Joanna Adams - "Clarity about Your Calling" (December 31, 2000)

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-	The third lesson is from the Gospel	0:13
	according to Saint Luke, the second chapter.	0:16
	"Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem	0:21
	"for the festival of the Passover.	0:24
	"And when he was twelve years old,	0:27
	"they went up as usual for the festival.	0:30
	"When the festival was ended, they started to return,	0:34
	"the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem,	0:38
	"but his parents did not know it.	0:42
	"Assuming that he was in the group of travelers,	0:45
	"they went a day's journey.	0:48
	"Then they started to look for him	0:52
	"among their relatives and friends.	0:53
	"And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem	0:56
	"to search for him.	1:00
	"After three days they found him in the temple,	1:03
	"sitting among the teachers,	1:07
	"listening to them and asking them questions.	1:09
	"All who heard him were amazed at his understanding	1:15
	"and his answers.	1:20
	"When his parents saw him they were astonished;	1:22
	"and his mother said to him,	1:25
	"Child, why have you treated us like this?	1:27
	"Look, your father and I have been searching	1:31
	"for you in great anxiety."	1:34
	"He said to them, "Why were you searching for me?	1:37
	"Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"	1:43
	"But they did not understand what he said to them.	1:49
	"Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth,	1:53
	"and was obedient to them.	1:58
	"His mother treasured all these things in her heart."	2:02
	This is the Word of the Lord.	2:08
-	Thanks be to God.	2:10
-	Thanks be to God.
	The late writer John Cheever once delivered	2:32
	the commencement address at a prestigious	2:37
	northeastern university.	2:40
	He stood before the members of the graduating class	2:43
	and told them this story.	2:47
	It seems that there was a man	2:50
	who was walking down the street one day with his wife	2:51
	when he spied one of those old-fashioned	2:56
	weight and fortune telling machines sitting on the sidewalk.	2:59
	The sign on the machine said, "Your weight and fortune told.	3:04
	"Five cents."	3:09
	He decided to stop and put his nickel in.	3:11
	In just a second, a little slip of paper emerged	3:15
	from the slot on the front of the machine.	3:19
	He picked it up and read: "Because you have	3:21
	"such great intelligence and talent,	3:25
	"you will go far in life and always be successful	3:29
	"in everything that you do."	3:34
	He was thrilled with the news.	3:37
	He told his wife what he had just read on the slip of paper.	3:39
	She listened without comment	3:46
	and then asked if she could read his fortune herself.	3:48
	He handed her the piece of paper.	3:55
	She read it.	3:57
	She looked up at him and she said,	3:59
	"Just as I thought.	4:02
	"It got your weight wrong, too."	4:04
	(audience laughing)	4:06
	Getting our lives right.	4:10
	That is the most crucial challenge human beings face.	4:13
	It is a challenge we face throughout our lives,	4:18
	chapter after chapter, decade after decade.	4:21
	With increasing life expectancies,	4:26
	we often find ourselves revisiting earlier choices.	4:30
	Sometimes what we end up doing in our 40s or our 50s	4:36
	is something that in our 20s we never	4:41
	would have imagined ourselves doing.	4:43
	It used to be that people chose one vocational trajectory	4:46
	and then pursued that path until retirement,	4:53
	often in the same community	4:57
	and with the same company or institution.	4:59
	Many people find today that their lives	5:03
	are much less like that single trajectory	5:06
	and more of a tapestry woven out of life experiences	5:12
	and interests that are very different.	5:17
	Our lives are less determined by our family tradition,	5:21
	by our social class, by our sex than they have been	5:27
	ever before in the past.	5:31
	It is a fascinating thing just to think about	5:34
	the number of occupations that exist today	5:38
	that did not exist only a short time ago.	5:42
	I recently heard the president of Emory University say	5:47
	that the word website	5:50
	was not even in our vocabulary eight years ago.	5:53
	Children and young people,	6:02
	you cannot possibly know the names of the careers	6:04
	that will be open to you in the future.	6:08
	Certainly, that was so in my own case	6:13
	in these past 50 years of rapid change.	6:17
	For example, when I was a little girl growing up,	6:22
	one of my favorite games was to play church.	6:26
	I would line up my dolls and stuffed animals on the bed	6:33
	and preach to them.	6:37
	(audience chuckling)	6:40
	Blessedly, they were the only ones who heard my sermons.	6:43
