full-time. A large part of my time involves training, supporting, and managing gifted people who do their part for the common good.
And outside the church, in "real life," each person's privilege and responsibility is to put their gifts to work for society's greater good. True, we all have to make a living. But much more than that, our work is meant to produce satisfaction for us and improvement for the world.
How interesting that we call one's work a "vocation." That's just Latin for "calling." So any work -- unless it's illegal, immoral, or fattening -- is what we're called to do.
Fishermen or fishers of men -- there's no difference as far as ultimate value goes. But all the difference in the world if you're called to one and try the other instead.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:43 AM
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