How Did I End Up Here? – Br. Jim Woodrum

After I first arrived at the Monastery five years ago, I remember taking a bus out of South Station to our other property an hour north of Boston to spend my Sabbath day. As we were pulling out of the station, I looked out of the window at the surrounding city scene and time seemed to freeze for a moment and a question popped into my mind: How did a man like me, who had lived his whole life in the south, raised in the Baptist Church, who had an interest in a career in music, end up in the greater Boston area as a monk in the Episcopal Church? How in the world did I get from there to here? Have you ever had one of those moments….when life became so large, so incredibly vivid that you had to step back and ask, “Is this real?” And then life’s “play” button is pressed and you forge ahead as you were, perhaps a little overwhelmed at the notion of actually retracing the various paths and stages that led to that moment, and it fades unresolved. Yet you know that you just had a glimpse of something larger than life and you have to settle with the idea that time will bring clarity and you will eventually understand. I can’t help to wonder if all the characters in our scripture lessons today asked themselves the same thing. Just as in my Sabbath bus ride, did they have to pinch themselves and ask, “Is this real? How did I end up here?

In today’s gospel lesson we read that John the Baptist is standing with two of his followers when Jesus passes by. John points to Jesus and says: “Look, here he is! The one who I’ve been talking about! Here is the Lamb of God!” Perhaps it is out of excitement and curiosity that John’s disciples begin to follow Jesus. Perceiving their curiosity He surprises them by engaging them. He asks “What are you looking for?” They inquire where Jesus is staying and He gives them an open ended answer: “Come and see!” Jesus doesn’t give a concrete answer to their question. If He did, I wonder if they would have continued with Him. When Philip shared the good news with Nathaniel, we hear a slightly amusing reaction that those of us from a small town might be familiar with. Incredulously he asks, “What good can come out of Nazareth?” Using the words of Jesus, Philip answers, “Come and see.” And it is with Jesus that these men find their vocation and are set on a course that changed their lives.

Notice that I said these men found their vocation rather than their career. The two are not altogether dissimilar and are in fact sometimes used interchangeably. The distinction though lies primarily in how they are initiated and discerned. The common definition of a career is: an occupation or profession, especially one requiring special training, followed as one’s lifework. Conversely, the word vocation comes from the Latin vocare which means “to call.” Unlike the choosing of a career, there is more than one person involved in the choosing of a vocation. While we do not know a lot about the men who became Jesus’ closest disciples, we do know that they left everything behind including well established careers. Many of them were fishermen by trade and one of them, Matthew, had the nefarious career as a tax collector. I imagine that when Jesus was younger he learned the skill of carpentry from his earthly father Joseph before setting off to fulfill the vocation He had been called to by His heavenly father, the one He called Abba.

A couple of years ago, I sustained an injury to my shoulder which required some physical therapy. When I first met with my therapist she asked me, “So, what do you do for a living?” I remember feeling a little uneasy, not because I thought it would be strange to say I’m a monk, but rather because I consider being a monk my vocation rather than my career. In actuality, I decided at a young age that I wanted a career in music as a performer and teacher. I was good at it and as you well know, I had a lot of good guidance in the development of that skill at home. But a few years ago, almost ten years into my career, I stumbled upon the website of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, a group of Episcopal monks located in Cambridge, MA. Their website headline said: We are men living traditional vows in the non-traditional setting of Harvard Square. We are learning to ‘pray our lives.’ While that deeply resonated with me, I kept pushing away the notion of being a monk until I heard a report on NPR about a Christmas CD recorded by a group of monks in a monastery. To my great surprise it turned out to be this same group of men that had intrigued me. More than eight years later, I finally accepted Jesus’ invitation to “come and see,” and know I have found my vocation in life.

So how is it that we discern our own vocation?   Let me suggest three ways. The first is to realize that our vocation is bound up in the very essence of our creation. In the beginning God spoke “Let there be…” and when he was finished He saw that it was good! Everything that has been created has a divine purpose for being in the world. In the second chapter of Genesis we read that when God made man He put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it. As He continued to create he would bring His creation to the man to see what he would call it. “The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field.” In today’s reading from the Old Testament God says to Jeremiah: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’

Old Testament scholar and theologian Water Brueggeman defines vocation as ‘a purpose for being in the world that is related to the purposes of God.’ A prayerful way to discern our vocation is to take notice of the inherent goodness of all creation, including ourselves; to realize that all of life is a gift and to give thanks to God. One of the early members of our Society, Br. George Congreve once wrote: “How strange it is that though we would not waste half an hour doing nothing, yet often when walking for half an hour along the road we do worse perhaps than waste it, when we might have glorified it and made it radiant with the brightness and sweetness and preciousness of the life and love of God by thinking of God and speaking to Him.”

The second way to discern vocation is the realization that when it comes down to it, none of us are ‘self-made’ people. We did not choose to come into the world on our own. We did not choose our families of origin, our ethnicity, or our station in life. While we were born with intelligence and with the capacity for learning, we did not arrive fully assembled nor did we come with an instruction manual. The only instinct we had in the beginning once our lungs were clear was to cry out for help as loudly as we could. God has placed people in our lives who have nurtured us, looked out for our well-being, helped us realize the gifts we have and how to use them. So a prayerful practice in discerning our vocation would be to recognize all who have brought us up in this life, to give thanks to God for them and then follow in their example; to share what we have been given and in turn help others to appreciate the miraculous nature of their of their very being.

And the third would be the recognition that in God’s economy nothing is wasted. I said earlier that each of Jesus’ disciples had lives and careers that preceded their vocational call and I can’t help but to think that each of these men were able to use their varied skills in their ministry. While I’m not longer a teacher and performer of music, my career as a musician has informed the work that I do at our monastery. Part of my duties is to serve as the Director of Music and Liturgy and my brothers draw on my skills to plan our music, rehearse the monastic choir, and to plan the various liturgies that help us order our prayer. The word liturgy actually means “work of the people,” and I get to help people live into their vocations as worshippers of God.

God even uses the ways in which we miss the mark to help us grow into our divine purpose. In our lesson from Acts we hear the dramatic story of Paul’s conversion experience. I wonder if his vocation as a missionary to the Gentiles would have had the same impact without his testimony to what his life was like before he set out on the road to Damascus. In the SSJE Rule of Life, it says: “We (brothers) expect to experience failures. Some of these contain lessons that can help us become more skillful in the future. Other failures are means by which we enter further into the mystery of discipleship.” As Christians, we are Easter people and the only way to get to Easter is through Good Friday. God often enters our hearts, not through doors we have left open invitingly, but through the cracks rendered to hearts through some hardship, or difficult relationship, or a traumatic experience. To realize how to live into our vocations as children of God, we first have to realize our need of Jesus as our redeemer and savior. When we fall down we can be assured that if we hand over control to God, He will be there to transfigure our experience and lead us home again.

How is Jesus calling you into something bigger than anything you could have imagined? If you are not quite sure, then don’t worry…..just take Jesus up on His invitation to ‘come and see.’ When you least expect it, you will find yourself pausing in one of these ‘holy’ moments asking yourself in amazement: How in the world did I end up here?