Ordinary Callings
The first time I spoke at length to my (now) husband Jordan, we were in a Ford Taurus, traveling from Connecticut—from my childhood home—back to college in western Pennsylvania. We exchanged pleasantries, talked about what music we should listen to in the car, and started driving. Then his very normal and appropriate question: “What’s your major?” launched us into my first conversation about the doctrine of vocation.
At the time of this exchange, I was a new college Freshman, and still a relatively new Christian. In my fervor to commit my life to Jesus, I was in turmoil over what my life should look like. The source of my anguish: should I trade in my literature major for a biblical studies major? Beginning college, I wanted to become a literature professor, ideally one whose expertise was in the realm of literary theory and composition. But here’s the thing that was driving me crazy: could I really serve God in that type of a career?
Although I had been baptized as a baby in the Episcopalian church and attended fairly regularly for the first ten years of my life, when my parents were divorced, we stopped going altogether, save on Christmas and Easter. When I finally heard the gospel for the first time, I was somewhere around sixteen or seventeen years old, and subsequently began attending a Christian Missionary Alliance church. It was in this church environment that I saw a strong emphasis on missions and pastoral ministry for the first time. As a new believer, it seemed to me that real Christians did missions. Real Christians went into vocational ministry. Real Christians shaped their lives around their faith—they didn’t spend time debating literature and textual interpretation in the academy, right? At least I didn’t think they did.
Amid my extremely long answer to Jordan’s unintentionally difficult question, he recognized my need to hear about the doctrine of vocation. He had just finished Gene Edward Veith’s book God at Work not long before this car ride and had the information fresh in his mind. His response to me boiled down to something along the lines of, “God calls us to love Him and serve our neighbor in every area of our life, and vocational ministry is simply one of the callings you could have, not the highest calling.”
During the time of Luther, and similar to the mission’s emphasis of my high-school church, “vocation” was distinctly connected to full-time church ministry. In this way, those who existed and performed other tasks in the world, such as being a farmer or a midwife, were not considered to have a “vocation” equal to that a monk. To combat this idea, Luther emphasized the priesthood of all believers. Veith explains, ‘The priesthood of all believers’ did not make everyone into church workers; rather, it turned every kind of work into a sacred calling.” It did not denigrate church work but emphasized the importance of all types of work.
It would be misleading if I said I had any intention of actually ending up in vocational ministry at the time. The only reason I was debating switching majors was out of a feeling of obligation, of a sense that I could only serve God in that type of work. I had just begun opening the scriptures for the first time; I had just learned who Abraham was two months before this car ride, for example. It was my overwhelming desire to serve God in my life. I just hadn’t found a way to reconcile literary theory and a life devoted to God. Fast forward eleven years, and here I am in full-time vocational ministry—but how did that happen? I will unpack that soon, but first, I’d like to look more precisely at what the doctrine of vocation is.
The Doctrine of Vocation
In our culture today, if you were to say the word “vocation,” people would immediately associate it with the idea of “jobs,” or the work we do to make money. The word “vocation,” however, has a historical doctrinal meaning. It is derived from the Latin word vocatio, meaning “calling.” Every person is laden with the task of loving God and serving their neighbor (Mark 12:30-31), but that service manifests itself in every sphere of our lives, and God works through us to care for others. The purpose, then, of living out vocational callings in our lives is to allow God to work in and through us to help and serve those around us. Veith writes,
God healed me. I wasn’t feeling well, so I went to the doctor. The nurse ran some tests, and the lab technicians identified the problem; so the doctor wrote me a prescription, I got it filled at the pharmacist, and in no time I was a lot better. But it was still God who healed me. He did it through the medical vocations.
It is not contradictory to believe that God is the one healing through the hands of the medical professionals, it is simply the ordinary ordering of things. If you read Romans 13, it becomes clear that God even works through non-believers to execute His will and purposes, which is why we are called to submit to earthly authorities. In every relationship, every service done, God is there serving our neighbor through us.
So what are some examples of vocational callings? Obviously job-related work fits this, but it’s not the only thing. Perhaps that calling is to be a nurse, a farmer, a president, a data-analysis specialist, or a fast-food worker—all of these are job-related vocations, but vocation extends into our personal lives too. God calls us to be in community in the church and society. He calls us to be in relationships with other people: friendship, marriage, citizenship. All of these are ways in which we not only relate to one another, but they are ways in which we can bless others as well.
