Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
August 30th,
Year of Our + Lord 2026
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran
Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
Luke 10:23-37
Finding clarity about life and
work and purpose seems much harder today than throughout most of history. Later in life career changes were almost
unheard of at most times in most places.
And retirement? Pretty short, if
you retired at all. For the young, there
was 90+ chance you would do what your parents did. Subsistence farming and animal husbandry for
most. And the boy who becomes the
cooper, the merchant, the blacksmith, the soldier? His dad was probably a cooper, a merchant, a
blacksmith, a soldier. There have not been
so many choices for most people for most of time. Was this a worse situation, or a better
one? It was different, for sure. Freedom can be liberating, or
terrifying. I think we are less likely
to pine about unrealized dreams when we have grown up knowing our vocation, and
the work of it is obviously important.
Either we harvest a good crop, grow our herd, or we face hunger, maybe
even starvation. Not an easy life, but
purposeful. And finding purpose seems to
be one of the great challenges of the 21st century.
We face a number challenges
rightly understanding vocation today.
First of all, what is vocation? Vocation
is a synonym with ‘calling.’ It comes to English from the Latin vocare, to call. You can hear it in vocal, and voice. As in a voice calls us to do a certain thing.
Now, in our culture, we tend to think of
an inner voice, what do I want to do with my life. But biblically,
callings come from outside us. We are
called to be a mother or father when we conceive a child. We are called to be a child when we are
born. We are called to be a soldier when
we are drafted. A vocation or calling,
biblically, is not necessarily our deepest desire. But it is God’s plan for who the neighbors
are we are going to serve, and how we will serve them.
As we go about trying to figure
out the various roles we are called by God to fulfill in the Year of Our + Lord
2026, three problems stand out.
1) Choices. Young people and not
so young people have so many options today, it can overwhelm and make you freeze
up. Even more, our culture is permeated
by the idea that everyone should keep searching until they find the perfect
calling, that totally fulfilling and great all-the-time-career. This perfect-calling-quest is only possible
because of the stunning material improvement of life in the western world. We can get by pretty easily, and so we can also
choose to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to “find our perfect job,” or
our “true self,” even if this means living in our parents basement till we are
35.
The problem is, we still live in
a fallen world. There are no perfect
vocations. Work, even good work, is
hard, still full of frustrations, because sin and its consequences affect
everything. If I believe that I can and
must find the perfect vocation, the perfect life situation, I am setting myself
up for failure and continual disappointment.
You might also notice all of challenge number one is incredibly individualistic. “You can be anything you want to be, build your own future!” This might sound good, but taken too far, it can also be an incredibly cruel thing to teach people. My fervent belief that I could still be a 6th man in the NBA, coming off the bench to nail the crucial three-pointer at the end of the game, does not change the fact that I’m too short and slow for the NBA, I can’t jump, and of course, I’m old. But we teach young people that they have to define and fulfill their own vocation, because that’s what society says we should do.
2) A lot of this is a marketing ploy by people trying to sell you
something, and it’s success depends on the second challenge to
rightly understanding vocation today: the degradation of family, clan, and community. The incredible mobility and material wealth
of the western world since WWII has, along with the retreat of the Christian
Church, robbed most people of history’s primary source of identity and purpose. And people without identity and purpose are
much more susceptible to pursuing unworthy pursuits.
You see, according to God’s good
plan, the first and most important earthly calling for everyone is to fulfill one’s roles in the family.
We all start out as someone’s child, and that’s wonderful. In the beginning, and still most importantly,
the most essential calling is to be a spouse and a parent. Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth.
Now, to be sure, in our
imperfect world, not everyone gets to be married, and not every couple is
blessed with children, both consequences of the Fall. Thankfully, none of this impacts our value in
God’s eyes. Our connection to Jesus is
what determines our worth to our Father in Heaven.
Still, marriage and family are
held up by God as the center of human existence, and so we should too. For every boy, the first calling he should be
encouraged to pursue is to be, Lord willing, a good husband and father. For every girl, the first calling she should
be encouraged to pursue is to be, Lord willing, a good wife and mother.
This perspective doesn’t deny other
callings, other careers. It doesn’t lock
women into domestic drudgery, (read Proverbs 31 sometime, if you doubt.) Rather, a proper understanding of our
callings in family actually gives proper meaning and purpose to
our other callings. And what if you are
not a husband or wife, not a parent? That’s
fine, God still loves you and you can still serve in important ways. You are still in a family, and your family
needs you, as aunt, uncle, brother, sister, caregiver, provider.
