you, TOO, HAVE A CALLING John M, Buchanan
I Corinthians 12:4-13 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
April 30, 1978 Golumbus, Ohio

In much of life I find myself a layman. There may be a few renaissance men
among us, those who can adjust a carburator, build a cabinet, sail a ship, manage a
farm, write poetry, play the harpsichord, cook an omelette, but not many, For the
most part we depend on a specialist, The technological revolution of the twentieth
century has made specialization necessary, We depend on people who know a great
deal about a particular thing. When we enter a hospital we are grateful for the
fact that we will be in the hands of a highly trained specialist, When the furnace
refuses to work we are relieved to turn the matter over to a person who knows all
there is to know about heating systems,

Hand in hand with the technological revolution, we have seen in our lifetime
the inaudible explosion in knowledge, In science, medicine, history - there is more
to know than the individual can assimilate, Harvey Cox, theological gadfly, recalls
his determination after graduation to keep abreast of his field. And he confesses
that his solemn vow soon meant reading the reviews of tha new books ~ and finally,
simply reading the titles, It is, in all disciplines, the age of the specialise.

Sociologists are warning us that there are inherent dangers in the phenomenon,
There are serious ethical problems raised by our dependence on computer technology,
in our ability to construct a Neutron Bomb, Educators, for instance, must constantly
confront the issue of whether their purpose is to train people to know their way
around one particular technological field, or to gain the broader, more generalized
view of what was once valued as a liberal education,

We are too eager to bestow a mystique on the specialist: we are easily intimi~
dated, afraid even to ask questions of the surgeon, or insurance agent, or automo-
bile mechanic for fear of revealing our own ignorance, The specialist mentality is
very much a part of the way we live, and it spills over, almost naturaily, into
matters religicus,

Now there is a curious dilemma here, We are the ones who invented the word
layman, or laity, It comes from a Greek word lacs, and it meant "the whole people
of God", The meaning of the word, however, has changed almost entirely. Webster
defines laity as "the mass of the people as distinguished from the specially
skilled", The very word layman implies - uninitiated, amateur, ignorant, Ironic-
ally, the church uses the word as the culture understands it. The Laity are the
people - as distinct from the clergy, the specialists. Here too, the laity are the
amateurs, the uninitiated, the ignorant. The specialists here are assumed to know
the secrets of the subject: certain authority is granted to the specialist: a
mystique exists, fed by an esoteric vocabulary, a certain style of dress and a
general remoteness from the laity - the people,

But first, think with me for a moment as we put the whole matter in historical
perspective, The issue of specialization initially emerged in the first century
Christian Church in the city of Corinth, It's too bad that we don't know a Little
bit more about the Corinthian people: they appear to be delightful in a scandalous
sort of way, They were strong prople. They reflected the cosmopolitan atmosphere
of their seaport city: they were a potent blend of paganism, Greek philosophy and
orthodox Judaism, They were vigorous, contentious and competitive, When they
observed the Lord's Supper some of them were so enthusiastic that they gorged them-
selves on the food and got drunk on the wine, And when they began to order their

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life as a Christian community they were continually comparing their respective tasks
and arguing about their relative importance, They were playing a first century
version of a contemporary game we know so well: "mine is better than yours".

5t, Paul saw immediately the danger of the specialist mentality and addressed
it in that portion of his letter to his Corinthian friends that we heard this
morning. There are many gifts, he told them; many different skills and abilties.
God needs them all, None is more important, more necessary, more heiy than any of
the others, In fact, the church is like a bedy ~ dependent on all of its parts
performing the function they were best suited to perform, The task, the vocation,
if you will, of the Christian according to Paul is to exploit and use to the fullest
the special abilities and skills he or she has, To be oneself, that is to say: Joy~
fully and gratefully and energetically to use what I have been given - that is my
vocation,

The point is that there is no ecclesiastical caste system: there are a variety
of ways to be a Christian: ne one way is more important, more pleasing to God, than
another way, Unfortunately, much of that has been lost on the church, Very early
in its life the Christian Church borrowed two time honored ideas from the world. The
first was the hierarchial model for exercise of power and authority, Just as a
kingdom needed a king, an” empire an cmporer,an army a general, so the church as an
organization needed a leader, a head, a boss, Just as the world granted status,
privilege and rank to its leaders, so the church rather quickly followed suit with
its clergy. The second idea was borrowed from Greek philosophy; namely, that all
reality can be divided into two categories - spirit and flesh, sacred and secular,
The realm of religion was seen to be distinct, apart from the world,