As mentioned earlier, the boy in the Ford Taurus and I ended up falling in love and getting married. Thus, one of my callings is to be a wife. We had two children, now I serve my two small kiddo neighbors as a mother. He became a pastor in the Lutheran church, so I became a pastor’s wife. I was not born into these vocations, but they were given to me as a blessing as years passed, as Veith says, “We do not choose our vocations. We are called to them.” All the while, I retained my vocations—and served others—as a friend, daughter, sister, active layperson in my church, stay-at-home mom, and citizen of the United States of America. In the realm of these different callings, I function differently. I do not treat my friends as I would treat my children, nor do I serve my government in the same way that I serve my church, and my vocations make me no better or worse than someone who serves in different vocations.
This said, I have struggled immensely in each of these vocations (and all of the others along with them)—as we all probably do. How can I be a good citizen if I feel like I can’t vote in good conscience for candidates in an election? Can I be a good mother if I feel so profoundly frustrated when my children wake me up in the middle of the night? At what point do I cut off toxic friendships? Or should I muscle through knowing that God tells me to love all people?
Although complex and often laden with interpersonal difficulty, vocations are to be done out of joy. Luther explains at length the importance of joy in service—vocational callings are not law thrust upon us, but a way of serving in light of the gospel. A beautiful example of this is when Luther explores the rhetorical question: why would anyone want to be married and have kids? Kids are smelly and frustrating and demand time and attention, and marriage isn’t any easier. Luther responds:
What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight” [...].
Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil's fools. (The Estate of Marriage)
I have to admit, I loved citing this passage when our children were small, and I wanted my husband to have a turn with diaper duty. But aside from the radical nature of Luther’s willingness as a man to attend to “women’s work,” this passage is fundamentally about joy and serving the helpless child to whom God has entrusted to love.
Vocation is Motivated by a Free Gospel
It is important to take a step back and acknowledge with Luther and the other reformers that performing good works benefits us nothing in terms of our salvation: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9, NKJV). No amount of changed diapers can merit us eternal salvation. No quantifiable joy in our service will do so either. Even if these works were far above and beyond the ordinary works that we do in life, they still have no bearing on our eternal status before God. Veith explains, “We often speak of ‘serving God,’ and this is a worthy goal, but strictly speaking, in the spiritual realm, it is God who serves us.” The purpose of living out our vocational callings is to love and serve our neighbor. Vocation is not self-serving to gain us a place in heaven, but a life focused on serving others out of the abundance of our freedom earned through Christ’s sacrifice. Paul teaches this in the next verse in Ephesians writing, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10, NKJV).
If my works did something to justify me before God, wouldn’t my works, in fact, be fundamentally self-serving? These “good works” would use my neighbor to my own end, and not actually serve my neighbor for the sake of serving. The law convicts us of our sins and leads us to contrition and repentance. Through that repentance, we have ears to hear the message of the gospel: that Jesus Christ came into the world to bear our sin on the cross and to rise from the dead, conquering sin, death, and the devil for us. Now freed from the demands and threats of the law, we are made free to serve in light of it.
Living in Light of Vocational Callings
The doctrine of vocation followed me throughout these eleven years, reminding me to serve from a place of joy, acknowledging that in every way that I am called, I should be glad to serve—not as law, but as a freed, loved woman in Christ.
So how did I end up in vocational ministry when I had been convinced that I could pursue my dream of becoming a literature professor? In short, God called me to it. It sounds overly simple, but I have to say it’s simply true. All of the things I have done in the last eleven years: getting married, having kids, beginning seminary, moving five times, etc., God has made my callings clear. While my relational callings have remained remarkably the same, except for the death of my mother, my career was the thing that changed the most over the years. I went from retail worker, to stay-at-home-mom, to editor, to seminarian, to preschool teacher, to college minister, and many of these overlapped at any given time. It wasn’t until I graduated from seminary—with still no intention of going into vocational ministry—I was called to serve part-time as a preschool teacher at a Lutheran school.
Now, a year later, I have been called to a role as a college minister, working with female students. Many of my conversations with them cycle back to the idea of vocation. How do I know what God wants me to do? Can I love God in the job I’ve picked out for myself? Am I serving my neighbor if my motivations are self-serving? (All good and similar questions to those I had in college).
And to these questions, I remind them that when Jesus died on the cross, we did not only have all of our sins wiped away. We were also given as a free gift through faith all of Christ’s righteousness. Theologians call this the “great exchange.” In this exchange, when God looks on us in our sin, he sees the robes of righteousness given to us in Christ. Similarly, because our good works will never truly be perfect, God looks on all that we do and credits it to us as perfect for the sake of Christ. God wants to use us, and he does so through absolutely ordinary things. He does so in all of our callings. We exist in our vocations imperfectly, yet because of our faith in Jesus, it is credited to us as righteousness.
