On vocatio

by James Gimbel

The Latin vocare often refers to a naming or calling. From this root, we get the word vocatio (or “vocation”), which describes God’s call for His creation to serve Him with a distinct mission and purpose.

All of creation has a vocatio

Psalm 19:1 begins, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and Psalm 150:6 says, “Let everything that has life and breath praise the Lord.” God created the sun, moon, and stars with a vocation—a purpose: to provide light and mark days and seasons. God called a gourd into creation to provide Jonah with shade as its vocation and purpose. Water and wheat and grapes were created by God for a purpose; in connection with God’s Word and command, they have a vocatio with sacramental impact. God called loaves, fishes, wind from their natural created purposes to a greater vocatio of service to Him.

Each person has vocatio

God called Jeremiah to be His prophet, Aaron to be His priest, David to be His king; each one responded to God’s calling. God called the Virgin Mary to be a mother, and Martha to serve food. A person’s vocatio is not exactly a career, job, or profession. A vocation is God’s design and calling toward a role of complementary service that carries out His plan of action.

Of course, one of the primary outcomes of sin is disrupting unity and God’s plans. Christ and His power, through faith, restores wholeness and unity, partially now, and wholly in the realized next life. The Holy Spirit also enables us to serve God in our vocations as a response of faith. It may be helpful to note that non-Christians also have a vocation in God’s design, whether they realize it or not; a non-believer may raise vegetables or perform surgeries or collect garbage, all the while unknowingly serving God.

Vocatio’s Variety of Roles

In the table of duties, Martin Luther encourages each person to consider his or her station in life. This is vocational language; most people have vocations in the plural, filling multiple stations in life. The same person may be a son, brother, student, and caretaker of the yard at the same time. Daily tasks may shift as they fall under different vocations. Roles may change over time, and there may be tensions between the functions of the roles.

Vocatio as the Masks of God

God’s design is to provide, protect, rule and govern, and care for people, animals, and the whole of His creation. When Luther speaks of God’s design, he distinguishes between direct and indirect care. God can intervene miraculously, as we see in the famous biblical miracles. But in the vast majority of Scripture, God uses indirect and rather ordinary means to care for creation.

God feeds the world through the vocatio of farmers, ranchers, butchers, canning factories, chefs and servers, grocery workers, and so forth. God heals through physicians, nurses, pharmacies, and even those who work with diet and exercise. God protects through peace officers, members of the Canadian Forces, and the RCMP… but also through security cameras and identity theft protection software developers. Whether or not we agree with them politically, Scripture is clear that God governs through the vocatio of Members of Parliament and legislators and premieres.

In every case, each person (even the non-believer) is called to serve God’s purpose and is accountable to God to fulfill the vocatio according to His design, rather than their own. Luther affirms how every role (even the milkmaid) is a critically important part of God’s care for the world. The Christian is distinctly aware of God’s presence and design, and fulfills vocatio as part of the walk of faith.

Vocatio as God’s Work through People

God provides for physical needs through the variety of vocations in the people around us. God also provides for spiritual needs through His means of grace: His Word and the Sacraments. Ordinary water, created for many purposes, is empowered in connection with God’s Word to bring spiritual rebirth in the sacrament of Baptism. Bread and wine are part of God’s ordinary providence for our sustenance. Through consecration with God’s Word in the setting of the Sacrament, these elements are Christ Himself for forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation.

As God the Good Shepherd leads and feeds and calms and quiets, He also provides undershepherds to provide spiritual care for His Church. In the Office of the Ministry, which is God’s own design, a man who has other vocations as husband and father and citizen and diaper changer may also be trained and ordained and called to a unique vocatio as pastor of a church. God’s Spirit provides spiritual growth to His people through His means, administered by His called servant.

