Our Christian Vocation
Work: a blessing and a curse. You may not enjoy your 9 to 5 but perhaps you love tending a garden, reading books with your children or grandchildren, or volunteering at a food pantry. Each of these things can be our vocation, since these are ways we can serve others.
Additionally, Christians are also all called to do church work. It’s not just the job of the Pastor. Depending on our talents, it may come in the form of singing in the choir, serving as a deacon, or listening to a friend in need.
What do all of these forms of work have in common? They do not appear to have much of a reward but looks can be deceiving. The reward is Christ Himself – the most incredible reward imaginable! We are called through baptism and the Word and made His own. And so, knowing we have these callings, we can find joy in them. We get to have the opportunity to wake up, find cheer in the new day, thank God for the work before us, and rejoice in it.
Thanks be to God for lavishing upon us his bounteous recompense.
Here is the full sermon text from Isaiah 49:
The Servant of the Lord
Listen to me, O coastlands,
and give attention, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
3 And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.”5 And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
6 he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”7 Thus says the Lord,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation,
the servant of rulers:
“Kings shall see and arise;
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
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