Welcome to the Martin Luther King Jr. long weekend. When I was about the age of some of our youngest acolytes I was a Martin Luther King Jr. expert. From Kindergarten to 2nd grade I attended Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School on the East Side of Providence, RI. Here is some photographic evidence from my first grade class. You will see not much has changed. I was one of the littlest and I have the same hairstyle.
So from that early saturation, I felt like I really knew King’s life and work quite well. But what I did not know and only learned some time later is that King was a brilliant scholar and thought that he would go into academia. But instead he ended out following the call of becoming a pastor, and a civil rights activist, the likes of which our country had never seen. Having been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and dedicated to the biblical values of equality, justice and freedom, and convinced that human beings could move in the direction of good over evil, King dedicated himself to a cause that gave him purpose and meaning, but ultimately cost his life as we all know. Some might say it was his calling.
This morning in our two lessons we read about call. We hear about the call of the early disciples in the lesson from John and we hear about Samuel’s call from God in our Old Testament lesson. And just a little information about Samuel: He lived around 1000 BCE – He was destined for greatness from the start. His mother, before his birth, dedicated Samuel to God’s service. And as Samuel grew he became a man of integrity and prayer. He was devout and brought Israel to godliness. He was skilled as a prophet and judge, and worked tirelessly for the welfare of his people and was able to restore order to the nation and under his leadership his people prospered and lived in peace. And it was hard work, but he was born and called to this purpose. Much like Martin Luther King Jr.
And the readings invite us to think about our own calling. I have been thinking a lot about call this year. I have a seminary intern this year working with me at Wellesley College who is discerning a call to college chaplaincy. Additionally, I mentor 4 newly ordained clergy helping them to discover their call to the work of ministry. And what I spend a lot of time teaching is that when we really consider and follow our calling or purpose, it saves us time and effort from things that are ultimately unrewarding for us. Using our energies that align our time, talent and treasure to our purposes is the best route toward feeling good about ourselves and feeling affirmed of our value and being the most productive. Here is an embarrassing case in point: I once spent a Christmas vacation from college developing photographs back when they had those 60 minute photo places. I was so terrible at it. I was in fact so terrible I fired myself. The attention to detail and thinking in the negative about the application of red and green to developing photos just made no sense to me. And truthfully, I was so badly trained. And I was entrusted with wedding photos and baptism photos. I was unhappy every moment I was there and was ashamed of my work. I begged to be let go early for the purposes of limitation of damages. After that I got a more suitable vacation job as a receptionist in a psychiatric outpatient office at Dartmouth Medical School which was such a better fit for me.
But how do you discover your mission, your purpose and your call besides not doing things you are terrible at?
Almost 30 years ago, when I finished college, I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. And I remember reading about how important having a personal mission statement it. Stephen Covey wrote: “Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs”
He recommends that your mission statement have three parts:
- Whatdo I want to do?
- Whodo I want to help?
- What is the result? What value will I create?
If this is something you have never done before – you can simply start by thinking about who you are: what gives you joy? What makes you smile? What activities make you feel good about yourself? Who do you like to help? What are you good at doing and what makes you lose track of time? What challenge or painful event in the past have you overcome in your life that you would like to help others overcome? Who inspires you? Start there, and the rest will fall into place.
And this is not just a personal question. It is a question that we need to ask ourselves as a church. And it is a question that we particularly ask when we form a new vestry each February. What is our purpose? What is God nudging us to do? What brings us to life? What makes us smile? What makes God smile? Last year as you have heard we realized that we needed to work on telling our story to the community so we could share this gift of St. Michael’s with our community and not continue to be Holliston’s best kept secret, we knew we were being called to bolster our stewardship so that we can pay our bills and get on with the work of Jesus, and we needed to encourage more volunteerism by letting people know what we needed help with and asking for it and to invite people into the joy of serving. And when the vestry meets for their retreat in March we will be asking the same questions again – what does God want this group of faithful people to be doing for the Kingdom.
There is no shortage of good ideas in a church, but the hard work is asking the question and answering honestly – is that really our purpose here at St. Michael’s? Do we have people to make that idea come to life and to thrive? Do we have the resources? Do we have the passion? Did the person who suggested the idea recommend it because he or she wanted someone else to do it? Or were they willing to roll up their sleeves and make the ministry happen? – because that is when ministries can really prosper and grow. Will this bring life to our congregation and Christ’s light to the world, or will it burn us out?
To end, I would just like to share, on New Year’s Day, there was an article in the New York Times written by a pediatrician, Dr Dhruv Khullar, entitled “Finding Purpose for a Good Life. But Also a Healthy One.” In the article Khullar shares information regarding the health benefits that come from leading a life of purpose. For example, he cites as study that teenagers who volunteered had lower levels of inflammation, better cholesterol profiles and lower body mass indexes. Additionally, those who had the biggest jumps in empathy and altruism scores had the largest reductions in cardiovascular risk. Incidentally, have a look at our new teenagers’ room – and you will see that what adorns the room at this early stage is love, serve and prayer. That’s a healthy sign.
But at the end of Khullar’s article he writes “Finding purpose is rarely an epiphany, nor is it something you pick up at the mall or download from the app store. It can be a long arduous process that requires introspection and conversation, then a commitment to act. The key to a deeper, healthier life, it seems, isn’t knowing the meaning of life, it’s building meaning into your life.”
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