President’s Message: Called to Loving Service
Students care about discussions of calling. Maybe we all do. A calling is not a job or a career. It is more basic than that. Calling in the Christian church is about baptism, when an identity is granted (Christian) and a person, together with the whole community, spends the rest of their lives growing into it. What that person does for employment (avocation) could be a whole variety of wonderful, spectacular, or ordinary but faithful tasks. In all and any of these roles, Christian calling is to bear witness to God’s reconciling action through Jesus Christ, in all of life.
Benjamin Perrin, Professor of Law at UBC, in his book Indictment, speaks of how his calling as a Christian changed his mind from a law-and-order stance on crime to one of mercy.
In Jesus’ life and teachings, I see a major emphasis on mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion and humility . . . I see myself as no better and no worse before God than someone who is a convicted criminal, even someone guilty of heinous crimes. The Bible says we have all fallen short, yet we are all deeply loved by God and can receive God’s gift of free forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ. I’d challenge any professing Christian to let God search their hearts and test their minds to see if they really believe that too, and if their actions align with their professed beliefs – or if their hearts are hard and unmerciful. No one is beyond redemption.” (Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023], 326-327).
When work is taken up with a sense of calling by God to live out the implications of the gospel in the world, it is simply transformative. Calling is contagious, it gets into everything. It can influence the way we drive! Calling is not just for the clergy; all Christians share in the ongoing ministry of Christ. Christians use God-given gifts to serve God and the world. Calling puts purpose into the work we do. Calling invigorates work with significance beyond immediate results and personal success. Calling is what will carry you through to the next day on difficult days. Calling gives resolve, ignites creativity, sponsors joy, and challenges us to integrity in whatever form of employment or engagement we take up in the world. It is all those things since it works and plays and rejoices with a sense that God is a live agent in the world.
On the verge of the season of Advent, I can’t help but think of the call of Mary. She’s the first one to serve the Incarnate Word. Her “here am I” indicates her consent to participation in the reconciling action of God. She sings for joy at what God is up to and at her involvement in it, even when it is not easy. Sung by a rural teenage girl living under an oppressive occupation, Mary’s Magnificat is a song of resistance. It is more Janis Joplin at Woodstock than Charlotte Church at the Met. Mary anticipates the reversals and inclusions God will work through the Incarnate Word, and she rejoices in a sweet song of revolution that riffs on past songs of hope in God. The world and its arrangements are acted upon, and Mary sings for the world God brings. God moves toward the world in a child, Jesus, and a reordering is underway. As Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn puts it, “redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe.” Mary gets called into a movement with God in the real world and just that promise solicits joy, purpose, and hope.
In this issue of perspectives, you will hear about calling and the work people have taken up in service to God and the world. I do hope it inspires us with purpose, joy, and hope in the work we do.
I wish you a blessed Advent and the peace of Christmas about to come.