3 minute read
Vocation 101
By Dan Engle
Advertisement
I was in Cairo, Egypt for three weeks in October, teaching computer software that we have been using in the States to design and track oilfield jobs. My students were Muslims. Their weekend runs Friday-Saturday. They pray five times a day, which resulted in our class getting two more breaks than we usually do. The meals contained no pork—even the bacon was beef. Three...long...weeks.
Religion never came up in any of the classes. If it had, I would have made sure the topic discussed outside of class time. It would have been the professional thing to do, after all.
I’d like to think that if I were asked, God willing, I could give a defense. My Christianity isn’t vindicated by my changed life. It’s proven by Christ dying and rising from the dead, fulfilling thousands of years of Old Testament prophecy. It’s about what He said about Himself and His role in rescuing us from eternal damnation.
Such a defense was not to happen. The call wasn’t there. A different type of service was required: providing care for my Egyptian neighbors. Switching them to the new computer system will save money, time, and effort.
Not everyone is to be a called and ordained servant of the Word. St. Paul writes in I Corinthians 12:28 that, “God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.” Most of us have gifts of helping. But check out verse 27, “you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” That is your first calling: formerly dead men and women made alive in Christ by the hearing of Law and Gospel.
Mischief can result when we don’t realize that we serve God through all our vocations—family, employment, citizenship, in addition to sacred. Many churches, LCMS and otherwise, insinuate that you are not doing a godly work if you are not actively assisting some ministry in “reaching the lost.” Remember your first call. Remember your baptism. Confess your sins and receive absolution. Listen to the Word of God in its reading and in its liturgy, and receive the Lord’s Supper often. You are free in Christ to use the First Article gifts God has given you, for your congregation and/or for your neighbor.
Plus you’re probably already working in several other vocations. High school students use the classes they take to see where their talents lie, and college students enhance those talents to best serve their neighbors and earn a gainful living to support a family. You may live with parents or guardians, or they may be helping you live in college residential housing. Perhaps you are helping someone much older or much younger who needs assistance. You might be working to put yourself through college or earn money to pay for a car. If you’re not yet 18 and voting, you still have a duty as a citizen to be informed of the issues you’ll be asked to decide soon. As a member of a congregation, soak in as much of the saving Christian doctrine given in the Bible and reflected in the Lutheran Confessions, volunteer on those work days, and support those activities that are consistent with the faith once delivered to the saints. We will never outgrow that vocation.
Sometimes our vocations conflict with one another. A boss or a parent may ask you to do something that would benefit the company but would harm others. Taking home supplies or padding expense reports for your school or employer may benefit the people then and there but harm your school or employer later. Confessing a scriptural truth may violate a company’s code of conduct. If we are asked to obey men in the face of a direct prohibition of Scripture, we are to obey God, but we must be prepared to suffer any consequences.
Whatever God gives us to do is a gift indeed. We may, like Joseph in Genesis, see the eventual up side benefit of the adversities we face today, or God may have our efforts serve another without any seeming benefit to us. Whatever you are given to do in your lifetime, always remember what God has called you to first. You are baptized. Forgiven. You were dead in your sins, but you are now free in Christ. You have the faith and the salvation that nobody can take from you. This is your calling, in which everything in your other callings are done. As Luther said in the Heidelberg Disputation, “The Law says, ‘Do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘Believe this,’ and everything is already done.”
Dan Engle is a member of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio. He is a traveling software instructor for Halliburton Company. He is the host of the Time Out podcast, lutherantimeout.org, and he blogs at necessaryroughness.org. He is married with two children.
