Calling

Pete Greig in his book "The Vision and The Vow" tells a story that cuts the oft-discussed issue (or what we make an "issue") of our calling in Christ right to the bone...

I was giving a friend a lift in my car, and we go to talking about life. "I don't know what God's calling me to do," he confessed, and asked me to pray about what it might be.

"Why?" I asked. "I already know what Jesus wnats you to do!"

"You do?" he gasped with excitement. "So, what is it? What's my call?"

I paused, enjoying the suspense. Drums rolled. String quartets tuned up. My friend held his breath...

"Your call," I said slowly, "is to be a worship leader ..."

He looked pleased, really pleased, so I continued: "...but not necessarily with a guitar in your hand."

"Okayyy," he mumured.

"Your call is to befriend that funny little lady at the end of your street..."

He seemed less pleased with this prospect.

"Your call is to feed the hungry and to spend yourself on behalf of the poor..."

By now he was looking distinctly troubled.

"...and to offer hospitality to strangers who just turn up in town needing a place to crash."

Consternation.

"And it's to fast."

He was starting to look furious.

"And it's to pray so long and hard that you run out of words and tears."

There was no going back:

"Your call," I continued, "is to preach the good news of Jesus to every person who will listen and a few who won't. Your call is to go somewhere, anywhere, wherever, whenever, for Jesus, and never stop. Your call is to love people no one else loves and to forgive them when they treat you like dirt--or worse. Do your job to the very best of your ability without grumbling about your boss or whining about your colleagues. Your call is to pray for the sick, and when they are healed, to dance all night. And when they aren't, to weep with them and love them even more."

I glanced at him and was relieved to see that his expression was beginning to mellow.

"Your call is to honor your parents, pray for your leaders, study the Scriptures, and attend plenty of parties. Be a peacemaker in every situation: when the fight breaks out on the bus home late at night and when the gossip starts to circulate at church. Your call is to pick up litter in the street when no one else is looking, to wipe the toilet seat, to pull the gum off from under the desk. It's to get to meetings early to put out the chairs."

By now he was smiling.

"Your call is to make disciples and to teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded. And don't forget to minister grace to them when they sin. Which they will. Your mission is to baptize and to cast out evil spirits. Your call is to bind up broken hearts wherever you find them, and you will find them wherever you look. It's to visit prisons. And hospitals. And to..."

"Yeah, yeah," he interrupted good naturedly, trying to shut me up, but I was on a roll--and I knew he couldn't leave, because I was driving the car.

"Your call," I continued resolutely," is to listen more than you talk and to listen with your eyes as well as your ears."

He was shaking his head in mock despair. I carried on: "It's to do the chores again and again without grumbling. It's to buy ethical coffee and to recycle your bottles. And while you're at it, don't forget to leave anonymous gifts on people's doorsteps."

By now we were both laughing, and I was finally running out of steam: "And when you've done all that," I grinned, jabbing him in the ribs at each syllable, "come back and see me, and we can spend a little time praying about Phase Two!"

In other words, the call of God is to come alive, more and more alive, and keep coming alive each day, to walk deeper and further in the truth of who we are, who God is, and the reality of the Kingdom Jesus came to reveal to us and bring us into and is even now waking us up to live in.

It's an invitation to watch and be confounded by the way Jesus loves, and then be broken by our call to love the same, knowing that to walk where Jesus walks is to inhabit a far more dangerous and far more glorious (and sometimes far less noticeable) role in this world than we ever dared fear or hope for.

I missed it last night. I totally missed it. My wife and I have neighbors that are pretty rough-around-the-edges. Their story goes way back, a tragically common saga or brokenness, abuse, and abandonment. A single mother is trying to raise two boys, the youngest just barely a teenager. He's lost, this young man. His world is all anger and fear and hatred, so much so that he loses it with his mom and older brother and then can't even remember why. He was alone when we got home from work, wondering the streets alone. He came up to us to talk. I told him we were going to start making dinner, and his face lit up. "Can I help?" he asked, excited and hopeful.

Great, I remember thinking. I'm tired. I want to just chill out alone with my wife right now. I don't want to be bothered. I made up some lame excuse. No, it was worse than that. I could have taken the opportunity to love him and invited him to have dinner with my wife and I. Instead, I tore him down with one of the stupidest things I could have possibly said: "It would be too crowded with you in here." What a knife to the heart. In other words, "You're just in the way, kid." A sentence he's no doubt heard in a myriad of ways from too many people in his life.

I ended up loaning him some game to play. It wasn't out of generosity, I'm sad to say, but more out of hopes that he'd smile big and say, "Gee, thanks!" and run off and play happily so that I'd be relieved of my guilt. Instead, he sauntered home, shoved out of the way of adults once again.

I tried to think of a way to redeem the whole situation, but the moment was gone. Soon his mom was home and we were packing up our leftovers. The damage was done. I know there's grace for me, and so must be grace for him. But I missed it. I could have found Jesus in the face of a hurt young man who would've given anything to share a meal with my wife and I. I could have loved extravagantly like I see my Savior loving me, sharing with me a home I could never have earned in a million years.

Annie Dillard got it right when she wrote, "On the whole I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anybody have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may draw us out to where we can never return" (Teaching A Stone to Talk).

Indeed, the "sleeping god" has drawn me to where I can never return.

What I couldn't redeem last night, Jesus did tonight. I got a chance to talk with the younger brother, tell him about the love of God and the Father he's got. Who was it that said "your actions speak so loud I can't hear your words"? I hope mine don't. I hope to grow into Jesus, to abandon myself to that love that "expects nothing, but demands everything," in Brennan Manning's words, and to pour it out on behalf of this broken and hurting world, starting with my next door neighbor and not ending until I come to the end of the road. That's the only way to live in this Kingdom. "What you do unto the least of these, my bretheren..."