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The Call to Vulnerability
With Mary Moore Driggers ordination this past Sunday and Ally Pexa’s ordination and installation coming up this Sunday, I have been thinking a lot about call. This past Sunday, I shared one of my call stories, a time when I felt God’s urging very closely and clearly. Many of you commented that you appreciated my vulnerability and willingness to share something personal.
This got me thinking about how call and vulnerability are related. Vulnerability seems to be a requirement in our scriptures in order to properly receive God’s call and to faithfully follow it. Of course, the most profound example is Jesus Christ, whose ministry was defined by both his humility and his willingness to be vulnerable. Our minds might go straight to his washing the disciples’ feet, but his willingness to make himself vulnerable certainly did not start “on the night he was betrayed.” His whole ministry was defined by a vulnerability that defied logic, especially for the Son of God. It was holy vulnerability.
Clearly, being vulnerable is a part of being faithful to Christ. But it is most certainly easier said than done. It is hard to be vulnerable because you open yourself up to being taken advantage of, even harmed. Also, our culture does not encourage vulnerability. It is often viewed as a synonym for weakness and being weak is seen by many as a moral failing. Perhaps there is no better place to see how deeply Jesus’ way of living creates tension with the values of our world.
Some of the most prominent accounts of Jesus’ vulnerability are with people who stood outside the societal norms of acceptability. The many times married woman at the well, the hemorrhaging woman, the Samaritan woman, tax collectors, and lepers were all outsiders who Jesus spent time both seeking and hearing out. And always there was someone or many people, whether his disciples or church leaders, telling him he should not do what he was doing; that he should not, as a proper Jewish man, make himself vulnerable to “those” people. Jesus never listened to them. His love and compassion drove him always closer and closer to those who were drifting farther and farther away from community.
I believe what drove others’ efforts to stop Jesus from living vulnerably was not so much anger and hatred, as discomfort. Or, at the very least, it was discomfort that drove them to hatred and anger. This underscores the truth about vulnerability, it is uncomfortable. And, quite frankly, it is easier to hate than it is to be vulnerable.
But we are called to be followers of The Way of Jesus Christ, and that means being vulnerable in our pursuit of loving others. It also means taking a self-inventory about what, and, particularly, who it is that makes us uncomfortable. And then, following the way of our Savior, we are commanded to seek these people out in order to listen to their stories and let them change our hearts. Jesus never worried about what challenges and discomforts might arise as he pursued the messy work of relationship and community; he simply moved forward in love. And this holy vulnerability calls us to do the same. To move forward, even if we awkwardly stumble, in love.
Grace and peace,
Will
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