WHAT'S YOUR VOCATION?

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What do you do for a living? Or, in the terms of the standard questionnaire, what’s your ‘trade, profession, or vocation’?

‘Trade, profession, or vocation’. That’s an odd choice of words. It reminds me of that famous sketch on the telly with John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett standing in a line. ‘I’m middle class’, said Ronnie B, ‘so I look up to him because he’s upper class. But I look down on him because he’s lower class’. Some people are tradesmen, some people are professionals, but the chosen few – the real ones to look up to – they have a vocation.

And the supreme example of a vocation – so we think – is the vocation to the priesthood. Those of us who’ve turned our collars round are the people with the real vocation. Trades-people go to the job-centre, professionals choose what they want to do with their lives – but you can only be a priest or a deacon if you’re called to it. It’s a vocation, a calling.

But that’s just a load of old balderdash.

I don’t know what goes on around here, but up in Geordieland where I live (and where Fr. Andrew was brought up) if we want to know a person’s name, we don’t ask ‘What’s your name?’ We ask ‘What do they call you?’ Everybody is called by the name they’re known by. Callings are for everyone. All of us have a vocation.

And that’s exactly what today’s Collect is saying. We ask God to ‘hear our prayer which we offer for all [his] faithful people, that in their vocation and ministry they may serve [him] in holiness and truth’. All God’s faithful people have a vocation. He has called the lot of us, not just the clergy.

You can find today’s Collect in the old Book of Common Prayer. But the wording we use today has been altered. We’ve got rid of the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’; we’ve also made it a bit more politically correct. And I reckon it’s lost out a bit in the process. I’m a great believer in women’s equality (whatever my missus tells you), but sometimes political correctness and inclusive language loses the bite of the original.

So in 1662, it was a prayer for ‘all estates of men in [God’s] holy Church’ that ‘every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, might truly and godly serve him’. In the 21st century it’s changed into ‘all God’s faithful people, that in their vocation and ministry they may serve him.’ ‘Every member’ in the singular has become all of us in the plural. The singling out of each separate person as a unique individual has become the bland blanketing of all of us together.

I think that’s a bit of a pity. We’re not a great amorphous mass of humanity. We’re individuals, and each one of us is unique. God doesn’t save us as if we were government statistics. He’s concerned with us, every one of us, each as our own unique self. He’s picked you out because you are you; and he’s chosen you for the job he has in mind for you.

Do you know that marvellous hymn by Charles Wesley that begins,

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in my Saviour’s blood?

I can never finish singing the third verse of that hymn; it so gets at my heart-strings that I’m overwhelmed by it:

‘Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For, O my God, it found out me!

As that realisation did to Wesley, so it does to me. The thought that the immense love of God can be so particular that it finds out Michael Perry and it’s got a vocation for him, is beyond belief. And yet it’s true.

I was watching Ken Dodd on Parkinson the week before last. Parky was making the point that Ken Dodd was unique. There’s nobody else in the whole world quite like Ken Dodd. (More’s the pity.)

Well, I’m like Ken Dodd – and so are you. I’m like Ken Dodd in being unique. There’s only one of him, and there’s only one of me, and there’s only one of you. And that’s part of God’s plan for the whole world. He wants you. He wants you for the one and only – the unique – contribution you can make to his world. And that’s your vocation. If you’re fulfilling it, you’ll be satisfied.

Parky reminded Ken Dodd that he was eighty years old, and he asked him when he was going to retire. ‘When you retire’, said Ken, ‘you stop doing what you’ve got to do and spend your time doing what you want to do. I’m already doing what I love doing, so I don’t need to retire’.

Nobody would deny that Ken Dodd has got a vocation to be a comedian. And he’s happy because he’s fulfilling that vocation. If he tried to be an accountant, think how miserable he’d be. He’s had difficulty enough with his own tax return – heaven help us if he started trying to get anybody else’s right!

God had a vocation for Doddy. And Doddy loves it.

God’s got a vocation for you, too. Your vocation is to be a member of God’s holy Church – to be the member he’s designed you to be, with all your particular and individual abilities and preferences – and all your particular and individual shortcomings and failings. And if you follow that vocation – the vocation to be a ‘called’ Christian, at work, at home, at your leisure, with friends and family, wherever and whatever – you’ll enjoy it – just like Ken Dodd enjoys being a comedian. You’ll be doing what God made you for.

And I’m talking about your vocation – not about the person sitting next to you – or anyone else. It’s no good looking at any of the great saints that inspire us all, and thinking that we’ve got to be exactly like any one of them. God doesn’t want you to be Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He’s already made one Desmond Tutu, so he doesn’t need two Tutus. He has made you as Joe Snook, or Jean Bloggs. What he wants you to be, is to be as good a Joe Snook or Jean Bloggs as he’s made you capable of being.

I got up very early one morning, a week or two ago, to listen to Pause for Thought on Radio 2, and I heard the Rector of St John’s telling us not to try to do the impossible, but to aim to be ‘good enough Christians’. That wasn’t because he was satisfied with anything second-rate; it was because he wanted each one of you to be the sort of Christian God had made you to be, not the kind of Christian he had made someone else to be.

Remember what the risen Jesus said to St Peter? It’s at the end of St John’s Gospel. He’d just given Peter his marching instructions, and Peter looked across at the Beloved Disciple and said, ‘And what about him?’ And Jesus replied, ‘That’s none of your business. You get on with following me in the way I’ve just told you to.’

One more point to make, and I’ve done. It’s that there’s one vocation – the vocation to be a Christian. But there are a myriad ways of carrying out that vocation, because God has called each one of us in our own unique way

‘All God’s people in their vocation and ministry’. There’s one vocation; but an endless variety of ministries – one for each of us: and it’s our job as Christians to see what it is that God wants us to do for his glory and the good of his church and world – to find out what unique contribution each one of us can make.

Some ministries are church-centred. For instance, you couldn’t imagine St John’s being what it is and doing what it does if it wasn’t for the ministries of dozens of people. Some of those ministries are high-profile ones, like standing here and ranting at you. Some of them are public ones like helping in the worship. Some are just as essential but quite hidden.

Some ministries, as I said, are church-centred. But most of the ministries that God hopes we can perform are outside this building. Ministries to the community, or the neighbourhood, or to people who need our help, or to our families and our friends. Get on with them, to God’s glory and the good of the whole world!

But remember: you can’t put any of these ministries in a rank of importance. They’re tailored to the individuals who perform them. So there’s no room for boasting. Look at those seventy apostles that we heard about in this morning’s Gospel! When they got back from their missionary work, Jesus told them that what mattered wasn’t the size of the job they did, or how many demons they’d vanquished; no, what mattered was that there was room for them all in heaven.

And – thank God – there’s room for you, too! May he help you to become the people he’s made you to be, so that all of us can find our true happiness, serving God in holiness and truth. To him be the glory now and for ever!
Amen.

Canon Michael Perry
Visiting St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea