Dressing up When You Are Dressed Down

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THE MASKS OF GOD:

DRESSING UP WHEN YOU ARE DRESSED DOWN

Paul M. Meier

[Wisconsin Lutheran State Teachers’ Conference. Wisconsin Lutheran High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October 29-30, 2015]

In the name of Jesus, my sisters and brothers in ministry:

This Reformation Day weekend more than 157 million Americans plan to celebrate a certainholiday, according to the National Retail Federation’s Consumer Spending Survey. The average person participating in the festivities will spend about $74, with total holiday spending expected to reach $6.9 billion[1]—second only to Christmas.

But I don’t think too many of the 68 million dressing up will be as their favorite Luther character. What do you think are the top-ranked costumes for adults? [Allow for answers] How about for children? [Allow for answers] And 20 million people plan on putting their pets in costumes as well. What pet costumes do you think are the most popular? [Allow for answers]

If you guessed little yellow Minions, pint-size Yodas and pretty pink princesses—along with superheroes, characters from Disney’s “Frozen” and the traditional Halloween fare—you would be correct. The following chart[2] lists the top costumes for adults, children and pets:

The Masks of Godand the Doctrine of Vocation

People like to hide behind masks, both literally and figuratively, and for a number of reasons. Our God is no exception. The prophet Isaiah once exclaimed: “Truly you are a God who hides himself.”[3] But through this hidingGod always reveals His goodness and mercy.

Luther called this modus operandi the “masks of God.” He writes:

What else is all our work to God—whether in the fields, in the garden, in the city, in the house, in war, or in government—but just such a child’s performance, by which He wants to give His gifts in the fields, at home, and everywhere else? These are the masks of God, behind which He wants to remain concealed and do all things.[4][emphasis mine]

Take, for instance, the Lord’s Prayer. In it we pray, “Give us today our daily bread.”[5] And our Father in heaven answers our petition. He does so by means of the farmer who planted and harvested the grain, the baker who made the flour into bread, and the person who prepared our meal. We can also include the truck drivers who hauled the produce, the factory workers in the food processing plant, the warehouse employees, the wholesale distributors, the stock boys, and the lady at the checkout counter. Also playing their part are the bankers, futures investors, advertisers, lawyers, agricultural scientists, mechanical engineers, and every other position in our nation’s economic system. All of these people God utilizesto make sure we’ve got toast with our eggs at breakfast and bread for our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at lunch.[6]

But you and I do not just live on bread alone. So God employs many more people in many more professions to make sure that we have all that we need for our bodies and lives.

This isn’t rocket science, although God does bless some individuals with the ability to be rocket scientists. But when God opens up His hand to provide for every living thing,[7]people often expect a miracle to occur. They think the clouds will part, the heavens will open, and a bright ray of light will descend upon some great and mighty gift that suddenly appears and forevermore will be the stuff of legend. But that’s not how God works. He wears His mask, all the while inviting you and me to see His loving and caring eyes peering through it. He works behind the scenes, all the while keeping us in the forefront of His mind. He takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. And that’s where you and I come in. God uses our vocations.

The term vocation comes from the Latin word for “calling.” Anytime the word “calling” is used in the New Testament, it refers to the call of faith. Indeed, that is how we use the term when we recite in Luther’s Explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed that the Holy Spirit has “called me by the Gospel.” But then we come to 1 Corinthians 7, where in verse 20 the apostle Paul urges the Corinthians Christians to stay in the “calling” in which they were “called.” Paul explains in the following verses:

Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so.For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord’s freed person;similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ’s slave.You were bought at a price;do not become slaves of human beings.Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.[8]

God has not just called us to faith; He has also called us to a life of faith. Out of justification flows sanctification as the Holy Spirit enlightensus with His gifts for Christian living—a life that in every season and every station of our life is a gift from God.

Such teaching was revolutionary in Luther’s day. Already by the fourth century Christians, aided by the church, tended to think that those who served in the church had a “higher” calling than laypeople. Over the centuries this false notion took shape and by the Middle Ages morphed into the monstrosity of monasticism. Now Luther comes along and correctly teaches that all vocations are equal, that all callings in life are blessed by God. Not only did this have an impact on the Christian individual, it also impacted the Christian way of life. In 1520 between six and ten percent of the whole population of Germany were priests, monks, and nuns. They had their own courts. They did not pay taxes. They did not marry. Only one generation later those numbers dropped by two-thirds. Monasteries and convents were almost entirely closed, and the vast majority of clergy had married. Rarely are social changes more dramatic.[9]

And yet our semi-Christian society still struggles with such status. Today the term vocation has taken on a common meaning as another term for a job, such as in “vocational training” or “vocational education.” And when we hear the word “calling” used in contemporary conversation, it usually refers to the work of the church, such as a “higher calling” (notice how we’re once again ranking professions). However, these terms are two sides of the same coin. The biblical concept of vocation orcalling, when properly applied, affects all walks of life equally. Vocation destroys the man-made distinction between sacred and secular for the Christian as every God-given calling becomes a holy and fruitful field for God-given fruits of faith that honor our Savior and benefit our neighbor. In other words, there is holiness in the Monday morning at work and in the Friday night out with friends, not just on Sunday mornings in the pew.[10] Or to paraphrase a quote attributed to Luther: “What God wants from a Christian shoemaker is well-made shoes, not shoes with little crosses on them.”[11]

But if we don’t put an emphasis on called workers, won’t the church’s spiritual leadership dry up? Look at the shortage of principals, pastors and other male teachers in churches and in Christian schools today. Shouldn’t we be stressing the sacred occupations over the secular?

