This is the first of several letters to you about the essentials of the Christian Faith and practise. It is clear to anyone who lives in our Episcopal Church today that there is a wide diversity of opinion on matters of faith and morals, and that much of what was at one time taken for granted as Christian teaching has not only been called into question, but abandoned.

Let it be equally clear, from this point on, that this is not a new phenomenon in the life of the Church and in the progress of a living Faith. The Church has many times moved from one point of view to another in presenting the essentials of Christianity to a new generation and a new era as the ever-increasing treasury of human thought, experience, and learning has been enriched through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth. We have often seen, unquestionably and in many ways, in our long history as a people following Christ, that, as the old hymn says, "time makes ancient good uncouth".

Nevertheless, many would argue that never before in our history as the people of the New Covenant has the Church strayed so far from its original understandings of life and our relationship to God, each other, and creation itself.

What I hope to do, in my role as teacher and pastor to our congregation, is to put forward in a small series of Pastoral Letters, issued over a period of time, a brief contemporary presentation of essentials of our Christian Faith and practise. These are to serve as very simple and basic starting points to help foster a renewed understanding in the present flux of modern opinion, while keeping congruence and respect with our past. I do not intend to offer the definitive, nor the exhaustive exposition of the topics of these Letters. I do intend to teach the basics of the Catholic Faith once delivered to the saints as it might and may be understood in the latter part of this our present century. While this is a task for which I am entirely unsuited, I believe that under God these Letters might prove helpful to our members and friends in the midst of all the current debates.

It seems most appropriate to begin with a Letter which applies to everyone personally: the Christian Vocation.

I. On The Christian Vocation

The primary, essential, fundamental belief of a Christian is that God (whatever that may mean) was somehow manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish male born in the reign of Caesar Augustus in the era of Roman ascendancy in the Mediterranean basin. This rooting in history is what puts the "Christ" in Christianity. The man Jesus was experienced and proclaimed among his people as "the Christ" (from a word of Greek origin), which was itself a translation of "messiah" (a word of Hebrew origin), which translates in English as "anointed one". Jesus of Nazareth was said to be God's "anointed one", in the belief of the Jews of that time, the one whom God would choose and send to lead them out of ignorance of God and away from evil.

A fundamental presupposition of the religion out of which Christianity evolved was that humanity needed divine intervention to be able to see the truth about itself, to order itself aright, and to enjoy this life. It was believed, and inspired men prophesied, that God would intervene in a man of his own choosing to be this intervention. There were many beliefs about how God's messiah would accomplish this, but many people around Jesus came to believe that this was the man God had chosen. These people were first called "Christians" in Antioch of Syria, the Greek form being used since Greek was still the region's common language.

The whole of Christianity rests on this belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the man in whom God himself lead people out of the darkness of ignorance and death-giving ways into the way of light, of truth, reality, and life itself, and that he still does it in him today. Indeed, it is the assertion of Christianity that God himself may be uniquely and ultimately experienced in coming to know Jesus of Nazareth as his Messiah, the medium and the message inextricably bound, the substance the same. To be a "Christian" is to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the messiah of God, and, equally important, to accept the call of God in Jesus.

Now in general, a "vocation" is defined as "a calling" (from the Latin vocare: to call). One of its definitions from a dictionary on my desk is, "...a function or station in life to which a person is called by God". Christians believe that they are called by God to follow Jesus of Nazareth as God's Messiah, or, Christ, and to make him known as such to all. When a Christian accepts this calling, his new function in life, above all else and through all else, is to become a living example of the truth in action, to show others the way to a full and genuine life, and to join them in a communion of Spirit with God himself. Their station in life, whether born high or low, rich or poor, is ultimately for each of them that of a servant for the sake of others. This is what it means to "follow" Jesus.

