What's a Calling? What's Our Purpose?

The Rev. Dr. William Willimon is an accidental preacher. He's written over 80 books and he was on a recent podcast with Kate Bowler's podcast, Everything Happens Episode 23. How did he become a pastor? "It wasn't my idea."

"We have a God who doesn't take no for an answer..."

In a world that teaches us to follow our bliss, shoot for the stars, don't settle for anything less than your best, figure out what you love to do and do that and you'll never work a day in your life, etc., there is this ancient biblical perspective that has totally gotten lost in the shuffle of all those platitudes and calls for individuality as the gold standard.

We have a life that is not our own. We can find tons of examples in the scriptures but consider the first four that pop into my brain: Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah, and Abraham. Here's what I know. I did not set out to swim in the recovery world. THAT'S the world I vowed to escape as I lay in my bed as a ten year old listening to the crashing of thrown objects against the den wall. I swore I was going to get the 'dys' out of dysfunctional family and never look back. And yet here I am. I am an accidental pastor to a recovery church, a community where the disease of addiction has doubled down and practically required an added heaping of "dys" for the family. The disease does that. I can tell you the facts of how this came to be and how unlikely the events that resulted in this radically changed life experience but I cannot explain how it happened.

"If you cannot explain it some other way, then it might be God," reports Dr. Willimon.

If this is the way God works, then according to Willimon, discernment becomes a very big task. His experience mirrors my own. He says he has days when he is really sure his call is from God and other days when he needs a reminder. The call to be married or someone's friend or a parent or any other role worth having is the same - we go back and forth, wondering: is this my path?

The weird thing about vocation is that it is not our idea; it is God's idea before it was ours. Dr. Willimon's position on such matters is completely foreign to the average American floundering for a sense of purpose and validation for their life choices. An external sense of determination is not a normal way to think about it in North America. When was the last time you heard someone say, "God just tapped me on the shoulder..." Or "I just came to understand the Lord was in this thing." Now, that language has some problems of its own. Sometimes people use God as an excuse to do things that even God wouldn't approve of! But as Willimon points out, there needs to be a definite sense of direction. "I do wonder if for modern Western people like us it's been so long since we have expected address from anything other than our own interiority. Maybe we are a little less adept at saying, 'God's got his hand on me.'" Dr. Will Willimon

At this point, I'm starting to think that maybe we need to think about God's hand on us more often, maybe it would act as a deterrent for putting our hands on other people without their invitation to do so.

Why Do Men Think it is OK to Kiss Women Who Aren't Their Wives?

Lately I've been struck by the number of news reports about men kissing women without their permission. On both sides of the political aisle, among the rich and famous who are not political, doctors, priests, pastors, athletes and therapists. Evangelists. People's relatives. You name it, whatever the role, there is someone out there who has been caught with their hands in someone else's cookie jar. No political persuasion or profession is spared from the relentless opportunity to take notice of all the men (and occasional report of women) who think it is ok to kiss, fondle and grope people without permission . I do not understand this; it baffles me. My grandchildren have a better grasp on body boundaries than this. Which reminds me of a funny story, totally not related to the topic, but what the heck.

When my son Michael was in preschool his beloved teacher Mr. Coley did a typical and lovely beginning to the Sunday school year. He took a long roll of butcher paper and traced the bodies of each of the children. As Mr. Coley was moving up one leg and around to the other, Michael said, "Watch out, Mr. Coley, do not touch the family jewels." I went to visit Wayne towards the end of his life. The first thing he recounted when he saw me was the "don't touch the family jewels" story. Oh, how lovely it is to remember moments of innocence and joy.

Ok, back to the blog. I continue to be puzzled by all the folks who cannot seem to keep their hands off of others' jewels but I do like what Dr. Willimon says on the subject of learning how to be faithful. In his funny, humble way he told the listeners tuned into his podcast interview (Everything Happens Episode 23) with Kate Bowler that as a young husband there were times when he did not feel like being faithful. But he had pledged vows that called for faithfulness. So he acted the part. When he did not feel like being a faithful husband, he remembered - act the role of faithful husband. He said this brilliant thing, "You act the role in order to assume the role." Then, he reports, you wake up one day and you're not having to try to be faithful anymore. Faithful is who you have become by fulfilling the role that has been assigned to you. This applies to the role of spouse, parent, employer or employee - whatever the role, that is your calling. I love his candor AND I love his vision.

I wonder how many men and women caught up in scandals that tarnish their reputation would have avoided such outcomes if they had simply done this: act the role in order to assume the role.

Our Calling May Feel Like a Cluster Cuss

Mother Teresa of Calcutta is an iconic figure. She dedicated her life to the marginalized people in India and died at the age of 87 with an unblemished record of selfless and tireless ministry in the name of her faith without a single scandal, sexual or otherwise, throughout her life of service. Now THAT'S saying something!

People revere her. But Mother Teresa herself was deeply troubled, even tormented about her faith and periods of doubt about God. In a collection of letters she wrote over 66 years ("Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light") we see a woman whose experience of her purpose was wildly different from our perception of her calling. And guess what? She never wanted any of us to know this about her. The Vatican did not accede to her wishes and destroy her letters, keeping them instead as potential relics of a saint. I bet she is spitting mad.

Here's an excerpt. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God - tender, personal love," she wrote to one advisor. "If you were (there), you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.' " Although I would not want to meet Mother Teresa on the other side of eternity if I had published those personal outpourings of suffering, I am grateful to have the opportunity to read them. They provide me some perspective when I think about my own life, when I doubt my own value, when I question my own calling.

