Louise N. Johnson

The Philadelphia Visit

Bible text: I Corinthians 1:26-31

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let no one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Story:

It was in the midst of the heat of a sultry summer evening and a too-swift move that I met my first classmate at seminary. His gruff, odd, old, too-friendly approach confirmed everything I feared about just how strange church people could be. Then I wandered inside to meet two of my new neighbors, who informed me that in the course of a few hours they had become best friends. And then I wasn’t sure whether I was more frightened at the prospect of not fitting in or actually fitting in. I stumbled to my room half-dazed from the heat, unloading my belongings, feeling more confused and fragile than I ever knew I could feel.

While I was pointing mental fingers at the inadequacies of these people I barely knew, the truth of the matter was that I felt like a hoax. The litanies of everything I had done wrong and everything I was not, played in my head like a song that wouldn’t go away. And the counterpoint to this fugue of self-doubt was my doubt about God. I was pretty sure I didn’t believe in either hell or the resurrection and I was really sure that I didn’t like the church at all. I felt foolish and needy and arrogant. And more at home than I ever had before.

Four years, two therapists and a whole lot of angst later, I announced that I was, in fact, not called to ordained ministry. I had loved learning. I had loved the seminary. But I could not see through the hoards of devils that littered the landscape of my growing up and I was convinced that I could not serve a congregation and come out alive. “What will you do while you discern?” the president asked me. He met my blank stare with a suggestion that made about as much sense to me as asking a serial killer to run a gun shop. “Why don’t you work in admissions while you sort things out,” he said.

As it turns out, sometimes blind leading blind is not such a bad way to go. My own struggles with call had created in me a capacity for walking in dark places. I had a knack for sniffing out and ministering to the aches and anxieties of others. And what on the surface of things appeared to me to be the church equivalent of a used-car sales position turned out to be the practice of a profound pastoral ministry.

The rest of the story is that I am an ordained pastor in Christ’s church. I had the great privilege to serve as pastor of Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Spragueville, Iowa – a congregation that loved me through the demons and into being a parish pastor.

At the end of the day, what most people will know about me is that I have had a hand in creating some projects and programs that I pray are to the building up of Christ’s church and that I have ushered in eight years of seminary students. (Pray for the church!) But if I have learned anything about the character of call it is this – that God’s wisdom is foolishness to any but those who are perishing, that in some way or another we are all perishing, and that God can take what is weak, and shameful, and fearful, and low and despised, something like a cross, someone like me, someone like you, and use them as instruments of God’s grace.

Project Connect is an initiative of the Eastern Cluster of Lutheran Seminaries. Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Funded by a generous grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc.