The world has been a pretty heavy place the past few weeks. The news feels like a Tsunami of rage-inducing items being shot at us from a fire hose. Usually, as Canadians, we feel at least one step removed from the chaos of our southern neighbours, but the tariffs’ rollercoaster this week carried with it very real implications for our lives in the northern part of the continent. 

So naturally, this week we get a story about being called. Jesus teaches some fishermen how to fish (Notice: a rabbi tells career fishermen how to fish!), and it goes so well that it almost sinks their boats. Then Jesus calls Simon (who will become Peter) to follow him. 

Sometimes, these gospel stories just pass us by because we have heard them before. We don’t always slow down enough to consider just how scandalous these stories are. Jesus’ call to these fisher disciples came right after a moment when their livelihoods were in peril because of no fish, and then when the abundance of fish threatened to sink them. 

This is the same call that Jesus is making to us while we navigate our moment of chaos, too. 

Yet, when we hear this notion of “being called”, it can be difficult to know what such a call would look like. So often, when we talk about being called in the church, we imagine it to be reserved for a special few, such as clergy or pastors.  This description of being called comes to us honestly; it was more or less the operating definition for the first 1500 years of Christianity. 

However, in the Reformation, re-prioritizing of baptismal identity came with what would be called the Priesthood of All Believers. Martin Luther saw in our baptisms a call to gospel ministry for every Christian, not just for monks, nuns, deacons, priests and bishops. God called everyone who was baptized to serve the Gospel, to be proclaimers of the Word, witnesses to God’s love and mercy given to sinners⎯the promise of the Gospel. 

Five hundred years from that time, we have more or less gone back to the idea that only the clergy are called, but with a more problematic variation. When we talk about the Priesthood of All Believers, the present-day church means that lay people are doing the stuff that clergy typically have done: lay-led worship, lay preaching, lay pastoral care, lay teaching and faith formation, etc. To be clear, oftentimes all these things, which most often were the tasks of clergy, can be done by lay people. But that is not what the Priesthood of All Believers means. Within the concept of the Priesthood of All Believers, we find the Doctrine of Vocation. Or, in simpler terms: the teaching of what it means to be called. 

The Doctrine of Vocation means that each baptized Christian is called to the ministry of the Gospel where they are. The school teacher, the lawyer, the tractor salesperson, the accountant, the stay-at-home parent, and on and on⎯ each baptized person is called to the ministry of the Gospel within their work in the world, in their community, in their family. Luther put it this way in his important treatise, The Freedom of a Christian (which I referenced last week): 

“As our Heavenly Father in Christ freely came to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbour through our body and its works, and each one may be Christs to one another and Christ may be the same in all, that is, that we may be truly Christians….”

Our baptismal calling is that each one of us bears to the world around us, Christ and Christ’s Gospel of forgiveness, life and salvation. Now, does that mean door-knocking and handing out tracts on salvation? Not at all. Luther also believed that one of the fundamental questions we ought to ask is, “What does my neighbour need to hear the Gospel?” Is my neighbour hungry? Need shelter? Need education? Need protection from harm? Need meaningful labour? Need love, compassion, and friendship? Need trustworthy people of faith genuinely interested in their wellbeing rather than just winning souls for Jesus?

Part of being Christ to our neighbour is also giving our neighbours what they need to hear the gospel. That might mean genuine love and care that witnesses to Christ through deeds rather than just words. It also might mean a simple invitation to church or the willingness to talk openly about faith, especially the things we don’t know and have questions about, too. 

I am not sure that Simon Peter had all this in mind when he left his boat and followed Jesus. I am also not sure that most parents who bring their children to the font to be baptized truly realize that calling that they are allowing God to place on their cute babies. I am not sure we, as people of faith, committed to a life of worship and fellowship together in the congregations to which we belong, often remember this calling with which God has called us. 

But this is the call of Christ, just the same. The call is not to be a perfect follower (certainly, Simon Peter was far from that), but to understand that we bear Christ to the world, to the people around us, as members of the Priesthood of the Baptized. 

And just maybe, in our moment of chaos (as in Peter’s), this call, this vocation, is exactly what is needed.

Photo: The Altar in front of which Martin Luther was likely ordained at the Cathedral in Erfurt.