Seems like everything I am reading this morning is a perfect storm for considering God’s call to follow Him. With the current class I am teaching on the book of Judges, combined with the Sunday morning sermon series on the presence of the Lord and Jesus’ calling of the disciples in Luke 5, combined with my morning readings of Nouwen… Oh, brother!
It’s funny that reading chapter 2 of In the Name of Jesus has made me think about some things with fresh perspective. When I first read this chapter 20 years ago I bought into the “glory temptation” so enticing for young preachers thinking that one day thousands of people would sigh on Sunday mornings as golden apples of sermon brilliance fell from my mouth. I thought Nouwen’s words were nice, but I wasn’t buying his brand.
But today I understand Nouwen’s chapter about moving from “popularity to ministry” in ways I wish I had understood years ago. (At least I think that’s the case.) I understand the importance of one-on-one conversations that can never be replaced by words spoken in blanket ways to the whole congregation. In fact, I now realize that sermons—and even announcements—are best heard through relational filters.
Reading one particular paragraph this morning was like a punch in the gut:
“Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg.”
At that point in the chapter Nouwen turns the attention to Jesus’ temptation to do something spectacular. He could have. To be sure, Jesus could have made the request of the tempter look foolish. Instead—and these are Nouwen’s words—Jesus “refused to be a stuntman.”
Too often in congregational ministry it is tempting for us preachers to be stuntmen always trying to outdo the last stunt. We go into competition with our previous sermons, thinking the pulpit is like home plate where we have to swing for the fences every time we step up.
But today I see that Jesus does not call any of us to the spectacular, but rather, to the simple. Like Peter, we sit with Jesus at the fire and hear his invitation to ministry, an invitation that is as simple as, “Feed my sheep.”
