One Job

There always seem to be more questions than answers. The answers that do seem reasonable are often followed by crippling fear or the echo of derisive laughter. We reach a certain point in our lives where we need to answer a few basic questions. Or make a few basic commitments. Why am I here? What am I doing? Why? Who am I doing this with? Do I really want to or think it’s the best thing? Often, we just follow a knee-jerk reaction motivated by fear. Or we try to figure out what we really want and then get frustrated when our moods don’t match our hard-earned reality. The nature of our Western society means that there are more and more voices inside our heads, each with an opinion and a gloomy forecast.

            On the other hand, we have blissful, unexpected, spontaneous moments of peace, relaxation, joy, connectedness. There are moments when it seems like everything is going to be alright. Then the sun goes behind a cloud, what we thought we could do we discover we can’t, and life seems like so much hard work. Then the TV, the couch and a cold beverage beckon and we hibernate and escape, putting our angst on the back burner to deal with on another day. Maybe this is too bleak a picture. Maybe your kids have turned out perfectly, your hair has no split ends, and your boss is the most compassionate, understanding friend you’ve ever had.  No one in your life has ever died, you’ve never felt abandoned, and your dog has never had fleas. OK, I hear you saying but nothing can be THAT bad. Maybe for you that’s true. But think about kinds in inner city Compton, California, home of gangs and violence and drugs.  Think about the inner rooms of countless nursing homes across the planet filled with forgotten, unloved, perhaps unlovable people.  Jails and institutions, court rooms and suburban bi-levels.  There is pain everywhere. We can mask it, ignore it or self-medicate with chemicals and fake feelings. Or, we can finally accept the job we’ve been given.

            There used to be a show on television in the US called Mission: Impossible.  In the 1960s and 70s, it must have come on at 8:00 PM because I can still remember lying in my bed, a wide-awake kid, and hearing the theme music. The premise of the show is that the main character aways got a message on a reel-to-reel tape (I told you it was an old TV show!).  The words that were the main part of the message from the tape-recorded voice invariably said:

            “Your mission if you choose to accept it…..”

            What followed would be the description of some seemingly impossible, crime-fighting task that only this one person could do. Only this one man, and the people he chose to help him, could do this one specific thing that was going to save some part or some part of the world or some person.

            The purpose of this book is to remind all of us that we have a mission to complete, each of us.  Finally, after working for months on a dissertation topic and research it finally came to me in simple words that I could understand and act on.

            You have one job. To glorify God.  No more. No less. One job. 1 JOB.

As you might imagine, there is a whole lot inside and beyond that bald statement.  There is a lot of twisted religion, broken theology, upside down child-rearing and warped societal standards that make that statement seem impossibly difficult to enact or insultingly trite to consider. We can look at Scripture through this lens and a lot of kaleidoscope pieces fall into place. We can look at the Christians that have come before us and see how their lives and work lived into that one statement. Martin Luther, John Wesley and Thomas Cranmer are a few. More contemporary witnesses like Corrie Ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Mother Teresa spring to mind.  Theologians like Jurgen Moltmann, Richard Hays and NT Wright have given voice to this vocational pointer.

By virtue of your baptism, you have one job.

Sustained by prayer, Eucharist, community and communion, you have one job.

Created, saved and fostered by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, you have one job.

There is a rhythm of life that is ordained for ordinary people. It’s not impossible or impractical. 

And The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat

Puts a tingle in your fingers and a tingle in your feet

Rhythm in your bedroom

Rhythm in the street

Yes, The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat[1]

            In its own, 1960s way, this lyric sums it up.  This lyric is proof that nothing is wasted in God’s Kingdom.  Even something as pagan as this points to our one job, our God-given vocation. What that means is that you can figure out the answers to all the previous questions for yourself in light of one great, overarching reality. This rhythm is the way we were created to live: connected, committed, creative.

God is God and you are not. (and I’m not either)

When we let God be God in our understanding and practice, life still hurts, there is still sacrifice and suffering but there is meaning, death has bee defeated and what we say and do, who are, really matters. Walk with me through this project and let me show you what I’ve been shown.  It’s not spooky or mysterious or a bit of brainwashing.

            James Taylor, the poet laureate of my generation, sang it this way: The secret to life is enjoying the passing of time. When we step away from time being an unrenewable resource, it can slip through our fingers like sand with no regrets.[2] In order for this to make sense, there are a few commitments that are vital. There are a few connections we need to make in order to live creative lives that make a difference.