Mother Teresa made service a requirement of living without asking it to make her happy. Like that awful parable that Jesus wrote about the hard and relentless life and times of a servant, I appreciate the perspective and how it might inform my own sense of calling.

Living a purposeful life does not require it to be meaningful but instructs: JUST DO IT. (Nike stole it from Jesus is how I'm seeing it from Dr. Willimon's perspective.) Maybe you, like me, are having a sad day, week, month or year. Maybe you are questioning yourself, wondering if you are a lazy pastor because you couldn't figure out how to create magnificent worship experiences in a parking lot of a commercial office park. Ok. Have a good cry. But then get off your ass and do the next right thing for the role into which you were called: spouse, parent of an addict, daughter of an alcoholic, lawyer, IT professional, and or - God bless your soul - pastor. Whatever role is assigned; just do it. If it were easy and glamorous and personally fulfilling, Mother Teresa would not have 66 years of intimate letters (written to trusted advisors who turned her stuff over to the Vatican) filled with doubt and dissatisfaction.

Jesus Has a Bad Day

I know we are not supposed to disagree with Jesus, so I won't. But this parable that I want to wrestle with is really not my favorite of his body of work. It is from Luke 17, and it goes like this: “Suppose one of you has a servant who comes in from plowing the field or tending the sheep. Would you take his coat, set the table, and say, ‘Sit down and eat’? Wouldn’t you be more likely to say, ‘Prepare dinner; change your clothes and wait table for me until I’ve finished my coffee; then go to the kitchen and have your supper’? Does the servant get special thanks for doing what’s expected of him? It’s the same with you. When you’ve done everything expected of you, be matter-of-fact and say, ‘The work is done. What we were told to do, we did.’”

I am not a fan of thinking about all the ways we have mistreated people by placing them in roles of slaves and servants. I'm a big fan of a world in which we all understand that "we are all bozos on the bus" - to quote my friend Dale Ryan. But Jesus did not use this parable to talk about inequality, he used it to show us the reality of the work set before us.

In Dr. Willimon's book Accidental Preacher, he makes it abundantly clear that much of what we think of as sacred calling is not glamorous. Nor should it be! I love this guy because he speaks what so many are afraid to say. In Kate Bowler's podcast Everything Happens she interviews Dr. Willimon (September 22, 2020 episode 23: Will Willimon: Your Work is a Calling). I am going to poorly paraphrase him so PLEASE go listen to the entire podcast! But here goes...

Dr. Willimon says, basically, that the deceit of modern life is believing that we can strip the roles from individuals for the sake of individuality. He continues to make his case by declaring that there is no YOU without the roles, assignments and relationships in your life.

In Jesus' parable, the servant knows his role and he fulfills it. Full stop end of sentence. This is so very unattractive to a culture who has hyped individuality and freedom to the detriment, I fear, of community care and service for service's sake. Tomorrow, I'll continue to unpack this, but for today - please do not skip the opportunity to ponder what this terrible, awful parable teaches.

Happy Birthday, Mommy

My mother had one calling in life - to be a mom. As an only child in her household I think my mom always dreamed of filling up a home with babies. And boy did she. Four kids. Three boys and one girl, one right after the other like little stair steps. She LOVED babies. Babies were her jam.

Once we started walking and talking back? She had to lean into her calling.

This month we're going to dissect what it means to live a life of complicated purpose. We'll even dive into the deep end of the pool and talk about our "calling". But on her birthday, I want to pay homage to a woman who pursued her calling to the bitter end even though the reality of it often startled her. She persevered.

Living a life of purpose is a mantra these days. We're encouraged to follow our bliss (Joseph Campbell). But what happens when our calling does not match our expectations of bliss? Do we search for meaning elsewhere or abandon the work that feels too hard to be sacred? My mother did not expect children to be so...dirty, messy, and expensive. She did not expect any of her children to end up addicted to alcohol and drugs. She did not expect her kids to end up having a...complicated...relationship with their father, her husband. She never in her wildest dreams wanted to live apart from her own parents or her kids. She expected a nice, neat, orderly, quiet life in Durham, NC within a few miles of her parents. What she ended up with was life in South Dakota, North Carolina (Durham, Charlotte), Georgia (Atlanta three times), Virginia (Virginia Beach, Richmond and Roanoke), Memphis, Tennessee (for such a short time she didn't even actually move there), Chicago, Illinois and New Jersey (two different locations).

Life was not what she expected but she soldiered on. When I got the call that my mom was in crisis after being given medicine that caused her to bleed internally, I left my own calling as a mother who was waiting for my own daughter to give birth and headed south to Atlanta. It took me 9 hours to reach her and it was 1 am when my GPS system guided me into the parking lot of the hospice facility where she had been taken. She was asleep and so I quietly settled in to watching her breathe.

Early the next morning she awoke, startled to be in this strange place. I reassured her. She asked me, "Have I been a good mother?" I was able to answer with all honesty, "You have been the best mother I could ever have hoped for." In her last days, my mom was afraid she had somehow failed as a mom. Was she reliving her sacred calling in her last days? Had someone hinted that she had not fulfilled her role? I will never know, but I know this: she did her absolute best at "momming".

Dr. William Willimon, who I will be talking about a lot in the coming days, expressed a sentiment about calling. He says that "calling" is not glamorous. When we live out our calling, it does not necessarily make our lives better but it does allow other people's lives to be enriched. If that's what it means to live a life of purpose, my mom was an all-star.