INTIMACY, IDENTITY, & PURPOSE
In all my years of ministry, I have found one axiom most helpful above all others:
Through intimacy with God
We learn to inhabit our identity in King Jesus
And discover our purpose as the Spirit-led Church.
This set of values has become the lens through which I filter all things in our community. Many of our people find their way to our church because they have this deep-seated sense that there must be something more, but they have become disillusioned by the patterns they’ve internalized from their faith community of origin. It usually reads something like this:
If I behave according to the rules
Then I can earn a certain status
And eventually approach a distant God.
This model of behavior modification to earn something from God is not only dangerous in what it tells us about our inherent worth, or lack thereof, but it’s also profoundly unbiblical. it has even bled into our surrounding culture, where we find this incessant assumption that life is about following the rules or performing a certain way to achieve our highest ideals, namely, love.
There are certain passages of scripture that operate as kind of lens through which I read the rest of the Bible. One of those is Jesus’ parable often called “the prodigal son”[1]. I think it may be the best summary of the story of God precisely because it speaks to this flow of intimacy, identity, and purpose.
Perhaps you’re familiar with how it goes. A man has two sons. The younger son tells his father he wants his portion of the inheritance early, which is to say, “I already wish you were dead”. The father, out of love for his son, allows him to get what he wants (which I think is the best definition of “wrath”), probably knowing what it might do to him. Before long, the younger son squanders all his wealth, chasing after his selfish desires, until he finds himself in a foreign land amongst the pigs. He can’t be any farther from his father’s table, both geographically and spiritually. He decides to change his mindset and return home (we call this “repentance”), scheming a plot to try and curry favor with his father by become a hard worker for his keep. However, in the most beautiful twist, the father rushes to him, bats aside his excuses and reasoning, and embraces him, adorning him with sandals and rings and a robe of welcome. The son is celebrated in his coming home, much to the chagrin of the older son, who this whole time has stayed in the fields working hard to prove his worth to their father. The story ends with a challenge to the older son to also come home, perhaps not geographically but spiritually, emotionally. Jesus ends the story with an open-endedness meant to invite us to consider: which son are we?
The elder son is trapped in a religiosity many of us struggle to be free from. Perhaps if we try really hard, do and say all the right things, we can prove we deserve a seat at the table. Yet the fantastic revelation in the story was that everything the father possessed, including his very heart, was always there for both sons. He is already well-pleased with both of them simply because they are his children. To sit at the father's table and sup with him is to enjoy that unshakeable truth and learn what it means to be a son, to be a daughter.
This is not to say that the sons are exempt from the work in the homestead. We’re created to work, to care for creation, encourage its flourishing, as an extension of the intimacy we have with God. We see this in Jesus himself, at his baptism[2]. Before he has preached a single sermon, performed a single miracle, stood up to the powers and principalities of his day, before he was crucified for the sin of humanity, it was spoken over him, “this is my son, whom I love; in him I am well-pleased”. As we grow in intimacy with God, what is true of Jesus becomes true of us. Only then do we have the courage and the foundation we need to set out on our purpose.
PURPOSE, CALLING, & VOCATION
I believe our purpose is a common one. There are many ways we speak of it in the Christian household - to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to preach the gospel by all means, to reconcile the world back to God, to steward creation. Part of the unity in the church is this collective call to be “a royal priesthood”[3] and “Christ’s ambassadors”[4]. Interestingly enough, part of the way we come to inhabit our identities as God’s children is to go out into the world and do what God has called us to do. It’s less a way of earning that status as it is making what is truest about us on the inside apparent in the way we walk the world outside us.
Calling can be seen as the way in which each of us specifically fulfill that common purpose through the uniqueness of our stories, our personalities, and our gifts. The Bible is full of beautiful images that speak to our unity-in-diversity. My favorite image is the one Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 11 of the church as a single body with many different parts. He makes careful strides to show, while we may be tempted to privilege certain body parts over others by our own judgement, they all have equal worth and specific functions, emanating from the Spirit. Too often we tend to rank members of the body of Christ in terms of importance or ability, but to do so reveals a value system that is a far cry from the one God holds. To stand back and to see the remarkable diversity in the Church, the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, is like gazing at a stained glass window where every small colored shard contributes to the grandeur.