            Our one task as Christians is to glorify God, to be God’s image bearers in the world.  We are surrounded by images that try to remind us of who we are – presidential faces on our money, logos on our shoes, shorts and underwear and mirrors and phone cameras that show us real reflections when we least want to see them. Emperors in ancient Rome sent statues of themselves to the far-flung corners of their empires so that the people there could imagine the emperor looking down on them and expecting obedience (and taxes). The image of the emperor stood in for his actual presence.  We here in the US, Great Britian and Europe have reduced the God of the universe to a stone head on Easter Island – a cold copy of a living, loving entity that we have buried up to his neck in unnecessary words, theology and rules that never came from him in the first place.  As I write this, there is a news story explaining that archaeologists have dug around one of the huge monolithic heads on Easter Island only to discover that there is a proportionately-sized body buried connected to that huge head.[3] Like the Pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain, no one can explain how they got there, the technology used to create such a monument and or the technological level of a society that could produce such a wonder.

            Our culture has buried God up to his neck in lies, shame, guilt and unnecessary hysteria.  We have used the Bible to promote all sorts of unloving hatred and self-serving ritual. It is time and past time to get back down to basics, to what is really true, to commit to the faith once received and do the work of creation and reconciliation that we are called to do. When we are connected to God and each other, committed to God and each other, we can then be creative, wounded healers in the world, being God’s image-bearers, bringing peace, joy and shalom to a broken and hurting cosmos.

            These words have painted a future with broad brush strokes and little to no detail on how all that occurs. In order to describe this lifelong project, there are terms that need defining, a theology that needs to be constructed. Don’t worry, that’s not as painful as it sounds. My rubric in this work is to use the points of what was called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to explain the elements of our vocational mandate – Scripture, reason, tradition and experience. Part I defines terms and looks at the commitments inherent in this Christian life. Part II looks at how we glorify God in our lives, with the things we have been given, the elements of what Eugene Peterson called our ‘everyday, walking-around lives’.[4] Part III offers specific examples and useful images as we move forward together in this important work.

If I could sum up the message of the life, death, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, if I could point to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, all of that within our time-space continuum, it would lead to one simple directive.

            Your mission if you choose to accept it is this: You have one job: to glorify God in the world.

            We don’t do this alone.  We have been given the gift of each other. We have also been given the symphony of God’s good creation all around us. The natural world shows us, simply by its created existence, how to glorify God. The sun, moon and stars do what they were created to do without making a fuss about it. “(T)he whole physical world itself is a primordial sacrament. Indwelt by the Spirit, Earth is a physical place of extravagant dynamism that bodies forth the gracious presence of God.”[5] The sacrament of nature leads to the overarching image for this project.

            My heart horse was a 17-hand Percheron that was retired from the US Army.  He was big, slow and had the kindest eyes in all the world.  Coming home from work, I could see him standing on a hillside a mile away. His feet were the size of dinner plates and his heart as big as all outdoors.  One of the best things he would do would be to wrap his head and neck around me as I leaned onto his shoulder. He was the highest expression of fatherhood, its wisdom and protection, that I have known outside God the Father. There was nothing better than walking up to him in the pasture to have him settle his huge nose against my small human one and just breathe.  He would time his breathing to be the opposite of mine, his inhale on my exhale and vice versa.  Most of the twenty or so horses I have cared for in my life have done this same thing.

When our horses and dogs trust us, they come nose to nose with us to share our breath. When we have a trusting relationship with Holy Love, we share the breath of life in new experiences of resurrection and recreation. Connected to God and each other, committed to God and each other, we can participate in God's work of new creation.  Fear erodes faith, trust heals trauma. The beginning of this chapter painted a bleak picture of our lives. I want to end this preface with this comforting and multivalent image.  The Creator of the Universe comes nose to nose with us, breathes life into us and sends us out to breathe that grace and peace into the world.

You have one job. It’s as easy as breathing.

[1] Cy Coleman, Sweet Charity libretto, The Rhythm of Life, 1965.

[2] James Taylor, The Secret of Life, 1973.

[3] CBS News, Discovery on Easter Island, July 2, 2024. www.cbs.com

[4] Eugene Peterson, Notes on The Message, Matthew 5.

[5] Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Is God’s Charity Broad Enough for Bears?,” Irish Theological Quarterly 80, no. 4 (November 2015): 283–93.