Christ Seeker

Why the call is important...

Heeding the call of God to "enter the lists" once again and contend for the Jesus Truth in our time is not simply a nice suggestion or just a good idea.  It is absolutely essential because of our propensity as a species for self-destruction.  Consider Scherer's words as he surveys the cultural landscape in the midst of WWII...(words, by the way, that could aptly describe our own time as well!)

"Mankind by exalting himself has finally become the puppet and the pawn of his own success.  The child of nature has triumphed over the child of God and has found in the triumph his own inexorable defeat.  Life in two dimensions has come off with all the garlands, and they are withered.  In its long rebellion against authority, in the violent assertion of its own mastery, it has cleared from the field both God and the human soul, to wander now among the ruins...The civilization which stemmed in Greek philosophy, and towered high in medieval cathedrals, has flowered in department stores.  The ends of life have become the goods of the body.  Existence has been turned into a continuous bank-run; and the bank is now closing.  That, I submit to you, is what crisis means.  It means that when an order has become thoroughly secularized it has committed suicide.  It means that the Kingdom of God is not a by-your-leave or an if-you-please; it is still a Kingdom, and to rebel against it is to pay the price of treason."  (11)

Now that last bit is so much a scare tactic as it is a statement of reality.  A reality without God.  Without God we spiral out of control and to our own destruction.  Without God, we fill the void with drugs, sex, money, possessions, power, you name it.  Anything to satisfy the cravings of the human heart.  And what we really, truly crave is transcendance.  We long for a purpose outside of our own appetites.  But without God we stumble in the darkness, searching in vain for a reason for living.  For something more than simply the weekend party or weekly paycheck or, as is the case for more and more people, basic survival.

Thankfully, God provides.  He doesn't leave us blind, walking in the darkness forever.  He sends us those whom he calls to guide us to the light, to show us the way back to Him.  And so when we talk about answering God's call, what we are really talking about is allowing ourselves to be used by God to bring light and life and joy and meaning and purpose into this world.  So the other day, I am having coffee with this group of men and one of them shares about his prior marriages.  Immediately, I am faced with a choice.  I can go with the flow and let the conversation spiral down into the typical ex-spouse bashing that usually takes place in such situations or I can, through a few honest, heartfelt questions, help the conversation flow in another, more healthy direction where this man can share a bit of what he's learned and how he's changed.  By simply and humbly asking him to share a bit more deeply, this man opened up in some amazing ways and the following morning thanked us for letting him talk about his past so openly.  This is why answering the call to share the love of Jesus with others is so important...

How many people truly have someone in their life with whom they can be transparent?  Someone they can share their struggles, hopes, and dreams?  One in six Americans (according to a recent Gallup poll) struggle with serious depression.  Sociologists like Robert Putnam at Harvard have charted the breakdown of community over the last several decades.  As we struggle through tough economic times, people are turning to drug or alcohol or food abuse to medicate their pain.  Or tragically, they physically take out their frustrations and fears on those closest to them.  What would happen if these people, caught up in such self-destruction, could experience the tangible, incarnated love of Jesus through us?  What a difference we can make...if we just answer God's call.

Not out of guilt.  Not because we "should".  Not because we feel obligated.  Not because "God said so".  But because we authentically want others to experience the joy we have in Jesus Christ.  Because we want those who are not yet part of God's family to trade in the world's "withered garlands" for a crown of glory.  Because we long for them to trade in their flat, two-dimensional existance and exchange it for a life of full, living color lived in three dimensions.  A life defined not by what we do or how much we make or what toys we have or the difficulty of our circumstances or the pain we have experienced but a life defined and shaped solely by God's creative and redemptive purposes.  This is life in the Kingdom of God.  And it is the life God calls us to share. 

We are all called...

