What’s My Line?

When I was a small child, maybe fourth or fifth grade, our family would gather around our old black-and-white TV to watch our favorite evening fare.  It was still our original TV bought in 1949 or so.  A little round screen and rabbit-ears antenna.  Some of you remember those days.

Among our favorites were: “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Beany and Cecil” puppet show, “Father Knows Best” and a quiz show, “What’s My Line?”

Guests would sign in and the panel participants could ask various questions that could be answered only “yes” or “no.”  Often the line of work was something obscure like wing walking, flaming sword swallower at the circus.  You get the idea.  Every now and then the guest would be so famous that the panelists would need to be blindfolded, but the audience would “ooh” and “aaaahhh” as the person signed in on the blackboard.

It is still the same, most of us are defined by our line of work. 

In theological terms, this is known as vocation or calling.  My wife knew as young as kindergarten that she was called to be an elementary school teacher.  And she has done that faithfully for some forty years before retirement.

I’ve bounced around at several lines of work, always, since my Army discharge, centered around the church.

In our Old Testament story, Jonah’s line of work assigned by God is to go to Nineveh and shape those folks up – a seeming impossibility given their reputation as a bunch of debauched degenerates.  An assignment worse than taking out the garbage.

And those “simple fishermen” were to be transformed into “fishers of men [and women].”  Another new life-assignment.

Frederick Buechner eloquently defines vocation, “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

Unfortunately, the church often does little in preparing young people to reflect on the spiritual dimension of that life choice.  Mostly, we stumble into something.

Our first assignment as part of the Jesus Movement is to discern the answer to the question of vocation, I believe.

I had lunch this week with a husband wife couple in their sixties.  His line, which got him in much trouble and caused much grief was Wilmington Gangbanger.

That was the route of most everybody in his family.  Most were still addicts, a good number still in prison.  Michael had spent over a decade in prison as a “lifer” for killing a person while high on PCP.  He has been a consumer of California correctional services in some of the most wretched places imaginable.

Then he came to his senses.  He got sober.  He got with the addiction recovery program in prison and realized God was laying out a new path for him.  All he had to do was walk through that door.

Meeting him and his wife Stephanie made my whole week.  As I snapped a picture, I told the two that “you two are what recovery looks like.”  Michael is now a year and a half into a course leading to a certificate in addiction recovery at Mt. SAC, a local community college.

He met his wife in high school, and they were married while he was still in prison, but then well on the road to recovery.  He now has over fifty years of sobriety.  Stephanie has a Master’s in business administration and oversees payroll for over one thousand employees in a large home building company.  She, also, grew up in a drug-infested family, but managed to get clear of those problems.

Recovery is their line and it is a blessed gift to all they encounter.  And could be for House of Hope.  Michael is interested in doing some work helping to put in our newly donated fruit trees at the church and giving Miguel help with putting in the new drip irrigation system.

Barbara Brown Taylor is absolutely correct in describing how God, the Spirit, works through our intuition.  Dreams, coincidences, a sidewards glance out of our peripheral vision.  Pay attention.

I’ve told the story early on at my arrival at St. Francis of how God got my attention.  And, because our congregation is about three times the size of what it was then, it may bear repeating.

When I was in junior high, we were living in a very upscale neighborhood in Long Beach, California, the Bixby Knowles area where many professionals lived – my father being a dentist who had done very well for the family.

One day, in the summer a moving van arrived at a house, about 6 or 7 lots down the street from us.  I and a few of my playmates rode our bikes down there to see what was going on.

There on the sidewalk, watching furniture being hauled out of the trailer was a mother and two boys.  A Black mother and two Black boys.  As I had always been taught to be respectful, I started a conversation.  The usual, “I’m John, what are your names?”  Where are you from?  What does your dad do?”  I just assumed their mother was a stay-at-home mom like mine.  The mother went back in the house and soon reappeared with glasses of lemonade for us all.

These were the first Black people I had ever seen.  I had led a pretty sheltered, privileged life up to that point.   And the boys just seemed like regular boys who would fit in with our neighborhood gang.  Not at all like how my father would have referred to them.

Shortly after moving in, this family took a long vacation.  While they were away, their fine Christian neighbors put a hose through the second story window and turned on the water which ran for over a week.  Flooded them out completely.

What little talk there was in the neighborhood about the incident was very hush-hush, whispers and innuendo.  My father’s take was that even though the man was a dentist like him, they had no business in buying that house.

What I found to be most spiritually damaging was that my church said nothing.  Absolutely NOTHING about this horrendous evil which had taken place right under their nose.

Deep down, even at that young age, I felt this to be a cowardly betrayal of all we had been taught in Sunday school.  It was about that time I dropped out of going.  They were just a bunch of phonies.  Several years later the conservative pastor came out publically against California’s fair housing law when it was on the ballot.  I wrote the whole place off as a joke.  A sick joke!

It would be a number of years later while attending a college Methodist group with a very progressive leader that he and his wife would convince me to attend a national student gathering over Easter vacation. 

There, in Lincoln, Nebraska, with several thousand other college- aged students I had the good fortune to hear the keynote speaker, one Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I could have stayed home; I was short on funds.  My father was definitely less than enthusiastic about my participation.  But a number of friends were on our three chartered busses, including one girl I struck up a conversation with from Occidental College, Jai Handcock.

Dr. King’s talk that evening was balm to my terrible memory of what had happened to our Black neighbors down the street. 

The Spirit must have been working overtime.  First, after I had heard King, my spirit leapt.  I thought, “If THIS is the church, include me in.” A healing of that searing memory came out of this newly discovered resolve.  I could devote myself to helping Americans better understand each other.  To work for equity and inclusion was a totally new direction from being a drifting, academic screw-up.  In that moment my life found purpose and hope.

Secondly, Jai and I began seeing each other upon our return to Los Angeles.  Before I was discharged from the Army we were married, and I knew I was headed to seminary to prepare for the ministry.

Yes, I’ve done many other things along the way.  I still do.  But I love the church with all its faults.

And what did I discover on this circuitous journey?  The same thing Jonah did.  Through hints and urges, happenstance — small as a mustard seed, God works wonders.  This is “my line” and it has been a blessing beyond measure. 

Just ask Michael and Stephanie.  Just ask any whose lives have been changed through AA or NA.  Ask any person of faith who spends the first part of the morning in prayer – what I refer to as “spiritual daydreaming.”  Ask my wife and all who have found their true life’s calling.  Wonders! I tell you.

As my friend Jim Strathdee’s song says in part, “If you follow and love, you’ll learn the mystery of what you were meant to do and be.”

That we might all find “…the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”  That is the enduring, lifelong Grace of God.  It’s never too late.  “Today really is the first day of your life.”  What are you being meant to do and be?  Amen.

January 21, 2024
3 Epiphany

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:6-14;
1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

“What’s My Line?”