The Human Vocation

Who am I?

Who am I? What am I doing here? No I’m not confused, don’t worry. I know I’m Pastor Tim. And I’m here to preach a sermon.

These questions though… Who am I? What am I doing here? are the questions that like every single human being asks and seeks to answer over the course of their lives. I can remember being a high schooler and just having a deep internal conflict that I was dealing with. Like I just wanted to understand who I was and what I was supposed to do with my life. People were asking me “what do you want to do after college?” And to be honest I had no clue right? I wanted to drive my car, go to concerts, hang out with my friends, and with girls. Like that was about all I had going on in the means of vocational aspirations.

So when it came to college I made the only reasonable decision: I went and majored in Sociology ;) But that was actually really good, because in taking a sociology major I was exposed to a lot of different worldviews and disciplines like biology, cultural anthropology, psychology and others that sought to answer these questions. Who are we and what are we doing here?

And I got a lot of answers. You’ve probably grappled with these as well. I learned that maybe we were a random coincidence, and that our job here was to survive. That’s certainly a very popular understanding of humanity, and it definitely is the foundation that holds up many of our modern ways of understanding ourselves and our world. However, I think that this idea falls short. I certainly did not find any real hope in seeing myself in this way. It didn’t motivate me at all to rise above myself or seize any real opportunity to make my world a better place. It’s not like these weren’t aspirations or hopes that I had for myself, they really were. I just could not figure out the why. I had no foundational driving force to motivate me towards any of the hopes that I had

Of course this was a time in my life when I wasn’t following Jesus in any sense. And there was a whole lot more mess going on in my life than just trying to pass college classes I didn’t want to be taking in the first place. But the point is this, I was stuck for a lot of years of my life because I had no real understanding of who I was or what I was doing here.

The Image

Over the next several weeks we are going to be looking at the answers to these questions — Who am I and What am I doing here? What we will discover is that who God says that we are is the driving force behind who we are what we are doing here. The reason for seeking to answer these questions is actually two-fold — first, to understand a theology of humanity and second, to reflect on how God is calling us to exist in our world and in our community of love here at First Church of Fort Pierce.

So I want to invite you to join me at the very beginning of your Bibles, in Genesis Chapter 1. After God created everything — the sky, the sea, and the land and everything in and on them, God creates humans in this way:

Genesis 1:26–28 NRSV

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

This is God’s crowning achievement — The pinnacle accomplishment of creation. God could have very well completed creation without having created humans. Or could have made humans with the same intention with which he made everything else. But, it seems that God had different intentions and plans for humans. So God made humans in his image. Which is not saying that “God made us look like him.” What being made in the image of God means is that we, humans, are created to represent God in a real and tangible way.

This is super important because it begins to answer the question “who are we.” Who are humans? Well, humans are who God has created and called to represent himself in the world. If that’s who humans are, then why are we here?

I think that this is also beginning to be answered right here in Genesis 1. God commands the humans to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over all of the other created beings. Essentially God here is outlining the broad goal of humanity. Have babies and exert your rational and logical mind in doing what humans have proven to be pretty good at doing. I’d say humans have pretty well exerted our dominion over this world. So much so that now we are looking at other planets to exert our dominion over.

But I think that we can agree that just having as many babies as possible and developing cities and nations that sprawl across every inch of the earth has not naturally made this earth a place that reflects the good creation that God made. We have accomplished the goal, but it seems like we haven’t paid attention to all of the details.

It’s like when you tell your kid to clean their room. And they just shove everything in the closet and under the bed. Like, they finished the task — but its not really good. It kinda looks good, until you look closely. That’s kind of where we are at. And it’s because we look at Genesis 1, but we forget to keep reading and get some more of the details, the guiding principles behind how God has called us to accomplish this task of having dominion over the earth. So lets keep reading. This is Genesis 2’s version of events. It’s important to understand that Genesis 1 and 2 basically tell the same events, but with a different emphasis. Genesis 1 is a bit more broad, while Genesis 2 focuses in on details — details that are critically important for understanding God’s purposes. So here’s Genesis 2.

Genesis 2:4b–6 (NRSV)

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground.

Here we have the set up. God created the earth. But the earth isn’t living up to its potential just yet. There’s no one to till the ground. That’s the problem. Sure, God could till the ground if he wanted, but it seems that God had different plans. So he goes on.

Genesis 2:7–8 NRSV

then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Ah. Here’s the solution. The ground has no one to till it, so God creates a human. A human, whom we already know from Genesis 1 that God creates in his own image. Formed using dust from the ground, God gives this dirt man life by breathing his own breath of life into him. And at this moment the man becomes “a living being.” Just a side note — a freebie if you will — the Hebrew here says “the man became a living soul.” So keep that in your memory banks for Bible trivia night or something.

So God makes humans - body and soul - and then plants a garden. The Garden of Eden, and it is there that he places this person whom he has just made. And you’re like ok. I think I see where this is going. God needed someone to till the ground, so he’s solved the problem, he made humans. And you’re right, here’s a few verses later, and this is going to be our focusing verse for this entire sermon series.