When those two ideas combine ~ the hierarchical model of leadership and the
dichotomy between religion and the rest of life, the result simply put, is two kinds
of Christians ~ clergy and laity, One, granted the. special status of leadership, is
isolated from the world, undefiled by such worldly concerns as earning a living and
raising a family: the other is emersed in the world but dependent now on the reli
gious specialist to grant access to the Holy; through prayer ~ which it was assumed
they could da best, through reading of sacred texts - which were kept in a language
only they could read, and through sacred ritual which ordination permitted them
alone to perform, The clergy had a vocation, which means a calling, given by God.
The laity were less fortunate, but free to pursue Life on the basis of other
considerations,

Now that is a very long way from the content of First Corinthians 12 in
particular and the New Testament theology in general, But it has been an altogether
durable heresy, Twenty centuries later we are still operating with a slightly
modified version of the same system, Clergy, it is assumed rather universally,
should have been called by God to their profession, Doctors, teachers, mechanics
come to theirs by an altogether different route, Clergy are specialists: the uni-
versal assumption is that they know about God, can pray better and longer and more
effectively than the laity, And, somewhere inside all of us there lingers that old,
oid notion that te be a minister one must not be worldly, [I still don't know
whether to be flattered or insulted when someote says, "You don't look like a
minister," Ina delightfully satiric book, How to Become a Bishop without Being
Religious, Charles Merrill Smith advises that a successful preacher will "gather
up in himself a host of characteristics which advertise that here is a man of much
prayer, disentangled from the secular, soiling concerns which obsess most men,.,

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You may have a taste for shaggy sport coats, bright ties and the Like, You must
ruthlessly suppress it.,,Who would turn for spiritual counsel to a man in a tweed
sport coat?,,,A prudent preacher will never use alcohol or tobacco (certain Episco-
palians, Presbyterians and Lutherans are exempt), avoid card playing and dancing and
the use of profanity, His pleasures will not be a vigorous nature, [Tt is a pity
that croquet is no longer popular for it is the ideal recreation for clergy. No

one gets very excited about it, no one swears over a poor shot, it is inexpressive
and it doesn't work up a sweat." (pp. 1-13).

Only in sophisticated literature do clergy come across as human beings, Graham
Greene, Tennessee Williams, John Updike portray priests and ministers as fallible
men, full of self-doubt and passion, sometimes tortured but altogether human beings,
Talevision and Hollywood, on the other hand, relentlessly sustain the stereotype, I
am probably unusually sensitive, but I have yet to encounter a clergy type on tele~
vision or in a movie with whom E would want to spend much time, The real tragedy,
however, is not in the popular stereotype of ministers, but in the resultant idea of
the laity, The tragedy is that the entire Protestant experiment was born in an idea
so revolutionary that it would have erased all the distinctions within the people of
God, Listen to this significant paragraph from Presbyterian historian Leonard
Trinterud, "The ministry, said Calvin, is a function of the whole church, distributed
among the members according as God has given to each various gifts and capacities and
corresponding calis, Calvin rejected the concept embodied in the terms ‘clergy’ and
"laity', The ministry is not an order of men, religiously different from those who
are supposedly merely laymen, The ministry is not even a group of men, The ministry
is basically the church fulfilling its God-given task," (The Church and Its
Changing Ministry, p.46).