Of course, "the voice of the Lord calling laborers into His harvest is as varied as human life itself, as manifold as the endless patterns of the fields and the clouds.  It comes to every living soul by every conceivable channel." (6) 

I want to reflect on two very important ideas when it comes to the issue of calling.  First, there is this myth that "being called" involves some mystical, far out experience.  To be sure, there are times when the Lord speaks very clearly but it doesn't necessarily involve the heavens opening, lightning strikes, thunder claps, and booming voices.  Yes, Damascus road experiences do happen but they are not be taken as the standard way God calls His people to His service.  Scherer points out, "Amos must not be forgotten, with his long brooding on the social injustices of his day.  Isaiah may not be forgotten, with his sudden consciousness in the midst of national catastrophe that the Great God wanted another man.  Jeremiah may not be forgotten, with his reluctant answer to that pressure which had kept growing within him until it seemed the culmination of an age-old purpose...and James and John may not be forgotten, or Matthew and Peter with the face they saw, and the presence that would not let them go, the love that haunted them down the dreary roads and set them apart for the gospel of God." (5)  Yes, God's call comes to us in the midst of life as we live it.  It comes as often as not as a still, small voice somewhere deep inside drawing us out, claiming us for something greater than ourselves.  We doubt it.  We resist it.  We thrust it aside.  We struggle with it.  But in the end, the claim God has on our lives is greater than the claim we have and so we surrender.  And in that surrender we discover life has incredible meaning and depth and purpose.

And let me hasten to add here my second point which is to say that this calling doesn't just come to full-time vocational ministers.  I think of the many teachers I know who experience the thrill of working with students who love to learn and agonize over those students who don't.  I think of the police officer I know who understands and lives the motto, "To serve and protect", to the point of offering his life on an almost daily basis to keep society safe.  I think of the heroes who ran INTO the twin towers even as every instinct for self-preservation cried, "Get out!"  I think of a physician I know who is just as concerned about the spiritual well-being of his patients as he is their physical well-being.  I think of the soldier in the field who fights for freedom and I think of the peace activist back home who is just as committed to the same ideal.  I think of the single mom who works three jobs to make ends meet so that her child can have a better life.  I think of the engineer who works so hard to to create systems and machines to make our world a better place.  I think of the business man or woman who is driven not by profit but by the desire to create jobs for people and produce a product that adds value to our lives.  I think of the relief worker who gives so much of themselves in refugee camps at home and abroad.  I think of a social worker I know who is absolutely overwhelmed by her caseload and yet finds the time to drive supplies around to families in need.  If we have the eyes to see, we begin to understand that no matter what our job title may be, our fundamental vocation is to "keep alive and cogent on this earth that awareness of Almighty God which is the soul's creaturely response to its Creator...to open minds to the splendor that shines forever on the face of human life; to the beauty and the mystery of godliness; to the horses and chariots of fire that range themselves about this beleaguered place...to throw wide the door of every narrow room and let in the mountains and the sea...to hold all hearts everywhere under the creative spell of the Infinite." (6)

So can we once and for all dispense with this notion that our lives are made up of a bunch of hermetically sealed compartments?  As if God's hand does not cross over into "work" or "recreation" or "family" but is somehow relegated to what we do for an hour or so on Sunday morning?  Do we dare to aim higher?  Dream deeper?  See farther?  Can we muster up the courage to take our stand on "the threshold of God's two worlds of sense and spirit, and there, under the quiet hand of the Master of Life, interpret for all that will hear what there is about living that is most firmly true and most deeply real?" (7)  I pray with all my heart we can!

Calling

My favorite book exploring the nature of God's call to preach is For We Have This Treasure by Paul Scherer, a compilation of the Lyman Beecher Lectures delivered in 1943 at Yale Divinity School.  In these acclaimed lectures, Dr. Scherer reflects deeply on the epistles of the Apostle Paul, what he calls "listening in to the experienced genius of a fiery little apostle..." as he unpacks what it means to be a faithful pastor in our time. 

