One of the great souls I’ve had the blessing of spending time with worked in housekeeping at a hospital.

She was someone with an open-hearted faith and an easy smile. She was someone well acquainted with struggle, with poverty – she was an immigrant to this country. 

She had come to know God as a living presence in her life, and in the life of her community, a living presence with the power to bring life and redemption up and out from death and dislocation. 

And she approached her work as a cleaner, as a housekeeper, in the hospital with a deep sense of purpose, her cleaning was  an act of prayer, an act of devotion to the Living God, an act of witness to the mysteries of resurrection.

This hospital was a trauma center. And her job often involved cleaning blood and vomit and feces. Her job often involved cleaning a room in the aftermath of death. But it often also involved cleaning a room in the aftermath of healing.

When she worked, she prayed. 

When she cleaned a room, she prayed for the peace of the souls of those who had left the room for the grave.
She prayed for the healing, the vitality, the hope of those who had left the room for continued life.
She prayed for the hands and the hearts and the minds of those who had left the room to go on to care for other patients in other rooms.
And she prayed for those whose lives and souls and fears and hopes would next rest on that bed and inhabit that space. 

She prayed that the space may be cleansed for them
Washed of any pain or fear or grief or guilt
And filled with the love and mercy of God
Made new for the love and the healing that person would need. 

She approached her job as a religious vocation, an opportunity to do her part on behalf of that cleansing and restoring and healing Spirit of the Resurrected Christ.

Now, she got this job because she needed a job. She wasn’t paid enough for it; the value and dignity of her work were not recognized or compensated near what it should be. If her life circumstances were different, and if our society were different, she would have been very capable of getting into any number of careers. It’s not like God had ordained her from the beginning to work as a cleaner in a hospital. And it’s also not like what she did for work was the most important way of seeing her purpose in life – she shared so much spirit and creativity outside work, with her community, church, family. 

And yet, here was someone clearly responding to God’s call to live with sacred purpose and vocation. 

The great late Christian writer Frederick Buechner has said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

Where is there hunger, where is there need that is yours to respond to, and to respond to from your place of fulfillment, giftedness, gladness?

The end of the summer I did a little sermon series on the Names of God, how we evoke, how we call on and call forth the Holy I Am Beyond All Name. And now this fall I’m doing a series on what how the God we call on in turn calls on us – how the God we call forth is all along calling forth us. 

Last week I explored how we are called to sacred playfulness, a creative and healing playfulness. This week, I’ll explore Purpose. 

When Moses received the hidden Name of God – the I Am that I Am Yyyyhhhhwwwhhh – it was in the same breath as him receiving the call to become an agent of his people’s liberation. He was given a tremendous sacred purpose. 

Now, we are not all called to be world historic leaders. But we are each and all called in our place and time to the ways we can contribute to the realm of heaven on earth. This is always true: God always calls us forth, calls us into more fully being who God has created us to be. 

There’s a little Hasidic Jewish tale about a man named Yosef. Yosef is an old man who became sick and died. When he dies he finds himself standing before the glory of God, he is overcome with a sense that he had squandered so much of his life. He cries out to God: “I’m sorry I wasn’t more like Moses.” His cry is met with an answer: “Josef, God doesn’t care that you weren’t more like Moses. Why were you not more like Yosef?”

 Irenaeus, an early Christian leader, said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” 

Part of what salvation by God’s mercy does for us is free us to be more fully alive, more fully who God has created us to be. Yosef can be more fully Yosef; we each can be more fully ourselves. 

This is why Buechner said that the place God calls us to requires our gladness – it’s where our gladness meets a deep hunger in the world. We aren’t only called to tend to the needs in this world full of urgent needs. We are called to do that in the certain ways that activate greater fulfillment in ourselves. 

I began this sermon the way I did, with the story of a hospital housekeeper, because so often when we talk about calling or vocation, we can imagine it to mean something way too particular and actually inaccessible to most people: as a profession that someone pursues as a free choice among a wide array of options. We too often talk about discerning a calling or vocation like someone going booth to booth at a job fair at Harvard University. But in the actual lived experience of most people now and throughout history, responding to God’s call on our lives often means making a ministry out of the circumstances we find ourselves in, responding in a faithful way to the needs at our doorstep and inside our own home, in ways that brings forth our fuller potential and indeed light and gladness.  

So that’s one misconception I want to clear up: that a calling is only about how we make a living. Living more fully into our purpose may or may not mean a change in how we make a living. Sometimes it does: for the sake of our integrity or the sake of our sanity or for the sake of a dream that has laid claim on our hearts, or truly being called to a different career. But so often what we are called to is growth in how we do what we are already doing, so that it is more an act of service, more fully done with courage and prayer and integrity. 

And more than that, our callings so often involve activity that isn’t about paid work. If it weren’t then no children would ever get raised, and churches and soup kitchens would cease to exist.

And here’s another misconception: That there is only one answer to what your purpose is, and that answer doesn’t change. 

The truth is living into a call to a higher purpose is a process of sacred experimentation and exploration. What we discover – what we make of our purpose, can and does change as we grow and as our life circumstances change. And it’s okay if there are periods of murkiness. 

It also is much more about the moment. The question of what God is calling us to is really a question for each moment. If there is someone right here in pain and in need, and you respond by being there for them. Let yourself be glad: You have responded to God’s call on you that moment. Period. 

Our scriptures for today are Jesus’ famous parables about not hiding our light, but letting it shine forth, for the glory of God, and the realm of Heaven on Earth. And I paired it with a lesser known parable from the Gospel of Thomas: If you bring forth what is within you, that will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is within you, that will destroy you. 

If we’re honest with ourselves, and honest to God, we know if we have light and potential that is not seeing the light of day; we know of we have soul potential that is pent up and eating away at us. We know if there is indeed a call on our lives that we have not said Yes to. We know if there is a great need that is ours to minister to that we are yet passing by. We know if the light of our full potential is stifled under a bushel. We know if we can yet become more fully ourselves, more fully who God has created us uniquely to be. And that’s fine, that’s good in fact, that’s the beginning of our awakening to a purpose that we can yet step into. Sometimes this is requires a process of healing from the ways we have been told we aren’t good enough or what have you.

And when we reflect on this we can also appreciate the ways our light is shining out, the ways we have found the hunger that we can meet with our gladness. We can celebrate that. We can give thanks for that.

This is all about God’s grace – our very existence is by grace, and our purposes here in this life are gifts of Grace. 

As a community of faith centered around grace we can help each other out through this, encouraging each other, lovingly challenging each other, helping each other discern how God is at work in one another and collectively in our church. 

So, I offer to you these questions, for you to prayerfully reflect on:
What is the purpose, what are the purposes, God is calling you to, here and now, at the time and place and stage of life you find yourself in? 

And to us as a church: what are the purposes God is calling out from all of us, together as a faith community, here and now, at the time and place and stage of life we as a church find ourselves in?

For the answers, and for the explorations and experimentations, for the flourishing of gladness and the nourishing of hunger, I give thanks to God. 

(Delivered Sunday, September 18, 2022, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge)