2009-01-25 New Job Sermon

2009-01-25 New Job Sermon

Monster.com, the big site on the Internet for helping you find a job has a religious pitch-line. It's trademarked, so I use it with caution. Right underneath the name of their company, Monster.com, is the line, "Your calling is calling." That's a good one. "Your calling is calling." The subtitle is, "Find jobs. Build a better career. Find your calling."

Calling is a religious word. Your calling is something that comes to you from the outside. Your sense of calling may be inside you, but you didn't put it there. Your calling comes from God. Callings work from the outside in. A job works from the inside out. A job is something you make happen. A job is something outside you that you go and get. A calling comes to you. Like Jesus came to the disciples.

Jesus came to Simon and Andrew, James and John, in the middle of the work day, and said, "Follow me." And they did. Dropped their nets and followed him. They had gone out and found their jobs. They were fishermen. That was their job. But one day, while they were at the jobs they had found, their calling came calling, and found them.

What's your calling? Has it found you?

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I'm just old enough that every time I hear the words, "Get a job," it conjures up the classic song from the 1950's by the Silhouettes, "Get a Job." It's like a virus that gets stuck in your head. An earworm.

Dip dip dip dip dip dip dip dip

Mum mum mum mum mum mum

Get a job

Sha na na na - sha na na na na

OK, I've just ruined a lot of people's day. Now it'll be stuck in your head, too. Every time you hear Brian Williams say, "The jobless rate in America..." it'll go off like an alarm. I'm a carrier of brain viruses. Sorry. It's my job. To make annoying things stick in your head. Actually, it's more of a calling.

Simon and Andrew, James and John had jobs. They were fishermen. Jesus came to them like a virus invading their equilibrium. He rocked their boats. And they got out to accept the calling that had come to them.

A lot of times we assume that Jesus had this irresistible, soul-piercing stare. He just looked at you and said, "Follow me," and there you went. It was like he could hypnotize people by the charisma, the divine truth that flowed form his eyes. I don't know. There were an awful lot of people who looked away from him and got to work building crosses. Some people will say that the Gospels give us the Reader's Digest of the calling, that Jesus had been working behind the scenes preaching and teaching those fishermen, so this is more a symbolic summary of how they were called. The truth is, nobody knows. Preachers make stuff up, but we don't know. It would be just as possible that Jesus had been walking along the seashore all day long, doing his job calling fishermen. "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." And one after another the fishermen said,

Dip dip dip dip dip dip dip dip


Mum mum mum mum mum mum


Sorry. I've got a job.

Some people's calling comes to them like a song. From the age of three, they know they're going to be doctors or artists, or garbage men. I'm serious. One of the best stories I've ever heard on NPR was about a garbageman in Chicago. He talked about how when he was five years old, he'd look out his window in the morning at the garbage men with their big, groaning truck and their gloves and boots, and he knew this was what he was meant to do with his life. Being a garbage man was his calling, and he loved it. He's probably the happiest, best garbage man in the world. We should all do so well.

Some people's calling comes early. But most people have to struggle. A lot of times our calling comes to us when we're doing a job, maybe a job we thought was our calling. And we hate it. Or we're bored by it. The hardest thing we do every day is getting out of bed because we know we have to go to that job.

Maybe, at the end of the day, down at the end of the line, where the poorest, worst fishermen were mending the holes in their worn-out nets that fell apart anytime a fish twisted too hard, maybe down at the bottom of the barrel, Jesus walked up to Simon and Andrew, James and John and said, "Follow me, and I will make you..." and that's as far as he got. "Stop!" They said. "You had me at hello. See ya', Dad." And off they went, splashing through the water to follow the first plausible ticket out of their dead-end job market.

We don't know. The reason I think this might be an equally valid explanation is I know from experience that most of us don't find our calling when we're five years old. Our calling comes to us after punching the clock, and punching the clock. Or when we have no clock to punch. The boredom or the desperation makes us really, really ask ourselves, "What is it I'm supposed to do with my life? What did God make me to be?" Most people don't find their calling on a mountaintop, they find it in the valleys. It's in the valleys that we stop long enough to lift up our eyes to the hills around us and ask, "Have I been climbing the wrong one all this time? Which one am I really supposed to climb?" And slowly we peel away the layers of expectations we've put on ourselves or the goals that other people have wrapped around us, and slowly the dreams that God plants in our hearts begin to grow back.

Your calling is calling.

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Times may be hard right now, but we still live in a place where the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up," is exciting to ask. We might laugh at some of the answers, or at their sheer multiplicity. "I want to be a singing cowgirl rock star brain surgeon, who juggles flaming torches and writes bedtime stories for puppies." And you're thinking, "Argh, I wanted to do that, too." We're so lucky to live in a place where questions about what kids want to be when they grow up mean something. Because they just might pull it off. Too many places the only answer to "What do you want to be when you grow up," is "Alive." They're just hoping they live long enough to see tomorrow. Does that mean these people have no calling? No purpose?

In the church we believe that God has more in mind for each of us than patching the holes in our nets. We believe God makes each person special, that every person on the face of the earth is here for a reason. They might not know what that reason is, or conditions might be keeping them from believing it. But God puts everyone here for a purpose.

When we help people, we don't do it because it makes us feel good. Although sometimes it does. When we help people, we don't do it so they'll owe us something. Although sometimes they do. When we help people, it's because we believe in their purpose. We believe in their worth. We believe that if they have a chance, their calling might come calling. And whether they answer the call or not, at least they deserve the chance. We help people because we believe in God. We believe in God in them. "Whenever you do it to the least of these," Jesus said, "you do it unto me." We help people because we believe Jesus is in them, a holy purpose is in them, a calling is in them - that maybe they can see, by the grace of God, and with a little help.

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Your calling is calling.

I find that I don't ask any children nearly so much what they want to be when they grow up. As long as it's not something like, Axe Murderer, or Auto Executive, I'm OK with that. And you can kind of tell those kids without asking. If they become rich, powerful, Nobel Prize winners, great. And if they work real hard and become the best garbage men in the city, well, that's great, too. It's not about what they do, it's what they do with what they have. It's about what they help other people do. It's about believing that whatever they have, it comes from God. It's about finding peace in the calling that Jesus calls them to, whatever that is.

Maybe you're lucky enough to have more than one calling. Or maybe your calling has changed. If there's a dream, or calling within you, there are also plenty of callings around you, too. God's not just in your heart, God's out in the world, too. Situations change, and God might have different work for you tomorrow. Today God might need you to be a fisherman. But tomorrow, God might want you to go do something else. You might have certain gifts, or you might just be trainable enough to go work with God on a number of different projects. The catch is staying open, staying prayerful, staying ready. Because you never know when Jesus is going to come walking up to your boat, and say, "Follow me."

I'm certain that your calling is calling. And I'm also pretty sure that you want to answer that call. Think about it. Pray about it. Test the calling to see if it's really Jesus calling. And if, after all that, if you really do believe it's Jesus, calling you to follow him, what are you going to do? Are you going to stay in the boat, mending your net, fiddling with your future? Or are you going to answer?