I heard Jesse James (of Monster Garage, and West Coast Chopper fame) interviewed the other day, and he was asked why he had stopped drinking.  He replied that his after-work drinking had started to affect his work.  “God has given me this gift, I am a great welder, and I don’t want to waste that.”  Drink was leading him to get less work done, and to do lesser work – so he stopped. 

            People who respect their vocation respect God, and his manifold gifts – the energy, the ability, the opportunity, the resources He provides.  Not all of us pursue a vocational model of work.  It would be difficult, I think, to approach a profession like Lawyering, or Consulting, or Selling, or Fundraising with the same workman-like attitude one can bring to carpentry, musicianship, or teaching.  I hesitate to judge, though, never having pursued those professions.  I know that some jobs are more vocational in their practice than I would have thought.  I heard someone recently describe a surgical procedure as the doctor’s “masterpiece.”  I thought “yes” that is exactly how it must be – a surgeon uses skilled hands – like a carpenter, or a pianist.  William Butler Yeats, in his famous poem “Adam’s Curse” describes the work of “stitching” together the right words as harder, sometimes, than “scrubbing a kitchen pavement,” and yet it is a vocation that causes one to “be thought an idler by the noisy set of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen the martyrs call ‘the world’.”

            That last line smarts a bit because I was always taught – even before I was an undergraduate – that ministry was a vocation, not a profession (I know my use of the word “profession” is inaccurate, but I can’t think of a more serviceable word).  I was taught that ministry required a flexible and varied skill set, that one had to respect the abilities and opportunities God provides, and that one should invest oneself in enriching and exercising those abilities.  This vocational model was permanently embossed on me when, as a new minister, I found that most of the things folks needed me to do couldn’t be taught in a classroom, but had to be learned “on-the-job.”

            The apostle Paul was trained in both a profession, and a vocation.  He received the best education a young man could receive, in the First Century A.D., as a Rabbi.  He learned to apply the already-voluminous rabbinic material to the text of scripture, and to hold his own in the great disputes of his day.  He also learned a trade – tent making (or leather working).  When he was called to missionary work, his vocation served him well.  He was able to support himself, and make valuable contacts in places like Corinth, Ephesus, and Thessalonica.  His vocational training provided him with something even more important.  It offered the very model he applied to ministry.

            Paul had a profession, and a vocation.  When called to preach, he was called to a vocation.  He always describes himself in terms of the working class.  He is a “bond-servant.”  In his pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus he describes ministry as “engaging in serviceable deeds” (Titus 3:8), and compares it to vocational pursuits – like farming, soldiering, and athletics (2 Timothy 2:3-6).  He forbids the two young preachers from becoming occupied with the abstract and arcane (2 Timothy 3:16-17, Titus 3:9-11).  And he describes the foundational act of any ministry – study of the Word, as a vocation.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, and who correctly handles the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 TNIV

            A single sentence, and yet, like a jeweler, he has placed each word in its setting for perfect effect.  We who study the Word are “workers,” laborers – like coopers, cobblers, fletchers, tanners, farriers, tinkers, and chandlers were all workers.  The product of our toil and applied skill will be examined.  We have to work hard, and handle our tools properly, so that when our product is examined, we have nothing to be ashamed of.

            Paul was trained in a profession, and in a vocation.  He says that Ministry, and Bible study are vocational pursuits, not professional ones.  They are not reserved for those of rarefied skill.  We are not dependent upon the masters of esoterica, and arcana for our knowledge of God’s clearly communicated will.

            We are welders, not lawyers.

            We make tents, not Talmudic arguments.

            And remember Jesus.  His training before he began his ministry was vocational – He was a builder (carpenter, or perhaps stone-cutter).  When the Rabbis tried to get him to engage them in their kind of argument he always refused - always - resorting time and again to the clearly communicated principle – not the elaborate argument.

            We know the lines: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27), Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, those who are sick do (Matthew 9:12), Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone at her (John 8:7), Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s (Matthew 22:21).  These are the lines of a craftsman – one who has used his tools properly, and has a product of clearly communicated truth to show for it.

            This is the biblical model.  It is a model all of us can follow.  It is the model we must follow if we are to use the Bible the way Jesus did.