Truly “whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task,”[12]but just as all callings are equal in God’s eyes, so also are all callings gifts from the Lord—provided they are God-pleasing callings.[13] Therefore, since gifts from the Lord are never given by us, only received, thus it follows that we do not choose our vocations; God calls us to them. In other words, just as nature abhors a vacuum, so also does God fill every vacancy. Consider your parents and your country. You did not choose them; you were born into them. Even the church in which you serve God deserves the credit. As the English scholar Samuel Johnson once noted, “The church you were raised in was the church in which God placed you.”[14]

But weren’t we all asked as a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Don’t we have a choice when it comes to our profession? Maybe I wanted to be a professional football player, but I could barely get off the line of scrimmage in high school. Maybe I desired to be an astronaut, but I stink in math and physics. Perhaps I strove to be a brain surgeon and make lots of money so my dad could retire early (actually, he wanted this one for me), but I can’t stand the sight of blood.

My friends: God made you who you are; by Him you are fearfully and wonderfully made.[15] God put you in the right time, place and setting and gave you all your gifts, talents and abilities. Therefore it goes to show that ultimately all our vocations—indeed, all our help—comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth[16] and the Maker of you and me.

Now, as good little Lutherans, we ask: What does this mean? What does this mean for me and my vocation? Three points to ponder. First: See Christ in me. Our Lord delights to live out His life through you and me, as the apostle Paul says of both himself and us: “I have been crucified with Christand I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God,who loved meand gave himself for me.”[17]

You know how little kids see the pastor up in front of church with his robe on and often mistakenly think he’s God? Well, what do you suppose happened one Sunday morning as my father, a pastor, and I, a seminary student at the time, led worship? After the service, one of the mothers approached me with a big goofy grin, pointed to her four-year-old daughter and said: “She thinks you’re the son of God.”

Now that certainly was a humorous misunderstanding, but it wasn’t too far off the mark for not just me personally but for that little girl and for all of you as well. Each one of us is so very special to our heavenly Father that He not only calls us to faith to have His very own Son live within us, but God also loves us so much that He permits us to be His mask in our calling to serve others.

Which leads to our second point: See Christ in others. Our Lord delights to receive our service as if it was done specifically for Him! In the Gospel account of the Sheep and the Goats, on the Last Day King Jesus will place us at His right hand and say: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.… For whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”[18]

Luther’s famous vocational comment rings so very true: “God Himself is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid.”[19] Whether we are serving a milkmaid or a mailman, the governor or a prisoner, a poet, a peasant or a child, through our God-given vocations we not only show our love for our neighbor but we also show our love for our Lord.

Our third and final application is this: That you are a teacher is not a mistake; God has called you and equipped you to serve in this vocation. God has also equipped you to serve in the home in the vocation of husband or wife, parent or child, or single person. God has equipped you to serve in government in the vocation of citizen at the local, state and federal levels. God has equipped you to serve in the church not only in the vocation of teacher but also as a communicant member of a congregation, along with all the opportunities it affords. And God has equipped you to serve the greater good, which Luther calls “the common order of Christian love.”[20] Recall the Table of Duties Luther inserted into his Small Catechism. Reflect upon the fact that Luther called them “Holy Orders”—the very words people back then used to call the monastic life.[21] And, equipped with your God-given abilities, remember this: “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.”[22]

Halloween isn’t just this weekend. Halloween is all the time as God hallows us, His saints, with our many and varied vocations. Before we consider three of those masks which God calls you as teachers to wear, I will now give you a couple of minutes to write down on the very sparse presentation outline in your convention booklet all the vocations God has presently called you to serve in the following five areas: home; work; government; church; and in general, such as your avocations or hobbies. When you’re done, take a break and talk to your friends for a bit. And when you hear the music, you’ll know the presentation is about to continue.

MY VOCATIONS

The Teacher as Farmer

[After the break, the presenter returns dressed as a farmer and plays a combination of “Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow” and the theme from “Green Acres” on the organ.]

Certainly I don’t have to tell you that being a teacher is more than just being an educator. One faculty lounge actually has this sign prominently hanging on one of its walls:

If a doctor, lawyer or dentist had twenty-five people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs and some of whom didn’t want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for ten months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher’s job.[23]

Every day you have the potential of beingcalled upon to serve as an actor, friend, doctor, nurse, coach, finder of lost articles, money-lender, taxi driver, psychologist, salesman, politician, and probably a whole host of other jobs of which because I’m not a teacher I am unaware. But two of the three masks of God which you as teachers wear that we will particularly focus on this morning actually stem from your conference’s theme and Scriptural reference. The first is a farmer.

Colossians 2:6,7 states: “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord,continue to live your lives in him,rootedand built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught,and overflowing with thankfulness.” In your vocation as a teacher, God calls you to serve as a farmer in the classroom when you build “strong roots for tender shoots.”[24]

Now what exactly does a farmer do? Perhaps the best description of a farmer that I ever heard came at a most unlikely time. During the fourth quarter of the 2013 Super Bowl, the voiceover was that of Paul Harvey in the following commercial:

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer.

“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon – and mean it.” So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from ‘tractor back,’ put in another seventy-two hours.” So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer.

God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pick-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church.