Just A Job, Or A Calling?

"Just A Job, Or A Calling?"
Ecclesiastes 1:1-9; 3:12-13


Suffice it to say, the writer of Ecclesiastes is not a happy camper.  He's discontented.  He's depressed.  He's fatalistic.  He's burned out.  If you were having a birthday party, he's not the one you want to invite--unless it's your 40th and you feel like having a bunch of similarly dour people around you.

What's even more interesting, and somewhat distressing to me, is the writer of Ecclesiastes calls himself "the preacher."  I personally like Peterson's translation, The Message where the writer of Ecclesiastes calls himself "the Quester."  Someone who’s on a quest.  Someone who's searching for something.  And the search is not an easy one.  It's a search for identity, for meaning, for truth, for finding what you're passionate about, to find out what you are really made of.

Another word for this is "calling."  Someone on a quest, who's following an inner voice on some great search, has a calling.  They are paying attention to something bigger than themselves, trying to discover who they are and what their place is in that "something bigger."

Maybe that's why so many translations of the Bible call this guy, "the Preacher," because we more often than not think of ministers as people who following a calling.  When we ministers are examined by Presbyteries, one of the big questions we are asked is to tell about our calling.  No one on the COM would ask something like, "Why do you want this job as a minister?"  Maybe someone from our presbytery's COM, but not the good ones.  The better ones want to know about your calling--your sense of how God in his largeness, reached out to you in particular and chose you for the ministry.

I don't know of any other profession that asks that kind of question when they are being interviewed or examined for their expertise for a certain job or occupation or career.  (Ask different people in the congregation if they were ever examined as to why they felt they were called.)

Here's what I believe.  I believe you were all called by God.  I'm not talking about the ministry, necessarily.  Just because you are a follower of Christ, you are in the ministry, whether you realized that or not.  But, I believe God called you to what He wanted you to do, how God wanted you to fit into His big picture, how God saw you on His timeline as it moves the direction God wants that timeline to go.  Whether you paid attention to that calling is another thing.



The difference between following that calling or not is the difference maker in the book of Ecclesiastes, and the tone of The Preacher.  The Preacher seems to have ignored his calling.  Instead he was on a quest to discover what he could that would fulfill him outside of his true calling.  The Preacher was making all kinds of futile attempts to make something of his life, other than paying attention to God.

Instead of becoming more and more, The Preacher discovered he was becoming less and less.  He tried this.  He tried that.  The usual things we try to plug into our lives to fill the void when we don't follow our calling is money, sex, power, adventure, and knowledge.  The Preacher tried all that.  Finally he got to a point in his life when he realized, "None of that worked."  All of it turned out to be worthless.  "It's all smoke," he says.

That's why I like this book.  Ecclesiastes challenges that naive egotism that ignores a person's sense of calling.  We go off in some direction that appeals to us.  We go after that direction with gusto and all the optimism we can muster.  We expect the result of our calling-less choices will result in a good life.

Ecclesiastes gives us a John The Baptist kind of bath--a cleansing, an AHA! moment, a paradigm shift, a purging of such egotistical thinking and living.  Ecclesiastes is a refreshing negation of the seductions that make us think we can make something of ourselves outside of our calling--outside of who God is and what God does to make something of us.

In terms of that calling, right at the very start of the book, The Preacher says

What's there to show for a lifetime of work,
a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?

It's a rhetorical question.  The answer is, "Nothing," if you haven't followed your calling!  You have nothing to show.  Just the boney fingers of working at following your own inclinations.  No sense of accomplishment.  No particular meaning.  A lost identity given over to work that really was never you.  Never being truly passionate about anything.  Because all of that comes from following your calling.

I can say I have loved everything I've done.  I heard my calling when in seventh grade.  Sitting in church with my mother.  Listening to Rev. Burgess preaching from that tall pulpit.  Feeling the Spirit come upon me, call me by name, say to me clearly, "Steve, this is what I want you to do."  I was sure.  I knew, in the deepest parts of me that I was going to be a minister.  I have never wavered.  Never considered doing anything else.  It was a true calling.

When I was working with a therapist, when I was out in Bakersfield, she once asked me about my calling.  She was a person of deep faith.  I told her the full story.
"Interesting," she said.
"How so?" I asked.
"At such a young age--but at such an important age.  Seventh grade.  A time when you were beginning the search for your identity, as all teenagers do."  She stopped and looked at me as if I'd understand what she was getting at.  I looked back at her, evidently with my characteristic dense expression.  She continued.
"You have never seen yourself other than a minister, a pastor.  Of course you weren't a pastor in 7th grade, but you have always seen yourself either as a pastor, or person who is going to be a pastor, defining yourself by that self definition.  During your most formative years, you never got to explore or wonder who Steve Wing was as just a person, as most of us do at that age.  But because your calling came so young, that's all you've ever known your identity to be.  I'm just wondering who Steve Wing is, stripped of his pastoral identity.

Her wondering question blew me away.  I didn't know what to say, or how to answer her.  It wasn't one of those kinds of insights or questions I could throw out a flip answer and be done with it.  Think about it no more.

I remember that conversation when I've talked to friends, they're telling me about something going on in their lives, and they look at me and say something like, "Quit listening to me like a pastor; just be my friend."  Then I feel bad, or get a little defensive, because I know they are telling me the truth.  I don't know how to turn "the pastor" off.  I'm not sure I can, or want to.  It's who I am.  It's all I've ever wanted to be.  Notice I didn't say it's all I've ever wanted to do.

Because that's how I think you know you have followed your calling and you aren't just doing a job.  What ever it is you are doing is at the same time fashioning you into the best person you are being and becoming.

I can be the best listener I am not because I am a pastor, but because I followed my calling.  I have found meaning in life, not because I'm a pastor, but because I followed my calling.  I am doing what I am most passionate about, not because I'm a pastor, but because I followed my calling.

To tell you the truth, I don't know who Steve Wing is, stripped of my pastoral identity, because to strip that away is to strip my calling away.  To strip my calling away is to strip away my very best self, as fashioned by God, and not by me.

That's what The Preacher didn't realize, but it finally came crashing down on him.  If The Preacher is indeed King Solomon, son of David, as most think, then one of the wisest, wealthiest, most powerful men in the world at that time didn't get it.  He didn't get this calling stuff.  I'm even feeling a bit smug about that--I've understood something even Solomon didn't get.

If I remember right, the book of Ecclesiastes is the only book in the Bible that barely mentions God: only in the last verse.   And there's the problem.  God as an afterthought. With God as an afterthought, there is no calling.  With no calling there is no meaning, no direction, no passion.  And with no meaning, direction, or finding that which you are passionate about, you end up with a book like Ecclesiastes--trying to figure out life on your own, looking and living in all the wrong places, without the proper Godly motivation behind it all.

The Preacher, the Quester, the writer of this book is basically saying, if you want to follow in his footsteps, good luck.  Nothings going to work or make sense.  But with God, luck has nothing to do with it.  It's all about calling from God, and following that calling.