A call to ministry is one of the greatest tensions a person might experience. It is not just an interest in a job, but a deep seated experience of the entire being called upon by a higher power to live in a capacity beyond what most would find typical or even desirable. Even worse, often the calling is worked out over years, sometimes decades, stretching out an already fragile tension with life long questions and doubts in the same basket as visions and hopes.
Jesus began his ministry with a boom. Matthew (4:12-25) begins the story with triumphant callings in Capernaum, quoting Isaiah and stirring up the hope of a new kingdom coming. He practically proclaims, "Let there be light!" in the same spirit of creation. He hooks a few fishermen in the next chapter with the promise of revolution, a brawl that rugged fishermen would be willing to drop their livelihoods for ("fishers of men" didn't mean what it does to us today). The narrative then moves into a sweeping epic of ministry to great crowds from cities and regions throughout Palestine. Epic.
Since high school and on through college, the call to the city bothered me. You see, I'm a product of the suburbs. For a young, wide-eyed teen looking to make a "difference," the prospects of urban ministry are no less revolutionary and aspiring as Jesus' original call. I worked with urban ministries throughout high school, college, but always at a safe distance: the kind that allowed you a few hours to a few weeks in the inner-city at a time before returning to the comforts of a home or campus in the burbs.
Now, years later, I'm working out my original desires at Wesley Theological Seminary in their new Urban Fellows program. I discovered the possibility an ocean away in China. After college I had put the idea of urban ministry on hold for international teaching and development. Here was that old call dressed up in a new, experimental program that sought a praxis engagement of urban DC, the very city I first felt the tugs of God's alluring whispers. With my wife and I set to return to the DC area, I signed up hoping this seminary and program would be the opportunity to bring together my fractured experiences from youth to today. I wonder if the disciples felt the same tensions and opportunities when they heard Jesus' words? Epic.
Luke (4:14-5:17) gives us a less rosy perspective on the call. Jesus' initial message given to town fellows in Nazareth produced the particular response of riot. The calling of the fishermen by the sea accompanied with the inner conflict of a man ashamed. Before the great crowds gathered on the plains to hear the words of the teacher, a long list of healings, controversies, and conflict had already taken place. Luke paints a journey that, though epic, is fleshed out in the realities of the world's religious, economic, and social systems.
As I complete my first semester of work with the Urban Fellows program, I'm realizing the messiness of the process ahead. In the wholeness of life, the calling to urban ministry is not all consuming. I have to work out the tensions of family life, friendships, and work. I've learned that in order to embody the Gospel, there is a lot of red tape to move through, a lot of study and consideration to be fleshed out in the both typical norms and sweeping changes of downtown DC. It has only been one semester. There are many more to come. I'm getting prepared for a little controversy, a little conflict, and hopefully, a little healing as well.
What's my narrative for my Urban Fellows journey? For now, it is the gospels themselves. The story of a rag tag band of men, tricked into following a ring leader full of dreams that, once revealed, seemed less and less like what they had in mind. Following Matthew's epic beginning comes the Sermon on the Mount, a message barely conceivable in the mind and heart much less in action. Where is the place for meekness and peacemaking in revolution? This Kingdom of Heaven is ideal beyond ideal, unrealistic to the core. Likewise, Luke's Sermon on the Plain is a challenge to the high and low to, a great balancing of fates requiring great love and great sacrifice, speaking into the very conflicts that had taken place before.
I believe Jesus' life spoke into the heart of the urban context of his time. As I follow the stories of his followers from a seaside call along the Galilee to a great journey across the Mediterranean to the center of imperial power, I likewise find my own journey from suburban Maryland to China and back. My life, thus far, has been an eclectic mix of experiences and ideas. As the disciples worked out their hopes and visions in conversation with the life of Christ laid out before them, so shall I in my studies at Wesley, DC, Baltimore, and beyond. I believe Christ will reconcile the great diversity at work within and around me during my Urban Fellows engagement. Along the way he'll challenge me with realities and ideals I've never considered or had to face, the same way his own disciples had to process it. These next few years will be anything but planned, smooth, and clear. Maybe... they'll be epic.
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