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Who Are You Called to Be?
All of the world’s great religions have to answer one basic question that’s been there since the beginning of time and that is: Who is a human being and what are human beings called to do? Different religious leaders throughout the ages have had various answers to that question: Who are you?

There’s a story told about a Lutheran bishop who was making his first pastoral call on a parish in his synod, visiting an eighth grade confirmation class. As he entered the room, tugging on his liturgical vestments and all of the things that spoke to his office, he asked the students: “Boys and girls, do any of you know who I am?” And immediately one little girl shoots up her hand and says, “You are a lost and condemned creature!” Well, that’s not the kind of answer that he was expecting. But that little girl was going to answer that question in a deeper way. She knew that who he was, was more important that his office.

There’s an old rule in Benedictine religious communities that states simply that anyone is to be welcomed into the monastery and received based on who they are. The brothers or sisters are not to ask anything but the person’s name. “Who are you?” in terms of your name and not “What do you do?” or where you came from or what school you graduated from or what achievements have you accomplished or what honors and how much you are worth. Those questions don’t matter to them. They’re not important. What interests them is who a person is and not what a person is. And who they are they would find out, not based on anything about their achievements or their accomplishments or any awards they’ve accumulated in life.

In Christian spirituality, we’ve answered the question “Who is a human being?” by asking this very simple question based on a tenet of Christian faith. That is, all persons are created in the image of God. No matter if they believe it or not, if they are a person of faith or not, or whatever stage of faith they may be in, everyone is created in the image of God. That means that something of the imprint of God is in every human being. Every person has a God connection. That means, among other things, that to be created in the image of God means that a human being is free—free to love, free to create, free to reason, and free to live in harmony with God and with all of Creation. Given all of that freedom, what then are we called to do with it?

That word calling in the Christian spiritual tradition means that one has a vocation. Vocation comes from that Latin word, vocare, meaning calling. In its earliest meaning it meant that God called a person to a particular task or work to do. But in centuries of reflection on vocation, we have come to realize that vocation is not essentially what one does but who one is and what one is to do with who he or she is in life. As Dorothy Day once said, “One’s vocation is not the thing that one does to live, but rather what one lives to do.” The vocation takes the full expression of that worker’s life, making full use of her spiritual or his mental or even their physical possibilities. Vocation is a larger category. Fred Buechner, another famous writer and spiritual preacher, once said that vocation is that place where their “deepest gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

What then are the characteristics of this vocation? First of all, we can say that vocation is huge. It’s much bigger than your particular job. Your job is what you do to make a living, to put bread on the table or a roof over your head, or to take care of your loved ones. Vocation, however, is a larger category. Vocation makes use of tasks but it is much larger than that.

When I think of vocation I think about my father. For many years he was an auto mechanic and for 37 years he owned a small business, an auto repair business in Washington, D.C. I used to always think of my father as just a good auto mechanic, but now since his retirement I’ve seen others things about my father. Now that he has the time, he is always fixing things around the house. He’s spending more time at his church and he is always doing things around that church to fix whatever is broken there. Even when I have a problem around my house—I’m all thumbs, I can’t figure out how to put anything together—I can always call my dad and he can come over and without looking at directions, he knows exactly what parts fit where, what needs to be fixed. I now know that my father, my dad, is not simply an auto mechanic. He’s a fixer. He knows how to fix things. Whatever is broken, he puts it together. He can fix things not only in terms of physical things or mechanical things, but even people. He has been known to fix two young boys, two sons of his, growing up in Washington, D.C. into full adults. That’s his vocation.

So vocations are huge. They are also holy. That is, vocations are those things that can be offered to God. Again, the vocation doesn’t need to be church related. You may readily see that mine is. My vocation is to proclaim the Good News everywhere. And I was fortunate to get an inkling of what that vocation may be from a very young age. But vocations are rarely church related. They have more to do with putting into perspective everything you do in life. Whether you are a lawyer or a businesswoman or someone who works at hotels, whatever job it may be, if you are able to, as St. Benedict once said, “offer it to God as work enfolded in prayer,” it can be your vocation.

The vocations are not only huge and not only holy, they are, in fact, impossible. That is to say there’s always some unfinished character to vocations. It’s work that can very never fully be done. St. Paul, in the New Testament, was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles and that he was. But in his career he performed many jobs and tasks, from planting churches and pastoring them to writing theological treatises to making tents. But still his vocation remained.

So then, how are you to hear the calling of God in your life? First of all, you must listen and that listening comes from deep prayer, contemplative prayer, where we are silent before God. And if we get silent enough, we know that the spirit can nudge you into the way that you are to go.

As Antonio Machado once said, “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” That is: Traveler, there is no road, the way is made by walking.

 

Conversation with Eugene Sutton

Lydia Talbot: Canon Sutton, that was a provocative message and gets us to wonder about the question you posed at the beginning of your message: Who are you and what are you called to become? I’m going to turn it around and ask you to answer it. What do you say to that question personally?

Eugene Sutton: Well, personally, and I get to say this being very excited, I am Canon Pastor of the National Cathedral and that’s very exciting work. I get to help build a community of people around the country who want to nurture their spirituality—in tune with the Cathedral spirituality—around prayer and study and action, no matter what church they belong to. But as exciting as my job is, it’s just one particular job or ministry. What I’m really excited about is my vocation and that’s the calling to proclaim Good News everywhere. As long as I’m committed to my vocation, it doesn’t matter where I exercise it. Whether I’m at the National Cathedral or at a small church or if I’m retired and I’m just at home and doing things in my community, always what follows me is “proclaim Good News.” What’s bad, what’s broken here? What’s the good news here? That’s my vocation.

