Daughter of the priest,
she invited him to break bread
In those many days she made a home for him,
the alien in a foreign land
She rescued Moses,
from Pharoah and the Egyptians
From himself
With Zipporah he learned to be a shepherd
He learned to be a Reuel
O Zipporah
Blessed be your name
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Sermon: "Downward Mobility"
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
Today’s Gospel reading follows immediately upon the heels of Jesus’ baptism. Having left Galilee, Jesus arrives on the banks of the Jordan River and presents himself to his cousin John the Baptist. Jesus persuades the wiry preacher it is both fitting and right that Jesus should submit himself to the waters of baptism. After some disputation John agrees and calls for Jesus into the water. As Jesus is being raised up out of the water we are told at once the heavens open and the Spirit of God descends upon him like a dove. “And a voice from heaven was heard saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, on whom my favor rests’” (Matt 3:16-17). Here begins ministry of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This is the conferring of his messianic mission. It is a charge given to Jesus to live into his baptism and to walk obediently in the path toward his own destiny.
Immediately, we are told, Jesus is led away into the wilderness and to have that charge put to the test. With ears to hear, listen to the Gospel account of Jesus’ temptation:
"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." 4 But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, "He will command his angels concerning you,' and "On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" 7 Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." 10 Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.' Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him."
(Matthew 4:1-11)
One central question binds all of these temptations: What kind of son will Jesus be? Will he conform to the image we might expect of one worthy to be called son of God by exercising his dominion over man and nature? Will he set up his throne on Zion and rule the world? Will he subdue all the nations and align them, through force if necessary, with the will and the way of his Father? This is certainly what we might expect from a son of God. I suggest to you, however, that here we may be being set up for the unexpected.
Jesus’ first temptation is an economic one. Jesus has gone into the wilderness to fast. This is not out of the ordinary for someone plotting revolution. Che Guevera retreated to the hills of Bolivia. Pancho Villa to the deserts of Mexico. Robin Hood to Sherwood Forest. Revolutionaries go to the deserts and to the wildnernesses of the world in order to know and suffer the pains of the common people. To, in the words of Bill Clinton, “feel their pain.” Revolutionaries live the plight of the poor and then seek to do something radical – something big – to change things. It is here that they end up subverting nature in their quest to right the wrongs of the world. In order to feed the poor they rob from the rich. In order to fight fascism they incite mass tyranny. For Jesus the temptation is to subvert nature by turning the stones to bread.
Satan then takes Jesus to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Standing atop the high walls that surrounded the City of David, Satan asks Jesus to prove his importance by casting himself over the ledge. The temptation is not a matter of trusting God to break his fall. Jesus is not afraid of death. What is instead being tested is Jesus’ willingness to dazzle the people of Israel by exploiting the miraculous – something we’ve all seen done in certain contexts. Satan wants the new preacher in town to make a big-to-do of all that is going on in his church.
Finally, Satan leads Jesus to a mountaintop and unfolds to him all the kingdoms of the world. “All these,” Satan says, “will be yours if you will just fall prostrate and worship me.” Here the temptation is to join forces with the Prince of the World and rule the nations.
Story Two
Henri Nouwen, in a short but very powerful book he wrote on Christian leadership, reflects upon each of these temptations Jesus suffered. According to Nouwen these are temptations we all face as we seek to live obediently as children of God. First, we want to be relevant. We want to meet the physical needs of the world we belong to by whatever means might be necessary. Secondly, we want to be spectacular. We want to show our own spiritual dynamism and uniqueness. We want people in Durham to say this church really means something. And, finally, we want to be powerful. We want the power to conform the world to the way we think God would have it ordered. This was the temptation the church gave into as thousands of Christian soldiers marched onward in the name of God during the Crusades. Holy wars, whether Christian, Islamic or Judaic, almost always involve people earnestly desiring to do big things for the kingdom.
Nouwen himself was no stranger to big things. Born in Holland, he became a Catholic priest, moved to the States and went on to become one of the true spiritual masters of the 20th century. A prolific writer, Nouwen enjoyed a vast readership from both Catholic and evangelical Protestant ranks throughout the world. In the academy his credentials were even more impressive. He rose to what is thought by many to be the crowning achievement of scholastic success – enjoying distinguished teaching appointments at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard universities. Henri Nouwen had reached a pinnacle of spiritual influence shared by only a few other modern writers.
At mid-life, however, Nouwen began to travel down what he called the “descending way of Christ.” The descending journey took Nouwen to some of the poorest places in Central and South America. Deeply affected by the horrors of war, famine and disease Nouwen returned to North America with a shaken conscience. Unable to rid himself of the disturbing memory of the afflicted faces he had come in contact with, Nouwen resigned his teaching appointement. He accepted a position as pastor in the L’Arche Daybreak community – a place dedicated to serving and ministering to the needs of its mentally handicapped residents.
L’Arche Daybreak is a long way from the laurelled halls of Harvard University. In fact, as I was preparing for this sermon I happened to meet a young woman now at Duke Divinity School who spent time as an intern at L’Arche after college. This young lady put into perspective for me the incredible challenges being faced by the people of L’Arche when she described what a dilemma it is for most residents to simply put socks upon their feet each morning. Ivy League credentials mean nothing in places like L’Arche. The descending way of Christ upends the entire social pyramid, defying all our assumptions of what it means to be relevant, spectacular and powerful.
Perhaps one of my professors at Duke, Richard Lischer, captured well the descending way of Christ when he quipped that after spending several years contemplating the metaphysical riddles of God, sin, theodicy and redemption, young preachers soon find out that all the church really wants is someone who can play the guitar. To be relevant is seldom to be famous or brilliant or even very popular. To be relevant is to help another change her socks.
Story Three
Of course the world’s ideas are different. The world tells us that ascent, not descent, is the hallmark of human endeavor. It’s up the corporate ladder, on to the next big thing, toward whatever else might make us seem more relevant, more spectacular and more well-respected to our friends, our neighbors and our selves. We are being lied to. These are the lies of the deceiver and we are in grave danger of being taken by them – hook, line and sinker.
Adam bit. Satan came to Adam promising more than he had and more than he was. Adam too could have the knowledge of good and evil. It was his destiny. If only Adam would reach up, high into the branches of that tree he too could be like God. Adam did just that. He reached up, extended his arm and then lifted himself upon his tiptoes and plucked himself the sweetest, ripest, juiciest Georgia peach that has ever been tasted.
