Our understanding changes, doesn’t it?

A FOUR-YEAR PROJECT
SENIOR CAPSTONE REFLECTION

WHY NOT A MINISTER?

There is a small square of blue paper that sits above my desk. It’s a piece of paper that I have looked at every day for the last three years. Measuring three inches square, it has the scrawl of a seventh-grade boy. “why not a minister?” it reads. As a matter of fact, it’s a simple question. As a matter of practice, however, the question is loaded with much significance.

“Why not a minister?” the paper reads, as if taunting me.

“Well that’s easy,” I remember responding when the question was first posed. Prepared with a pile of silver-bullet responses, I attempted to systematically shoot down the inquiry. If you ask anybody who knows me well, of course, you’ll learn that I’m a terrible shot. As a result, this seventh-grader’s prophetic curiosity forced me to confront the fact that when all of my excuses have been made, there is still one question I cannot satisfactorily answer.

“Why not a minister?”

A new and very dear friend of mine has begun encouraging me to live into a life of questions and not be needlessly preoccupied with a search for answers. “Don’t search for the answers…because you would not be able to live them,” she urges me, sitting atop a pile of rocks at the banks of the Puget Sound. “And the point is, to live everything,” she continues, reclining in her rocky seat. “Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

She raises points that I can’t systematically dismantle. My silver bullets are no good here. It is now, in the face of these questions, that it seems right to consider the experience of those who have gone before us.

CALL NARRATIVES

There are those who feel a call to ministry and jump headlong into the nearest M.Div program without a moment of hesitation. Then, there are others. People like me. People who doubt their ability to serve as a mouthpiece of God, as a shepherd to sheep, as a leader of a people, as a servant of the Creator of this universe—people who even proactively deny the reality of their calling. If I have occasion to doubt my faith when I find myself in this second category, I soon find I’m in good company.

It’s common Sunday School material to talk about how God called Moses to stand up to Pharoah with God’s demand, “Let my people go!” What somehow got glossed over in my own catechesis, though, was the unlikely nature of Moses’ candidacy for this position. Five times, Moses stood against God’s call, and five times God did not let Moses off the hook. The last time, using perhaps the last silver bullet in his belt, Moses simply tells Yahweh “Please send someone else to do it” (Ex 4:13). What does it do to our understanding when we ponder how unreceptive Moses was to God’s call in his life?

Or what about the call of Samuel (1 Sam 3)? What I had always wondered about in this passage was how the story would have gone if Eli weren’t around that late night. Surely God can speak to anybody He pleases, but what significance is there in the fact that Samuel needed Eli’s lifetime of experience and wisdom to discern God’s voice? That Samuel did not recognize God’s voice but Eli did should do several things to our understanding. Perhaps most importantly, it seems clear that one’s call to ministry sometimes requires the guidance and involvement of another. After all, considering the second half of this story, we have little reason to believe that Eli was a perfect minister of the Lord. Even so, and with judgment approaching, Eli’s experience of God is an essential part of this narrative. What does it do to our understanding when we ponder the role of the wisdom and experience of our elders in discerning God’s call in our lives?

The story of Jeremiah offers yet a third significant insight into the nature of a call to ministry. In Jeremiah’s first chapter we find an account of the word of the Lord coming directly to the prophet, saying “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:4-5). Of course, Jeremiah’s role in the redemptive history of God’s people is without question. So what does it do to our understanding when we ponder the fact that maybe, just maybe, God does have some plan for our lives?

VOCATION THROUGH THE AGES

It is an interesting proposition to consider vocation through the ages. From the very first monastic and ascetic communities in the first centuries after Christ to the present day notion of vocation as something much more broad, there has existed for millennia an understanding that there is something distinctive about a Christian’s work in this world. At the most fundamental level, every person will simply seek a job that pays the bills. But a Christian will face an additional consideration. “In what way is my work in the world helping or hindering the development of the Kingdom of God here on earth?” For a Christian, this is a question of paramount importance.

Perhaps the most liberating shift in the idea of vocation came about as a result of the reformation. No longer was it legitimate for a protestant to think that a vocation in the church proper was any more holy than seeking a vocation as a cobbler or a tailor. Indeed, as we began to discover in the years of the reformation and following, it must be possible to serve God fully no matter where it was that he planted an individual, for the alternative no longer made much sense. All of this leads us to even more questions. What does it do to our understanding when we ponder the reality that no matter where we find ourselves, we are always in a position to work toward the establishment of the kingdom of God here on earth?

NATHANAEL HENRY BERENDS THROUGH THE AGES

And so now, we take a turn toward introspection. What has changed? Bear Berends, my father and role model, is fond of saying “God’s grace is something we can only really understand in hindsight.” I’d be inclined to agree with the old man.

In the spirit of hindsight, let us go back two years to my application for transfer admission to Seattle Pacific University.

On 1 April 2007, I concluded my transfer application with one question:

What do I know? That God is calling me out of my selfish pursuits in marketing and television (something made more difficult by the accolades, awards, and honors that I have been blessed to receive by doing so).

My two years in Boston have not been without purpose. As my father says, It’s through hindsight that you really see God’s faithfulness. I believe that today, more than ever. I have had two of the best years of my life at Emerson College, without exception.

Right now, however, I feel a pull on my heart to begin orienting my life more towards God.

These last two years have been greatly affirming. It is perhaps even poetic to see that already two years ago I was citing my father’s wisdom. And isn’t it interesting to consider that there is something radical about the way some things change, and other things never do?

To summarize the call narratives above, we might be able to say something about the three stories, in order; one didn’t want it, one didn’t hear it, and one couldn’t control it. While each of these seemed strikingly true at one point or another in my own experience, I am at a point where I can say, all things considered, it is well with my soul.

FROM PAPER TO LINOLEUM

Last week, on a 3-inch-square scrap of flooring tile, I created something that now lives on my desk. Written in black Sharpie marker on orange dappled linoleum is the question “Why do you do what you do?” Sitting next to one another, these two questions—that which began my remarks, and this that closes them—frame much of my daily reality.

To look back upon the project of the last four years, and to ponder the reality that every step occurred as if to indicate some larger scheme, I cannot deny the suspicion that there is some bigger plan at work in my life. My strongest sense is that it is no accident that I write this paper today, and graduate with a theology degree next Sunday. After all, let us ask our nearest neighborhood police officer. There’s no such thing as an accident. Surely there’s such a thing as a collision, but there’s no such thing as an accident.

What does it do to our understanding when we ponder the reality that no matter how confused our paths may become, there’s something bigger than our own selves at work here in the world and in our lives? Our understanding changes, doesn’t it?

What does it do to our understanding to begin to confront the reality that maybe, just maybe, our lives are a means for more than our own simple and selfish gain? Our understanding changes, doesn’t it?

What does it do to our understanding to begin to confront the reality that my life is more than mine, and that yours is more than yours? Our understanding changes, doesn’t it?

And what does it do to our understanding to stand back at the end of the day and acknowledge that we have no good answer to the very simple question, “Why not a minister?”