	But even as I played this fantasy game,	6:49
	I could never have imagined that I would grow up	6:54
	and serve the church as a minister.	6:59
	Women were not allowed to hold ordained office	7:04
	in any of the mainline denominations	7:07
	when I was a little girl.	7:10
	And hey, I'm not that old.	7:13
	(audience chuckling)	7:16
	Sigmund Freud once defined love and work	7:19
	as the two most important things in life.	7:24
	Love and work.	7:27
	They are the two things	7:29
	that give meaning to human existence.	7:31
	On the eve of the beginning of a new year,	7:36
	at a time in which all things are still possible,	7:40
	I want you to think with me about this matter	7:45
	of what we actually do with our lives	7:49
	in light of two stories that are told	7:53
	in our faith tradition.	7:56
	The first is the story of a man who went down	7:59
	to the temple one day, heard the voice of God,	8:02
	and left with burned lips	8:06
	and an entirely new life direction.	8:09
	Listen to this account from the sixth chapter of Isaiah,	8:13
	of Isaiah's vision of God in the temple.	8:18
	"In the year that King Uzziah died,	8:21
	"I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty;	8:23
	"and the hem of his robe filled the temple.	8:27
	"Seraphs were in attendance over him; each had six wings:	8:31
	"with two they covered their faces,	8:35
	"with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.	8:38
	"And one called to another and said:	8:43
	"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;	8:45
	"the whole earth is full of God's glory."	8:49
	"The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices	8:52
	"of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.	8:56
	"And I said: "Woe is me!	9:01
	"For I am lost, I am a man of unclean lips,	9:03
	"yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"	9:07
	"And then one of the seraphs flew to me,	9:11
	"took a live coal that had been taken	9:15
	"from the altar with tongs.	9:17
	"He touched my lips with, touched my mouth with it and said:	9:19
	"Now that this has touched your lips,	9:24
	"your guilt has departed, your sin is blotted out."	9:26
	"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,	9:31
	"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"	9:33
	"And I found myself saying, "Here am I; send me!"	9:37
	In the second story, if you have your Bibles,	9:45
	you would want to turn to the fifth chapter of Luke,	9:48
	a very creative and detailed story	9:51
	of Jesus' call of the very first disciples.	9:55
	Beginning with the first verse.	10:00
	"Once when Jesus," of the fifth chapter,	10:02
	"once when Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret,	10:05
	"and the crowd was pressing in on him	10:09
	"to hear the word of God,	10:11
	"he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake;	10:13
	"the fishermen had gone out of them	10:17
	"and were washing their nets.	10:19
	"He got into one of the boats,	10:21
	"one belonging to Simon,	10:23
	"and told him to put out a little way from the shore.	10:25
	"And then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.	10:29
	"When he had finished, he said to Simon,	10:33
	"Put out into the deep water and let your nets down	10:36
	"for the catch."	10:40
	"Simon said, "Master, we have worked all night	10:42
	"but have caught nothing.	10:44
	"Yet if you say so, we'll let down the nets."	10:46
	"And when they had done this,	10:50
	"they caught so many fish that their nets	10:51
	"were beginning to break.	10:54
	"So they signaled their partners in the other boat	10:57
	"to come and help them.	10:59
	"And they came and filled both boats,	11:01
	"so that the boats began to sink.	11:04
	"But when Simon saw it, he fell down at Jesus' feet,	11:08
	"saying, "Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man!"	11:11
	"For he and all who were with him were amazed	11:16
	"at the catch of fish;	11:19
	"and so were James and John, son of Zebedee,	11:21
	"who were partners with Simon.	11:23
	"And then Jesus said, "Be not afraid;	11:26
	"from now on you're going to be catching people."	11:29
	"And when they brought their boats to shore,	11:32
	"they left everything and followed him."	11:35
	Here they were, partners in a seafood business,	11:40
	who on the very day on which they caught	11:44
	the most profitable catch they had ever caught,	11:47
	decided to leave everything behind,	11:51
	boats, nets, everything,	11:54
	and invest themselves in a new concept	11:59
	called the Kingdom of God.	12:01
	Both Isaiah and Simon, along with James and John,	12:09
	experienced what can only be described	12:15
	as God's call, God's particular claim on their lives.	12:18
