Something tells me that when Jeremiah was a boy, sitting in the pews, watching his father conduct services as a priest of Israel, he wasn’t dreaming that one day he might be a prophet. Something tells me that most of you sitting in the pews today have not been dreaming about God calling you into some special ministry.

When I was growing up, becoming a pastor—Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, or any other flavor—was the furthest thing from my mind. I was all about sports. I dreamed about playing professional football. Along the way I had to give up that dream—until recently, when I heard that the Cowboys are now going with a 40-something University of Miami quarterback. Put me in, Coach! With a business degree in my pocket, acceptances from business school, law school, a coaching offer, and some other job possibilities, I headed to seminary to study for the ministry. Why? Because God called me, of course. But, George, how did you know it was God calling? What did that sound like? Was it a voice you heard in your ears or in your head? Was it like it was with Jeremiah?

Well, yes and no. All of our calls are alike, and yet each of our calls is unique. What’s alike is what Jeremiah learned: God knows you, God made you, God has a purpose for your life, and God wants you to know the joy of living out that purpose. The particulars are the hard to figure parts.

For many our work will be the work of the church in the world, while for some it will be church work. There is no greater or lesser to this, even though we like to say that the ministry is a “higher” calling. But the whole notion of higher or lower callings suggests that the woman who changes the sheets in your hotel room is less important to the kingdom of God than that good and gentle man who wears the pointy hat in Rome. The pontiff has a more strategic role, perhaps, but not a higher calling if both he and she are doing all they can in the places they are to serve the Lord.

We should not compare ourselves to others vocationally, because someone will always make us feel superior or inferior, instead of just what we are meant to be. There’s a lovely and simple parable in Karen Santorum’s book Everyday Graces that gets this right. “Once upon a time there was a king who had a beautiful garden. One day, he went there and found everything drooping. He asked why. The vine said it couldn’t grow tall and strong like the pine tree, so it saw no use in trying. The pine tree, in turn, couldn’t produce tasty fruit like the apple tree, so why bother? The apple tree produced only small, simple flowers, unlike the beautiful flowers on roses that everyone loves.

“Finally, the king came upon the pansy. It had avoided this trap. The king asked how. I am happy because I know that when you planted the seed out of which I grew, you didn’t want a pine or an apple tree or a rose. You wanted a little pansy. So to please you, I am going to be the best pansy I can be.” [ISI Books, 2003. Thanks to Carl Reeves for this citation.]

I’ll resist the temptation of urging you all to become pansies. But to turn this another way, some are called to raise their children as homemakers, volunteer at school and spike the spirit of the community; some are called to raise shopping malls where people will be employed and goods sold and the economy expanded so that many may prosper; and others are called to raise the spiritual maturity of a generation of Christians who are called to a thousand kinds of ministry. One is not better or worse than any other.

Even within church ministry, though, we are tempted to compare ourselves wrongly. I would love to have the voice of my preacher friend Joel Gregory, the former pastor of First Baptist downtown. But one of the finest preachers in America, Fred Craddock, is a slight man of about 5’5” and voice he describes as the sound of “wind whistling through a fence post.” No one can tell a story like Fred, though many of us try to tell Fred’s stories. All of us envy his gifts. God gives each of us and all of us unique gifts with which to work for God’s glory, the world’s benefit, and our delight. Our pastoral residents will have to find their own voices and avoid too much George creeping in.

But how do you get to the point where you think you really are doing what God has called you to do with your life? Jeremiah’s call is a template for our own. If we wonder about whether God might call us to be prophets or priests or teachers or mothers or bankers or bakers or whatever in order to glorify God in the world, then notice how the call story begins with Jeremiah saying, The word of the Lord came to me. God takes the initiative. If there is a calling, there is a Caller. And God is far more interested in our knowing our call than we are in knowing it. So God comes to us—in various ways, through various events, in the sound of various people’s voices. Jeremiah doesn’t tell his whole story, but my guess is that he had been hanging around the temple a whole lot of his life, smelling the incense, watching the sheep slaughtered for sacrifice, seeing his father do his work. He had an idea about what a religious vocation might be like—and maybe even whether the voice he was hearing, probably in his head, sounded like it could be God.