In today’s age we are often brought to the point of asking if this story really happened. That is a valid question, but no the best question. The best question to ask is whether or not that story is really true. I think, if we are candid with ourselves, we have to admit that there is no truer story we’ve ever told about ourselves than the story of our fall.
Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us that the story of Adam is a typology (typos) of our own story. What Adam did is what we all do when buy into the lies. This, Paul tells us, it the path to perdition. Through one man’s trespass – through one man’s ascent of heaven- sin comes into the world, jumps on our backs and wraps its chokehold around our necks. For it is through Adam that death enters into the human story. When Paul says Adam is a typology Paul is saying Adam’s story is our own story.
Story Four
It was Saint Augustine who, in reading Paul’s epistle to the Romans we heard earlier, first formally developed the doctrine of original sin. When Paul writes that in Adam we have all been given over to death, Augustine took him to mean that we were all literally “in” Adam when he sinned, and we are all therefore inescapably doomed to repeat his mistake. Scientists and philosophers have by and large reaffirmed this rather negative view of humanity, though they have been sophisticated enough to shake Augustine’s archaic views about God, sin and salvation. Now we are all merely products of force meeting force – the sons and daughters of those who happened to win out in a cosmic, winner-take-all game. This is the game wherein we deceive in order to achieve, walk all over whoever gets in our way as we climb the corporate ladder, and kill in order to eat. Only the fittest will survive. The rest will be voted off the island.
This is the game Adam was hustled into playing. This is the story Adam bought when the Serpent came a calling. “You have to do this if you expect to survive.”
Story Five
There is another story. It is the story we find in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the other typology. When presented with the vast array of wealth and political might this world has to offer he would not be duped. When offered the chance to be spectacular and powerful he would not bite. Though born with the beauty and wonder of divine-likeness he would not storm heaven’s gates. Though tempted to be a leader who would provide for his people’s needs, he refused to subvert nature– knowing that man cannot live on bread alone. When taken to the very summit of Mt. Sinai, as we read last week, he refused to stay. For he knew that downward is the path to salvation.
In Adam sin and death came into the world. In Adam we have one story of our humanity – the story of our fall. But in Christ we have another fundamentally human story – the story of resurrection. With the resurrection we have a new setting and a new stage. The old curtain has been rent asunder and a new backdrop has come down. The kingdom has come. The story of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the story we were all created to live. It is the story we are destined to partake in. We were made to live lives like Jesus, to follow him as disciples to his cross, sharing with him in his sufferings and so, somehow, attain to the resurrection. We too were made to lives as sons of God.
Story Six
This is the first Sunday of Lent. This is the beginning of a season of reflection and repentance for us all. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. It literally means to turn around. We have to ask ourselves today, what is it that we are being called to do in order to turn this thing around. In order to mend our estranged relationship with our creator and live into our baptism; to reclaim our call to live as sons and daughters of God.
There are people turning around all over the world right now. People like Nouwen with plans for bigger and better things instead choosing to live alongside the poor. People of pedigree foregoing the road to success and instead choosing to live as another fortunate Son lived – as a servant to the meek and cranky. People of great political ambition and ability choosing to serve rather than be served. It is happening in places like New Deli and L’Arche, where putting on socks is a daily chore. Even places in this very city like Walltown or East Durham or right across the field behind us – where people are choosing to give up their Saturday mornings in order to volunteer with kids who don’t know how to read.
What would it mean for us to turn around this morning? As the whole world is reaching up, with Adam, toward the heavens to pluck that peace of fruit off the very top limb and be like God, what would it mean to simply be who we were made to be – human? What would it mean to go with Jesus, to look from the heights of the tallest mountain of the world, upon all the kings and kingdoms and then say no – choosing to instead turn and walk down the mountain, and into the lives of our friends and neighbors who need a hand changing their socks. We will not meet all their needs – we have to realize that. We will be tempted to subvert nature in order to accomplish, but we will refuse. We will learn to follow in the way of our Lord who knew it was less important to be glorious than it was to be faithful.
What would it mean to be like Christ who we are told was in the very nature like God but did not consider equality with God something to be robbed but humbled himself and became obedient to death? What would it mean to turn away from our worship of the world and all its false grandeur and false promise and false securities and follow Jesus in whose name every knee will one day bow down to and every tongue confess as Lord.
As we repent of our sins this Lenten Season let us remember that a new age is now upon us. Humanity’s story has been re-authored in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The heavens have been rent apart. The kingdom of God is at hand. Let us submit to our own mission as sons and daughters of God. Let us conform ourselves to the call of discipleship. Let us follow down the descending way of Christ.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
Today’s Gospel reading follows immediately upon the heels of Jesus’ baptism. Having left Galilee, Jesus arrives on the banks of the Jordan River and presents himself to his cousin John the Baptist. Jesus persuades the wiry preacher it is both fitting and right that Jesus should submit himself to the waters of baptism. After some disputation John agrees and calls for Jesus into the water. As Jesus is being raised up out of the water we are told at once the heavens open and the Spirit of God descends upon him like a dove. “And a voice from heaven was heard saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, on whom my favor rests’” (Matt 3:16-17). Here begins ministry of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This is the conferring of his messianic mission. It is a charge given to Jesus to live into his baptism and to walk obediently in the path toward his own destiny.
Immediately, we are told, Jesus is led away into the wilderness and to have that charge put to the test. With ears to hear, listen to the Gospel account of Jesus’ temptation:
"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." 4 But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, "He will command his angels concerning you,' and "On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" 7 Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." 10 Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.' Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him."
(Matthew 4:1-11)
One central question binds all of these temptations: What kind of son will Jesus be? Will he conform to the image we might expect of one worthy to be called son of God by exercising his dominion over man and nature? Will he set up his throne on Zion and rule the world? Will he subdue all the nations and align them, through force if necessary, with the will and the way of his Father? This is certainly what we might expect from a son of God. I suggest to you, however, that here we may be being set up for the unexpected.
