Vocation (Passion Sunday)

Passion Sunday
(Vocation – Taking Stock - 5th in Series at All Saints Putney)

Jeremiah 31.31-34; Hebrews 5.5-10; John 12.20-23

“Whoever serves me, the father will honour.”
John 12.26

Let me tell you my story.

Missionary, steam train driver, Baptist minister, maths lecturer, composer, engineer, academic, father, bishop, politician…

The list goes on of all the things I have wanted to be in my life. But now, as my Freedom Pass draweth nigh, I realise that a number of them are not going to happen – although most steam trains are now being driven by aging priests.

Quite a number of these things did happen – I’ll let you guess which – but then there were a number of things I had not planned:

Postman, refuse collector, council grass cutter, holiday guide, unemployed, administrator, school teacher, prebendary…

The list goes on. Some of the things were pleasant, some unpleasant, and some, like the curate’s egg, good in parts.

Many of the jobs I desperately wanted, I didn’t get. And on the whole, I am glad I didn’t.

I nearly became an Anglican when I was 23, but waited till I was 45. Looking back now, I think it could have been a fatal move.

Today is both Passion Sunday, when we begin to prepare for Holy Week, and as the 5th Sunday in our Lent series, it carries the theme of vocation: Taking Stock of our sense of purpose, God’s purpose, in our lives.

Those lists of what I wanted to do and what I have been doing are an illustration we could all give from our own lives.

Sometimes we think of vocation in too narrow a way. In the church we often use the word to mean simply a vocation to the priesthood. But it is much more than that.

One of my jobs is Director of Ordinands for the Diocese, and I’m glad to say that we continue to have record numbers of men and women offering themselves for ministry in the church: there are over 140 in training from London at the moment and another 60 or more exploring their vocation.

And I hope that God maybe calling some of you to the priesthood – in that strange phrase from the epistle today – to be a priest after the order of Melchizedeck, the mysterious King of Righteousness who appears to Abraham and who is held up in scripture as an example of the priesthood of Christ and indeed of all priesthood.

One of the great privileges in my job is to see just how different are the people God calls to serve him in this way, and to hear their stories.

Jeremiah, for example, was an unlikely prophet: a young depressive who didn’t want to do the job.

But he became the voice of God for the people of Israel, and in those wonderful verses we read this morning, he pointed to the new thing that God was preparing to do in Jesus.

But e must keep things in perspective. To be a priest is a high and hard calling, but arguably not as hard as being known as a Christian in year 10 at school, or in some of the places where you work.

All our callings are costly, and for most of us, the calling is simply to be God’s servant in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

They may not be the circumstances we would wish for, although if we are fortunate, we may be very happy most of the time in our calling.

And of course things change during the course of our lives as in today’s society many of us will play a variety of roles during our lifetime.

We have to take the rough with the smooth, and believe me, all priests have days when they would rather be anything than a priest.

It reminds me of the story of two priests who decide to take a break away from it all in the Canary Islands. They’re determined to make this a real holiday from people by not wearing anything that would identify them as clergy. As soon as the plane lands, they buy some outrageous shorts, shirts, sandals and sunglasses.

The next morning sitting on the beach, enjoying a drink, a gorgeous blond in an imaginative bikini walks by. She smiles at them and says, "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."

They were both stunned. How in the world could she have known?

The next day, they bought even more outrageous outfits - so loud, you could hear them before you saw them. They even got rid of their Oxfords and black socks in favour of flip-flops. Well after a while, the same gorgeous blonde walks along the beach, turning heads as she passes.

As she approaches the two of them she nods and says "Good morning, Father, Good morning, Father."

Astonished one of the priests shouts out “How do you know we’re priests?”

The blonde turns with a puzzled look and says, "Fathers, it's me, Sister Monica!"

Well all of us at times don’t like where we’ve ended up, and want to get away from it all. But usually that’s just not practicable or even possible.

And this is where our Christian faith comes in to encourage us. Jesus says in our text, ‘whoever serves me, the Father will honour.’

We have to go about our daily work seeking to serve Christ.

George Herbert put it this way in the poem we often sing:

Teach me, my God and King,
in all things thee to see,
and what I do in anything
to do it as for thee.

A servant with this clause
makes drudgery divine:
who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
makes that and the action fine.

Now there’s just a patronising hint there that we should count ourselves ever so lucky to be sweeping the floors of those who have been born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

The Christian way is not one of fatalism. Like the Calvinist who fell down the stairs and said ‘thank goodness that’s over with!’

Part of Taking Stock this Lent is to open ourselves to divine possibilities; it is to pray in the words of Mary ‘Be it unto me according to thy word’; it is to believe that with God all things are possible. It is to offer the gifts we have and all that we are, and all that we might be, in the service of God.