Strong families also make good
citizens. Knowing and pursuing and
cherishing our place in our earthly family then helps us see and rightly
prioritize our place in community, in our clan or tribe, our employment, our
town or nation. A healthy and strong
sense of identity from my family gives me the best base from which to go on to
fulfill other callings well.
3) The third challenge to rightly understanding vocation, and the first
to specifically related to the Christian Church, is a collective loss of
understanding of the Christian way of fulfilling vocations. And, this will get us back to the Good
Samaritan, in case you were wondering where I’m going with all of this.
A good understanding of vocation
adds value and richness to any culture, Christian or pagan. Identity from family, clan, community, and so
also commitment to, and dependence on family, clan, and community, leads to
stable, richer lives. Not always richer
economically, but often. But very much
richer in human terms, relationally, for having sense of purpose and
identity. Again, we are not talking
perfection. But we can say it is good to
have a place to call home, and to know without doubt who you are, and where you
belong. It is a tremendous gift to have
an identity based in family and community that guides and keeps you as you go
through life. Our shallow and
individualistic culture tries to deny all of this, and so today we have a
pandemic of loneliness and hopelessness.
We can and should push back against this foolishness.
And what does Christian faith add to a good understanding of vocation? Everything! Faith in the Good News of Christ Jesus, trust in His forgiving and life giving death and resurrection, provides the new heart and mind that enables the faithful to embrace and happily serve in their various vocations, in a way that the world cannot know. Christian faith gives an eternally confident perspective, which sets us free to serve others, without worry about how things are going to work out for us. Because we know, in Christ, we already have everything good, forever and ever, Amen.
This is not to say everyone “in
the Church” understands or lives according to this freeing truth. In reality, we all struggle to embrace
it. Which is a big part of what Jesus
teaches through the Good Samaritan.
Followers of Jesus are called by Him to receive their vocations, their
various callings in life, as gifts from Him.
As His followers, they seek to fulfill their vocations, their roles in
life, in a better, more godly way. And,
that is good, for everyone.
What in general is the calling
in day to day life of every ancient Israelite and every Christian? As we heard in our Gospel reading from the
lawyer, the expert in the Law of Moses: “You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
What does this mean? As the Good News of Jesus Cross and
Resurrection teach us, because of our sinfulness, these two greatest
commandments cannot be the way of salvation. The perfection they require is beyond us, far
beyond us. We are saved by grace alone,
through faith in Jesus, alone. But,
loving God above all and our neighbor as ourself is the way of those who have been saved.”
Those who have been given the gift of faith in Christ seek to live out
our daily lives according to His loving will.
Specifically with the parable of
the Good Samaritan, Jesus warns His people not to avoid calls to love and serve
a neighbor by using religious excuses.
We have as negative examples a Levite and the Priest. Think of the Levite as a full time Church
trustee at a very large church. His day
to day job is to do whatever it takes to make sure the church facility is ready
support all the ministry that goes on there.
A Levite had this calling by birth, by being a man of the Tribe of Levi,
but not a descendent of the first High Priest Aaron. The Levites’ role was important, enabling the
ministry of God to go on.
The priest is the full time
Minister. As a descendent of Aaron, the
priests tasks included the daily services of the Temple, prayers, teaching, and
making the appointed sacrifices. Both of
these men are full time church workers in God’s congregation.
Sadly, they both avoid helping
the stranger. But, didn’t they have
reasonable, face saving excuses? It
seems so. I think their thoughts may
have run along these lines: “Ooh,
that poor, half-dead man, lying over there, (maybe he was moaning?) Oh, this too bad. But, I really can’t stop my journey to help,
for I must get to the Temple. I can’t be
delayed; God’s people are depending on me.
And, if I help him, I will probably make myself unclean. Then who would open the Temple gates, who
would lead prayers and offer the sacrifices?
I’ll mumble a quick prayer as I go, and trust that God will take care of
that poor man.”
We can imagine these, or maybe
another set of excuses. After all,
excuses are like… belly buttons.
Everybody’s got one. But what the
Levite and the priest have completely lost is God’s purpose for forming a
congregation in the first place, which is to save people.