Jesus’ first temptation is an economic one. Jesus has gone into the wilderness to fast. This is not out of the ordinary for someone plotting revolution. Che Guevera retreated to the hills of Bolivia. Pancho Villa to the deserts of Mexico. Robin Hood to Sherwood Forest. Revolutionaries go to the deserts and to the wildnernesses of the world in order to know and suffer the pains of the common people. To, in the words of Bill Clinton, “feel their pain.” Revolutionaries live the plight of the poor and then seek to do something radical – something big – to change things. It is here that they end up subverting nature in their quest to right the wrongs of the world. In order to feed the poor they rob from the rich. In order to fight fascism they incite mass tyranny. For Jesus the temptation is to subvert nature by turning the stones to bread.
Satan then takes Jesus to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Standing atop the high walls that surrounded the City of David, Satan asks Jesus to prove his importance by casting himself over the ledge. The temptation is not a matter of trusting God to break his fall. Jesus is not afraid of death. What is instead being tested is Jesus’ willingness to dazzle the people of Israel by exploiting the miraculous – something we’ve all seen done in certain contexts. Satan wants the new preacher in town to make a big-to-do of all that is going on in his church.
Finally, Satan leads Jesus to a mountaintop and unfolds to him all the kingdoms of the world. “All these,” Satan says, “will be yours if you will just fall prostrate and worship me.” Here the temptation is to join forces with the Prince of the World and rule the nations.
Story Two
Henri Nouwen, in a short but very powerful book he wrote on Christian leadership, reflects upon each of these temptations Jesus suffered. According to Nouwen these are temptations we all face as we seek to live obediently as children of God. First, we want to be relevant. We want to meet the physical needs of the world we belong to by whatever means might be necessary. Secondly, we want to be spectacular. We want to show our own spiritual dynamism and uniqueness. We want people in Durham to say this church really means something. And, finally, we want to be powerful. We want the power to conform the world to the way we think God would have it ordered. This was the temptation the church gave into as thousands of Christian soldiers marched onward in the name of God during the Crusades. Holy wars, whether Christian, Islamic or Judaic, almost always involve people earnestly desiring to do big things for the kingdom.
Nouwen himself was no stranger to big things. Born in Holland, he became a Catholic priest, moved to the States and went on to become one of the true spiritual masters of the 20th century. A prolific writer, Nouwen enjoyed a vast readership from both Catholic and evangelical Protestant ranks throughout the world. In the academy his credentials were even more impressive. He rose to what is thought by many to be the crowning achievement of scholastic success – enjoying distinguished teaching appointments at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard universities. Henri Nouwen had reached a pinnacle of spiritual influence shared by only a few other modern writers.
At mid-life, however, Nouwen began to travel down what he called the “descending way of Christ.” The descending journey took Nouwen to some of the poorest places in Central and South America. Deeply affected by the horrors of war, famine and disease Nouwen returned to North America with a shaken conscience. Unable to rid himself of the disturbing memory of the afflicted faces he had come in contact with, Nouwen resigned his teaching appointement. He accepted a position as pastor in the L’Arche Daybreak community – a place dedicated to serving and ministering to the needs of its mentally handicapped residents.
L’Arche Daybreak is a long way from the laurelled halls of Harvard University. In fact, as I was preparing for this sermon I happened to meet a young woman now at Duke Divinity School who spent time as an intern at L’Arche after college. This young lady put into perspective for me the incredible challenges being faced by the people of L’Arche when she described what a dilemma it is for most residents to simply put socks upon their feet each morning. Ivy League credentials mean nothing in places like L’Arche. The descending way of Christ upends the entire social pyramid, defying all our assumptions of what it means to be relevant, spectacular and powerful.
Perhaps one of my professors at Duke, Richard Lischer, captured well the descending way of Christ when he quipped that after spending several years contemplating the metaphysical riddles of God, sin, theodicy and redemption, young preachers soon find out that all the church really wants is someone who can play the guitar. To be relevant is seldom to be famous or brilliant or even very popular. To be relevant is to help another change her socks.
Story Three
Of course the world’s ideas are different. The world tells us that ascent, not descent, is the hallmark of human endeavor. It’s up the corporate ladder, on to the next big thing, toward whatever else might make us seem more relevant, more spectacular and more well-respected to our friends, our neighbors and our selves. We are being lied to. These are the lies of the deceiver and we are in grave danger of being taken by them – hook, line and sinker.
Adam bit. Satan came to Adam promising more than he had and more than he was. Adam too could have the knowledge of good and evil. It was his destiny. If only Adam would reach up, high into the branches of that tree he too could be like God. Adam did just that. He reached up, extended his arm and then lifted himself upon his tiptoes and plucked himself the sweetest, ripest, juiciest Georgia peach that has ever been tasted.
In today’s age we are often brought to the point of asking if this story really happened. That is a valid question, but no the best question. The best question to ask is whether or not that story is really true. I think, if we are candid with ourselves, we have to admit that there is no truer story we’ve ever told about ourselves than the story of our fall.
Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us that the story of Adam is a typology (typos) of our own story. What Adam did is what we all do when buy into the lies. This, Paul tells us, it the path to perdition. Through one man’s trespass – through one man’s ascent of heaven- sin comes into the world, jumps on our backs and wraps its chokehold around our necks. For it is through Adam that death enters into the human story. When Paul says Adam is a typology Paul is saying Adam’s story is our own story.
Story Four
It was Saint Augustine who, in reading Paul’s epistle to the Romans we heard earlier, first formally developed the doctrine of original sin. When Paul writes that in Adam we have all been given over to death, Augustine took him to mean that we were all literally “in” Adam when he sinned, and we are all therefore inescapably doomed to repeat his mistake. Scientists and philosophers have by and large reaffirmed this rather negative view of humanity, though they have been sophisticated enough to shake Augustine’s archaic views about God, sin and salvation. Now we are all merely products of force meeting force – the sons and daughters of those who happened to win out in a cosmic, winner-take-all game. This is the game wherein we deceive in order to achieve, walk all over whoever gets in our way as we climb the corporate ladder, and kill in order to eat. Only the fittest will survive. The rest will be voted off the island.
This is the game Adam was hustled into playing. This is the story Adam bought when the Serpent came a calling. “You have to do this if you expect to survive.”
