Vocation and the Way of Christ: A Reflection on Luke 4.14-21

It hasn’t been a good week for the ‘better angels’ of human nature. At pretty much every turn, it seems cruelty and unfeeling self-concern has become king. As a follower of Jesus, it’s a tough pill to swallow — especially when people who claim to also follow Jesus are either leading the war against mercy and compassion, or applauding it. It’s easy to fall into despair, but that won’t solve anything, either for us or for the world. But if there’s anything to help us gird our loins for the cause of God’s mission in the world, it’s today’s Gospel reading, which I’ve previously referred to as “The Jesus Manifesto.” Both this passage, from Luke 4, and the Epistle reading from 1 Corinthians are all about calling, and so they are particularly well-positioned to help us sort through what we as Christians are called to do and be in the world today.

First let’s remind ourselves of the text of today’s Gospel:

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:14-21)

In those words of the prophet Isaiah, Jesus saw his own mission laid out clearly. His life was to be dedicated to the cause of good news for the poor, the captive, and the oppressed in mind, soul, and body. Full stop. And it’s one thing to commit to helping things when the world feels right and stable. But this was not the case for Jesus. The hard-fought independent kingdom of Judea was increasingly slipping under Rome’s heavy boots, armed rebels were gathering strength, and violence was in the air. If ever there was a time and place to turtle and hold on for dear life, it was first century Judea. And yet, in this situation, Jesus committed himself to the cause of the poor and oppressed — in other words, in a world that was increasingly dominated by injustice, Jesus committed himself to the cause of justice.

As those who follow Jesus — who belong to his family, who are united to him in faith, and are citizens of his kingdom — our callings will be aligned with his. That is, we aren’t called to repeat his life — we won’t be going around performing exorcisms or whatnot — but our general concerns will be his concerns: for justice and mercy for all, and a tearing down of the kind of self-righteous posturing that all too often comes from the religious instinct. But it will be our vocation, not his, something uniquely ours, governed by our unique constellation of abilities, interests, and historical and social contexts. In today’s Epistle reading, Paul describes this in terms of the function of individual body parts: Just as each part has a vital role to play for the health and thriving of the body, so too do we each have our own roles to play for the health and thriving of the Church, and by extension, the wider world (see 1 Corinthians 12.12-31). In this body Christ himself is the head, and we are his hands and feet — everything we do should be directed by the course he set.

My main series right now on the blog is talking about Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow, and the ways Christianity deals with the shadow well, but also the ways our practices and stories can strengthen it if we aren’t careful. If we understand our Christian vocation as described above, the interplay between our personal vocation to be ourself and our general vocation to be like Christ in the world, and all of this within Christian community, can create a dynamic that helps not push anything into the shadow: It doesn’t, for example, motivate us to push away any part of our personality or calling that we think doesn’t mesh with ‘imitating’ Christ; nor does it encourage us to develop a sense of calling that is apart from Christ’s example. And the community aspect mitigates any inflated sense of our calling. The three — the personal, the communal, and the Christian — exist in a dynamic tension that resists us thinking either too highly or lowly of ourselves and our abilities. But, if we aren’t careful and any one of these anchors is eliminated, we can easily run into trouble: If we lose our particular vocation, we run the risk of just playing assigned roles and withholding our unique contributions; if we lose the example and mission of Christ, we can delude ourselves into thinking anything is of God; if we lose the community context, we can delude ourselves into a kind of inflated messianism, in which we think the world depends on us.

So, what are we to make of all this? Jesus was committed to living for the cause of justice and compassion for all. As those who follow him, our vocations won’t be his — we won’t be called to do the same things he did in the same ways he did — but they will be consistent with it. We too must be committed to justice and compassion, to extending the love and grace of God to as many as we can, but live this out in our own ways consistent with our interests, God-given abilities, within the opportunities and challenges of our circumstances.

The world is a scary place; it always is, but it seems particularly scary right now. But whether things are going well or going poorly in the world, our job remains the same: to look around us, in the vocation of the present moment, and do something, anything, to spread God’s love, grace, and joy in the world.