The beauty of understanding our individual calling as part of the larger purpose of the church is that we don’t feel the pressure to take the whole mission upon ourselves. We learn to trust that, as we steward well what God has placed on our hearts, others will do the same for their part in the larger picture. In this way, God weaves together a grand narrative that celebrates diversity, as we all contribute out of our gifts and limitations. There is tremendous relief in not holding the burden of the whole great commission, and with it a renewed call to responsibility to really understand what we’re each called to do.
I like to imagine Calling as the viscous long-term mission of my life, and vocation as the particular vessel that may hold it for a season. To put it another way, “calling” is what I am to do, while “vocation” is how and where I do it. I do not believe God always calls us in such specificity to certain vocations, although it does happen. Vocation often seems to be the place where our free will is exercised, where we trust that we have been shaped by Jesus over time to make decisions that honor the gifts God has given us. This is the place of freedom and creativity. It can be a source of anxiety for us to feel like we have to find exactly the right vocation, fearing we might miss the One Big Chance God gives us. It can be intimidating to take hold of opportunities and see how they help us to exercise our calling. But even as we move from one vocation or career to another, as we move through chapters in our life’s story, our calling should remain relatively the same.
My formal training is as an art teacher. My first career was teaching art in inner city schools in Nashville. Although my career only lasted three years, I have come to embrace the lessons I learned in that season, and the way art school shaped me, to meet the demands of my current vocation as a pastor of a church. When I look back over my journey, I can see that the passions and ways of seeing the world, of meeting the needs of people and where I want to take them, have remained relatively the same, even though the content and format of the work have changed.
Jonah or Stephen?
Oftentimes those of us in the Christian household are presented with the story of Jonah as a way to understand what it might be like when God calls us. Jonah is told by God to visit Nineveh, the land of his people’s worst enemies, to proclaim a message he doesn’t understand or want to give. Jonah tries to run from the job at hand, only to be swallowed up by a giant fish, spat out on the shore, and so he bregrudgingly calls the city to repentances. Much to his chagrin, they do so, and Jonah is left frustrated and wanting to die. The narrative doesn’t end with any sort of resolution for the hero, just a challenge from the Lord to check his attitude. The lesson here often reads as 1) God will call you to do something you don’t want to do, 2) for people you don’t want to associate with, 3) and you’ll be left bitter and burnt out. So best of luck in your life of misery.
I wonder if we can’t bring more nuance and understanding to the idea of calling and vocation by looking at the story of Stephen, often called “the proto-martyr”. In Acts 6, we see that the leaders of the church recognized a need in their burgeoning community - the Greek Jewish widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve suggested that seven people are appointed to the task, and the criteria is that they be “full of the Spirit and wisdom”, one of which is Stephen.
A practical need arises. The community appoints people who have the internal qualities necessary to meet that need, and then support them in the work. The whole community is better for it.
Now, if you know the story of Stephen, you might remember he is dragged before the Jewish leaders of the day, interrogated, and after a blazing sermon recounting the whole story of Israel, he is murdered in public and received into the presence of God. But that is another lesson altogether.
The point here is this: many of us think God will call us to do things for people we don’t like with skills we don’t possess. Yet more often than not, and especially as New Covenant people, God instills in us particular qualities that equip us for the journey that begin to shape our vocational possibilities. As we learn to read our stories with God, understand the uniqueness of our personalities, and cultivate the gifts instilled in us by the Spirit, we realize God has prepared us for a life of joyful service precisely because of who we are.
Reflection:
How have you come to understand the subtle differences between purpose, calling, and vocation up to this point in your life?
If you grew up in the Christian household, what were some of the tasks to which you believed you were called?
[1] Luke 15:11-32
[2] Matthew 3:11-17
[3] 1 Peter 2:5
[4] 2 Corinthians 5:20