Story Five
There is another story. It is the story we find in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the other typology. When presented with the vast array of wealth and political might this world has to offer he would not be duped. When offered the chance to be spectacular and powerful he would not bite. Though born with the beauty and wonder of divine-likeness he would not storm heaven’s gates. Though tempted to be a leader who would provide for his people’s needs, he refused to subvert nature– knowing that man cannot live on bread alone. When taken to the very summit of Mt. Sinai, as we read last week, he refused to stay. For he knew that downward is the path to salvation.
In Adam sin and death came into the world. In Adam we have one story of our humanity – the story of our fall. But in Christ we have another fundamentally human story – the story of resurrection. With the resurrection we have a new setting and a new stage. The old curtain has been rent asunder and a new backdrop has come down. The kingdom has come. The story of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the story we were all created to live. It is the story we are destined to partake in. We were made to live lives like Jesus, to follow him as disciples to his cross, sharing with him in his sufferings and so, somehow, attain to the resurrection. We too were made to lives as sons of God.
Story Six
This is the first Sunday of Lent. This is the beginning of a season of reflection and repentance for us all. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. It literally means to turn around. We have to ask ourselves today, what is it that we are being called to do in order to turn this thing around. In order to mend our estranged relationship with our creator and live into our baptism; to reclaim our call to live as sons and daughters of God.
There are people turning around all over the world right now. People like Nouwen with plans for bigger and better things instead choosing to live alongside the poor. People of pedigree foregoing the road to success and instead choosing to live as another fortunate Son lived – as a servant to the meek and cranky. People of great political ambition and ability choosing to serve rather than be served. It is happening in places like New Deli and L’Arche, where putting on socks is a daily chore. Even places in this very city like Walltown or East Durham or right across the field behind us – where people are choosing to give up their Saturday mornings in order to volunteer with kids who don’t know how to read.
What would it mean for us to turn around this morning? As the whole world is reaching up, with Adam, toward the heavens to pluck that peace of fruit off the very top limb and be like God, what would it mean to simply be who we were made to be – human? What would it mean to go with Jesus, to look from the heights of the tallest mountain of the world, upon all the kings and kingdoms and then say no – choosing to instead turn and walk down the mountain, and into the lives of our friends and neighbors who need a hand changing their socks. We will not meet all their needs – we have to realize that. We will be tempted to subvert nature in order to accomplish, but we will refuse. We will learn to follow in the way of our Lord who knew it was less important to be glorious than it was to be faithful.
What would it mean to be like Christ who we are told was in the very nature like God but did not consider equality with God something to be robbed but humbled himself and became obedient to death? What would it mean to turn away from our worship of the world and all its false grandeur and false promise and false securities and follow Jesus in whose name every knee will one day bow down to and every tongue confess as Lord.
As we repent of our sins this Lenten Season let us remember that a new age is now upon us. Humanity’s story has been re-authored in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The heavens have been rent apart. The kingdom of God is at hand. Let us submit to our own mission as sons and daughters of God. Let us conform ourselves to the call of discipleship. Let us follow down the descending way of Christ.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ordination Council Paper (My Story)
Scope and Purpose
In what follows I have attempted two things. First, I have tried to tell my story as accurately and as truthfully as I, or anyone else, can bear. Secondly, I have tried to reflect theologically upon various stages in that story in order to better understand and articulate who it is that I am today and who it is that I want to be. In that respect my story, like all good stories, is arched by force toward some end. We might call this force, as the Hebrews did, “wind” or “spirit”. And we might call this end Christ. It is my belief that I have read the winds rightly and they point me toward an end which is hoped for, yet unseen. It is my hope that you, this Ordaining Council, will read the winds with me, confirm my interpretation, and point in The Way.
First Foundations
Baptism is the sign through which we freely confess Jesus the Christ as Lord and covenant ourselves to live as faithful and obedient disciples in life, in death and into the resurrection.
As any good Baptist would, I have begun with baptism. My own baptism took place in a backyard pool in Lubbock, TX in the presence of the people of Live Oak Community Church. The blue water glistened, cool and refreshing, beneath the hot West Texas sun. The skies were not rent asunder; there was no booming voice from heaven. But I have to think the Lord was nevertheless well pleased. I was baptized by the Reverend Scott Travis, a friend and mentor from whom I first (with ears to hear) heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and responded. I was 20 years old.
Growing up, church was not a significant part of my family’s life. My parents were (and still are) salt of the earth kinds of people. They worked hard and did their best to instill the values of right and wrong in us kids. Faith was important to them; church was also an important - but not quite necessary. Jesus Christ died for their sins and that was what mattered most. God would judge us by what was in our hearts.
I came to Christ through the evangelical high school mission Young Life. Scott was the Young Life area director for Lubbock and I gravitated toward him and his message. He presented a Jesus far more exciting and attractive than anything I had ever heard. All the other Jesuses had been about religion. The Jesus Scott preached was about relationship. I fell in love with the new Jesus and wanted to follow him.
I was on fire and that fire was all consuming. I became significantly involved in my church and in Young Life where I served as both a volunteer leader and later as intern during college. Jesus Christ had changed my heart and I was eager to tell others of the peace he had given me.
That peace was a curious one however. While on the one hand I was profoundly moved by a sense of tranquility and rest, I also harbored a deep anger and hostility toward those who could or would not share with me in this new life. My relationship with those closest to me suffered most. I failed to make the same kinds of connections with my family that I could make with those I mentored and ministered to. It was difficult for me to understand how my sister and parents could not feel what I felt and know what I knew about Jesus Christ. It was impossible for me to imagine how people could be so lukewarm about something I found so exciting and so right. I can see now how pious and condemning I often was. I had become a zealot, not out of malicious intent or hatred, but out of a distorted image of what it means to do and be good in this world.
Jesus told us faith in Him would put a wedge between father and son and bring a sword rather than peace to the world (Matt. 10:34). Somehow I had missed his point. The sword was supposed to be in the hands of those who hated Christ, not those who loved him. It was a lesson I learned early in life and one which will shape my own worldview for the rest of my life. It is less important to be right than it is to be loving. Our God is a god of mercy, not of sacrifice.
