In January
2001, after seven years of slowly creeping to the conclusion that God’s plan
for my life included becoming an Episcopal priest, I had an appointment with
the Bishop of the Diocese of California.
I’d paid for and completed the psychological evaluation. I’d met the three year residency requirement,
and gotten the letters of recommendation, and written the essays. I’d organized the congregational vocations
committee and gone through the day-long meeting with the diocesan Commission on
Ministry, and they’d recommended me to the Bishop for admission to the postulancy,
the first stage of the ordination process.
But it was the Bishop’s decision to make, and as he showed me into his
large corner office looking out at Grace Cathedral, I knew that my fate was in
his hands.
We chatted for
maybe half-an-hour while he leafed through a thick dossier on his lap that I
knew was all about me. I don’t remember
anything about the conversation until the point when he closed the folder, straightened
up in his chair, looked me in the eye and said, “Well, I was prepared to be
unimpressed.” Then he said, “what I usually
do in these interviews is I look at the person in front of me and match them up
with some other person I’ve ordained. I’ll
think, ‘He reminds me of so-and-so, so I know he’ll be a really fine pastor’,
or ‘she’s kind of like what’s-her-name, who’s such a wonderful teacher.’ And when I can do that, then I feel confident
that this person has a real vocation and a reasonable chance of success.” He paused for a moment, while I waited for
what he was going to say next. “But the
problem I’m having with you,” he went on, “is that I can’t match you up with
anyone. You’re not like anybody
else. But I feel like maybe God is doing
something here. So I’m going to say it
will be okay to go ahead, and we’ll see what happens.”
If you’ve
ever listened to Christian AM radio, you’ve heard it said that God has a plan
for your life. This is a standard theme of
sermons that are aimed at bringing about religious conversion. It is an effective message because it speaks
to an emotional and spiritual need that our secular society is not doing a very
good job of meeting. In our world every
individual person is expected to follow a fairly predictable script: find what
it is that you are good at, which, incidentally, had better be something you
can get paid for; then apply yourself to that diligently and consistently over time,
so as to be rewarded with the material standard of living that says “you’ve
made it,” and that enables you not to have to depend on anyone else. Many people are by temperament or good fortune
able to fulfill that script pretty well, which is no discredit to them at all,
although even they sometimes wonder if that is really all there is.
But a lot
of people really struggle because for a whole host of reasons their lives don’t
quite work out that way. And some people
actually were just never cut out for that script in the first place. Either way, they often pay a very heavy price
for their inability or unwillingness to “make it” in that sense, and it is to
them that the radio preacher speaks, to say that there is something else,
something that transcends the conventional “ladder to success”, something that
gives purpose and pattern and meaning to our lives. It can be life-changing to hear this, and to
imagine that the holder and giver of life’s meaning is infinitely wise, and infinitely
powerful. That can be good news to
people who are struggling to find a sense of their own power, their own wisdom
and worth.
But this
brings us to the question that Jesus asks James and John in the gospel story
this morning—“what do you want?” Because
the way we answer that question says a lot about whether we are really open to
God’s plan for our lives, or whether we’re actually asking to make a deal with
God, to get her to work on behalf of our plan.
Sometimes when people say “God has a plan for your life,” they also seem
to be saying “if you believe in God, and do the right things, your life will work out the way that
you want.” But I think we all know that sometimes life doesn’t work out the way
you want. And with some things that
happen, it’s pretty near impossible to believe that God was behind it at all.
James and
John tell Jesus that what they want is to be given seats on his right hand and
on his left when he is enthroned in glory, and he explains to them that those
places are not his to give. That’s the
sort of thing that belongs to the higher plan, and as such it is none of their
concern. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a plan
for their lives, and Jesus answers with a question about their commitment to
that plan. “Are you able,” he asks them,
“to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism that I
undergo? Are you able to join me in my mission?” And then he takes the twelve disciples aside
to explain to them one more time what his mission is about, and what being his
disciples really means. Because God
doesn’t just have a plan for their individual lives. God doesn’t just have a plan for my life, or
your life. God has a plan for the whole
universe, and your plan cannot be separated from my plan or anyone else’s. There is really only one plan, and it is a
plan for all of us together.
The mission
of Jesus Christ, in which we are privileged to take part, is to give himself to
the world in service of that great plan.
When our aim in life is only to seek our own advantage, to carve out our
own little domain where we are the boss, and other people serve us, we diminish
God’s plan for our lives. We lose sight
of our true greatness, a greatness of spirit that comes to life in us as we are
remade by the grace and the glory of the one who came in service to others. In his life of perfect generosity we see an
image of God’s purpose for every human life.
It is a purpose that holds good, even when, on a personal level, we
experience loss. It holds good, even
when we experience suffering. It holds
good, even when we experience, poverty, and homelessness, and failure. Because on the personal level, that’s what
Jesus experienced, and he accepted it--not because suffering and death are
desirable in themselves, but out of the depth of his love, the breadth of his
hope, the power of his faith in God’s plan.
I will
always be grateful to Bishop Swing of the Diocese of California for trusting that
God’s call to the priesthood sometimes paints outside the familiar lines. It’s a trust I’ve tried to repay in my
ministry by being open to the working of God’s purpose in all kinds of people
and every sort of circumstance. And as
we celebrate our Stewardship Season at St. John’s, I think it is important for
us to be grateful that God’s plan for us is greater than meeting the needs of
our own parish. So this week we have a
couple of opportunities to reflect together on that more comprehensive plan. On Wednesday evening we will gather to break
bread and enjoy our friendship, and then to have a conversation about God’s vision
for the future of our congregation, and what it might call us to do to take loving
care for the whole Earth. And this
morning, as we did at this time last year, we welcome a representative of the
Committee on the Shelterless (COTS), which does such fine work on our behalf, helping
people in our community to maintain their faith in God’s plan for their lives,
when they have no place to stay.
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