The Other Six Days: C4 - Human Vocation

The Other Six Days

Part Two - Summoned and Equipped by God: Chapter 4 - Calling in a Post-vocational Age

Human Vocation

I have written in the past two posts about personal vocation and Christian vocation. Now we come to what I consider to be the missing ingredient in most discussions about vocation: human vocation.

Stevens begins this section observing that when we talk about vocation, two mandates usually surface: The Creation Mandate (Gen1:27-30) and the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19-20). He notes the tendency of denominations to prefer one over the other. Mainline denominations (the National Council of Churches crowd) and European churches prefer the Creation mandate with its emphasis on “civic responsibilities like earthkeeping and engineering.” Evangelical churches, as evidenced by their name, emphasize evangelism and saving souls. Stevens uses the word “tragic” here. Tragic indeed.

Stevens suggests that:

Salvation is both a rescue operation (recovering our lost vocation in Eden) and a completion project (preparing for the final renewal of creation at the second coming of Jesus.) Eschatology (the end times) is critical to understanding our vocation as Christians in this world.

The last thing we is the first thing we think about. … (90)

If you have read guru Stephen Covey, you know one of his axioms is that we “begin with the end in mind.” It is a very biblical idea. So what is the “end” we are to have in mind? We find the “end” both at the beginning of the Bible with Genesis and we find it in Revelation. There is the covenant between God and humanity at the beginning of creation. The covenant is broken by humanity. A new covenant is initiated by God. The story ends with the consummation of a New Creation.

Stevens relates three aspects of the original covenant mandate. Communion with God is one. Stevens writes:

The practice of the presence of God is not the exclusive vocation of professional ministers and cloistered monks. Nor is it a sacred interlude but woven into the warp and woof of everyday life. It is part of our calling. (92)

Concerning the second aspect Stevens writes that “God makes humankind innately social and inevitably sexual.” Again quoting Stevens:

Adam and Eve were called to live in grateful awareness of the cohumanity of life, male and female being the image of God together and not alone (Gen. 1:26-28), each sex evoking the other’s sexuality, and together enabling humanity to be a mysterious expression of God’s own love (Eph. 5:32). As designed by God, male and female are equal partners and heirs of the grace of life, complementary and side by side, rather than senior and assistant.

The family becomes God’s prototype community on earth and is part of every person’s vocational calling, whether one remains single or gets married. People-making (Gen. 1:28) gives Adam and Eve the further privilege of making people in their own likensess (Gen 5:3) as God made them in his. … (94)

The marriage relationship is the embrace of that which is other than oneself and serves as the grounding model for other centered love in broader community. The basis of work, whatever our occupation, is about sustaining and enriching the community building mandate given to us by God and in a very real sense it does not matter what particular occupation we use individually to earn our living as we build community.

A third aspect of the creation covenant is co-creativity. God created humanity to exercise dominion over the earth; to bring it to full fruition. Stevens alludes to Micah 4:3 where it is prophesied they will beat “swords into ploughshares and their spears in pruning hooks.” We often latch on to the destruction of war implements facet in this passage but don’t notice what the instruments are transformed into: tools for work and economic production.

At the end of the chapter Stevens asks, “How is our sense of vocation enriched by a trinitarian understanding of God?” He offers three responses.

• First, we experience communion by becoming co-lovers of God...
• Second, through community building we become lovers of one another....
• Third, co-creativity draws us into God’s love for the world. ... (103-104)

To tie all of these pieces together Stevens presents the following chart on page 101.

COVENANT MANDATE
	Creation One		Creation Two
	Design	The Fall	Substantial Salvation	Final Salvation
Communion with God	grateful awareness	bitterness alienation	access adoption	full communon
Community-building	relationality holy sexuality family	homicide broken sexuality alienation	neighboring church redeemed sexuality	garden city bride of Christ
Co-Creativity	world-making stewardship	earth-raping manipulation	Redeemed work subcreativity	beauty fulfilled creativity work and sabbath
	Gen. 1-2	Gen. 3	Eph. 2-3	Rev. 21-22

I think this is one of the most critical sections in the whole book. My take is that a large portion of the Western Church (mainline Christianity) sees its mandate as civic service on behalf of the existing world order, essentially baptizing the status quo. Others within this community see their work as social justice, but it is largely justice predicated on modernist/Enlightenment notions of justice, dressed up in God language. Another large portion of the Church sees its mandate to “winning souls” and gettin individuals right with God. Many within this camp have grown uneasy with the narrowness of this and want to include social justice, yet just like their mainline cousins, their emphasis tends to be more about modernist/Enlightenment notions of justice.

Lost from all of this is any clear eschatology. The issue is not evangelism versus social justice. The issue is the creation covenant and how do we participate in the restoration of that covenant as God’s New Creation until the consummation of the new covenant at Christ’s return. The issues are greater than evangelism, greater than social justice, and greater than the two of them combined. Evangelism and social justice are only two aspects of Christian vocation. Christian vocation should have as its ultimate vision the restoration of the human vocation. The Christian vocation is temporal. The human vocation is eternal.

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Comments

[Dana Ames]

Great stuff.

Wright says that our theology is most fully informed by our eschatology. Everywhere I look, I find evidence to confirm this. Stevens does it too.

This is so important. We can't even go there if we believe that this earth will be burned up and thrown in the cosmic refuse bin.

Dana

[Michael W. Kruse]

The corresponding problem from the mainline tradition has been silence. Mainliner pastors are extremely reticent to talk about eschatology. I think that part of it is that some fear that talking about “end times” will make the look unsophisticated to the educated in their congregations. Some fear that those who are opposed to evangelicalism will be turned off by talk about a “second coming” no matter what is said. I think still others know that so many in their congregations have bought into distorted “end times” stuff that they don’t want to face the effort and possible conflict it will take to bring corrective teaching. Whatever the case, I rarely see eschatology addressed in mainline contexts. So the options are often warped eschatology versus no eschatology. Both leave is in a very bad place.

[Michael W. Kruse]

I should also add that what Steven's makes so wonderfully clear is that it is not about evangelism and social justice. The mission is the restoration of communion, community, and co-creativity. Evangelism and social justice are part of the work we do to bring about the end but they are not the ends themselves. That is so critical for the Church to grasp.