I graduated from college and took a year’s sabbatical – determined (only half-jokingly now) to “find myself” and listen for God’s gentle whisper. As I searched scripture I could not shake the sense that I was called to seminary. I lived with the Apostle Paul’s charge that our love for Christ should overflow with knowledge and depth of insight (Phil 1:9). The foundation of my faith was laid solid, it was time to build upon it. Charles Johnson, a Baptist preacher I respected a great deal from my hometown, put me onto Duke Divinity School. It didn’t take much arm-twisting. I wanted a place that would grow me both spiritually and intellectually. In researching schools I read that the Dean of the Divinity School, Greg Jones, boasted that Duke’s goal was to cultivate in its students what Jean LeClerc called “a love of learning and a desire for God.” I was sold.
Beyond Foundations
“What is crucial is not that Christians know the truth,
but that they be the truth.”
Stanley Hauerwas
When I arrived at seminary I was startled to discover that the foundation I thought my faith so solidly rested on began to sink quickly. Confronted with challenges like the historical-critical method, the problem of history’s violence (especially Christian history’s violence), the high burden of “proving” anything (especially the burden of proving the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God) and the fact that the fire that had once burned so fiercely could no longer be seen or felt, I began to doubt the reality of my faith. At times I even doubted the reality of reality. All this, mixed together and thrown into the pressurized cooker of a rigorous academic curriculum and cranked up to 500 degrees was enough to make me crack. At the beginning of my second year of school I suffered a crisis of faith.
This was a dark period in my life; yet I now consider it a necessary part of my journey, just as the desert wandering was for Israel. My former foundations having given way, I looked to new rock for manna. In contrast to what one might expect from theologians trained in communicating Christian truth, the professors at Duke Divinity School did not begin afresh with what could be proven about the Christian faith. They began with what could be practiced.
Up until that time I had understood Jesus was the one through whom all my needs would be met. The emptiness I now suffered called that into question. I began to find solace, however, in reflecting upon the book of Job. In the story Job, a righteous man, suffers affliction beyond comprehension and is left to wrestle with the terrorizing thought of a god who allows pain and evil to persist in the world. As readers we are privy to something Job is not. Though the problem of evil is never resolved for us, we learn, from God’s own conversation with Satan, that Job’s suffering (and by inference all human suffering) is bound up with the human freedom to love or reject God. The capacity to love and follow God is contingent upon an analogous capacity to “curse God and die.” The question put before God by Satan, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:9), remarkably resembled the question being asked of me in my trial of faith, “Can you love and obey God selflessly?” To love and obey God selflessly is to love a god who sometimes remains quiet amidst heartache and tragedy. To love the Lord is to risk loving a god who will not always give us what we want.
I think this is the lesson of John 6. After Jesus fed the five thousand, the people were so overcome that they were willing to resort to violence in order to make him king. Jesus instead withdrew to a mountaintop. The people had fallen in love with the miracle and had missed what that miracle was pointing toward – a new economy of abundance being established on earth. To love God selflessly is to worship a king who will not always work miracles.
At the same time I was reflecting upon Job I began a class on Baptist polity and history. The central question put to us throughout the course was “What does it mean to confess Christ as Lord?” It was this question that fundamentally changed the entire course of my seminary education and perhaps my life.
For early Christians, the confession “Christ is Lord” did not rest upon a set of doctrinal statements about the truth and divinity of Jesus which could be isolated from the story of God’s ongoing work in the people Israel. Instead, as Baptist theologian Jim McClendon notes, in Jesus we have two stories – God’s story and the story of his people – weaved together. The good news for the early Christian witnesses was the proclamation of a new world being ushered in upon them in the faithful life, death and resurrection of Christ. The earliest meaning of “Christ is Lord” was that Jesus, a man, obediently chose to live the self-giving life God chose for him and was raised from death that all might follow his path and be reconciled in “the way, the truth, and the life.” The flame which would set the world afire was the good news that the kingdom of God had drawn near. The stranglehold of suffering and death had ended. Humanity had been born anew in Jesus Christ.
What was so liberating about this discovery? On the one hand it was terribly frightening - I might not ever regain the certainty I at one time thought I possessed. But at the same time, this new discovery was freeing. God called me to live as a disciple, to follow the pattern Jesus set in giving his life away, and to submit (literally “to put under”) my own humanity to the call of the cross – to live as humans were made to live by renouncing power and glory and affirming service to our neighbor as the way to loving and obeying God selflessly. The lesson of Job – to love God and serve him without regard to self-interest - was fulfilled in the life of Christ.
God had given me the freedom to either accept or reject that life. In reflection I realized my baptism – the baptism I had undergone so many years before – was a promise I had already made to follow in the life of Christ. Believer’s baptism was a pledge to accept my place in the cosmos - an affirmation that Christ’s way is indeed the Way to new life and Christ himself is indeed Lord. The ball was now in my court. It was up to me to either break or keep that pledge.
The Church…The Body of Christ
Looking back now I can see that the first two years of seminary had been a terribly selfish period in my life. I am ashamed of this. I rejected most forms of legitimate Christian community, choosing instead to turn inward and wrestle with my demons in isolation. Though I joined a local church I disengaged from its communal life - perhaps fearful that my faithlessness would be exposed. Darkness always fears the light. Up until divinity school I located the truth of my faith in my own private, experience of Jesus Christ. In layman’s terms, “I knew Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.” What I had failed to consider, however, was the ways in which my fellow community of believers had helped me sustain and make sense of my faith throughout the journey. What I thought was a strictly private matter had in fact been a community affair!
Sadly, modern assumptions about the self and the primacy of the individual have done much to diminish our understanding of what the church is. The church has become something like a club where like-minded peoples gather and worship and then freely disassociate themselves from the fellowship when times and circumstances warrant. It was this kind of misconception on my part which allowed me to break from the church when doubt began to cast its long shadow over my life.
But the church is something more than a coming together of peoples. The church is the community of fellowship wherein the very constitution of peoplehood is remade into the likeness and body of Christ. This body is a living body – an organic expression and embodiment of God’s kingdom being made on earth. When we separate ourselves from the body of Christ we lose more than casserole dinners. We forfeit our very selves – who and what we were made to be. When I disconnected myself from the church I lost touch with the fact that I was designed to live in community with others. This loss was the loss of what McClendon calls the “baptist vision” for church. With the “baptist vision” we come to see the waves of human destiny already breaking upon us. With the “baptist vision” we come to realize that the kingdom of God dwells – already - in the resurrected and Spirit-filled lives of Christ’s disciples.