Act the time of the Reformation it was called the "Priesthood of all Believers”.
It was the revolutionary concept that the task of the clergy, while requiring full
time effort, Was essentially no more important and certainly no more holy, than any
task performed by any other person. We have affirmed it this morning in the ordina-
tion of Elders and Deacons, I continue to believe that this idea, to which we pay
occasional lip service, is one of the most dynamic ideas within the Christian faith,
and that it has ramifications far beyond the life of the institutional church,

Consider, for instance, the broader implications, We assume that God calls
people to the clergy; that to be a minister is a holy calling, But what if God is
equally interested in politics, and homemaking and the law? What if God's call may
be answered in a variety of ways depending on the particular skills and abilities
He has already given the person? Eiton Trueblood put it eloquently: "The exciting
idea behind the New Testament use of ‘calling’ is that ours is God's world, in all
its parts, The way in which we grow potatoes is as much a matter of God's will as
is the way in which we pray or sing,'' (Ibid p.63). And an Englishman, Canon Edward
Patey: "ALL orders are holy, Plumbers are as much in holy orders as the clergy.
Electricians, park~keepers, doctors and typists are all working as much with the
things of God as the priest with the sacrament," (God's Frozen People, p.12).

The radical message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that God reaily loves the
world, The world is where His work is done, What that means personally is that God
values what you do in the world, Regardless of how you earn your Living, or how you
spend your time, it is of interest to God, He calls you to do it for His glory, In
fact, because you spend most of your time in the world and not in the church, your
opportunity to be an effective disciple of Jesus Christ and therefore an important

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part of the church, is far greater than the opportunity a clergyman has, In Hans
Ruedi-Weber's words you "spend most of your working hours in social, political,
economic and cultural areas where the decisive battles of faith are being fought,”
{opt,cit. p.12). That ts to say, God's work may be talked about, planned and
celebrated in this building. But it happens elsewhere - in the State House, and
Courtroom and banks and schools,

Do you think for a moment that God cares more about what hymns His people are
singing in Columbus, Ohio, than about how this community will resolve the matter of
quality education for all its children? Do you think that God cares more about
whether His Presbyterian people decide to ordain homosexuals than about the rights
of all people to equal justice and equal opportunity? The simple fact is that you -
where you are most of the time - will determine how the important issues of life
are resolved, You, not the clergy, are involved in making this community livable:
the vital decisions are made in your offices as you make the city go financially and
legally and commercially, in your clinic or operating room or classroom, You are
called in that context te be disciples of Jesus Christ, Your vocation is to be His
special person in the world, wherever and however you earn your living and spend
your time,

J. H, Oldham once asked, "Why should a scientist or engineer or an administrator
attach any great importance to religion unless it says to him: -'In the work you are
doing day by day you are a partner of God in His work of creation and the realization
of His purpose for the (human family}'', (Ibid p,62),

The radical message of the New Testament is that you are, or can be, God's
partner: that He has called you, however exalted or modest you are to an important
work, He has called you to heal or to create or to build or to teach, He has called
you to help someone else, to extend compassion and caring to someone who needs you,
That is His work too, When a child is healed - when a difficult political decision
is made honestly - when parent and teenager extend grace and forgiveness - God's
cail has been answered, I believe He calls each of us to become all that we are
capable of becoming. I believe He makes us impatient with the status quo in our own
lives, I believe He calls us to be as excellent as we can in whatever we do,

it has taken a number of years, but I have finally learned that God, in
wondrous Ways, has given every person a special gift: a unique something, a particu-
lar skill, or ability or sensitivity which no one else has. Some are blessed con-
spicuously, Some not so obviously, But every person, I believe, possesses a pift
from God which is entirely unique, Some persons are exquisitely skilled - intellec-
tually, artistically, mechanically: some are exquisitely skilled relationally: some
can love openly and heal emotionally,

What I want to suggest is that God's call to you is not necessarily a mystical
voice telling vou what to do, Rather His call comes in the form of that special
gift He has given to you, Your vocation, your call, is to know what it is, to nurture
it, to sharpen it, and te use it fully, Our faith is that in Jesus Christ God has
shown how deeply He cares about the world. In Christ He has torn down the barriers we
construct between sacred and secular, The world is Holy - made Holy by God's law, We
are called, you and I, in Jesus Christ, to use what God has given us, May I sugpest
that there is nothing more joyful and exciting and satisfying than to know what God
has given - and then, to put it to work in the world He loves? That is our vocation,

Amen,

Our Father, we are grateful for the many gifts You have given: for the unique
and particular gifts You have given to each of us, Grant us the courage to use what
we have: to live our lives fully: to serve you faithfully through Jesus Christ
‘our Lord, , Amen,