Sometimes when we ask the big questions of life all we get as an answer is thundering silence. But on occasion, we get an answer we understand. That’s what happened to me about ten years ago. And, nothing has been the same since. I grew up in church, actually, a lot of churches. Which means there is never a time I can’t remember sitting in a pew, singing a hymn, or listening to a Bible story. Church just seemed natural, not strange and off-putting as some people describe it.
As the years led me to adulthood I still stayed in the church, but there was one question that seemed never to get a settled answer. Should I teach or should I preach? In other words, should I pursue an academic career and teach in colleges, universities and seminaries. Or should I seek to become a priest and serve as a pastor of a parish. Both were appealing (and my academic background shows how I ping-ponged between these two options). Every time I would ask the question “What should I do?”, all I got in reply was thundering silence (and God and I had been on pretty good speaking terms for quite a long time by then).
Summers in Northern California are spectacular. The last drop of rain falls the first of May and for five long months summer unwraps itself with one blue-skied day after another. Out west people don’t go far for vacation once summer arrives. Instead they head to the coast and ramble along Highway 1 catching one vista after another. Or they head to the mountains and roller coaster their way to Yosemite or Shasta.
In the summer of 1994 I decided to ramble and headed north to Patrick Point on the Oregon border. As I drove the Big Question was rambling along with me. It was a juncture in my life and was considering a Ph.D. and a career in academics. But I felt the pull of the church. I’d been living a bit in both worlds for the last nine years as I divided my time between serving as pastor of a small church, teaching at a local community college, and working in a psychiatric hospital.
My life was full and I enjoyed all the variety. But a decision was looming. After all, very few people can pursue two careers simultaneously. And I was certainly not one of them. After a day hiking the trails and enjoying the beach I climbed to the top of the cliff to watch the sunset.
As I watched the sea melt into night a bigger question than the big question I’d been asking plopped right into my head. It was one of those questions that I’d never ask, never even considered. And, I wasn’t asking it now. Someone else was. God was. I still remember the question. I still feel the question. “What do you want to say about your life at the end of your life?” That’s it. That was the question.
No sooner was it asked than the answer shot up inside of me: “That I was a pastor.” That’s it. I had the "answer" all along. It was the "question" I had wrong. And it took God asking the right question for the answer that was already there to be heard. Whether at the end of my life I will have been a good pastor or a capable priest others will have to decide. For me, it will be enough to be able to say, “I was a pastor.”