Abuses of Vocatio

Part of our Lutheran understanding of the ministry is shaped by some of the abuses of the office in Luther’s day. By the sixteenth century, those who were ordained received an exclusive sacrament, which suggested they were “closer” to God than the non-ordained. The sacramental nature, they believed, gave them special privileges, like an extraordinary measure of forgiveness unavailable to the laity, as well as the right to receive the wine (the blood of Christ) in communion—something not offered to the laity at the time. They also believed that those who received the sacrament of ordination thereby received the power personally to retain and absolve sins (as opposed to this being a power which is instead granted to the Church as a whole, which it then entrusts to called ministers to exercise publicly on its behalf). Luther reacted against the elitism and abuses of power to which this understanding of ordination had given rise.

A significant part of the Lutheran story is the reforming of the theology of ordination. Luther taught that ordination did not bring a priest or pastor closer to God than the laity, nor did it clearly promise an elevated reward in heaven. Nor should the reception of the wine (the blood of Christ) in communion be restricted only to ministers; it should be available also to the laity. The vocatio of ministry, Luther understood, did not allow the ordained to lord it over others. God wanted all people to understand the liturgy, to hear Scripture in their own language, and to sing in praise to God. Luther emphasized that the ordained were to represent, serve, and reflect Christ—to be “servants for Jesus’ sake,” as Paul explains (2 Corinthians 4:5).

Vocatio of the Laity

Luther recognized that God works under the “masks” of the laity and their ordinary vocations. He discussed the priesthood of believers, based on the broader principle of vocatio as service to God, but especially as presented in 1 Peter 2:4-5.

Church treasurer, Sunday school teachers, organists, ushers, and acolytes all fill important roles in the Church’s life that God calls them to (their vocatio). As the roles play out, the laity and the ordained work together in God’s kingdom, rejoicing in the mutual opportunity to walk and talk together in the faith. In good order, the laity identify and encourage and support and send potential pastors and deacons for training and formation at seminary.

In God’s design, some among the gifted disciples who have been identified and encouraged and prayed for and supported by their congregations and pastors have an increasing sense of God’s nudge toward ministry. They apply at a seminary, where they study academic coursework, serve in numerous roles that provide supervised contextual experience, and are individually formed to be eligible for call and ordination and service in Christ’s Church. This is part of their training for a pastoral vocatio.

In Canada, we have two seminaries that are partnered with Lutheran Church–Canada through Memorandums of Understanding. Through these articulations of joint service, the Church identifies and refers prospective students, and the seminary recruits, receives, and trains enrolled students in the classroom and in field education and vicarage congregations for service to Christ’s Church. The seminaries take their purpose seriously; faculty and staff have a unique vocatio to form pastors and deacons for Christ’s ministry.

The seminaries then return the students to the Church in sacred convocations, prepared for the Office of Word and Sacrament Ministry or the office of Deacon. The mission of each seminary is to serve Christ and His Church by preparing those servants to serve and live their vocatio for Jesus’ sake.

Vocatio and the Office of the Public Ministry

Pastors serve in the Office of Public Word and Sacrament Ministry. They are trained, ordained, called, and empowered to use God’s tools, His means, as instruments through which God promises and pledges to work. Pastors are not lords over the Church, but instead have a vocatio to partner with the laity and lead with a servant heart.

Ministry can be a challenging role; spiritual warfare is often intensely targeted toward Christian leaders and pastors and deacons. But God provides His promise and tools to guide, guard, and keep them in His grace and service.

Ministry is also potentially one of the most rewarding of vocations imaginable. God is at work in and through the variety of ministry vocations, and it can be a joyful privilege to serve the noble tasks.

All believers are encouraged to pray for family, government leaders, society, the poor and widowed and orphaned. But Christ also directs prayer for the ministry vocation distinctly. “The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus says. “Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38). The Church and the seminaries partner in their distinct vocations as part of God’s answer to these prayers.

Vocatio and His Church

God is always the author of faith who calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps believers in the one true faith. God could work directly without means or people for this task. But God uses the Church and the seminaries to help fulfill the prayer for workers who will serve in His Church.

God’s design is that we work together in this life for mission and ministry. May He lead us in His will and in His ways, to His glory and praise.

Rev. Dr. James Gimbel is President of Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Edmonton.