"I was turning forty and I decided I needed a career change." After twenty years in public relations, Michelle Passoff was finding the work to be thankless and uninteresting.

So, she says, "I did a lot of thinking about what kind of business the world needs right now, and what it means to be a human being and a woman right now. I looked at the kind of problems we face around all those things. And I kept getting the same message in each area of inquiry, which was: Clean your clutter!"

That's right: Clean your clutter.

"I'm serious," she says: "in all areas of your life there is just too much clutter -- mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. Think about it."

Michelle is now a "Clutter Consultant." She has a business that helps people deal with papers, clothes, furniture, memorabilia, and other stuff through the exercise of "clutter-cleaning."

Nancy and I could sure use her as we struggle to set up our new house!

Michelle sees private clients, grants interviews, and speaks nationally, working six days a week, twelve hours a day. She has a book on the market called Lighten Up! Free Yourself from Clutter -- and an audiotape, too. "I'm doing great," she insists. "I've never been happier in my life." (John Bowe, ed., Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium [New York: Crown Publishers, 2000], 77)

Michelle Passoff joins about 120 other Americans in reflecting on their work in a new book called Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium. Compiled from columns that appeared in a Web magazine, these essays capture the voices of our fast-paced and diverse economy, and reveal the hopes, goals and disappointments of 21st century laborers. Clutter-consulting is not the most surprising job in the book by far: There are also essays by buffalo ranchers, dog trainers, palm readers, orthopedic surgeons, telephone psychics, video game designers, Elvis Presley "interpreters," and art movers.

It's Labor Day weekend -- a time to rest from our labors. But this is also an opportunity to reflect on our daily work, and discern whether our effort is thankless and uninteresting, or something that gives us deep and lasting satisfaction. God intends for our work to be much more than a job, much more than a daily grind. It should be, instead, a vocation -- which means, quite literally, a "calling." In today's lesson from Romans, Paul challenges us with the words: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and perfect" (12:2).

Do not be conformed to this world -- a world that expects you to put the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar above all else. No, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, says Paul -- be transformed by discovering what the Lord God is calling you to do.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, ordained ministry is not the only work that can be considered a true vocation. In fact, based on what Michelle Passoff wrote in the book Gig, it sounds like clutter-consulting can be a calling as well. Michelle looked at what the world needed, at what it meant to be a human being, and at what kinds of problems people faced. All of this reflection led her to becoming a Clutter Consultant -- a line of work that gives her tremendous satisfaction.

That's a calling. That's vocation. The call of God is where the world's needs and your own joys, gifts and interests intersect.

Not that clutter-consulting is going to be right for everyone. Some may feel called to work at Kinko's, making copies and laminating and dry-mounting things onto poster board. Don't laugh -- Natasha Werther used to teach at a community college in Boston, then moved to eastern Massachusetts and began to work the night shift at Kinko's. She says it's her favorite job ever.

"It's really not that hard, so you can be very helpful to customers," she explains. Customers come in feeling panicked in the middle of the night, shouting that they need a job done immediately. "I'll go up and help them," says Natasha. "It's kind of nice, because I can actually help them. And they really do NEED help."

So you see, even copying at Kinko's can be a calling.

The apostle Paul makes very clear that we each have "gifts that differ according to the grace given to us" (v. 6). Some have talents in prophecy, some in ministry, some in teaching, some in exhortation, some in leadership, and some in compassion. Ministry is only one of MANY gifts that God can give, and it's not even at the top of the list. Add to this roster the spiritual gifts found in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and you can find a job for just about everyone: utterance of wisdom, utterance of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:8-11).

Frank Wade, the senior pastor of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., has a problem with the word "layperson." He thinks the term is demeaning to people who aren't ordained ministers. And he's right. After all, think of how we use the word "lay" in common conversation. If someone is a "lay electrician," he might be able to change a light switch, but you don't want him anywhere near the high voltage. If a person is labeled a "lay plumber," you're not going to let her do much more than clean a drain.

The bottom line? We consider laypersons to be amateurs.

This is diametrically opposed to the biblical notion of how God calls and empowers his chosen people. There is absolutely nothing amateurish about the role you are called to play when you "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God" (Romans 12:1). The Lord wants us all to be pros -- pros in our work of discerning what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For you, the will of God may be commercial fishing, along the lines of what Ian Bruce does in Kodiak, Alaska -- the town that serves as a major source of America's seafood, particularly salmon and crab. "It's risky," he reports. "Actually, it's more than risky -- it's a brutal, archaic life. But I like it. When I go out fishing, I'm slipping into a role that humans have always played. It's the eternal hunting party."

Or maybe the Lord wills you to be a florist, like Lora Harding of San Francisco. She says, "People come in, I help them -- give advice, do a little arranging, and I run the register. It's simple. It's great. ... People come to me at the important occasions in their lives -- from birth to death."

Perhaps God is calling you to be a cleaning product salesman. No, it's not glamorous work, but it's necessary. "People are dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty," observes salesman Desmond Grant. "You can walk into any kind of store and see dirt all over the place. I was in a flower shop this morning. There were stains all over their carpets, their tile floors, their windows. Mold on the stainless steel around the windows. I'm a clean person myself. I enjoyed cleaning that place!"

"Made a nice sale," he says, almost as an afterthought.

Does this mean that any career can be a calling? Almost anything. As long as your own joys and gifts are making connections with legitimate human needs, you are living out your vocation. Now this is not to say that the meeting of EVERY human need qualifies -- we'd want to rule out stripping and drug dealing and prostitution as jobs that can be considered sanctified services to the community. But at the same time, we shouldn't be too quick to judge. In the book Gig, a security officer in a gambling casino describes herself as a "truth seeker." She monitors surveillance cameras to make sure that no one is cheated -- not the casino, nor its customers, nor its employees.

Regardless of how you feel about gambling, it seems to be a safe bet that God would want a truth-seeker on the job.

The time has come for laypeople to cherish and to celebrate their labors, and to see their work as essential to the health of both the Body of Christ and the larger community. To be a layperson is not to be clueless, inept or unknowledgable, as many of us feel when we go to a doctor and have to say, "Gee, Doc, I'm just a layman -- so could you put that in plain English?"

No, to be members of the laity is to be people who "have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us" (v. 6). It's to be gifted clutter consultants and fishermen and florists and sales reps and security guards, all of whom perform tasks essential to the health of the community. It's to be people who understand that a body could not function if all of its members were doctors and lawyers and preachers. There's no WAY that such a body could function -- we'd be talking total dysfunction! A healthy body needs laypeople.

Maybe the time has come to toss the term itself. Instead of talking laypeople, let's get biblical and pull a new name from Romans 12. How about "transformers"? Paul lays out the challenge, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds" (v. 2). He wants us to be transformed and transforming people, not only changed BY Christ but involved in the changing of the world FOR Christ.

To be a transformer, in the world of electrical engineering, is to transfer electric energy from one circuit to another, and often that transfer involves a change in voltage, current, phase, or other electric characteristic. Well, the very same is true for laypeople who think of themselves as Christian transformers. As people transformed by Christ, they go into the workplace to transfer Christ's energy to the world. Through these transformers, the power of the Lord flows into the workplace, appearing in the form of Christian consulting, fishing, flower-arranging, soap-selling and security work.

That's the will of God. That's what is good and acceptable and perfect. Not a body of religious professionals, but a circuit of changed people who are changing the world through the exercise of God-given gifts.

Your call is to be a transformer. That's a pretty good gig.

Let's take a moment of Sabbath silence to allow God's Word to take root within us. Amen.