God has made us members of His
Church, to save us from death. To give
us a family now, and to bring us into the heavenly family reunion that never
ends. Yes, the Levite and the Priest had
important tasks to fulfill at the Temple, and certain rules to follow as they
did that. Helping out the dying man
would have upset the apple cart, surely.
But to ignore, for the sake of
the rules, a dying man who God literally placed on their path? This is to deny the whole reason God created
Israel, both ancient Israel and the New Israel, the Church of Christ
Jesus. We are here to offer rescue from
death to dying souls. Our message is not
just for each other, inside the Church, although we do need to do that,
certainly. In fact, we really should
speak more Gospel to each other, which could also make us more adept at
speaking the Gospel to outsiders. Yes,
in the Church we love and care for each other, but we are also called to serve
dying souls outside the Church. Which,
it helps to remember, is where we all came from, before God brought us into His
Church. And on the outside, way outside,
is where we can all end up, if we ever lose sight of the grace of God in revealed
in Christ Jesus.
Then there is the Samaritan, a
despised mixed-breed cousin of the Jews of the first century. He is the ultimate outsider to the Jews, yet
he nevertheless understands God’s will and its proper impact on the way he
leads his life. Jesus doesn’t tell us
how, but somehow God’s Word of hope has reached the Samaritan, and changed
him. He knows that God has loved him,
saved him, rescued him, and so, when in the regular course of his life, the God
of this Good News calls him to care for another, he does it. The new heart and mind he had by faith in
God’s promises lead him to prioritize the dying man, even though it cost him
time and inconvenience and money.
This is the way that Christian
faith impacts the way Christians fulfill their vocations. Sin still infects our daily lives, but so
does forgiveness, faith, wisdom and love.
And so Christian marriages and families are, in total, the best
families. Kings and dictators and
governments tend to mistrust committed Christians, because their first loyalty
is not to the regime. But the reality is
Christians make the best citizens.
Hollywood spends a lot of time depicting Christians as bigoted,
misogynistic, legalistic and hateful.
But the truth is that the dignity of women, the development of hospitals
and orphanages, the university, widespread literacy and universal basic
education, and the end of slavery are all the product of societies where
Christianity predominated. Christians
know from God’s Word that we cannot create heaven on earth, but the impact of
the growth of Christianity on the quality of life in our world is pretty
impressive.
So, have we helped anyone with
their vocational struggles? Lord
willing, yes, in three ways.
Concerning the third problem,
the loss of understanding as to how Christians fulfilling their vocations is
different, we are set free to dare to serve our neighbor, even when it is a
serious inconvenience. Why? Because true faith is fixed on Jesus, who
humbled Himself to save us. Indeed, in
the Good Samaritan we do well to see a picture of Jesus Christ and His love for
us. Often insulted by the Pharisees as
being “A Samaritan,” God’s Son, through this parable, gives us a picture of His
saving work for us half-dead sinners. By
seeing Jesus as our Good Samaritan, we also learn to embrace the opportunity to
love others, as God in Christ has loved us.
Concerning the second problem,
the loss of understanding of the callings we all have in family, God through
Jesus Christ has revealed to us the great and eternal family that is all the
forgiven sinners who make up His New Israel, His Church, on earth, and also in
heaven. Christians are strengthened to
love others, starting with the family as God established it, and extending out
in expanding circles of love, by the marvelous Good News that God the Father
has given His Son to rescue us from sin, death and the devil.
Finally, the first problem, how
to deal with the seemingly limitless vocational choices that make finding and
fulfilling our vocations difficult.
Choosing a good vocation from which to serve God and neighbor is
different today. We should recognize
this and support one another as life throws us vocational curveballs.
And, when we understand our
vocations rightly, as a callings from God, even if it is to serve as a
fast-food fry cook, this knowledge sets us free to serve with joy, and also to
seek better and better vocations, from which to serve our family and our
neighbors. Most of all, we can live in
peace through it all, because our worth as people does not depend on our
career, but rather on Christ, who makes us right with God, today, and
forever.
Jesus is your Good Samaritan,
who took on Himself the costs of saving you, and who has carried you safely to
His Inn, His house, the congregation to which you belong and in which the Holy
Spirit sustains and loves you. God grant
us all to embrace our vocations, and seek to fulfill them fully, for the good
of our own faith, and for the life of the world, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment