Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Living as a Called Person

SOMETIMES ONE FINDS A MOST BEAUTIFUL LINE IN AN old book. For example, I found this one in a book written almost eighty years ago entitled A Casket of Cameos, by F. W. Boreham, in which he reflected on the faith of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom (from an even older book). Tom, an old slave, had been wrenched from his old Kentucky home and put on a steamship headed for unknown places. It was a terrible moment of crisis, and Boreham observes, "Uncle Tom's faith was staggered. It really seemed to him that, in leaving Aunt Chloe and the children and his old companions, he was leaving God!"

Remember, it's an old book, but there's a nugget of truth coming. Falling into a troubled sleep, the disoriented slave had a dream, Boreham wrote. "He dreamed that he was back again, and that little Eva was reading to him from the Bible as of old. He could hear her voice: `When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; for I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, Thy Saviour."' The dream and its powerful message put Tom's heart at rest.

A necessary rest indeed because, soon after, Tom was suffering under the antagonisms of a sadistic master, Simon Leg.

Boreham continues:

A little later, poor Tom was writhing under the cruel lash of his new owner. "But," says Mrs. Stowe, "the blows fell only upon the outer man, and not, as before, on the heart. Tom stood submissive; and yet Legree could not hide from himself the fact that his power over his victim had gone. As Tom disappeared in his cabin, and Legree wheeled his horse suddenly round, there passed through the tyrant's mind one of those vivid flashes that often send the lightning of conscience across the dark and wicked soul. He understood full well that it was God who was standing between him and Tom, and he blasphemed Him!" 1


THE CALLED PERSON

It is this quality - the quality of an inner-directed person - for which we seek when we compare driven persons and called persons. Driven people often project a bravado of confidence as they forge ahead with their achievement-oriented life plan. But often, at the moment when it is least expected, adversities and obstructions conspire, and there can be personal collapse. Called people, on the other hand, possess strength from within, a quality of perseverance and power that are impervious to the blows from without.

You never know when you're going to bump into one of these called men or women. They can emerge from the strangest places and evince the most unique qualities. They may be the unnoticed, the unappreciated, the unsophisticated. Look again at the men Christ picked: few if any of them would have been candidates for high positions in organized religion or big business. It is not that they were unusually awkward. It is just that they appeared to be absolutely ordinary.

We have to keep reminding ourselves: No headhunter in his or her right mind would have vetted most of them for leadership in the kingdom of God. But Christ did, and that made all the difference.

The Scriptures are dotted with called men and women, of course. Mary, mother of Jesus, has to be near or at the top of the list. You wonder about what's behind the phrase, "And Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." No need to grandstand here; no need to impress anyone.

Caleb (of Joshua and Caleb fame) sure qualifies. "I followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly," he said as he summed up his life. Or Stephen, reputed to be the first Christian martyr: "a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit." Great lines, these.

But I have to say then that when I line up all the called folk, John the Baptizer comes first. He has been an inspiration to me in the highest and, especially, the lowest moments of my life. And I have known some of the lowest of moments. On those occasions particularly, John was there with me. So let his story wash over you for a moment and see if it has the same effect it has had on me.

THE MAN WHO LOST HIS JOB

Start with courage. John the Baptizer abounded in it. When the crowds came streaming to the Jordan River valley to take his measure, John had the audacity to tell them that they ought to back off from exonerating themselves on the basis of their claim to racial or religious superiority. They should, he said, face up to their need for spiritual and moral repentance.

The baptism (usually reserved for Gentiles), he claimed, would be good for them. It would offer proof of the genuineness of their long-awaited contrition. His words must have driven the sanctimonious man in the crowd mad.

No wonder no one was ever neutral about John. The man never wasted words, never flattered a soul. You loved him or hated him. You're probably aware that one of the haters eventually removed his head. But only after John had finished his work.

Humanly speaking, John didn't have much going for him in terms of an attractive public world. We assume his parents died while he was quite young. He grew up in the desert where he partook of an austere diet and wore off-brand clothing. You can only conclude that you are watching a man with extraordinary inner strength and orientation.

John, this called man, is a marked contrast to the Old Testament's King Saul, a driven man from the start. John seems to have had from the very beginning a vivid sense of destiny, the result of a heavenly assignment that came from deep within as he immersed himself in the writings of Isaiah.

One sees the contrast between Saul and John most vividly when their personal identities and their sense of vocational security are under attack. Saul, the driven man, you will remember, reacted violently, lashing out at the younger David as he followed him all over the desert in an attempt to destroy him. And each time he encountered David, he appeared more foolish than he'd been previously.

But John is another story. Watch him when the observation is made that his popularity may be headed into serious decline. To put it another way, study John when he learns that he is losing his job.

The moment I have in mind comes after John has introduced Christ to the multitudes and they have begun to transfer their affections to this "Lamb of God" John 1:36). It is brought to John's attention that the crowds, even some of his own disciples, are turning to Jesus, listening to His teaching and being baptized by His disciples. One gets the feeling that those who brought the news to John concerning the decline of his ratings may have anticipated (even hoped?) that they would get the chance to see John react just a bit negatively. But if that was the case, they were to be disappointed.

A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, "I am not the Christ," but "I have been sent before Him." He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. And so this joy of mine has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:27-30)

So what is the man saying here?

• Called People Understand Stewardship

First, John's comments begin with the principle of stewardship. Those who have instigated this conversation apparently believe that John will be rattled when he hears that his life as a crowd gatherer is over. But in fact he was anything but rattled. He seems, rather, to have been delighted.

Here's how John sees it. Having never owned the crowds in the first place, John was prepared to surrender them to Jesus if that was God's plan. That's the thinking of a steward, a key quality of a called person. The task of a steward is simply to properly manage something on behalf of the owner until the owner comes to take it back. John knew that the crowd leaving him for Christ was never his in the first place. God had placed them under his care for a period of time and now had taken them back. With John that was apparently just fine.

How different this is from the driven Saul, who assumed that he owned his throne in Israel and could do anything with it that he wished. When one owns something, it has to be held onto; it has to be protected. But John did not think that way. So when Christ came to compel the crowds, John was only too glad to hand them off and get out of the way.

John's view of stewardship presents us with an important contemporary principle. For his crowds may be our careers, our assets, our natural and spiritual gifts, our health. So - and think before answering! - are these things owned, or merely managed in the name of the One who gave them? Driven people consider them owned; called people do not. When driven people lose those things, it is a major crisis. When called people lose them, nothing of substance has changed. The private world remains the same, perhaps even stronger.

I love the words of Cardinal Danneels of Brussels:

When I get home after a long day, I go to the chapel and pray. I say to the Lord, "There it is for today, things are finished. Now let's be serious, is this diocese mine or yours?" The Lord says, "What do you think?" I answer, "I think it's yours." "That is true," the Lord says, "it is mine." And so I say, "Listen, Lord, it is your turn to take responsibility for and direct the diocese. I'm going to sleep."2


• Called People Know Exactly Who They Are

A second quality of calledness is seen in John's certainty of his own identity. Let me paraphrase his remarks. You will remember that he said to his visitors, that I've told you often who I am not namely, the Christ. Knowing who he was not was the beginning of knowing who he was. And John had no illusions as to his personal identity. That had already been established in his interior, private world.

By contrast, those whose private worlds are in disarray tend to get their identities confused. They can have an increasing inability to separate role from person. What they do is indistinguishable from who they are. That is why people who have wielded great power and enjoyed positions of privilege find it very difficult to give them up, and will often fight to the death to retain what they've had. It is why retirement is difficult for more than a few men and women. And it helps to explain why a mother may suffer depression when her last child has left the home. Come to think of it, I was the one who felt the depression when our kids left home. Apparently, it works either way.

We need to ponder this matter of identity carefully, for it happens to be a very contemporary subject. John could easily have taken advantage of the crowd's gullibility during the early days when he was popular. Or he could have been seduced by their applause. The fact that the masses were switching their favour from the priests of Jerusalem to him could have supercharged him with arrogance and ambition. It would have been rather simple to nod yes to questions as to whether or not he was the Messiah.

I suspect that there was a small window of time when he could have gotten away with making outlandish claims about himself. You can almost hear a man of lesser integrity than John in a moment of weakness saying, "Me, the Messiah? Well, I hadn't thought about it quite like some are saying it, but perhaps they're right, there is something kind of Messiah-like about me. Why don't I fly with this idea of Messiahship for a while and see what transpires?"

If that had been John, he probably could have pulled off the hoax for a short while. But the genuine John would not even try. His inner sphere was too well ordered for him not to have seen through the terrible implications of a misplaced identity.

If there was a moment when the crowd's praise became thunderous, the voice of God from within John was even louder. And that voice spoke more convincingly because John had first ordered his inner world out on the desert.

Don't underestimate the significance of this principle. Today in our media-fashioned world many good and talented leaders face the constant temptation to begin believing the text of their own publicity releases. And if they do, a messianic fantasy gradually infects their personalities and leadership styles. Forgetting who they are not, they begin to make dangerous assumptions about who they are. Did any of this stuff tempt the recent mayor of New York City to think that he could get the rules suspended so that he could run for a third mayoral term in a two-term system?

St. Paul offered a valuable precedent when he wrote to Timothy and recited his call from Judaism to Christian faith and apostleship: "I was the worst of sinners, he wrote; I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man ... the grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly" (1 Tim. 1:13-14). A man with a memory like that, regularly freshened, is not likely to think of himself more highly than he ought.

• Called People Possess an Unwavering Sense of Purpose

A third look at John's remarkable response to his interrogators will reveal that the prophet from the desert also understood the purpose of his activity as forerunner to Christ. And this is another dimension of calledness. To those who questioned him regarding his feelings about the growing popularity of the Man from Nazareth, he likened his purpose to that of the best man at a wedding: "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend [that's John] of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice" (John 3:29). The purpose of the best man is simply to stand with the groom, to make sure that all attention is riveted upon him. The best man would be a fool if in the middle of the wedding processional he suddenly turned to the wedding guests and began to sing a song or engage in a humorous monologue. The best man has fulfilled his purpose most admirably when he draws no attention to himself but focuses all attention upon the bride and groom.

And that is what John did. If Jesus Christ was the groom, to use John's metaphor, then the Baptizer was committed to being best man and nothing else. That was the purpose that flowed from his call, and he had no desire to aspire to anything beyond. Thus to see the crowd headed toward Christ was all the affirmation John needed; his purpose had been fulfilled. But only called people like this man can relax under such circumstances.

I love Robert Browning's lines in his poem, "Bishop Bloughram's Apology:"

In everyman's career are certain points
Whereon he dares not be indifferent;
The world detects him clearly, if he dare,
As baffled at the game and losing life.


Among the things we can say about John is this: He was never baffled, and he never lost life. Hard to do if your purpose is lofty and imaginative, if it calls from you every ounce of moral and spiritual energy you have, if it is bigger than you are.

When the 9/11 catastrophe took New York's Trade Towers down, my wife, Gail, and I headed for Ground Zero to contribute our energies to the work of the Salvation Army. During that first week when all seemed so chaotic, we were part of the thousands of workers and their relief supports who attacked the rubble in hopes that we would find trapped people still alive.

By the hour I worked as part of a team that brought everything from cold water to fresh boots to the men and women who formed the bucket brigades intent on getting to anyone who had survived. Occasionally, we would hear the signal that meant "Silence" as the suspicion arose that a voice or tapping was heard underneath the concrete and steel.

Late one night I stood in a circle of fire-fighters who had been working 24/7, refusing to rest.

"Don't you think you'd profit from a few hours away from this place?" I asked.

"Not a chance," their leader said. "We've got brothers in that pile, and they may be waiting for us."

It was moments like this that would cause me to occasionally find Gail at the station where she was dispensing aid, walk off to a corner with her, take her into my arms, and whisper, "I was made for this!"

Now I have a slight, momentary sense of how the great saints -John the Baptizer included - must have continually felt as they lived down through the centuries, caught up in a lofty sense of purpose.

• Called People Practice Unswerving Commitment

Finally, John, as a called man, also understood that some things need to be released. Mothers know they must eventually release their children to a more independent life. Mentors know they must release their proteges at an appropriate moment.

