Vocatio

Imaging a Visible Church

C. Andrew Doyle

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781640651180
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

• Popular author with broad appeal
• New vision for shaping future church leaders

The Church's mission is not dependent upon economic or worldly boundaries. The gospel will expand and grow where people respond to God's grace in their lives. The Episcopal Church, along with all denominational churches, is being forced to break out of old training models and traditions of ordination in this new age of mission. The Church must rethink formation of leaders (lay and clergy) to keep up with what God is already doing in the world. Participating in God's mission will press us to reconsider assumptions about the vocations themselves, and their shape for the future.

CHAPTER ONE

A Shalom Making God

God’s call disrupts the lives of settled people, both in biblical times and now. God sends, then and now, to transform the present world, subject to alien powers, into the world God intends. Discipleship and evangelism are, therefore, not primarily about church membership and recruitment but about an alternative way of being in the world for the sake of the world.

—Walter Brueggemann¹

God calls people to be about God’s work. The call is neither complicated nor hidden from view. On the other hand, religion calls priests. Religion redacts scripture to find traces of contemporary priesthood models to support a temple/church-oriented system. As we look at the whole of scripture without the lens of institution to misguide us, we see God calling people into God’s work and mission. When we include the Old Testament into this picture, we see important typologies that are echoed in the New Testament. God’s Spirit has been at work before time began and throughout time as we know it. God’s call to our ancient faith ancestors, therefore, is constant and consistent in manner and form with God’s call through the Incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Our sense of our own calling must begin with curiosity about how God has called God’s people from the very beginning, because the vocations held within the Church are not simply vocations of a “New Testament” kind, but are rooted in the authority of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel.

In the Old Testament, God calls a wide variety of people. God calls Israel into the wilderness and invites them to give of themselves. In the wilderness they ask, “Did you bring us out here to die?” The answer to all of God’s people throughout scripture, and to our communities today, is, “Yes.” We are constantly invited by God to leave the comfort of our lives for the discomfort of the journey with God.² God is at work for the world itself. To redeem the world is God’s mission. God calls people into community for the purpose of redemption: the inauguration of the kingdom of God. This emerging kingdom causes friction and is always in conflict with the culture of humanity and, oftentimes, the Church. We can see this throughout the circumstances of biblical history and in our own context.

Whole books could be written that detail the various invitations God made to this or that person in the Old Testament. There are the creation stories and God’s invitation to Adam and Eve to work in the Garden. There is the calling of Noah to restart creation. Abram (Abraham) and Sarai (Sarah) are called to leave the land of Ur of the Chaldeans—the beginning of generations of God’s people. There are the judges and the prophets. Jacob is called and renamed. There are women: Miriam—a leader who brings Israel out of slavery in Egypt with Moses; Deborah—a judge of Israel; Huldah—a prophetess who helped Josiah; Ruth and Naomi; and Esther—the queen of Persia, to name a few. The sheer number of called people is too many to number, but we will examine a few of these crucial stories.

Let us begin with Abraham and Sarah, originally called Abram and Sarai and renamed for their faithfulness. In many ways the story of their calling begins the narrative of God’s people. Abraham and Sarah were frequently cited by the early Church as examples of God’s expansive promise to all people. God said, “Go,” and all of their worldly plans were set aside as they left their homeland for God’s wilderness. Their lives were disrupted by God’s invitation and their response. Theologian Walter Brueggemann says Abraham

is caught up in a world of discourse and possibility about which he knew nothing until addressed, a world of discourse and possibility totally saturated with God’s good promises for him and for the world through him (Gen 12:1). By this call Abraham is propelled into an orbit of reality that totally preempts his life and removes him completely from any purpose or agenda he may have entertained for himself before that moment.³

Abraham and Sarah offered themselves faithfully to the journey and became a blessing to the world.

