Date:
January 18, 2009, The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Author: The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel
GRACE TO YOU AND PEACE FROM GOD OUR FATHER AND THE LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST. AMEN.
What should I do with my life? It often seems to be a question young people ask as they consider a career path or a relationship. Nick Marickovich is a 2005 graduate of Virginia Tech. He wrote in Lutheran Partners magazine, “After College I set off to hike the Appalachian Trail from end to end. During the 2000 mile, six-month journey, I hoped for a revelation, a real Damascus Road moment where God would lean out from behind the clouds and tell me what to do with my life. Instead I was awakened one morning at the crack of dawn by a fellow hiker who, as some do, liked to begin a morning in the great outdoors by belting out a couple of show-tunes. I was pulled out of sleep by the following lyrics from Les Miserables :
When the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums There is a life about to start When tomorrow comes!
It was followed by some ironic, early-morning applause.” He later realized the singer was giving the revelation he sought from God.
Frederick Buechner, the novelist, defined vocation: “Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world's hunger meet.” We are doing what is right for us when we make the connection between our passion, our joy, our gladness and the world's need. It is listening for God's call and to the voice within us saying, “This is the right thing to do, do this with your life.” Dear Abby gave this advice to a young woman who had lost her zest for living. Abby wrote, “As I have read and re-read your letter I am struck by the listlessness and boredom it conveys. Perhaps you would be happier if you dwelt less on yourself and the emptiness you feel and spent some time helping people who are less fortunate that you. Leo Rosten once wrote that the purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make a difference that you lived at all—using the talents that God has given you for the betterment of others.”
The theological term for answering the question of what to do is called discernment. Discernment means discovering what God's will is for you and what decisions to make to follow God's will. It is often used for those deciding to enter the ministry but in Lutheran thought, a vocation is any calling of God. That calling may be to pastoral ministry, to a career, to a relationship or to any way to be the person God wants you to be. Discernment means discovering God's will for your life. Sometimes that will is clear—the doors will open and the decision will feel right. At others times, discerning God's will may be more difficult.
I was talking not so long ago with a couple in mid-life wondering about career change and move and discernment. It is not only young people who are trying to find their way through life and wondering what God wants them to do. The advice I gave is good for all of us I think. Oh, and I shared a secret with my Wednesday evening Bethel class that I'll let you all in on—when the preacher preaches, the preacher often preaches to him or herself. Ministers don't have all the answers! When we come to those hard questions in all of our lives, it is important to discern what God's will is and how our gifts can best be used to serve. The first place to go in making any decision is to go to God, to pray and listen. In our Gospel lesson for today, Philip becomes a follower of Jesus and says to his friend Nathanael, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth .” The theme of this text is discovering who this Jesus is and deciding to follow him. How did Philip decide? Philip knew the Scriptures. He based his decision to become a disciple of Jesus on the Bible—because Nathanael knew Moses and the Prophets, he could understand that Jesus was the Messiah. When Jesus when spoke with him, he confessed, “Teacher, you are the Son of God.” When we seek to discern our life's path, we can ask ourselves, is my decision consistent with my faith, with my understanding of God, with the Scriptures?
This week in our Wednesday morning Bible class we read again the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The rich man ate sumptuously and the poor man sat at his gate, starving and with sores licked by stray dogs. They both died. The rich man went to hell and Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man could see the beggar in bliss and asked Abraham to send him down from heaven with his finger dipped in cooling water. This could not happen. There is a great chasm fixed between heaven and hell and none can go between. Then the rich man asked that Lazarus come from the dead to warn his brothers who were still alive. Abraham answered, “They have Moses and the Prophets; they should listen to them.” When the rich man said that they would listen to one returned from the dead, he was told, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone rises from the dead.” As Lutheran Christians we confess that the Scripture is sufficient and perspicacious. All that we need to know about God is revealed in the Scriptures. Not tradition or reason or experience although these are important, we base our faith on Christ alone, revealed in Scripture alone. God will never ask you to do anything contrary to the Bible. God is faithful and consistent. We have Moses and the Prophet and Jesus and this is enough.
But then, the next step must also be to pray and listen to the quiet voice inside. Is this my passion? Am I using my gladness for the world's hunger? It never hurts to make lists of pros and cons. A counselor once told me to write a word or phrase that summed up the question and then by free association just keep writing down words as they came to mind. It worked for me. It helped me understand the real issue beneath what I had thought was the issue. Ask other people. We believe that God works through means—not so much visions and voices although that can be part of it. It seems that our days are like those of the boy Samuel when a direct word of the Lord is rare and there is no frequent vision. The means God uses to come to us are God's Word and the sacraments. If we want to find God here in Word and Sacrament is where God promises to be. But our Confessions also declare that a means of grace is found in other believers. Luther called it the conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters. We can ask others to pray for us and share their insights with us. Christ is present where two or three gather in Christ's name and perhaps other believers can see more clearly than we can ourselves what we should do.
What should I do with my life? What does God want me to do? There are times when we must make the decision on our own. St Therese of Lisieux wrote her autobiography when she knew she was dying of consumption at twenty-four. This girl felt a call to the convent at fourteen—she actually felt a call to the priesthood as well—but her family opposed this, the Carmelite superior opposed this and so did the local bishop. When her father took her with her family to Rome , they had an audience with the pope. Although forbidden to speak, she threw herself at the feet of Leo XIII to ask his permission to enter the convent. The pope would not give his consent only saying, “You will enter if God wills it.” Then he had her carried away by two Swiss guards. Therese continued to hope and pray and believe. Hearts changed and she entered the convent. In her autobiography, Story of a Soul , she writes, “I looked at gardens and noticed all the different varieties of flowers God had created. And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus' garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to lilies and roses, but he also created smaller ones and these must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God's glances when God looks down. Perfection consists in doing God's will, in being what God will us to be.” We received a Christmas card from a dear friend who had lost her husband, a classmate of mine at seminary; it paraphrased this sentence from St. Therese: We find our purpose in doing God's will, in being just what God intends us to be.
Be what you were created to be. Discern God's call to you. Put your gladness, passion, joy and the world's hunger, need, together. Amen.
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