Christians are called out of the ordinary way of living, the "every man for himself" way, and into a new mould for being in the world. Christians consider themselves to have as their calling to show the way to the truth, that people may have life abundantly, and not live in fear and self-destruction, or at the mercy of their out-of-control appetites. Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth lived in a manner which embodies the way to true living, with the added promise that real life will never end.

Christians' calling then, their vocation, is to live in such a manner that anyone looking at their lives would recognise the very qualities of life which people found in Jesus of Nazareth. These are the qualities which turn hearts to God. Christians are not called to slavishly do just what Jesus did, and that in every situation, but rather to reveal today in themselves and in their own actions the same seeking after God, the same desire to reconcile one to another and all to God, which was so apparent in the life and activity of Jesus, the Messiah of God. Christians are called to a life motivated not by need or greed, but by the same thing which propelled the life of the Christ: love.

What God revealed in Jesus, above all else, was that the whole of point of life is love. Not sentimentality, not affection, not even empathy and compassion, though all these may be useful and good, but rather love is at the root of what the Christian understands about the way to true living in this wondrous creation.

Christians believe that God calls everyone, that the vocation is given to all. Nevertheless, in the complexity of our world not everyone has heard of Jesus of Nazareth, yet the same God calls out to each responsive soul the same vocation: come out of the ordinary, learn a better way, come to me, learn to live Love, go and tell it to others. People genuinely do respond to this call of the Spirit. This is expressed and lived out in countless religious traditions, often in uniquely profound ways and from which the Christian has much to learn, while in other instances perhaps less skilfully. What the Christian has to offer is the utter clarity, poingancy, and unique spiritual life of Jesus, and the insights, or truth, gained from living his way. The Christian can, in all humility and sincerity, offer to anyone seeking it, the way, the truth and the life in the reality which is Jesus of Nazareth. In making this offering, Christians offer faith, hope, love, and in the end, salvation itself from the many ways of death.

This vocation to show, or to enflesh, the way to truth and life in order to enable others, is indeed a high calling for all. And the Christian knows how far from the ideal he or she so often is. We know how often we shy away from the service and the sacrifice we know to be the Way. Failure to respond to the call perceived in following Jesus does not mean that the vocation, does not exist. Nor does our failure to commend the faith we have negate the truth about life revealed in Jesus. What these failures of ours do is to starkly expose to us and all the crushing brutality of ignorance, fear, small-mindedness, prejudice, self-aggrandisement and greed. In short, they cast a floodlight on death's way in a grim witness along a via negativa we used to call the seven deadly sins: pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and indifference. The example of Jesus was to overcome these with faith, hope, and above all love, and to prevent them with prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. This, too, is our vocation.

The Christian vocation is the same calling which Israel had and has: to be a light to lighten the world, to reveal God in his creation to all. The Christian does this uniquely through embodying the powerful living Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian's mission, his high calling, is to carry on Christ's work of reconciliation in the world, to be the body of Christ for this generation through the power of that Spirit.

To begin to accomplish this as an individual Christian, insofar as is possible, I must first know who I am in relation to God, what I believe about him and where I stand with him. Then I must know who Jesus is, what he said and did, what he instructed those who would be his followers; in other words, what his vocation for them is. And I must then decide whether or not I choose to be one of his followers, whether or not I accept his call, the vocation he lays before all of us. When I have searched out these things and chosen to accept, then I am obliged to begin to examine my own daily life and distinguish its every aspect with regard to my new life's vocation. Am I married? How does that show forth Christ's message of reconciliation? Am I a hospital worker, an asphalt layer, a NASA scientist, a librarian, a groundsman? How do I show Christ to the world in what I do? Suppose I am retired, or disabled, or rich, or in politics, or an artist. How shall I fulfil the compelling call of Christ Jesus to be a light to the world? The vocation is one, but its expression is as varied as the gifts we are. It is a simple calling: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbour as yourself." "You shall love one another as I have loved you." This foundational love is the Christian Vocation. The honest question is this: Have you really thought about your vocation and accepted it? Think about it.

JLAP