Daniel Pawlus: Do you think we get caught up or intimidated by this idea of calling? You intimated this a little bit, that’s it’s got to be big and religious in some sense. Why do we struggle with that and get in our own way, I guess?

Sutton: Well, I think one of the reasons we struggle with it is, frankly, because of, television, the movies. So often when there’s a big moment and someone gets a message from God, the music swells, the light is ablaze and there may be an angel there blaring a message: “You are called to do this or that.” But in the Scriptures and in our tradition, that rarely comes that way. More often, God calls, God comes to us, in a quiet way. Perhaps as I Kings 19, in the Old Testament said: “In a still small voice.” So I think it can confuse people if they don’t hear big blaring messages. I think it’s more the daily being accessible to God in prayer.

Talbot: What has inspired your own journey, your purpose in life, if you will? What were some of the beginnings?

Sutton: Oh. Well, one of the great beginnings, of course, in my family was being raised in the church. I was raised a Baptist and now I’m an Episcopalian.

Talbot: It’s a great mix!

Sutton: In a way, I’m an Episcopal Baptist! Well, the great influence of my family, my grandparents, my mother and father, and all of that. In high school, though, I was troubled at 17 years old and I wasn’t sure if there was a God. How could people even know that God was speaking, if God was? I went to a concert and someone sang a song, a Gospel song, that was simply: “God gave me a song that the angels could not sing.” The singer was so joyous and so assured in her faith, and I remember thinking I would just love to have that assurance. And God answered my prayer right then and there. Music helped.

Talbot: Music touches the spots of our soul.

Sutton: And I think all the arts do: a good piece of theater or a good piece of music, or you go to an art museum and see beauty, or you go out in nature. These are also texts, I believe, that God writes. Not only the Scriptures, but in the scripture of nature, all pointing to this divine purpose.

Pawlus: When we understand our calling better, Eugene, do you think there’s a sense that we feel more in synch on a daily basis, that there’s more of a flow in our life? I wonder if people are afraid of that feeling sometimes, that it’s just unnatural because we’re constantly trying to shift and move and deal with all that life throws at us.

Sutton: Well, I think it anchors us, the vocation and the calling, because, frankly, we have good days and we have bad days and sometimes we think God is very far away. But that may be when God is the closest. Sometimes when we’re so very sure that God is behind us and God is giving us messages, is when we need to get quiet and find maybe we’re not as close to God as we need to be. But when one is sure about one’s vocation, then you can ride out the ups and downs of life because you know you’re headed some where. I might say one other thing. I’m not sure that we can discern our vocations much before the sunny side of age 40! I had an inkling of what mine could be at the age of 23 when I entered seminary, but it actually took twenty years of doing the acts of ministry before I could say with confidence, “This is my calling, this my vocation in life.” Similarly for my father, I don’t think he would say, “I’m a fixer.” But I think maybe now as he’s approaching 80 years old, he can look at his life and he can see the great theme and he knows, that’s my vocation.

Talbot: We need to name your dad. He sounds wonderful! What is his name?

Sutton: James Sutton. James and Eileen Sutton are my parents in Washington and I obviously owe them much. My family figures a lot into my preaching as well as my spirituality.

Talbot: That’s very, very clear. I must ask you about the Frederick Buechner quote that you gave in your message: the place that God calls us to be is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Sutton: Where the world’s deep hunger meet.

Talbot: Now, how did that get revealed to you personally?

Sutton: Well, for me it’s relatively easy. You may gather that one of my deep gladnesses is to communicate, to speak. And I was raised in that culture, you know. African American culture is very expressive and we were encouraged in churches to say what our faith is and to sing it and to even express it in a physical way. So that’s one of my deep gladnesses. When I am helping people, when I’m communicating something about the goodness of God, I am in my element. I’m never happier than to be with a group of people and they are praying. Now, I also believe that that’s where the world’s deep hunger is. What we believe as people of faith is that even though we may pray to God for specific and particular things, what we are really hungering for is the presence of God and God acting on our behalf and saying this has purpose, this has meaning. That is the world’s deep hunger, at least in my eyes, and I get to help meet it.

Pawlus: Before we go, Eugene, can you speak a little bit about centering prayer? As an authority, where is the value that comes from what you see in these retreats that you lead?

Sutton: Yes, thousands of people now have come from around the country to the National Cathedral as one of the places where they can learn centering prayer and do it in community. They make pilgrimage to the cathedral and we encourage people to do that.

Talbot: What is it?

Sutton: Centering prayer is just an offering to God beyond thoughts, beyond words, beyond desires. Its only intention is to consent to God’s presence and action within. Somebody once asked Mother Teresa, “When you pray, what do you say?” And she said, “I say nothing. I just listen.” Then they asked her, “Well, what is God saying?” She said, “He says nothing. He just listens.” In that listening—you to the heart of God, God listening to your heart—truth and grace and love and goodness abound. So centering prayer is a way to help you to listen, not for voices but for an awakening to God in your life.

Talbot: So what form does that take for you in your daily prayer?

Sutton: I begin my day—I should say most days—with going to the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage at Washington National Cathedral. That is a wonderful place for me to begin my day in silence. With eyes closed and with a letting go of all the other cares of the world, I simply, for 20 minutes as we teach, say “yes” to God and “God show me the way today.”

Pawlus: Eugene, thank you for joining us today and for saying yes in your message for us.

Sutton: Thank you

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