	I wonder if you have yourself had	12:24
	a similar experience, a call from God	12:27
	that seems clear to you.	12:32
	This I will do, because this is what I know in my soul	12:36
	God is calling me to do.	12:42
	In the Bible, it's the kind of thing that happens	12:44
	all the time.	12:46
	The boy Samuel hears a voice at night	12:48
	and thinks it belongs to Elijah the priest,	12:51
	but it turns out that it belongs to God,	12:53
	who has a plan for Samuel.	12:56
	Mary, a young girl from Nazareth, hears a word	12:59
	from the Lord by means of the angel Gabriel.	13:05
	She learns, quite to her astonishment,	13:09
	that God has a plan for her life.	13:12
	It all seems so clear in the stories the Bible tells.	13:17
	But these kinds of calls seem rare in our day.	13:24
	Indeed, the idea of one's life being divinely ordained	13:30
	is usually limited in our minds or our assumptions	13:34
	to the vocation of ministry.	13:38
	But the word vocation from the Latin	13:42
	meaning calling or being called by God	13:45
	is applicable to every single person.	13:50
	Each person.	13:54
	We know by faith each person has a divine purpose.	13:56
	You were created for a reason.	14:03
	I was, too.	14:08
	And it is our job to figure out what God put us	14:10
	down here for and then go ahead	14:13
	and do whatever it was that we were created to do.	14:18
	God, according to these stories,	14:24
	is quite willing to be our partner in the process	14:28
	of discernment.	14:32
	God will speak, in other words,	14:34
	God will speak, if we will listen.	14:37
	We might wonder how God speaks to us today.	14:45
	I'm convinced that God speaks regularly	14:51
	through our successes and our failures,	14:56
	through the joys and disappointments of our lives,	15:00
	through the surprising twists and turns	15:03
	that our life paths take.	15:07
	We are all too often found not to be paying	15:11
	much attention to the messages	15:15
	God keeps trying to give us.	15:19
	The foundation of everything is the basic fact	15:23
	that God has a purpose, a particular purpose	15:30
	for your life and for mine.	15:35
	I'm thinking of a young professional woman	15:39
	who went to Harvard and then got an MBA at Emory University.	15:43
	She and her family and everyone else assumed	15:49
	that such a bright, outstanding person	15:52
	had found her vocation as she pursued a career	15:55
	in the financial management area.	15:59
	And then she became pregnant.	16:03
	She and her husband were delighted.	16:04
	When the baby was born, it turned out that the child	16:08
	had Down syndrome,	16:11
	and so she and her husband discovered a new vocation,	16:14
	the vocation of parenthood.	16:19
	They became agents of God's blessing	16:23
	in their child's life.	16:28
	And the child, of course, the child had his own purpose.	16:31
	God had a plan for the baby who became	16:37
	God's agent in their lives and in the lives	16:41
	of all who knew him	16:45
	because God has a plan for every human life.	16:47
	During the holidays, I have thought often	16:54
	about my parents, long gone now.	16:57
	And I remembered how 20 years ago	17:03
	over in Burlington, North Carolina, just down the road,	17:06
	when my father was in the last weeks of the illness	17:10
	that finally took his life,	17:14
	I remembered how my mother found a new vocation.	17:16
	My dad got to the place where he could not eat	17:22
	any of the food that was served at the hospital.	17:27
	And so every day, she got up early and prepared for him	17:31
	his favorite foods, seasoned them exactly the way	17:38
	he liked them, and took the food to him	17:42
	morning, noon, and night until the day he died.	17:45
	There in Alamance County Hospital,	17:51
	my mother discovered a vocation of tenderness	17:54
	incarnated in a coddled egg and a bowl of cream of wheat.	18:02
	We all have callings at each stage of our lives	18:09
	if we will stop, and be still, and pay attention	18:14
	to what is happening and ask the question:	18:19
	What does God want me to do now?	18:23
	Not 10 years ago.	18:29
	Not 20 years ago.	18:31
	But at this particular moment in my life,	18:33
	what is my calling?	18:37
	It's a thrill for me to be at Duke University this morning,	18:41
	and I am reminded at this great institution	18:45
	of higher learning of how crucial	18:50
	is the vocation of learning and thinking.	18:53
	All human activity is based on what people think	18:59
	ought to be done.	19:03
	Medical, and ethical, and economic choices	19:04
	all are the result of some understanding	19:08
	of the truth of reality, the vocation of thinking	19:11
	and being a steward of the truth.	19:19
	I believe that you and I can tell that we have found	19:24