For years now, I have made it my practice to read this book through on an annual basis.  It reminds me and calls me back to the heart of my ministry which is to "relish, this taste and tang of life, with the immemorial figure of a Galilean in the center of it, waging his hungry, stubborn hopes."  And now that I find myself again in a time of transition, of preparation, as I wait for God to move me from one post in His Kingdom to another, I find myself turning again to Dr. Scherer's work. And I offer these reflections with the hope and prayer that perhaps others might find in them the same hope, comfort, peace, and inspiration I have found.

"Our story begins with what the apostle calls my divine commission as a priest of Christ...in the service of God's gospel.  It was this sense of high appointment that undergirded him all his way along.  It sent him back to the stones at Lystra.  It filled him with a passion that turned as at a signal now into some desperate entreaty, now into a hymn of gratitude.  Here is some quick severity, there an eager tenderness.  Over and over again are sentences that pay no attention to grammar, with the words tripping on one another's heels, piling up into a kind of chaos, with the light of God on it, the gallant sunshine of His soul.  If I could only clear these windows of mine to let it through!  Wherever I go, he writes after the trouble he had had with the church at Corinth, God makes my life a constant pageant.  The whole procession of the days - peril, shipwreck, hunger, thirst - moves along some Via Sacra, brilliant and full of color.  Nothing drab about any of it!"  (pg. 4)

One thing I know.  I could not do what I do if I didn't think God Himself had called me to it.  I remember when I first was exploring my call to ministry and I approached the pastor at the church where I had grown up to ask him why he entered the ministry.  I will never forget his response.  "It's a recession proof job."  Now I am sure he said a lot more than that but these words sounded such a deeply discordant note within me that I have never forgotten them.  At the time I remember thinking to myself, "You know, I don't know much, but that can't be right!"  Thankfully, there were other people in my life, most notably my grandfather and the pastor of the church I attended during college, who pointed me to God.  A divine commission, the apostle Paul calls it.  A sense of high appointment, so says Dr. Scherer.  A deep, mysterious, almost unexplainable conviction that burns within the heart.  And this conviction is so compelling that, as one preacher famously remarked, "if you can imagine yourself doing something else...then go and do it." 

To be sure, this call is not for the faint of heart.  This life demands all that we are and more.  On the one hand, we get a front row seat to some of the most wonderful moments in a person's life.  Weddings, childbirth, answered prayers for healing, hope, and restoration.  We get to see people grow in their faith and in their relationships with others.  We get to see monumental acts of mercy and compassion and mission.  We get to see communities uplifted and strengthened as people come together to serve the least and lost in our world.  It is inspiring.  On the other hand, we also get front row seats to tragedy and despair.  Marriages that end in divorce.  Terrible accidents that claim the lives of children or young people.  Jobs lost.  Families displaced.  Cancer.  Death.  Hope turning to despair.  And through it all, we are expected to find words of comfort, words of peace, words that point people again to God. 

Then there is the pressure, because of the culture we live in, to produce.  To get the numbers. Woe be to the preacher under whom attendance lags, or dollars diminish, or buildings crumble.  It may be due to any number of factors but it is often the preacher who wears the bulls-eye during these times.  Or consider the weight of expectations that is put on the preacher personally, or their spouse, or children.  And yet...there is God.  God in the midst of all the chaos of our lives calling us, beckoning us to this grand adventure, "making our lives a constant pageant."  This call sends us back despite the failures, the shipwrecks, the peril, the hardships, the pain, the suffering.  It fills us with hope amidst the despair, turns our mourning into joy, and brings light out of darkness.  It raises us out of the muck and mire of this world so we can see the glory God is slowly, but surely, revealing in all of us.

Indeed, you might be able to say a lot of things about the life of ministry but one thing you cannot do is call it "drab!"  There is nothing mundane, drab, or dull about any of it!  If we have the eyes to see, it is LIFE in full, vibrant colors!  The Jesus LIFE.  The abundant LIFE of God that He promises to us through the Holy Spirit.