In
Nadia Bolz-Weber’s new book, Pastrix,
she tells a story of her time as a down-and-out alcoholic comic in Denver like this: “When I
was working as a comic, normal noncomic people would often say, ‘Wow, I don’t
know how you can get up in front of all those people with just a microphone.’
To which I would reply, ‘Wow, I don’t know how you can balance your checkbook and
get up for work each day.’ We all find different things challenging in life.
Speaking in front of hundreds of people was far less challenging for me than
scheduling dental appointments.”
We all find different things challenging in
life. There’s a lot of wisdom in that short sentence. I can
resonate with that quite a lot. It’s not that I don’t find this whole
preaching thing a challenge some of the time, but compared to, I don’t know,
tending a garden or changing oil or cooking dinner I’ll take preaching most any
day. Some of you would prefer those things to preaching—I don’t know why. I’m
clearly normal; all of you are clearly strange… or maybe we are all challenged
by different things.
We
really only have identity crises when we’re called to be something that we
would rather not. Sometimes it seems like God has called entirely the wrong
person for the job. Moses had this experience. When God came to him with a
demand to go to Pharaoh with a direct order Moses had a mini freak-out about that
vocation. Me? Talk to Pharaoh? But me don’t
talk good! Except what Moses actually said is best captured, I think, by
the (old) Revised Standard Version, which translates his refusal like this:
“Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to
thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”
He
really should have went with, “Me don’t talk good.”
See,
there’s a difference between not being equipped to do a task and just not
wanting to do it. Moses is not actually making an argument; he’s having a
tantrum. Mostly, it’s not that we’re not equipped for the various jobs to which
we are called; we just like having tantrums. I really believe that none of us
are equipped for leadership or to pray or speak publicly or serve communion or
really any of the public ministries that we do as a church. Sure, we can become
more comfortable at it the more that we do it, but its not our wisdom or
abilities that make any of it meaningful. The only wisdom—the only things that
are going to make a difference—are words that God places in our mouths.
“Who gives speech
to mortals?” asks God to Moses. This is where Moses gives up the game. “O Lord,
please send someone else,” he begs. This is something a four-year-old says; not
our famous Moses of “let my people go” fame.
This is why our
church generally does not call pastors who grew up in a congregation. The
church knows too well that we were once snotty little kids who smelled and lied
and tried to get out of doing things we didn’t like. Nobody wants to call a
pastor who they once knew (and still remember) as the snotty kid who smelled
and lied and whined and complained that life isn’t fair. Nobody wants that kid
to be their pastor. So we pull a big switcheroo and call pastors to
congregations other than the one where they grew up and pretend that, “Oh, this
man—this woman—is different; this woman—this man—was never the snotty, whiny
kid. This pastor was a pastor from the day he was born—he probably wasn’t ever
a child, actually; he was clearly ordained by God, a person who said his prayers
and never spilled his food and always, always respected his parents.” That’s
the illusion we create when we call pastors who did not grow up in our midst,
and hey, it works for us. It’s nice to believe that pastors are somehow set
apart from the dawning of creation.
Of course it’s
also a big fat lie. I’m not sure if every pastor is called like Moses, but I do
believe that most of the good ones are. It takes a person kicking and screaming
and looking for any option other than accepting the call that God has offered
to understand our dependence on God to be the one who puts the words on our
lips and the wisdom in our heads. It takes tantrums to realize that I have a
really crappy perspective on my own and I’m need of something a whole heckuva
lot bigger than myself.
But this is only
really important because it’s not limited to pastors. All of our callings are
equal and God calls each of us in different ways, and to make a difference in
any area in life usually requires more than a little kicking and screaming. Everybody
throws tantrums; it’s just that most adults have gotten good at hiding that
that’s what they’re doing. You see, God calls each of us according to our
gifts, but frankly our gifts scare us, so instead of hearing when others tell
us, “Hey, you’re really good at this” we minimize our abilities as God-given
talents, and we only give in when we are dragged into doing something that we
would rather not only to discover that it is exactly there that our life is
given meaning. How many times have you been certain in life that you are not
capable of doing something so you resisted a calling only to be forced into it
to find that, heck, it is
challenging but also meaningful beyond what you could have imagined? And lest
you think this is just about jobs, that last sentence applies to
everybody who’s ever been married or had children. God works through our
challenges to create meaning; it’s the same in our work and in our relationships.
This story of
Moses’ calling is lived out daily in the offices of high school guidance
counselors, college career centers, and over the dining room table with mom and
dad. It’s not a matter of what you want to do in life; it’s a question of what
is God calling you to be. Believe it or not, I think most people actually hear
a pretty clear calling, but like Moses we just don’t want to follow it. We let
our fears dictate what we accomplish in life, which is why people are more
afraid of public speaking than they are of death. The fear gene is so pungent,
and we feel so easily judged, that nothing in the world seems worse than
standing up for what we believe. So, we admire comics and social advocates and
administrators and pastors and people who do that kind of thing for a living,
because I could never do something like
that.
Maybe you can’t,
but, honestly, neither can I, and neither could Moses in spite of the fact that
his beautifully worded refusal of God’s call demonstrates how pathetic this
whole episode is. It’s not our abilities that matter but our willingness to let
people see us for who we are: broken creatures, visibly flawed. If you allow
yourself to be known as that—a person in need of help who clings to God because
you are in desperate need of some solid ground on which to stand—then God is
going to use you to do things you never thought you could do, because the
simple fact is that you can’t do them on your own. It’s only by the grace of
God that anyone becomes anything in this world.
In Moses’ case,
God shows that it also really doesn’t matter if you refuse. God is going to
make things happen whether you are up to the task or not. You don’t speak very well, Moses? God says. How about Aaron? He knows how to talk.
Checkmate.
In life we will be called to things that scare
us and mostly we won’t want any part of it. We’ll drag our feet. We’ll make up
terrible excuses. We’ll basically be a giant pain in God’s butt. Yet, through
it all, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, whether we’re willing to help
things along or not. That’s what ends up happening with Moses. He is the first
great prophet of the ancient world; he forever changes the course of history
for God’s people and frees countless living, breathing human beings from the
bonds of slavery. He ends up being the most central figure in the Old
Testament, and he starts out like this—whining, complaining, and throwing a
tantrum before God’s request.
If Moses became
all that what’s your excuse? What are you afraid of? And might that be exactly
where you’re being called?
No comments:
Post a Comment