	the right place for ourselves if the core of our being	19:27
	is resonating gladly	19:34
	with what you and I do most of the time.	19:37
	And if not, perhaps it is time for a change.	19:41
	In his book "Modern Man in Search of a Soul",	19:46
	Carl Jung wrote: "At least 1/3 of my patients	19:49
	"are suffering from no definable neurosis.	19:53
	"What they are suffering from is senselessness	19:58
	"and emptiness in their lives.	20:04
	"This kind of emptiness	20:07
	"is the neurosis of our times."	20:11
	I recently read about a young man who was depressed.	20:18
	Only in his 30s, this is what he said.	20:24
	"I have found myself unable to work creatively anymore	20:28
	"at the job I have always loved.	20:34
	"All my dreams have already come true	20:37
	"and I no longer have anything I want to accomplish	20:42
	"that I haven't already accomplished."	20:47
	This is the kind of thing that can happen.	20:54
	If you rush forward so fast and furiously,	20:57
	you can lose any sense of what you're really after.	21:01
	And then there are those who try this, and that,	21:07
	and the other, and because there're so many choices,	21:10
	they cannot make any decision.	21:14
	A grandmother of a child in our congregation in Atlanta	21:18
	told me not long ago	21:22
	about her granddaughter's ballet recital.	21:23
	It seems that on the stage there was an x	21:27
	that marked the spot where each little girl	21:30
	was supposed to stand during the recital.	21:32
	All the children came out in their little tutus	21:37
	and they found their spot and got on with their dancing.	21:41
	Except for one little girl who spent	21:44
	the entire ballet recital searching for her x.	21:47
	She never danced a step.	21:53
	Finally, you have to get going,	21:58
	trusting that God has a plan and that if you step	22:01
	out of that plan, God will call you back	22:05
	and set you right again so that you can be engaged	22:08
	in the beautiful dance of life.	22:12
	I would describe that dance this way.	22:15
	It is to serve God by being your true self.	22:21
	I believe that the two beautiful stories	22:30
	that we heard from the Scriptures just a moment ago	22:33
	suggest how we might be able to find our x in life.	22:38
	Isaiah reminds us of how crucial it is	22:45
	to be open to God's guidance,	22:49
	to look up and not down,	22:53
	to expect God to invite you	22:56
	into an idea that is larger than yourself.	23:01
	My favorite line in the story, perhaps you missed it,	23:04
	the Scriptures say, "The hem of the Lord's robe	23:08
	"filled the temple."	23:13
	Not the robe.	23:15
	Just the hem of the robe.	23:17
	God is greater than any human anything.	23:19
	But this holy God is willing to make	23:25
	unholy humans fit for the roles set aside for them.	23:30
	Isaiah said, "I'm not worthy."	23:35
	But then a winged seraph took a live coal from the altar	23:39
	with a pair of tongs and touched his ordinary, mortal lips,	23:44
	and he was made fit so that when the Lord said,	23:50
	"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"	23:57
	Isaiah heard his own voice saying, "Well, here I am.	24:02
	"You can send me."	24:09
	No one was more surprised than Isaiah.	24:12
	The prophet's genius lay in realizing	24:18
	that God alone was great,	24:21
	and therefore he was willing to let God	24:26
	be in charge of his future.	24:29
	My favorite "New Yorker" cartoon this year	24:33
	depicts a secretary sitting behind a desk	24:35
	in a swanky office.	24:38
	The sign on the door reads: "The thee big pigs"	24:41
	In parentheses underneath are these words:	24:48
	"Formerly known as the three little pigs."	24:52
	We live in a time in which the spirit of Isaiah	24:57
	has all but disappeared.	25:01
	We think we are the big stuff.	25:03
	We make too much of ourselves and our successes.	25:06
	Think about it, though.	25:12
	Every, single, genuinely happy person you know	25:16
	is someone who has dedicated him or herself	25:21
	to some greater cause, some larger good	25:27
	than simply his or her own success.	25:31
	The last thing I would say to you	25:39
	about finding some clarity with regard to your calling	25:41
	is that when you find yourself saying yes to God,	25:46
	you are on a sure path to finding your most authentic self.	25:53
	There Simon Peter and the others were fishing all night,	26:00
	working very hard, but they had not found	26:04
	the groove, the zone, the place of congruence	26:08
	between their efforts and the will of God.	26:12
	And then Jesus said to them, "Trust me.	26:17
	"Put your nets out into the deep waters."	26:20
	And Simon, mister type A among the disciples,	26:22
	of course argued with Jesus saying,	26:26
	"Listen, you know, I'm really the fisherman here	26:28
