I love word puzzles. I love putting different combinations of letters together and making up funny words. But when I’m playing with others, such as Scrabble or Boggle, I must often ask (or my opponents query), “Is that a real word?”  The same is true for ideas.  I am capable of positing many things: The grass is green. Dandelions are yellow. In the spring my lawn is green and yellow polka-dotted.  Cows are black and white. Tuxedos are black and white. Cows must be clothed in tuxedos. Not everything I am capable of positing is true.  There are times I must ask myself, “It sounds good, but is it true?”

In reading the proposed ELCA Social Statement “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” (HSGT), I found myself asking this question with regard to the use of vocational language. “We do not live in private worlds without thought or consideration for historic events or the impact of our actions on individuals, the community, or the environment. Rather, the responsibility to serve the neighbor through our daily callings seeks to shape human relationships and a world community that honors God and anticipates God’s future transformation of all of creation. In so doing, all people, in whatever situation they find themselves, are called to actively promote the good of the neighbor.  We recognize the complex and varied callings people have in relation to human sexuality: being in relationships, being single, being a friend, living in a young or aging body, being male or female, being young or old, or having different sexual orientations and gender identities.” (HSGT lines 274-283)

Is it true that we are called to be young or old, male or female, gay or straight? 

Biblically, vocation is always united to God’s redemptive relationship with the world and its people, and specifically to his covenant with Israel.  God calls Noah to build an ark so that the remnant of creation might be restored when sin has been judged in the flood. God calls Abraham to father children of the covenant from a barren wife. (Does it follow that Sarah was called to be barren?) God calls Moses to lead his enslaved people out of bondage into the freedom of the Promised Land, freedom boundaried by the Torah and brought to completion on the cross. God calls David to exercise the kingship of divine justice which Jesus brings to fulfillment, but is it God’s call to David to express his genderedness in relation to Bathsheba? The risen Lord calls Paul to be an apostle, but does he call him to his unmarried state? (1 Cor. 7:1-11ff)

There is no biblical indication that any of these questions can be answered affirmatively. To conflate vocation with createdness ignores the reality of sin’s brokenness present in creation and gives the illusion of blessedness where God has not acted specifically to bless. God does not bless barrenness, but for Sarah, and Hannah, and Elizabeth, God acted to quicken life in them and those lives were blessed by God, because they were the fruit of his Word. Paul was single, but his apostolic call did not require it.

Vocation is participation in God’s creative and redemptive love. Vocation is initiated by God and revealed through God’s own Word. We cannot be called to something that is contradictory to God’s own purpose or that is not of God in the first place. Nor can we be called to something that does not contribute to the generation of life.  We might say, “I am not called into ministry;” we do not say, “I am called not to be a minister.” We might say, “I am not called to marriage and children;” we do not say, “I am called not to marry and have children.”

Vocation is always bound to God’s life-giving presence in our world. Our createdness as particular human beings is not vocation, but circumstance, and subject to the vicissitudes of  brokenness in creation and in humanity.

For this reason, we ought to carefully distinguish God’s call from human desire, so that we do not fall into error by blessing both.