My friend Max and I were talking last week about calling and ministry and what practical steps to take if, in his case, he were to pursue music. I kept finding myself veering away from the mechanics of the question and steering toward heart matters. Maybe that’s because I’m not the most pragmatically-minded person on the planet, I’m more of an intuitive, play-it-by-ear person? I do believe very much in wisdom which means we should, “get good information, in order to make good decisions,” and I believe that we are persons, not machines, so the nature of knowing for a person entails more than raw facts. 

Humans live both as and in stories. That means that we need more than a set of rules to get us where we’re going, we need to be listeners to the Great Tale and learners who are ever becoming more developed as characters in that story. 

One phrase that helped me hang on to this idea as Max and I were talking shows up in several places across Scripture, for instance, in Psalm 118:14; the phrase is “The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.”  “He has become my salvation.” Salvation isn’t something Jesus has; he didn’t stop by the grocery store and pick up bread and a bottle of wine on the way over; no, the bread he gives is his own body, and the wine his own blood. Salvation is not something Jesus has – salvation is something Jesus is.  

That begins to make sense of the Christian claim to the exclusivity of Jesus as the only way to God, the way of salvation; because Christianity has always taught that salvation is not a thing like a teaching, or a set of procedures, or a philosophy, or a set of rules that Jesus has access to (something that presumably some one else also has equal access to), but rather that Jesus himself is our salvation. Because Jesus is the maker of all things, no one else is in a position to make all things new. Because all that exists borrows its being from Jesus, only Jesus can supply the sap the branches need to flourish and bear fruit. 

It’s not a case of “we like our guy better than your guy – rah rah Jesus!”  Jesus isn’t speaking figuratively when he says that he’s the only way to the Father; he’s being literal. He’s not being self-centered, he’s clearing up a point about the nature of reality; any other god, any other way, simply isn’t real. To stress the point again, he’s not competing alongside other gods or ways, he’s saying there is no competition because those other gods and ways don’t actually exist. He is God; the bridges are out at the end of every other road. He is God; any other foundation is quicksand. This is a case of the fundamental reality that reality itself “lives, and moves, and has its being” in Jesus, the uncreated, eternal Son of the Father, who himself invented humans long before he ever became one.

E.L. Mascall makes an interesting point about the Incarnation at Bethlehem. He says that in the case of every other human ever born the person and their body came into being simultaneously. But, not with Jesus. With Jesus, the Person had always existed, but at a certain historical moment in earthly time, in a specific town, that ever-existing Person knit himself to a human body for the first time and ever after.  

For now, the reason I bring up all that about Jesus being the only way is really just to point out how it eases the burden on me personally.  I mean, if Jesus is the pattern we follow, then I find myself asking the question: “What does it mean for me to make the Gospel available with my life?” And the relief comes from the fact that, since Jesus is the Good News, that I’m being called primarily to be someone more than to accomplish some kind of task. Abiding in Jesus is the most important thing. 

I have a habit of thinking in terms of skills, gifting, and abilities – what is it that I can do for God? What thing can I bring to the equation? Of course, it’s true that we have gifts and so on that are given to be put to work in this world to manifest God’s way of life here on earth as it is in heaven. Still, in Romans 5, Paul says, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”  The conversation my friend Max and I had, turned out to be about becoming the kind of person who loves what God loves and does the kinds of things God does.  

My understanding of the concept of “anointing” is that, when God calls someone to serve in a particular way, he supplies what that person will need to get the job done. “Go plant an orchard, here are seeds, soil, water, and time – you’ve got hands and a brain, go for it. Bear good fruit.”  At Jesus’s baptism, which is his commissioning ceremony as he launches into his public ministry, he’s anointed with the Holy Spirit and ratified by the voice of his Father. Now, he’s got what he needs to do what he’s been called to do. But remember, what he’s been called to do it not just pick up bread and wine at the store; he’s been called to become our salvation.  

Likewise, as we are sent out, whatever ministry we offer will flow more from who we are in Christ, than what we can do and how well we can do it. Our fruitfulness will emerge more from things like listening well, learning to discern and love truth, being a good friend, patience, generosity, courage, purity, and so forth, more than from networking, diplomas, business assets, charm, beauty or even gifting. I think Paul is getting at this in 1 Corinthians 13 when he says who gives a flip if you can speak in angel-tongues, throw money at the poor, fling mountains around by faith, or know all there is to know – all that is fruitless if I’m not a person whose character is marked by Christ-defined love. 

We certainly do not “become salvation” for others, there’s only one Jesus. But we have been incorporated into Christ as members of his Body, and we’ve been anointed. Jesus’s title “the Christ” means the Anointed One, and we are Christians, which means “little anointed ones.” Jesus has become our salvation; he doesn’t give us some thing that can save us, he gives us himself. Funny enough, when we give ourselves to him, he gives back to us, not just gifts and abilities, but more importantly, he gives us our true selves. We are written back into the Great Tale, where we become living characters through whom the Story continues to be written and realized. 

Our calling in this world, as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, is that each of us might “act in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is – Christ”.   Or, as Henri Nouwen reminds us, “We are not what we do, we are not what we have, we are not what others think of us. Coming home is claiming the truth. I am the beloved child of a loving creator.”  

We are not gears in a machine, mere employees – that way of seeing ourselves grinds against an imagination informed by the biblical story which says we are beloved children in a family. We are ones who belong to a membership like the varied and precious parts of a beautiful human body. We are not the sum of our accomplishments, credentials, capabilities, or popularity. That kind of ladder-climbing is exhausting, and as a thing to be esteemed is foreign to scripture whose Lord Jesus was economically, socially, racially, and politically a failure.  

We are people, and our salvation is a Person who makes us truly human again. Like Mary who neglected Martha’s kitchen to sit at the feet of Jesus, the best way to set the table for the ones we love is to become like our Lord, knowing and being known, loving and being loved by him, learning to lay down our lives like our friend has for us. And when the branch is drawing life from the Vine, all its being and gifts filling with the Sap of the Holy Spirit, it will bear good fruit for others to taste and see how good the Lord really is. 

Lord Jesus, nothing matters more than turning our faces to your face to see the way you look at us with love and to accept your invitation to abide with you. Nothing matters more than opening our ears to your voice and listening to you say our true names, teaching us what is real and true. Holy Spirit help us, in the midst of our restlessness, to rest at our Lord’s feet and be content, and from that place of abiding to become characters who live the Father’s story in this world He so deeply loved that he would send his only Son, who through his life, death, and resurrection has become our salvation. Amen.