We have spent a lot of time talking about vocation here over the last five years. And here is why: you and I spend so much of our lives working, both in jobs we get paid for and in those where we aren’t compensated – at least not financially. But we don’t talk often about vocation just because it’s what we spend so much of our time doing. We talk about it because God talks about it and because He has something or some things that He wants us to do with our lives. To say it another way, God has a vision for our vocational lives.

Genesis 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

It’s really important to recognize that God calls human beings to work long before the fall comes in Genesis 3. If work shows up in paradise, guess what we should assume we will be doing when we spend eternity with God? That’s right – we’ll be working and taking care of things. Some of you who are counting down to your retirement, you’re like, “Oh, you mean I don’t just have 5 or 10 years left to work?” Nope ☺

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Our lives are the handiwork of God. And His vision for our lives includes doing good works that He prepared for us to do a long time ago. And yet there’s something that is getting in the way of the work we’ve been called to do.

Shame often restricts the possibility of us living out our God-given vocation.

I want to spend today and next week talking about the role shame plays when it comes to our vocations. I’m calling this message, “Disrupting our Vocation”. And even if you’ve never recognized exactly how shame does this, I know that you’ve felt it. It shows up when you’re asked certain questions. I want you to see how these specific questions make you feel when you hear them.

Where did you go to school?

What were your numbers last quarter?

How long have you been in this entry-level role?

Have you made partner yet?

Why do you think you couldn’t raise more money?

Did you say you were unemployed, as in you don’t have a single job?

What are your future plans for moving up in the company?

You’re just a stay-at-home mom?

Are you serious that you’re a stay-at-home dad? You just let your wife do all the work?

“It is not always easy to know how to respond to the multiple callings we may hear, but one thing is sure: shame will not allow us to listen without bringing its dissonance to bear in every way it can.” - Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame

A couple of years ago, it was a big story that Geoffrey Owens was working at Trader Joe’s. He is an actor and best known for his role on The Cosby Show. Why was this such a big story that he was working at Trader Joe’s? Because of what we’re talking about today. He experienced job-shaming. But I love his response:

“Every job is worthwhile and valuable and if we have a kind of a rethinking about that because of what’s happened to me, that would be great.” - Geoffrey Owens

I want to help us have a kind of rethinking when it comes to vocation – in a way that helps move shame out of our lives and in a way that we can help move shame out of the lives of others.

1 Corinthians 12:12-26 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we are all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body – whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” if would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

One body, many parts. We can only be one if we affirm each person’s vocation.

There are no second class vocations in God’s kingdom.

Shame affects our vocation in all kinds of ways, starting with the careers we choose. Some of you have parents who would never forgive you for choosing a “less than” career. In their minds, they didn’t raise you to do something they think is beneath you. Some of you are in careers you hate because you were led to believe this was the only way to avoid shame.

In our culture, there are shameful vocations. In God’s economy, there are only sacred vocations.

God has placed the parts in the body, every ONE of them, JUST AS HE wanted them to be.

God Himself gives us our vocations, as He sees fit.

God arranges us. He is creative. He is purposeful. And we need to fulfill what He’s called us to do. And we don’t need to wish that we were like everyone else.

Regardless of your role or title, we need you and you need us.

You can’t say you aren’t needed or that I’m not needed. For some of you, you need to see that you actually need people you thought were insignificant. For others of you, you need to see that you are significant, regardless of what the world says about what you do or don’t do for a living.

We are called to see vocation different than the world sees it.

The parts the world treats with dishonor, we treat with honor. We bring dignity to all people because every person is made in the image of God and every vocation is given by God. Let’s make sure we’re doing all we can to honor everyone, especially those who will never receive honor from this world.

Here’s how the world wants to rewrite verse 26. See, we live in a highly competitive society where for me to win, you have to lose. So the world operates in this way: when you rejoice, they suffer. They can’t be happy for you because of what they think it means for them. But when you suffer, they rejoice. But not in God’s kingdom and not in this church. When you suffer, we enter into your suffering. When you rejoice, we are right there to celebrate with you.

So much of our shame comes from comparing ourselves with each other. My education to your education. My skills to your skills. My title to your title. My pay to your pay.

Vocational comparison robs us of contentment and it keeps us from carrying out the vocation we’ve actually been given by God.

It makes us feel superior or inferior. And it has to stop.

I love how C.S. Lewis writes this in The Screwtape Letters. He’s writing from the vantage point of Screwtape, a senior demon, to his nephew Wormwood.

“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankfully and gratefully as in his neighbor’s talents – or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things.” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

We cannot make our greatest contributions to the world if we are riddled with shame.

Think about how Satan works. He does what we would do if we were him. If you wanted to stop the people of God from carrying out their calling, what would you do? I mean, if you had the chance to stop goodness and truth and beauty from appearing in the world, how would you tackle that issue? Wouldn’t you introduce something like shame that you knew would stifle billions of people on earth from bringing their contributions into the world?

Replace what you have believed about shame with the truths of the gospel. You are loved. You are chosen. Jesus loved you and gave himself for you. Make this declaration daily or even more often:

I’m living for an audience of one, not everyone.