Vocation and calling

The idea of vocation, or calling, is not based on some deterministic social hierarchy that God affirms, but is based on the openness of every life to the Spirit of God, that saves and transforms every part the world, whatever limitations might otherwise be placed on that life. 'Vocation' is the dogged belief that God is not transforming some ideal or imagined world, but the very particular world that I find before my eyes (and behind them). It is the commitment that God has in fact saved me, in my strange and individual situation, and called me to serve him there. It is the commitment that that service will be judged by the Lord, and the Lord alone. Judged, not by the standards of the world, nor by the gospel-consequentialism of full time ministers, but by the very Lord who called me TO his service, IN my situation. (note this isn't called TO my situation, IN his service. Our situations may and probably will, and possibly should change, our calling to serve those around us as though serving the Lord won't). It is a commitment that the rewards of the Lords judgement are available to all, id indeed they live lives of loving service.

Approaches to 'vocation' that are about searching within for talents and then pursuing them at the expense of others are perversions of vocation.

The dropping of the idea of vocation for 'ministry' in protestant circles is perhaps behind the attempts of some full time ministry workers to serve an ideal pure (non-existent) church rather than accepting that the reward of the Lord is equally available for serving the messed up, broken church they find before them.

Exegesis and performance

When I used to do theatre type things, one of the things you learnt quickly was that you couldn't just memorise a script. As you rehearsed and wrested with a text, and shaped the meaning of a performance, you did have to know the text. But as you approached a performance, memorising the text wasn't so important. If you had done your job well, you understood the characters, the situation and the plot so well, that the words of the text were simply what HAD to be said at that point in time. You would remember the text because so much meaning was caught up in them.

Doing exegesis for an exegetical exam feels the same.

At first, you are confronted by a text, trying to remember whether the text form is an infinitive, or middle, or what ever. But as the message and internal logic gets drilled into you, as you think about the background, about what the writer is getting across, memorising the language or details becomes irrelevant.
In the end, I don't have to remember what a niphal passive participle looks like, because I know that the content and whole thrust of Ezekiels message demands one at this moment.
It's a nice feeling. (when it all comes together, of course when it doesn't it is like dying on stage)

A Hymn to God the Father: John Donne

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.
by John Donne


I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.

Dying for Telstra

“The modern nation-state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its behalf. As I have remarked elsewhere, it is like being asked to die for the telephone company.”

—Alasdair MacIntyre, “A Partial Response to My Critics,” in After MacIntyre (University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 303.


What do you say of a political figure who promises to feed you your daily bread, to fix the world, and calls you to lay down your life for it?
Should we expect our nations to have a wider vision of 'the good' than thier own survival?

So, which messiah shall we follow?

“The appointment of Jesus to be the Christ takes place in the Spirit and must be apprehended in the Spirit. It is self-sufficient, unlimited, and in itself true. And moreover, it is what is altogether new, the decisive factor and turning-point in man’s consideration of God. . . . To the proclamation and receiving of this Gospel the whole activity of the Christian community — its teaching, ethic, and worship — is strictly related. But the activity of the community is related to the Gospel only insofar as it is no more than a crater formed by the explosion of a shell that seeks to be no more than a void in which the Gospel reveals itself. The people of Christ, His community, know that no sacred word or work or thing exists in its own right: they know only those words and works and things which by their negation are sign-posts to the Holy One. If anything Christian be unrelated to the Gospel, it is a human by-product, a dangerous religious survival, a regrettable misunderstanding. For in this case content would be substituted for a void, convex for concave, positive for negative, and the characteristic marks of Christianity would be possession and self-sufficiency rather than deprivation and hope. If this be persisted in, there emerges, instead of the community of Christ, Christendom, and ineffective peace-pact or compromise with that existence which, moving with its own momentum, lies on this side of the resurrection. Christianity would then have lost all relation to the power of God.”


– Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 36-37.

Does your church rate 'deprivation and hope' as one of it's defining marks?
Do we really see ourselves as utterly dependent on the gracious giving of our Lord week by week?
Are our lives the shattered fragment from the explosion of the gospel?

Holy Sonnets 4

HOLY SONNETS.

IV.

O, my black soul, now thou art summoned
By sickness, Death's herald and champion ;
Thou'rt like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turn to whence he's fled ;
Or like a thief, which till death's doom be read,
Wisheth himself deliver'd from prison,
But damn'd and haled to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack ;
But who shall give thee that grace to begin ?
O, make thyself with holy mourning black,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sin ;
Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might,
That being red, it dyes red souls to white.

Holy Sonnets 3: The sin of despair

HOLY SONNETS.

III.

O ! might those sighs and tears return again
Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent,
That I might in this holy discontent
Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourn'd in vain.
In mine idolatry what showers of rain
Mine eyes did waste ? what griefs my heart did rent ?
That sufferance was my sin, I now repent ;
'Cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain.
Th' hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief,
The itchy lecher, and self-tickling proud
Have the remembrance of past joys, for relief
Of coming ills. To poor me is allow'd
No ease ; for long, yet vehement grief hath been
Th' effect and cause, the punishment and sin.


Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 158.