John's comment, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30), spoken to those who had queried him about his attitude, illustrates the principle of planned released. A called person - because he is a steward, because he knows who he is, because he is purposeful - anticipates the day when it is time to step back and let go. In this case it was a crowd, a temporary reputation, and a bevy of disciples that had to be released to Jesus' influence.

No driven person could ever say what John said, because driven people have to keep gaining more and more attention, more and more power, more and more material assets. They have to hold on; they cannot let go. Too much of themselves is wound up in what they are doing.

Occasionally we hear the story of an organizational leader who, having given powerful leadership to an institution, comes toward the end of his working life and keeps holding on to leadership long after he should have let it pass into the hands of someone in a younger generation. Or he ensures that the leadership passes into the hands of a son or a daughter so that he can maintain his influence.

Somewhere in my library is a book in which the story is told of an English headmaster who was appointed when he was forty-five years of age. His first act was to write himself a letter to be opened on his sixty-fifth birthday. In it he wrote (and I paraphrase), "Today you are sixty-five, and it is time to give the task of being headmaster over to a younger person. You will tell yourself that there is no one who can replace you; that the school cannot do without you. But don't believe this self-aggrandizing propaganda."

Sure enough, when he turned sixty-five and opened the letter, he found that he entertained those exact feelings about his indispensability. But he took his own advice and released the leadership to another. Which is exactly what John did.

It is these kinds of qualities - John's sense of stewardship, his awareness of his identity, his perspective about his role, and his commitment to the principle of release - that mark a called person. And they are the characteristics of a person who builds first in the interior or private world so that out of it will flow fountains of life.

How totally different were the lives of Saul the king and John the Baptizer. The one sought to defend a golden cage, and lost; the other was pleased with a place in the desert and a chance to serve, and won.

You sense a maturity in John's thinking that is uncommon. There's a peacefulness about him. This is not a rattled man whose sense of well-being craters when his public world changes.

There's a quality of joy that ought not to be confused with the modern-day version of happiness - a state of feelings dependent upon everything turning out all right. When others thought that John might be worried about ending up as a failure, they discovered that he actually was quite satisfied, in spite of the fact that his audiences were leaving him. Some folk in John's generation might not have thought so, but John had such an assurance because his evaluations were based first on his private world, where real values can be fully formed in concert with God.

John is in fact the quintessential called man. He illustrates what Stowe meant when she wrote that Simon Legree's blows fell only upon Uncle Tom's outer man, but not upon his heart. Something stood between John and the public evidence that he may have been a failure. It was the unquestioned reality of God's call, which John had heard in that private world of his. And that voice was louder than any other sound. It came from a quiet place of order.

THE ROAD TO CALLEDNESS

As one looks with admiration at John the Baptizer, the obvious question is, How did he get that way? What was the source of this determination, this stamina, this unswerving ability to look at events in a totally different way than others did? A quick overview of John's background offers some insights into the structure and substance of his inner life.

If there is one thing that begins to explain John, it has to be the kind of parents he had, who shaped him in his earliest days. He had good genes, physically and spiritually.

It is clear from Scripture that Zacharias and Elizabeth were godly people with extraordinary sensitivity to John's call. It had been revealed to them through various angelic visions. And they in turn from the earliest days began to pump that destiny into John's soul. We have little indication of John's family life after he was born, but we do know that his parents were marked with an extraordinary depth of integrity, godliness, and perseverance.

John's parents must have died when he was still a very young man. How he handled the loss we do not know. But when the Scripture next highlights John, he is living alone in the desert, separate from the society to which he would later speak as a prophet.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Luke 3:1-3)

These words contain an intriguing insight. Caesar, we're reminded, was in Rome doing whatever important things Caesars do. Annas and Caiaphas, major-league priests, were in the Jerusalem temple promoting organized religion. And various other political personalities were going and coming in public places, participating in seemingly newsworthy events. Their worlds were the impressive public worlds of power, notoriety, and human connection.

Then this: But the word of God came to John, an insignificant man in the most insignificant of places: a desert. Why John? And why a desert? Think about it!