And we must never look at what other people do and think that what we do is somehow inferior. That looking after children, or stocking the shelves in Sainsbury’s is somehow not a real vocation.

If we cultivate an attitude of service to Christ and others in all that we do and all that we dream of doing, then the Father will honour us with a sense of wellbeing, will guide us into the right paths and will bless us in all we undertake and in all the circumstances of our lives.

And then we will know that, as Jesus says

“Whoever serves me, the father will honour.”
John 12.26

For further Study
Compare a list of some of your hopes when you were younger with the reality of your life as it has unfolded.
Do you see your day by day work as a Christian vocation?
How could the church help in supporting and resourcing all of us in our vocations?
What prevents us from considering a calling to some particular form of Christian ministry: priest, Reader, chaplain, church worker…?
What is St Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 12.12-26?

Christ the King 2006

Christ the King

“You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” John 18.37

An interesting letter caught my eye in the Independent yesterday: “Sir: I have just received my first invitation to a carol concert in which ‘Songs of a religious nature may be sung’. Can’t say I wasn’t warned.”

And of course MacDonald’s coffee cups warn us, sometimes optimistically, ‘contains hot liquid’.

It reminds me of the wonderful warning I saw when I was a boy in our local butcher’s shop. Mr Harmsworth was a bit of a wag and had written up: “Will mothers kindly refrain from sitting their babies on the bacon slicer as we are getting a little behind with our orders!”

The Feast of Christ the King reminds us that Christianity carries a life-time warning: becoming a follower of Jesus Christ requires the surrender of your will, your intellect, your money and possessions – in fact of everything.

In the stark words of our Lord himself: ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.’ (Luke 14.26)


Jesus uses typical Jewish hyperbole here to show us that his Kingship is foundational to all other relationships and indeed to life itself. (Obviously, he doesn’t actually mean we should hate those close to us!)

But it all sounds a bit extreme. It smacks of fanaticism and it’s not very Church of England.

However, we need to understand what this Kingship of Christ means, and our unconditional surrender to him.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus has just explained what it doesn’t mean to Pilate. It is not a political kingdom; it is not the establishing of a Christian theocracy. It is not a bid to make Bishop Richard the Mayor of London.

So now, in our text, he finally tells Pontius Pilate what the Kingship of Christ does mean. In John’s theology, why the eternal King was born into the world. And it is simply this: that as King of the Cosmos, he came to testify to the truth – to testify to the truth. And truth, in this context in John’s Gospel, means ultimate reality.

In a world subject to unreality, illusion and self-delusion, Jesus has come to offer the reality of a personal relationship with the only true God, moment by moment and day by day; a truth that gives meaning to our deepest longings and hopes. And this truth sets us free; free to be ourselves and to know the love of God.

So here is a paradox. The prisoner, Jesus, offers his captor, Pilate freedom. But Pilate is too world weary and cynical to ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’.

As Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the Reformation philosopher put it: “‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.” (Essays - Of Truth)

People often say they are looking for the truth, or for spiritual answers, but only want to listen to Jesus selectively – to pick the bits of his teaching that suit them. They don’t want to wait and listen – like Pilate they are too busy with the affairs of their own life.

Here in the United Kingdom, technically at least, we are not citizens; we are subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. We are not citizens with rights; we are subjects with privileges.

All good earthly monarchy is modeled on Divine monarchy. We have no ‘rights’ before the God who made us. But we have privileges that when we begin to grasp them, take our breath away.

In our text today, Jesus says ‘Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ Jesus and John are reminding us of another image of Christ: the Good shepherd whose sheep hear his voice. Christ’s Kingship is always a gentle rule. He is both totally demanding, and totally understanding and sympathetic to us.

The promises which Laura will make in her baptism today and which we will echo, are promises of complete obedience to our heavenly King.

The money that we give and promise today on this Stewardship Sunday are part of that obedience; they are recognition that the deep truth and reality which we pursue in Christ, make the pursuit of possessions or the love of money, the ultimate folly. For we can’t take it with us, despite the misprint I once spotted in ‘Guide me O thou Great Redeemer… land my safe on Canaan’s side’.

So although the demands of King Jesus are absolute and comprehensive, his promises and privileges to us his subjects are boundless in their grace, mercy and love. His service is perfect freedom.

And here is another paradox of the Kingship of Christ that we will presently rehearse at the altar. Although he is enthroned above in glory, as we have sung in our hymns, here on earth he reigns from a cross. He is a King who lays down his life for his subjects. There is no proud triumphalism in Jesus, only the assurance of loving companionship now and through death into the eternal courts of our King. Let us worship him with glad obedience and the fealty of hearts full of love.

“You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” John 18.37