Our age is an age of new words, reflecting the astonishing advances that mankind has made in science and psychology during the last decades.
There are new words. I hear that one father, at Christmas, was quite bewildered when one little customer asked for a miniature transistor set powered by solar batteries.
And there are old words which were once on the fringe of the vocabulary of the average man, but which in our age have been taken over and infused with new meaning.
One of these is the word vocation.
It is so old that it appears in the King James translation of the Bible:
“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.” (Ephesians 4:1)
We hear the word today used in various ways and with great frequency:
Vocational guidance
Vocational training
Vocational reconstruction
He has chosen a good vocation
But the meaning that it carries today is not the meaning which it held when it was translated by the King James revisers.
This is not unique. There are many words whose meanings have changed:
Let — once meant hinder
Prevent — once meant precede
Communicate — once meant share
Conversation — once meant conduct
But it is necessary for us to explore the meaning of vocation, for it enshrines a critical truth that every Christian person in this congregation must understand if he is to be a true Christian.
This is the first Sunday morning that I preach to you, and I have chosen this subject so that my relationship to you as your pastor, and your place in the plan of God, might be clearly before us all.
Let us first establish the biblical meaning of vocation.
Since it is a Latin word, it means:
“The act by which Providence destines every creature to a determined role.”
In English it means:
“A call” or “the act of calling.”
Therefore, "walk worthy of the call that God has given you."
In another place Paul tells them to carry out every job—profession, craft, trade, or occupation—conscientiously and well; but he is not saying that here.
By vocation, he means “the summons to God’s service which we have received from Him.”
Every Christian man and woman, then, has a vocation. And for every Christian man and woman, this vocation is the same: the summons to God’s service. Put more clearly and less generally, it is a call to be a sign and an instrument of salvation.
God calls each of us by repentance and faith into the membership of the Church, to be a sign and an instrument of salvation.
A man said, “God has called me,” and there is a sense in which we can say this; but fundamentally and primarily, our call from God is one, and it is distributed equally to every Christian.
Besides our vocation, there are other things which must proceed alongside if we are to live, and which must proceed alongside if the complicated machinery of our civilization is to move. These activities have a name. These are our avocations.
The vocation of a Christian is that he be a sign and an instrument of God’s salvation. His avocation is his occupation, profession, trade, state, condition.
Once again, this is a Latin word. Its meaning is something stemming from a call: something extra to it, and proceeding alongside it, subsidiary to it.
These avocations must neither be confused with our vocation, nor allowed to take its place.
For instance, it is to someone's job to preach, and it is mine to give—you do your job and I'll do mine: no idea could be more wrong. Our giving is part of our job of living as God’s servants.
One of the greatest tragedies of our western Church has been the division of clergy and laity: religious specialists and others.
It would have been better if the ideas of clergy and laity, as they exist today, had never been formed. Although in the first place, when the word “laity” was first coined, it had a high and noble meaning.
For the Greek word from which it comes, laos, meant people, and the laos theou were the people of God; and every minister and preacher, as well as the tent-makers and carpenters, gloried in the wonder of being a member of the laity.
Everyone had a vocation.
And it is time the idea of laity—of the Christian in the pew—took on again its original significance.
It is essential that your vocation be seen in its true perspective, and that your occupations serve your true vocation.
Paul was occupied in tent-making, so that he might keep himself independent to preach.
There is a way for every tradesman to perform his work to the glory of God. The question is: do you do your work to make money, or to glorify God? Is it an end in itself, or is it a means to the end of serving God?
What is our vocation? What is the place of our avocation in relation to our vocation?
For we must have a vocation. If we do not, we are like a ship without a rudder, tossed by every wave, at the mercy of every wind, and swept by every cross-current; and eventually the rocks will claim us.
Our vocation must either be that of which Paul speaks, or these other things.
The poem—the works of our hands must perish. Ozymandias.
[Shelley's famous poem Ozymandias tells of a mighty king whose great statue stands broken in the desert. Its inscription boasts of power and glory, yet it stands in ruin and all that remains around it is empty and vanishing sand. The proud achievements of men disappear, and history cannot preserve them.]
This work will never perish: the work of God. It has eternal significance; eternal glory.
“I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.”
The world changes. Nations change. The Kingdoms of God doesn't.
Whom have we in heaven but Thee, Eternal God? And there is none upon earth that we desire beside Thee.
Our flesh and our hearts fail, but Thou art the strength of our hearts, and our portion for ever.
Draw near to us this day, increase our faith, guide us with Thy counsel, strengthen us in Thy Spirit.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Forbid, our Lord, that our hearts should become shrunken and our souls small, because our thanks to Thee is mean, and our hands closed.
May our gifts to Thee be worthy of a life that has been given in sacrifice for us, a true expression of deep thankfulness, and a display of a strong faith in the God who will supply all our needs out of the abundance of His resources. Amen.
Almighty and Eternal God, who dwelleth in Eternal Light and holiness, we children of Thy creation look up to Thee in wonder and awe as our earthbound minds reach beyond themselves to touch the uncreated power and truth and purity and infinity which is with Thee.
Our minds reel when we consider the things that Thou art, the depths to which no thought of ours can fully reach, the glory which makes our attempts to praise Thee sound hollow and meaningless.
And more than anything, the length and breadth of Thy amazing love which has reached us and claimed us.
We thank Thee for the simple experience of that love, which has come to us by our Saviour, Jesus, and which has bridged the gap between our humanity and Thy Holy Light.
We thank Thee for the demonstration of love which has made it so plain to us that Thou art willing and glad to accept us.
We thank Thee for the sacrifice which has given us a bridge of escape from our sin.
We ask for forgiveness again for our slowness to accept the fact of the love; for the reluctance to grasp the instrument of faith; for the stubbornness of minds that have not yielded to Thy Spirit.
We ask ourselves how can we find acceptance when our lives are such poor expressions of gratitude and overflowing love, and such poor examples of redeemed lives.