I am reminded of Herbert Butterfield's words, which have always humbled me:

Both in history and in life it is a phenomenon by no means rare to meet with comparatively unlettered people who seem to have struck profound spiritual depths ... while there are many highly educated people of whom one feels that they are performing clever antics with their minds to cover a gaping hollowness that lies within.3


So why John? First answer: Only God knows. Beyond that one simply has to say because John responded. The call demanded submission to God's ways, God's methods and God's criteria for success. And John was willing to accept those terms no matter what the cost to him in pain or loneliness.

Why a desert? Perhaps because in deserts people can hear and brood upon things not easily heard or thought about in busy cities, where people are usually hurried, surrounded by noise, and steeped in self-importance. Sometimes in cities the shrillness of the public life is so great that the whispering voice of God cannot be heard. And sometimes in cities, people are too proud to listen to God amid all of their steel and concrete skyscrapers, their colourful theatres, or their incredible temples.

God drew John into the desert where He could speak to him. And when He got him there He began to stamp impressions onto John's inner world that gave the son of Zacharias a totally different perspective on his times. There in the desert he gained a new view of religion, of right and wrong, of God's purposes for history. And there he developed a special sensitivity and courage that would prepare him for his most extraordinary task: introducing his generation to the Christ. His private world was under construction - in the desert.

The word of God came to John in the desert. Such a strange place for God to speak. What can one learn in deserts? I am inclined to forsake deserts, to detour around them whenever possible. To me, deserts mean pain, isolation, and suffering. And no one cares for any of that. Deserts are hard places in which to live, physically or spiritually. But the fact is unavoidable: The greatest lessons are potentially learned in deserts if one, in the midst of struggle, listens for God's call.

In deserts, one learns about dryness, because deserts are dry. John would learn not only to cope with the dryness of the desert, but it doubtless taught him to appreciate the aridity of the spirits of the people to whom he'd speak at the Jordan.

In the desert a person learns dependence upon God. Life in the wilderness, as the Hebrews had found out centuries before, cannot be sustained without the benevolence of a merciful God. Only a person who has suffered desert-like hardship knows what it is like to totally cast himself upon God because there is nothing else left.

There is a slightly brighter side to deserts, however. Wilderness provides a place where one is free to think, to plan, to prepare. And then at an appointed time, like John, he comes charging out of the dry land with a message, something to say that will expose hypocrisy and superficiality. Issues are addressed that cut through to the bottomless depths of the human spirit. And an age of people is introduced to the Christ of God.

In the desert a person can be called. As John stood up first to his critics and then to the furiously defensive Herod, whose immoral life the prophet rebuked, he began to reveal that special quality of calledness. You can see it in his serenity in the midst of his prophetic performance. Something special within was operating, providing him with an independent base of judgement and wisdom. Few could withstand his message.

What was the makeup of that private world that was formed in the desert? Frankly, the biblical writers do not give us much of an answer. We are simply treated to the evidence of an ordered inner life. John is a prototype of the product we are looking for. In a public world where all seems chaotic and disordered, he moves with assurance and certitude.

Have Saul, John, and my friend the "successful bum" taught us anything? I think their message is plain. Look inside, they say. What makes you tick? Why are you doing all of that? What do you hope to gain as a result? And what would be your reaction if it were all taken away?

I look inside my private world and discover that almost every day I have to wrestle with whether I will be a Saul or a john. I have lived in a competitive world where achievement is almost everything. Now as I journey through my sixties, the challenge has morphed a bit: how to back out of organizational leadership and influence, gracefully turn it over to another generation, and embrace a quieter (and far more sane, actually) role: being a mentor, a cheerleader, an encourager to the young.

This may sound sort of noble, but it's not always that simple. I always enjoyed being in charge, more or less. I could still find it easy to join Saul, to be driven to hold on, to protect, to dominate. And I might even find myself doing those sorts of things while telling myself that I was doing God's work. But as John did, I have concluded that it's time to practice the principle of release and go on to other things. As Henri Nouwen eloquently put it: to embrace littleness, hiddenness, and powerlessness. Frankly, I'd rather hug other things, but this is the way of the cross, the way of the called person.

Extracted from Gordon Macdonald’s Ordering Your Private World.

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