(Acts 4.5-12; 1 John 3.16-24; John 10.11-18)
‘We know love by this, that the Son of God laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.’ (1 John 3.16)
“I don’t know how much longer I can take this…” It might come out in words like these, and it might be said about marriage or some other relationship which is being endured – which saps the spirit rather than builds it up. It might be the experience of illness, borne personally or in caring for a loved one who gets no better and whose needs are ever greater and more demanding. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand this…” someone might say when they are the victim of misunderstanding or find themselves in the midst of a mess of their own personal making. Or it might be work and pressures which overwhelm rather than fulfill the individual.
What allows you to be the person you really are, rather than the individual you are forced into being? And what keeps you going regardless of all those pressures bearing upon you? I ask these questions because today is observed by the Church as “Vocations Sunday” – and vocation is about the recognition of calling, about seeing what I am called to be… more than a job, beyond planning a career, and where you need to hold in balance circumstance and reality.
From time to time I get asked – frequently by children and teenagers, “How old were you when you decided to become a Vicar?” I remember being asked that by one of my children! I didn’t normally expect questions like that from him that might require some profound attention to what I’ve been doing with my life. But the question arose from the vulnerability that young people might feel when the pressure is on them to make choices… How you decide when you’re that young what subjects you want to pursue at A-level or university? How do you know what job you might want to do? What if you might make the wrong choice? These days it’s the case that most people will be expected to make several career changes during the course of their working lives, but that’s not much comfort when you’re starting out and that first big choice confronts you. I suspect that it was much easier when I was growing up. There were no fees to find for a university education, you could do what you want, many people finished their degrees not much clearer about what they were going to do with their lives – there just seemed to be much more time available before those critical choices had to be made.
But of course the question that gets put to me, “How old were you when you decided to become a Vicar?” - it’s the wrong question. I’m not sure I ever decided to become a Vicar. Being a “Vicar” is a job – in fact it’s a job-title, though a convenient one and rather easier to get your tongue round than “priest-in-charge” which is what my job title is in the parish of Castleside, as opposed to being Vicar of Benfieldside. I’m only a “Vicar” because first of all I’m a priest – and being a priest is both more and less than a job. A job is something you do. A priest is only something you can be. You’re ordained to it – something about you is said to be changed by ordination, but only after it’s first recognised that it has to do with the person you are. There’s careful assessment in the selection of clergy, but fundamentally the issue which prevails above any question of abilities and skills is, “who is this person? – what is at the root of their being? – how are they being called to respond to God’s calling?” And if that sounds terribly profound, it’s not because there is a set of answers which can be ticked, and mean you can go forward successfully to be ordained. It’s because they are questions which need to be answered about each and every person if we are truly to respond to God. Everyone has a calling if we are truly God’s people. It’s a calling that needs to be addressed from the time of our baptism – individuals known by name, baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. From that time on God lives in us, we live our lives in God. But do we recognize it? What difference will it make to our lives? What is God calling me to be?
And the answer can be worked out in many career choices, as people do many jobs. The call to priesthood doesn’t necessarily require working it out by doing one particular job. Many people continue a secular job day-by-day in a variety of careers. Our own Phil Carter has been ordained after retirement from a life of teaching. Since ordination I’ve always been one of the stipendiary clergy – paid by the Church – but it doesn’t always have to be that way, and I would still go on being a priest, whether paid or not. I might be nearing the time when I have to retire, but I’ll still go on being a priest. “I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this…” That’s a statement that perhaps in the future won’t be so much an indication of desperation as a statement of financial reality if the Church simply finds itself unable to pay its clergy – but they wouldn’t stop being priests.
Vocation – and the question of what constitutes a call from God – is something that sometimes has to be addressed in the most difficult of circumstances. When I have found the going tough, I have had to recognize just how many other people have to carry on with their own lives and in their own calling. If I found it tough to be a single parent and a priest, just how tough is it for anyone else? Can you be a single parent and a Christian? Yes, of course! So whatever people might have gone through in difficult times, everyone has to ask the question, “What is God saying to me?” “What particular task or calling does God have for me?” A church which recognizes the realities of daily living will be a church in which clergy and lay people with a particular call to ministry will find those realities bearing personally upon them.
“How much longer can I go on like this?” For me as a priest there needs to be a reality to my calling. For anyone I’d say that being tested in your calling – in the circumstances of daily life – is not the same as the denial of that calling. Asking myself - where should I be now? - I’ve learned to appreciate so much more where other people are in their lives, how they fulfil their callings. You can change a job, but it doesn’t mean that you give up a calling. I could stop being a Vicar, but I’d go on being a priest. I’ve learned that you can cease to be a husband, but I can’t envisage not being a father.
That’s about being what I am… who I am. Priesthood is not just about me – that wouldn’t be priesthood, because the priest should exercise priesthood to enable people in their own vocation and calling. You can’t be a priest on your own. You need support – support which I’ve learned to value so much. And you need to recognize what other people must be enabled to do by the fact of your priesthood.
Prayer is fundamental. “How can I go on?” There are those disciplines which you simply do. Like prayer. And if the priest needs to get on with prayer as part of the stuff of daily living, then it’s something for every other Christian too. Love is the other fundamental. Love in which we so frequently fail, but which is nevertheless our motivation and the basis of our calling. The recognition of love is the recognition of our being in God. Which brings me back to those words from our 2nd reading with which I began: ‘We know love by this, that the Son of God laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.’