The same invitation was given to Moses, Esther, and Jonah. God sent Moses to Pharaoh to speak on God’s behalf. God invited Moses onto holy ground and challenged him to accept the mission of freeing God’s people. Accepting the invitation meant that Moses would leave his past life behind: his journey in Egypt, the murder he committed, his fleeing into the pasturelands, and his long exile shepherding sheep. God invited Moses to join in the long line of ancestors on God’s mission of shalom—of peace. Brueggemann says that Moses’s call was “an abrupt act that displaces Moses for a world of conflict propelled by God’s holiness.”⁴ Moses was oblivious to the long history of God’s mission until he stood on that holy ground and was invited to “go” on God’s behalf. Like Abraham and Sarah, his going was about bringing a blessing to the world. Vocation is broader than being called into community. Vocation is also about acceding to God’s disruptive mission—saying “yes,” and then going.⁵

Esther, the queen of Persia, was called by God and given work to do. In a departure from how God dealt with Moses and Abraham, God did not come to Esther directly, but spoke to her through others. While the means may be different, God’s invitation was the same. Haman had a plan for King Xerxes to annihilate all of the Jews in the kingdom, and Esther was the agent of protection for God’s people. It was Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, who first spoke to Esther about the plight of her people in Esther 2:7, and she was immediately brought into the conflict.

Through Mordecai, God invited Esther to “go” and plead with Xerxes not to carry out Haman’s plan (Esther 4:8). Esther resisted God’s invitation delivered through Mordecai. Mordecai then said, “For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). Mordecai reframed Esther’s royal standing as an opportunity, an invitation into the greater story of God and God’s people. Despite her fearful preoccupations about safety, God invited Esther to enter the plight of her people. She was to be a blessing to the world by stopping the king’s violence and saving her people.

Isaiah’s call story is commonly read at Episcopal ordination services today. We do not know much about Isaiah. He was one of the great prophets and a school, or guild, continued to prophesy in his name after his death. We do know that Isaiah began his career immediately following King Uzziah’s death. Uzziah, whose name means “Yahweh is my strength,” was evidently an excellent king of Judah. He brought the military to great victories and built forts and towers. He fostered development in the fields of agriculture and trade (2 Chron. 26). He did everything right in God’s sight (2 Chron. 27:2). And he had leprosy. The scripture tells us he was prideful and was not the best at worshipping God. He was rarely seen in the temple. But he was beloved and the nation was strong. When Uzziah died, everything changed and Judah was beset by adversity. Under threat economically and militarily, the very safety of God’s people was jeopardized by surrounding enemies.

In the midst of this sea change, Isaiah was called. Abraham heard God’s voice, Moses heard God speak from a bush, and Esther heard God speak through Mordecai. Isaiah’s calling was inaugurated by a great vision.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. (Isa. 6:1–4)

Esther was afraid to honor God’s call because it put her at risk. Moses had other plans and believed he could not speak well enough to accomplish what God wished. Isaiah suffered no such ambivalence. He humbly accepted God’s invitation, believing that he was not worthy to go for God because he was unclean. God sent one of the creatures down and touched Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal taken from the altar. Then God asked, “Whom shall I send? Who will be my messenger?” God invited Isaiah to respond. Isaiah answered, “I will go! Send me!” (Isa. 6:6–8). Again, it was an invitation to go—an invitation that overwhelmed misgivings about worthiness, personal plans for the future, or bodily safety.

Finally, there is the story of Jonah. I mention Jonah because he flat out rejected God’s invitation at first. God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah’s response was to go to Tarshish. He went to Joppa, got on a boat, and attempted to flee from God’s call. A storm came up, the sailors threw Jonah overboard, a big fish swallowed him, and then, upon being spit up on the shore, Jonah heard God again: “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” Jonah went to Nineveh to be God’s messenger (Jon. 1–3).

The reason that Jonah did not want to go was because God was too forgiving! Jonah knew that if he did what God wanted, then God would simply forgive the people. Jonah complained angrily when God proved him right. He cried out in prayer, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jon. 4:2).

God’s invitations are very persuasive. Through visions, voice, and the advice and counsel of friends, God invites God’s people to go. The specific circumstances of this going vary across different contexts, but there is always purpose behind God’s invitation to go. People are always being sent. There is a hinge here in the language—a double meaning: going and being sent are about both the invitation and the purpose.