When I returned to the church I found myself once again. Yet here is the mystery…I found myself in letting go. By acknowledging the fact that in baptism I had buried the old body and all its claims to self-determinism I, by process of logic, could not deny the fact that my life was no longer my own. It had been born again; and this not merely in the age that is to come, but born to God here and now, as a member in Christ’s living body.
As I began to engage in the practices of gathering, worshipping, storytelling and fellowshipping, I began to once again find my self and my God. I began also to recover the summons to share in the self-emptying of Christ’s cross. I was beginning to discover my gift and my call to serve Christ’s body as a minister of the gospel.
The Priesthood of Believers and the Call to Ministry
There is no provision for ordination in the New Testament. Baptists rightly reject the hierarchal priesthood in favor of what Martin Luther called the “priesthood of all believers.” This does not, however, mean that every person is a priest unto him or herself. Instead it is the fullness of the communal body (Eph 1) in its abundance which points us toward the consummation of all things in and under Christ. It was not merely one person, but the people of Lowe’s Grove Baptist Church that ministered to me in my need. The people had become one person, Christ, who drew me near.
Given this fact it may seem somewhat anomalous to seek ordination into the gospel ministry. For are we not all then commissioned to proclaim the gospel in baptism? I take this point quite seriously and answer with two points of my own. First, some members of the body are called to be pastors, and some teachers, and some apostles, and some are called to bake casseroles (not because their place is in the kitchen but so that all might share in equally in the fellowship of Christ). No one calling is greater or more exalted than another. In point of fact, we know from our Lord himself that those who will lead must in turn become low and give themselves as servants. The call of ordination is then not a call to glory but is instead the call to set oneself apart for extraordinary (more than might be ordinarily expected of or possible for a faithful disciple) sacrifice and service to his or her (yes, “her”) brothers and sisters.
My second argument is somewhat more pragmatic, but no less important. We live in a world of diverse opinions and perspectives. Not all Christians share the same ecclesiological views as us baptists. Nor are all non-baptists familiar with the nuances of what priesthood means. Therefore I believe it is incumbent upon us as we seek reconciliation with other Christian communities to single out particular members who can speak on our behalf with some degree of credibility. In the eyes of other Christian communions, faith traditions and the State ordination serves this purpose and is beneficial in doing so. In any case, the call to lead is exactly that - a call. It is our call to hear the call of the Lord and respond in sacrifice and in service. I can truly say I have heard the call and want faithfully to respond.
I have not shared the following with many people, but believe it is pertinent for the exercise at hand. I had delusions of being a lawyer after Divinity School. I call them delusions because I think they were part of a last-ditch effort at what the world sees as beautiful. A final attempt to be like God. Yet the nagging feeling I had through all of it – the feeling that certain people like Forest Gale, Hardy Clemons, my fiancée Irie and my Mom wouldn’t allow me to put to rest – told me that I was born to be a minister. To do otherwise would be to deny my own humanity – the humanity we are called to submit to in service of God and neighbor. I had a terrible fear that somehow my world would one day come to an end and I would realize that at a very definitive moment in my life I had counted the cost of eternal life and, like the rich young ruler, turned and walked away in sadness. The cost of eternal life is the cost of giving everything away when called to do so. It is the cost of putting away all our ambitions and plans and securities and upon the altar. The cost of living into one’s baptism is the cost of setting aside who we want to be in life and submitting ourselves to what God desires and calls us to be. Now is the critical time in my life. I stand at the crossroads.
Frederick Buechner says that vocation is the point at which our greatest joy intersects with the world’s greatest need. If he is right - and I think he is as right as anyone - then I feel confident about my calling to the ministry. I can think of no greater joy than standing with the people of God, in the midst of the world’s pain and suffering and brokenness, as we witness in word and in deed to the kingdom which is now at hand. For what is so remarkable about Buechner’s statement is the fact that our greatest joy IS in fact the world’s greatest need. It is Christ who stands in this intersection and we, as baptized members of his body, are called to stand with him.
After Words: The Journey Begins
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.
John 21
Oh Lord, you have made us for yourself, our hearts
know no rest until they rest in you.
Saint Augustine
I confess I have been, in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, a “slow train comin’.” I sometimes kicked and sometimes screamed, but there was nothing I could do to alter the course of life’s motion. Now I can say it is time to stop swimming upstream, and give myself to the current. Give myself to the living water, which not only sustains us but will also deliver us, when the times will have reached their fulfillment, unto the safe harbor of God himself.
I cannot say I know where the path will take me; I can only say I am committed to the voyage and I am committed to the ship. And I am willing to fish.
In what follows I have attempted two things. First, I have tried to tell my story as accurately and as truthfully as I, or anyone else, can bear. Secondly, I have tried to reflect theologically upon various stages in that story in order to better understand and articulate who it is that I am today and who it is that I want to be. In that respect my story, like all good stories, is arched by force toward some end. We might call this force, as the Hebrews did, “wind” or “spirit”. And we might call this end Christ. It is my belief that I have read the winds rightly and they point me toward an end which is hoped for, yet unseen. It is my hope that you, this Ordaining Council, will read the winds with me, confirm my interpretation, and point in The Way.
First Foundations
Baptism is the sign through which we freely confess Jesus the Christ as Lord and covenant ourselves to live as faithful and obedient disciples in life, in death and into the resurrection.
As any good Baptist would, I have begun with baptism. My own baptism took place in a backyard pool in Lubbock, TX in the presence of the people of Live Oak Community Church. The blue water glistened, cool and refreshing, beneath the hot West Texas sun. The skies were not rent asunder; there was no booming voice from heaven. But I have to think the Lord was nevertheless well pleased. I was baptized by the Reverend Scott Travis, a friend and mentor from whom I first (with ears to hear) heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and responded. I was 20 years old.
Growing up, church was not a significant part of my family’s life. My parents were (and still are) salt of the earth kinds of people. They worked hard and did their best to instill the values of right and wrong in us kids. Faith was important to them; church was also an important - but not quite necessary. Jesus Christ died for their sins and that was what mattered most. God would judge us by what was in our hearts.
