I was skimming the back of The Christian Century, a magazine read
by a lot of pastors, and saw an advertisement from a church that was looking
for a new Senior Pastor. I always
read the “Positions Open Section” since I failed to respond to an ad that
wanted to pay its next pastor a lot of money to do ¾ time work in a church that
had a view of the Green Mountains of Vermont. Don’t get me wrong, I love St. Andrew, but we’re talking the
Green Mountains of Vermont!
As
I am reading the ad I’m being prideful, going through their list of desired
attributes of a new Senior Pastor, thinking to myself: got this, got that, do ok with this
other, and so on. And then it came
to the point where the church said they were looking for a “dynamic, upcoming
pastor.” I couldn’t help but
chuckle when I realized I am no longer an up-and-coming pastor. I’ve done up and come. I am about as good as I’m ever going to
get. I suppose I am in that sweet spot where sufficient
energy is balanced by wisdom borne of experience. I was just a little melancholy because the pastor search
committee of this church was really saying that they were looking for someone
younger than me.
I’ll
never forget listening to a pastor describe himself as middle-aged only to be
interrupted by his wife who whispered something in his ear. And he mournfully shook his head,
admitting that his recent 57th birthday meant that he was middle
aged only if he managed to live to the very ripe old age of 114.
You’ve got to laugh, I guess, or
you’re going to cry. Life is full
of those humbling moments.
Sometimes we turn around and realize that we aren’t as young as we used
to be. Sometimes we get told
through the promotion of a colleague that we aren’t the golden girl or golden
boy around the office any longer. And
other times we loudly and confidently proclaim that the newest Die Hard movie
is the fifth in the franchise only to have someone pull out their smart phone
and make us look foolish by proving that it’s only number four. Sometimes circumstances say No to us when we were clearly expecting
an enthusiastic Yes instead. And we’re left with a choice between
loud lamentations or laughter.
Humility is an important virtue if
you want to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Being humble doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself than who
you are. Humility doesn’t require
running around comparing yourself in unflattering ways to the people near you. Humility means basing your self-image
on how God sees you—it means seeing yourself truthfully and honestly on the one
hand, but also understanding that you are loved and valued because you are
first and foremost a child of Almighty God. True humility comes when we are secure in our
self-identity. I might look like a
genius in one moment, but I know myself well enough to enjoy the accolades of
that moment, because in a few more moments I’m going to look like a complete
idiot. Humility is knowing that I
am both and neither. I am a work
in progress: a pilgrim on a life-long
journey of learning and growing, falling and failing, and moving forward in my
desire to become like Jesus.
We were cleaning out junk from the
basement six or seven years ago and we came upon a series of articles I wrote
for my High School paper. I had a
weekly humor column among other things.
The boys sat down and read through a couple of them and then turned to
me and said, “You know Dad, you could have been somebody.” Wow! Talk about a back handed compliment. My response was to laugh long and
hard. They was saying, “If you’d
stayed writing—being a columnist—you might be famous and successful as a
journalist.” He wasn’t really
saying “Being a pastor in the church of Jesus Christ for the last 20 plus years
is a real waste of talent.” But I
could have taken it that way.
Lucky for me I have a slightly higher opinion of full-time
ministry. And since God called me
into pastoral ministry—who or what I might have if I had taken a different path
is moot anyway.
Lent is a season in the Christian
calendar when we take a long, humbling journey with our Lord and Master. He who was equal with God, emptied
himself and became one of us—more than that, as one of us, he became a
servant. The King of Kings was
crowned with thorns; the Prince of Peace was violently tortured and
killed. Jesus would not have been
able to face any of that if he didn’t have great confidence in his mission and
purpose, knowing who he was called to be and who he was in the eyes of God.
My prayer for you is that you take
a moment or two when those humbling moments come along and choose laughter over
tears. We are who we are by the
grace of God, and the God who created us, who has gone to such great lengths to
redeem us, is the God who will provide for us everything we need to be the
women and men he wants and needs us to be. And humility is as good a place to start that journey as
any.
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