RCL Proper 14A
9 July 2023
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
This morning I want to share with you a reflection on today’s reading from the Gospel according to Matthew. I call it ‘a reflection’ because I am still working out what today’s reading is saying to us, both as a community and as individual disciples.
In April of 2010 I returned to my office at Vancouver School of Theology after a long and intense Faculty Council meeting. As I sat at my desk, looking at the essays to be read and evaluated, the reports to review and all the other tasks associated with being what we call ‘a teaching administrator’, I said out loud, ‘This isn’t fun anymore.’ In the silence of my office I heard no response.
As I drove home, I pondered what to do when something to which I had devoted twenty-three years of my life, whatever talents I had for teaching and a significant amount of money in terms of training and continuing education ceased to be ‘fun’. When I arrived home, I found Paula and all the children in the living room. Without any preamble I said, ‘I’ve decided to leave VST.’ ‘Well,’ said one of our children, ‘you haven’t been happy for the last three or four years. So it's good that you’ve come to realize it.’
So here I am, some thirteen years and two parishes later, doing what the late Jim Cruickshank of blessed memory once said to me. ‘Richard,’ Jim observed, ‘you are a parish priest who happens to teach in a theological college.’ Jim, as usual, was quite right. Despite all the ups and downs of parish ministry, especially here where we have been wrestling with how to re-develop our Hall and Cathedral to take better care of our neighbourhood, a neighbourhood that has changed many times over the last one hundred and sixty-four years, I can honestly tell you that in parish ministry I’ve found joy. I’ve found my fundamental vocation.
One of my favourite authors is Frederick Buechner, the American novelist, essayist and theologian. In his book, Wishful Thinking, published in 1973, he wrote this about vocation.
It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.
There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest.
By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren't helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
Buechner opens up to us one of the more familiar yet still enigmatic sayings of Jesus: “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11.28-30 NSRVue) How can exchanging one burden for another give one rest? What is, after all, the yoke and burden that Jesus is carrying? But what Buechner tells us is that the yoke and the burden that Jesus is bearing is “ . . . the place where (his) deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet”.
This place, this vocation, is not without its moments of uncertainty and disappointment, but those moments are bearable because of the deep joy that comes from knowing that we are doing what we are truly called to do and that we are being who we truly are as disciples of Jesus. There is a sense in which pursuing our vocation enables in troubled times to live in the spirit that Paul encourages the Christians in Thessalonika when he reminds them that we grieve not as others do but as people who have hope (1 Thessalonians 14.13). Hope and its ever close-bound friend, joy, fuel our vocation and are almost inexhaustible.
Our life-long task is two-fold. We have to discover where we find our deep gladness. We then have to bring that deep gladness to where the world, as we see it, as we understand it, deeply hungers. The greatest service we may render to one another is helping us discover where we find joy and then directing us towards that place where it is most needed. It may take us our entire lives to discover that joy and that place of need. While some may find that discouraging, I think that it means that our lives are filled with the possibility of surprise, especially if we are able to nurture that quality of wonder that children bring to every moment of their early years.
It would be wonderful to have a precise guidebook to lead us to where our joy lies and where that joy needs to venture. We see glimpses of this in the Scriptures. Even in long readings from Genesis about the search for a wife for Isaac, readings that we may wonder why they matter, we may catch a glimpse of a family seeking to discover God’s purpose for them in world vaster than their small corner of it. Even when we hear Paul’s struggles with what he feels called to do and with the reality of his shortcomings, we may catch a glimpse of a man who, despite those shortcomings, lives in the hope that God is working in him, through him and around him.
Where do you find joy? This is the venture upon which Jesus in today’s gospel reading invites us to embark, shedding the ‘heavy burden’ of joylessness and taking upon ourselves the easy yoke and light burden of discovering where our deep gladness is found. Where does our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet? Buechner suggests that we look at our feet: “ . . . when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.” [1] I think that our feet often take us to where the world’s hunger is found. And when we arrive there, we may be grace-filled enough to have brought our joy with us.
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