I came to Christ through the evangelical high school mission Young Life. Scott was the Young Life area director for Lubbock and I gravitated toward him and his message. He presented a Jesus far more exciting and attractive than anything I had ever heard. All the other Jesuses had been about religion. The Jesus Scott preached was about relationship. I fell in love with the new Jesus and wanted to follow him.
I was on fire and that fire was all consuming. I became significantly involved in my church and in Young Life where I served as both a volunteer leader and later as intern during college. Jesus Christ had changed my heart and I was eager to tell others of the peace he had given me.
That peace was a curious one however. While on the one hand I was profoundly moved by a sense of tranquility and rest, I also harbored a deep anger and hostility toward those who could or would not share with me in this new life. My relationship with those closest to me suffered most. I failed to make the same kinds of connections with my family that I could make with those I mentored and ministered to. It was difficult for me to understand how my sister and parents could not feel what I felt and know what I knew about Jesus Christ. It was impossible for me to imagine how people could be so lukewarm about something I found so exciting and so right. I can see now how pious and condemning I often was. I had become a zealot, not out of malicious intent or hatred, but out of a distorted image of what it means to do and be good in this world.
Jesus told us faith in Him would put a wedge between father and son and bring a sword rather than peace to the world (Matt. 10:34). Somehow I had missed his point. The sword was supposed to be in the hands of those who hated Christ, not those who loved him. It was a lesson I learned early in life and one which will shape my own worldview for the rest of my life. It is less important to be right than it is to be loving. Our God is a god of mercy, not of sacrifice.
I graduated from college and took a year’s sabbatical – determined (only half-jokingly now) to “find myself” and listen for God’s gentle whisper. As I searched scripture I could not shake the sense that I was called to seminary. I lived with the Apostle Paul’s charge that our love for Christ should overflow with knowledge and depth of insight (Phil 1:9). The foundation of my faith was laid solid, it was time to build upon it. Charles Johnson, a Baptist preacher I respected a great deal from my hometown, put me onto Duke Divinity School. It didn’t take much arm-twisting. I wanted a place that would grow me both spiritually and intellectually. In researching schools I read that the Dean of the Divinity School, Greg Jones, boasted that Duke’s goal was to cultivate in its students what Jean LeClerc called “a love of learning and a desire for God.” I was sold.
Beyond Foundations
“What is crucial is not that Christians know the truth,
but that they be the truth.”
Stanley Hauerwas
When I arrived at seminary I was startled to discover that the foundation I thought my faith so solidly rested on began to sink quickly. Confronted with challenges like the historical-critical method, the problem of history’s violence (especially Christian history’s violence), the high burden of “proving” anything (especially the burden of proving the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God) and the fact that the fire that had once burned so fiercely could no longer be seen or felt, I began to doubt the reality of my faith. At times I even doubted the reality of reality. All this, mixed together and thrown into the pressurized cooker of a rigorous academic curriculum and cranked up to 500 degrees was enough to make me crack. At the beginning of my second year of school I suffered a crisis of faith.
This was a dark period in my life; yet I now consider it a necessary part of my journey, just as the desert wandering was for Israel. My former foundations having given way, I looked to new rock for manna. In contrast to what one might expect from theologians trained in communicating Christian truth, the professors at Duke Divinity School did not begin afresh with what could be proven about the Christian faith. They began with what could be practiced.
Up until that time I had understood Jesus was the one through whom all my needs would be met. The emptiness I now suffered called that into question. I began to find solace, however, in reflecting upon the book of Job. In the story Job, a righteous man, suffers affliction beyond comprehension and is left to wrestle with the terrorizing thought of a god who allows pain and evil to persist in the world. As readers we are privy to something Job is not. Though the problem of evil is never resolved for us, we learn, from God’s own conversation with Satan, that Job’s suffering (and by inference all human suffering) is bound up with the human freedom to love or reject God. The capacity to love and follow God is contingent upon an analogous capacity to “curse God and die.” The question put before God by Satan, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:9), remarkably resembled the question being asked of me in my trial of faith, “Can you love and obey God selflessly?” To love and obey God selflessly is to love a god who sometimes remains quiet amidst heartache and tragedy. To love the Lord is to risk loving a god who will not always give us what we want.
I think this is the lesson of John 6. After Jesus fed the five thousand, the people were so overcome that they were willing to resort to violence in order to make him king. Jesus instead withdrew to a mountaintop. The people had fallen in love with the miracle and had missed what that miracle was pointing toward – a new economy of abundance being established on earth. To love God selflessly is to worship a king who will not always work miracles.
At the same time I was reflecting upon Job I began a class on Baptist polity and history. The central question put to us throughout the course was “What does it mean to confess Christ as Lord?” It was this question that fundamentally changed the entire course of my seminary education and perhaps my life.
For early Christians, the confession “Christ is Lord” did not rest upon a set of doctrinal statements about the truth and divinity of Jesus which could be isolated from the story of God’s ongoing work in the people Israel. Instead, as Baptist theologian Jim McClendon notes, in Jesus we have two stories – God’s story and the story of his people – weaved together. The good news for the early Christian witnesses was the proclamation of a new world being ushered in upon them in the faithful life, death and resurrection of Christ. The earliest meaning of “Christ is Lord” was that Jesus, a man, obediently chose to live the self-giving life God chose for him and was raised from death that all might follow his path and be reconciled in “the way, the truth, and the life.” The flame which would set the world afire was the good news that the kingdom of God had drawn near. The stranglehold of suffering and death had ended. Humanity had been born anew in Jesus Christ.
What was so liberating about this discovery? On the one hand it was terribly frightening - I might not ever regain the certainty I at one time thought I possessed. But at the same time, this new discovery was freeing. God called me to live as a disciple, to follow the pattern Jesus set in giving his life away, and to submit (literally “to put under”) my own humanity to the call of the cross – to live as humans were made to live by renouncing power and glory and affirming service to our neighbor as the way to loving and obeying God selflessly. The lesson of Job – to love God and serve him without regard to self-interest - was fulfilled in the life of Christ.
God had given me the freedom to either accept or reject that life. In reflection I realized my baptism – the baptism I had undergone so many years before – was a promise I had already made to follow in the life of Christ. Believer’s baptism was a pledge to accept my place in the cosmos - an affirmation that Christ’s way is indeed the Way to new life and Christ himself is indeed Lord. The ball was now in my court. It was up to me to either break or keep that pledge.