Genesis 2:15 NRSV

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

Ah! We were right. But there is a lot more to this verse than meets the eye. It’s going to unlock for us the principles behind God’s command for humans to have dominion over the earth. You see, the Bible is written to a specific people in a specific time. So while it is timeless in the truths that it teaches, often those truths are wrapped in language that strikes at the heart of a certain people based on the way that they see and interact with their world.

Genesis was written to Israel, a people who were in large part, farmers by trade. So this agricultural language was the natural means of communicating a truth about how God intended for humans to interact with their world. God places them in a garden and says “till it and keep it.” These commands are pretty natural if you know anything about gardening right? They are how you go about creating a suitable living environment for plant life. The soil has to be prepped and then it needs to be watered, weeded, protected from pests, etc.

The really interesting thing about this language is that it is not confined only to life in a garden or a life of agriculture. As with many things, when we look a little bit closer we are going to find something really interesting. Something that is going to help us understand the answer to that Question “What am I doing here?”

Serve and Guard

The word translated “to till” is the Hebrew word avad. And this word does not really mean to till. It means “to serve.”

The word translated “to keep” is the Hebrew word shamar. This word means “to guard.”

And so these are the basic principals that are meant to drive our understanding of “What are we doing here?” This job that God has created humans for is much more than gardening, yet gardening is a strangely appropriate metaphor. God created us to serve and guard his world.

As gardeners, humans engage in the vocation of stewardship. We create favorable conditions by serving, working, or tilling the ground and by guarding or keeping our gardens. But what comes out of the ground isn’t something that we’ve created. Sure we might have put some seeds in there. But those seeds didn’t originate with us. They came from somewhere, from someone else. They’ve been entrusted to us, and when we do our job right then they become something that is good and useful. The plants are a gift.

So this is the mindset that God intends for humans. God said have dominion over the earth and subdue it. But God doesn’t say do with it as you please. He says, “serve it and guard it.” God didn’t give this world to humans and take his hands off the wheel. God placed humans here to care for this gift on his behalf, in his way.

This is the core of our Christian understanding of ourselves and our place in this world.

Who am I? Well I’m a person created in the image of God. What am I doing here? I’m here to serve this world and guard it as a gift that God has entrusted to me. Thats who all of us are, and that’s what all of us are doing here.

I think that the implications for this are many. But most importantly it calls for us to have a radical shift in the way that we view our world and our place in it. We live in a world that is driven by ideologies that teach us to live for ourselves. They tell us to look out for number 1, that survival of the fittest should be the driving force behind everything we do.

But when we look at how God desires us to interact with this world we see a vastly different vision. We see that God has called us to live for him and for our neighbors. We are called to live sacrificially, to operate under an economy of grace, to serve and guard our world on God’s behalf and in God’s ways. The human vocation calls for us to be admirers and doers.

Be Doers

We don’t live thousands of years ago in a garden. We probably aren’t going to alter the course of human progress. We can’t go back in time and caution the developers of the ancient and modern worlds against subduing the earth in a way that causes pollution and ecological disasters.

But what we can do is practice stewardship in the garden that God has given to us - our church, and our community. You see when Jesus came, he made the same commands that God had given to the first humans about the garden. But he used different language. He invited people to Love God with everything they had and to love their neighbors as themselves. This is the same principal that was meant to drive the human vocation in the garden.

When we love, which is an action word, we create and cultivate an environment that allows God’s creation to flourish. And when we love in this way, within the context of our church, we create a community that allows God’s redemptive and restorative work to reach those who are most desperately in need of it. We create a community that is “all in” when it comes to reaching the hearts and lives of those whom God is desperately calling home.

When we look at the church, and the call that God has placed on us to serve and guard it, I think that we have got room for improvement. As Americans, we typically experience church as a spectator sport. The majority of folks come to experience the work that a few have put in. We do our hour or so on Sunday, tell the pastor “good game” and then move on with our lives.

And that’s fine if we want a church that’s ok. But that’s not the kind of church that I want to pastor. That’s not the kind of church that First Church is, and it’s not the kind of church that you should want to be a part of. First Church is much better at being stewards of God’s gift to us than most churches are. But we still have so much more that we can do. And we can’t do it with the resources that we have now. I’ve got big crazy dreams for this place. Crazy dreams about deep discipleship, radical evangelism, and passionate worship that I can’t make happen on my own. I’m placing all of my bets on the fact that together we can.

That’s the purpose of this entire sermon series. It’s a means for us to explore the ways that God is inviting each of us individually to give our time, our talent, and our treasure to help further God’s kingdom here in Fort Pierce. It’s a means by which I am going to challenge you to do more. I’m going to challenge you to devote yourself to God and your community so that the garden that God is calling you to serve and guard might blossom and bear the sweet fruit of the Holy Spirit. This is an opportunity for us to answer: Who are we, and what are we doing here.

That’s only going to happen if we commit ourselves to this work - If we pledge ourselves to being stewards of God’s world. So we’ve created a pledge card that you are going to receive in worship next week.

And this is what’s important: Begin to pray every day as an individual or as a family. Over then next weeks we will cover each area of that card more deeply. And at the end of this series we will collect those cards and pray over them as a community. These are going to show me what I’ve got to work with as we look to a future that echos the words of Jesus — In Fort Pierce as it is in heaven.