When we dedicate babies here, we ask parents to keep their children in the precincts of the temple. We want our kids to get acquainted with the interests of God, to learn what God cares about. We want them to know that if their greatest ambition in life is to be rich and lazy and care about no one but themselves, they cannot possibly call that a spiritual calling. If they cannot see that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, if they cannot see that healing the bent-over woman is more important than keeping things under control, then they cannot blame that on God or claim to be doing God’s will. But if they find something they are clearly good at doing—speaking in front of people, say, caring about fairness among classmates, making friends with newcomers other people don’t bother with, listening to the problems of others with genuine concern—well, there may be something to that.

We love to see the human dramas unfold in the Olympics at this quadrennial time. The beautiful movie Chariots of Fire told the story of Scottish runner Eric Liddell, who competed in the 1924 games in Paris but would not run on Sunday out of spiritual commitment to keep the Sabbath holy. His sister Jennie didn’t understand his desire to run at all. She thought it undermined his higher calling to become a missionary—something Liddell would go on to do in China some years later. His wise preacher father said: You can praise the Lord by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection. Run in His name and let the world stand back in wonder. And later, Liddell explained to her in his own words: I believe God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure. To win is to honor him.

Jeremiah says that God knew him before he was born, that God had formed him in the womb and consecrated him and appointed him to be a prophet before he ever took his first breath. Some people take this as a literal statement of God’s predestination of every person. They see it as a sign that every baby conceived is the direct result of God’s intention, and thus abortion is all the more horrifying. It’s horrifying enough, though, without adding this layer to it. What Jeremiah is saying, I think, is that his calling was not his idea. He was not self-appointed. He did not seek the role of prophet for some selfish reason of putting himself above anyone else. He just felt in his bones that this is what he was meant for; that it all came together for him when he was speaking the truth to power, calling upon a nation to wake up, suffering their rejection even in doing it. When you discover your calling, the matter of whether it is hard or easy is beside the point. The point is that this is what you must do because it is who you are.

When I was wrestling with my call to ministry, I finally took a long look at how my life had been shaped. I remembered how I was the boy who won the competition in the fifth grade for speaking the longest in front of the class on a subject I knew nothing about. Some of you think I still do that, although I have learned how to stop, don’t you know?! You have Kim to thank for that. I was the boy who loved to go to church, who could memorize Scripture without difficulty, who always was called upon to pray, and who hated to choose up sides in games because someone would always be chosen last. I was also the young man whose pastor told him he ought to consider the ministry, because that older man saw the gifts that seemed to fit the ministry calling. In other words, when I was really honest with myself, I was most at home in the world in the church. I still am. Especially here in this church. It fits in a way that makes me feel like I was made for this.

And that’s why we are beginning a new program for teenagers called YourCall. You can read about it in the Tapestry, but the gist of it is that we want to introduce high schoolers to the possibility of God’s call to ministry in the church or for the church in the world. And then we are offering again the class Serving by God’s Design in order for adults to reflect upon the way God has formed them in the womb and called them to serve until they settle in the tomb.

Someone asked me awhile back how to distinguish between a vocation and an occupation. I am not sure I want to squeeze all the mystery out of it, but my immediate answer still makes sense to me: an occupation is something you can do; a vocation is something you can’t not do. There are many ways to make a living for any one of us. But circumstance and abilities might dictate or allow that we can do the kind of work that best fits how we are made. That’s what you can’t not do. And what a joyful thing, what a happy union, when those things come together!

Anyone who feels called by God to do anything will feel also the humbling inadequacy that goes with it. You might feel as Jeremiah did that you are too young, or that you are not from the right school or the right stock or the right sex. Those things too are beside the point. The humility is a good sign, however, since it makes you depend upon God. God will put words in your mouth, as Jeremiah learned, if you are called to preach or teach or speak for a living. God will give you a heart for children if you are called to work with little ones. If God has called you, whatever the field of service, God will empower and sustain you. God’s adequacy, not yours, is the issue. If God has called you, you are up to it. Period. There is no need to fear and no cause for arguing the matter with God or running from the call. But it’s your call. Are you answering your call?