God called Abraham and Sarah to become a people that bless the world, which is a habit of God’s throughout all of scripture. Faithfulness is the act of accepting the invitation and opening oneself to becoming the blessing. Those whom God invites, God also blesses, in order that they might bless others. God said to Abraham and Sarah, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Their promised family would outnumber the stars of Abraham’s counting and be a blessing to the world. Brueggemann ponders the meaning of this blessing and says, “‘Blessing’ is not a religious or moral phenomenon in the world,” it is a “characteristic feature of creation that is fruitful and productive.”⁶

Creation was separated from God because its communal structures were organized around itself as opposed to God. These inwardly focused structures perpetuated a mimesis, a repetition, of violence that created a dark shadow over the kingdom of God. Abraham and Sarah were called to show how human community could be different. God made a point of rejecting religious violence by refusing Abraham’s offer of Isaac as a sacrifice. God undid the human drive to sanctify murder. God was interested in a shalom that broke the repetitive, violent cycle of Cain and Abel. Abraham and Sarah’s call was to heal the violence that separated humanity from God. Yet, the feud continues, and so does the division between God and humanity.

Even with all of religion’s great gifts to society, we must acknowledge that disunity and tribal grievances still exist. God continues to invite us to go as peace bearers and we continue, often, to reject the invitation. It is religion that calls for the sacrifice of Jesus. His is one name among the many who have been scapegoated for the sake of political and religious peace. Religions have a propensity to scapegoat others. God’s invitation to Abraham and Sarah was an invitation beyond this history of sacrifice. God went further and sent the peace bearers to dwell in the midst of the other.

The relationship between Abraham and God is typological of God’s relationship with all whom God invites into mission. Abraham was invited to be in community with God, and to take that community on the road. God’s call removes us from the realm of self-definition: we begin to define ourselves as creatures in relationship with our Creator. This movement dissolves the idea of the “other,” for the only true other is God. We no longer divide the human community into friends and others. Instead, there are only friends along the way. When we obey God’s call to go, there are no strangers or aliens. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that our invitation to journey with God means confessing and rejecting the notion that

for there to be an “us” there must be a “them,” the people not like us. Humanity is divided into friends and strangers, brothers and others. The people not like us become the screen onto which we project our fears. They are seen as threatening, hostile, demonic. Identity involves exclusion which leads to violence.⁷

To journey as Abraham and Sarah did is to reject our inclination to protect ourselves by force. In their going—in our going—we embrace our vulnerability and forsake our tribe in order to journey with God and God’s tribe, pronouncing God’s blessing upon the world. Brueggemann says, “Abraham is called to exist so that the general condition of curse in the world is turned to a general condition of blessing, life, and well-being. Israel’s mission is to mend the world in all its parts.” God’s people are to be a blessing in the world. God intends the world to be “generous, abundant, and fruitful, effecting generative fertility, material abundance, and thisworldly prosperity—shalom in the broadest scope.”⁸

The importance of being a people bringing about peace and blessing in the world is affirmed in the teaching of the early Church. Paul used God’s call to Abraham and Sarah and their blessing as a paradigm of the expanding mission of God. Paul read the blessing and invitation of God as being fulfilled in the great expansion of grace to all people regardless of ethnicity, gender, and social class (Gal. 3:8). God will not be limited to a religious or ethnic “us vs. them,” but instead imagines a kingdom where we are all beloved of God. This kingdom is founded upon the rejection of violence for the sake of nation, and faith in favor of shalom for God. Our presence and participation in God’s creation is our invitation into the community of blessing—this community of shalom. We are rooted in it by our very nature. The mission is not about nation-states, or making people members of religious institutions; the mission is a journey into a new community of being.

While God sent Abraham and Sarah as a blessing to the whole world, God sent Moses as a blessing of peace and a means of deliverance for God’s people. Egypt had become an intolerably ugly place for master and slave alike, and God intervened in this evil course of affairs by sending Moses. Egypt was supported by slave labor long before the Israelites ever arrived. The pyramid of Giza was built before the birth of Abraham.

When life becomes cheap and people are seen as a means not an end, when the worst excesses are excused in the name of tradition and rulers have absolute power, then conscience is eroded and freedom lost because the culture has created insulated space in which the cry of the oppressed can no longer be heard.⁹

We already know that enslaving one another is part of the cycle of violence. The enslavement of God’s people in Egypt was even prophesied to Abraham when he began his journey. Abraham and Sarah’s people were destined to be strangers in a strange land.¹⁰ Regardless of his plan to live out his days shepherding with his father-in-law, Jethro, Moses was sent to bring shalom to the people in Egypt.

God said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians. . . . The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them” (Exod. 3:7–9). Brueggemann points out that God often goes and does this or that. However, in the call stories, God sends someone as an envoy. In this case, God sent Moses.¹¹ God said to Moses, “So come, I will s...