The Church…The Body of Christ
Looking back now I can see that the first two years of seminary had been a terribly selfish period in my life. I am ashamed of this. I rejected most forms of legitimate Christian community, choosing instead to turn inward and wrestle with my demons in isolation. Though I joined a local church I disengaged from its communal life - perhaps fearful that my faithlessness would be exposed. Darkness always fears the light. Up until divinity school I located the truth of my faith in my own private, experience of Jesus Christ. In layman’s terms, “I knew Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.” What I had failed to consider, however, was the ways in which my fellow community of believers had helped me sustain and make sense of my faith throughout the journey. What I thought was a strictly private matter had in fact been a community affair!
Sadly, modern assumptions about the self and the primacy of the individual have done much to diminish our understanding of what the church is. The church has become something like a club where like-minded peoples gather and worship and then freely disassociate themselves from the fellowship when times and circumstances warrant. It was this kind of misconception on my part which allowed me to break from the church when doubt began to cast its long shadow over my life.
But the church is something more than a coming together of peoples. The church is the community of fellowship wherein the very constitution of peoplehood is remade into the likeness and body of Christ. This body is a living body – an organic expression and embodiment of God’s kingdom being made on earth. When we separate ourselves from the body of Christ we lose more than casserole dinners. We forfeit our very selves – who and what we were made to be. When I disconnected myself from the church I lost touch with the fact that I was designed to live in community with others. This loss was the loss of what McClendon calls the “baptist vision” for church. With the “baptist vision” we come to see the waves of human destiny already breaking upon us. With the “baptist vision” we come to realize that the kingdom of God dwells – already - in the resurrected and Spirit-filled lives of Christ’s disciples.
When I returned to the church I found myself once again. Yet here is the mystery…I found myself in letting go. By acknowledging the fact that in baptism I had buried the old body and all its claims to self-determinism I, by process of logic, could not deny the fact that my life was no longer my own. It had been born again; and this not merely in the age that is to come, but born to God here and now, as a member in Christ’s living body.
As I began to engage in the practices of gathering, worshipping, storytelling and fellowshipping, I began to once again find my self and my God. I began also to recover the summons to share in the self-emptying of Christ’s cross. I was beginning to discover my gift and my call to serve Christ’s body as a minister of the gospel.
The Priesthood of Believers and the Call to Ministry
There is no provision for ordination in the New Testament. Baptists rightly reject the hierarchal priesthood in favor of what Martin Luther called the “priesthood of all believers.” This does not, however, mean that every person is a priest unto him or herself. Instead it is the fullness of the communal body (Eph 1) in its abundance which points us toward the consummation of all things in and under Christ. It was not merely one person, but the people of Lowe’s Grove Baptist Church that ministered to me in my need. The people had become one person, Christ, who drew me near.
Given this fact it may seem somewhat anomalous to seek ordination into the gospel ministry. For are we not all then commissioned to proclaim the gospel in baptism? I take this point quite seriously and answer with two points of my own. First, some members of the body are called to be pastors, and some teachers, and some apostles, and some are called to bake casseroles (not because their place is in the kitchen but so that all might share in equally in the fellowship of Christ). No one calling is greater or more exalted than another. In point of fact, we know from our Lord himself that those who will lead must in turn become low and give themselves as servants. The call of ordination is then not a call to glory but is instead the call to set oneself apart for extraordinary (more than might be ordinarily expected of or possible for a faithful disciple) sacrifice and service to his or her (yes, “her”) brothers and sisters.
My second argument is somewhat more pragmatic, but no less important. We live in a world of diverse opinions and perspectives. Not all Christians share the same ecclesiological views as us baptists. Nor are all non-baptists familiar with the nuances of what priesthood means. Therefore I believe it is incumbent upon us as we seek reconciliation with other Christian communities to single out particular members who can speak on our behalf with some degree of credibility. In the eyes of other Christian communions, faith traditions and the State ordination serves this purpose and is beneficial in doing so. In any case, the call to lead is exactly that - a call. It is our call to hear the call of the Lord and respond in sacrifice and in service. I can truly say I have heard the call and want faithfully to respond.
I have not shared the following with many people, but believe it is pertinent for the exercise at hand. I had delusions of being a lawyer after Divinity School. I call them delusions because I think they were part of a last-ditch effort at what the world sees as beautiful. A final attempt to be like God. Yet the nagging feeling I had through all of it – the feeling that certain people like Forest Gale, Hardy Clemons, my fiancée Irie and my Mom wouldn’t allow me to put to rest – told me that I was born to be a minister. To do otherwise would be to deny my own humanity – the humanity we are called to submit to in service of God and neighbor. I had a terrible fear that somehow my world would one day come to an end and I would realize that at a very definitive moment in my life I had counted the cost of eternal life and, like the rich young ruler, turned and walked away in sadness. The cost of eternal life is the cost of giving everything away when called to do so. It is the cost of putting away all our ambitions and plans and securities and upon the altar. The cost of living into one’s baptism is the cost of setting aside who we want to be in life and submitting ourselves to what God desires and calls us to be. Now is the critical time in my life. I stand at the crossroads.
Frederick Buechner says that vocation is the point at which our greatest joy intersects with the world’s greatest need. If he is right - and I think he is as right as anyone - then I feel confident about my calling to the ministry. I can think of no greater joy than standing with the people of God, in the midst of the world’s pain and suffering and brokenness, as we witness in word and in deed to the kingdom which is now at hand. For what is so remarkable about Buechner’s statement is the fact that our greatest joy IS in fact the world’s greatest need. It is Christ who stands in this intersection and we, as baptized members of his body, are called to stand with him.
After Words: The Journey Begins
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.
John 21
Oh Lord, you have made us for yourself, our hearts
know no rest until they rest in you.
Saint Augustine
I confess I have been, in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, a “slow train comin’.” I sometimes kicked and sometimes screamed, but there was nothing I could do to alter the course of life’s motion. Now I can say it is time to stop swimming upstream, and give myself to the current. Give myself to the living water, which not only sustains us but will also deliver us, when the times will have reached their fulfillment, unto the safe harbor of God himself.
I cannot say I know where the path will take me; I can only say I am committed to the voyage and I am committed to the ship. And I am willing to fish.
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