Thursday, October 10, 2024 | Trey Comstock
Supervisor: You know, Trey, a good Methodist pastor is willing to stay forever and move at a moment’s notice.
Me: You, {Redacted}, do not uniquely speak for God.
This interaction happened three and a half years ago, and I’ve thought about it ever day since. As soon as I opened to Mark 10 and the story of Jesus and the rich young man, the conversation again sprang immediately to my mind. My supervisor talked to me in the same vein as Jesus does with the rich guy. He found a thing that I didn’t want to give up, and he decided to remind me that, especially in the United Methodist ministry, one shouldn’t limit what they will give over to the service of God.
On a level, he spoke the truth. The whole story centers on the fact that this rich guy can’t muster the devotion to give over his riches. Jesus sympathizes with him, but in the end, the rich guy departs in despair. The precipitating argument between my supervisor and myself centered on where I was and where I was not willing to live and serve. I sought to place limit and injection my own input, which ran afoul of how Methodism interprets texts like these in the context ministry. I am not meant to maintain control over physical residence and career path. In becoming a pastor, I explicitly gave that over to God’s control, and now, I seemed to want it back – putting me solidly in the corner with the rich guy.
The two interactions have some key differences. God gives humanity free will, and Jesus fully respects the rich guy’s free will in their exchange. Jesus has no compelling power over the man over other than opening up an invitation. My boss had a lot of compelling power over me. Not only did he control my future career prospects, he controlled where I lived (especially as I lived in a parsonage at the time), how much I made, and the quality of my housing. I could quit, but that would mean becoming both jobless and homeless throwing my family into turmoil. Also, my boss did not offer an invitation, “Here is a thing that you can do.” He chose to deploy shame instead, “You’re not as devoted as you should be.”
Beyond the shaming aspect, the whole situation felt different to me. God invited me to go places before that I didn’t want to go, and I had gone. I took pay cuts, lived thousands of miles from my spouse in austere conditions for months at a time, acquired tropical diseases and several broken bones, moved close to a dozen times in 15 years often to places that I’d never heard of or never wished to encounter – all at the invitation of God. I experienced suffering through a lot it, but I felt called to it. Those seasons came with energy, excitement, and an ability for some fairly extreme things to roll off me. I knew the feeling of receiving a hundredfold for my efforts, as Jesus promises Peter for those who seek to rise to the standard.
Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30 NRSV)
By the time that I argued with my boss, I didn’t feel any of that. I felt trapped in a calling and a life that no longer felt like mine. After months of wrestling, prayer, and therapy, I reached the conclusion that my calling sat in another direction. That season felt different from other difficult seasons because I no longer felt called to it. I believed that God sought to guide me back towards God’s purpose for me. Thus, my supervisor strayed into the spiritually abusive by seeking to shame me into obedience and imply my unwillingness to hand my life over to God. When in fact, the thing that I wouldn’t hand over was my sense of self grounded in my ability to discern God’s will for my own life.
Or, I’m just a bad pastor who proved insufficiently devoted. I don’t know. I ponde that exact question, all the time.
All of this reveals the boundaries that we should set in talking about texts like these. I am not the first person in Christian history to get abused by someone playing substitute for the voice of God and stating what God definitely wants me to give over. Anytime we touch on how other people should show devotion to God, we walk a fine line. Christ can speak to the rich guy in such definite terms because as the Word of God, Christ knows the will of God in such definite terms. We don’t. Some Christian expressions have Popes or Prophets who serve as a more direct conduit for God’s will. Methodism doesn’t. We, like God, should respect an individual’s free will, consent, and the fact that God can reckon directly with the person. We can talk in generalities. God can get specific.
Connecting back to a Scripture from a couple of weeks ago, I think Esther’s relative Mordecai gets this right. He has examined the circumstances and clearly thinks that Esther’s placement in the palace constitutes God’s way forward for God’s people, but he approaches Esther with uncertainty and an invitation. “For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’” (Esther 4:14 NRSV) He does not hold back the realities, but the “perhaps” leaves room for Esther to discern for herself what kind of obedience God desires from her.
Put back into my own scenario, it would look like this:
Supervisor: Perhaps, God already has you right where you need to be.
Me: No, after a lot of prayer, conversation, and wrestling, I definitely feel call to serve in a different direction.
If it had gone that way, I’d have a way better relationship with the Church right now.