	"and let me just say, we've already done that	26:31
	"and it didn't do a bit of good."	26:34
	Jesus said, "Trust me."	26:36
	And finally, Simon Peter obeyed.	26:40
	He listened to the voice.	26:44
	And then he and his friends caught so many fish	26:48
	their nets broke and they had to call in their partners.	26:52
	And all the boats were filled with fish	26:56
	and the boats began to sink.	26:59
	It's a funny story, really,	27:00
	the abundance that comes from listening to the genuine	27:03
	and working with the power of God in your life	27:09
	instead of against the power of God.	27:13
	And truly, the final word I would say	27:21
	has to do with how you determine whether or not	27:25
	you have been successful in your calling.	27:28
	And I would simply suggest that finally	27:34
	you cannot know, and so forget measurements.	27:37
	"You will go far and be successful,"	27:43
	the fortune telling machine said.	27:45
	But who is really to say?	27:47
	Some of those who are most successful in the eyes	27:50
	of the world are perhaps	27:53
	not so successful in God's eyes.	27:57
	Just think of Simon Peter and Isaiah	28:01
	who were failures in the eyes of the world.	28:05
	Isaiah never knew whether he had had	28:09
	any effect on the hearts and minds of the Hebrew people.	28:11
	Simon and the other disciples died	28:15
	without knowing whether or not their work would go forward.	28:18
	You just do what you can	28:24
	with as much integrity as you can muster	28:26
	and trust God with the results.	28:30
	I spoke earlier about the call to ministry	28:36
	and I will close with this	28:39
	thought of a friend of mine who is a pastor in Delaware	28:44
	about his success in the ministry.	28:47
	He writes: "When I was a kid, I always imagined	28:52
	"I would do something great with my life.	28:56
	"Something noble and brave.	28:58
	"Something saintly, like the work of Mother Theresa	29:01
	"among the poor.	29:04
	"Martyrdom such as that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer	29:06
	"who died resisting Hitler.	29:09
	"I would preach a sermon as Martin Luther King did	29:11
	"the night before his death,	29:15
	"I Have Been to the Mountaintop."	29:17
	"And after I was gone, tour buses would come	29:22
	"and there would be little trinket shops,	29:26
	"and they'd sell souvenirs, and parents would say	29:29
	"to their children, "Come, come over here.	29:32
	"Stand here; have your picture taken	29:35
	"where Pastor John gave his last full measure of devotion."	29:38
	"But my ministry has not been like that at all.	29:45
	"I have been asked to do the little things	29:49
	"because the little things have been needed	29:53
	"and somebody needs to do them.	29:56
	"My vocation has been to do what I can with what I've got.	30:00
	"No noble tasks.	30:05
	"Just the call to be faithful	30:07
	"with what God has given me.	30:11
	"I wouldn't trade it for anything."	30:15
	And so this first Sunday after Jesus was born in Bethlehem,	30:20
	and before a new year begins in your life and in mine,	30:28
	I want to remind you and remind myself	30:34
	that the only life truly worth living	30:39
	is the life God actually calls us to live.	30:43
	Today would be a good time	30:49
	to be still, and to listen,	30:52
	and to discern the voice of God.	30:57
	Let us pray.	31:02
	Whatever our vocation, oh God,	31:11
	whether it is to be a good grandmother,	31:15
	or to pursue genetic research,	31:22
	we give you thanks and praise that we are your chosen ones	31:27
	and that your great plan for the healing of the world	31:33
	includes us and our gifts.	31:37
	Use them for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.	31:42
	Amen.	31:48
	(organ music)	31:53

Item Info

Title:

Joanna Adams - "Clarity about Your Calling" (December 31, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 2:20. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 31:51.
Isaiah and Simon Peter's unworthiness to be called was transformed into worthiness by God, and so everyone has a vocaitonal calling in life - whether that is to be a grandmother or research genetics, and the calling can transform over the course of a life, but one's primary calling to God is always to be your most authentic self. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4cz32m5k

Date:

December 31, 2000

Speaker:

Adams, Joanna

Liturgical Calendar:

Epiphany

Biblical Book:

Chapter and Verse:

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1046
ref10249_6h7
uachapelsermaud
duke:324131
dcrau001690
ark:/87924/r4cz32m5k
a0cf4cf1-726f-435a-8c2a-74aa2256e380

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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