I Have No Idea What's Going On: Caleb Adcox
One of the greatest ways The Wesley blesses the students involved in its ministry is by allowing us to participate in the regular worship services. Rather than having one designated person who leads every week, any student who is willing has the opportunity to preach a homily at our Sunday Evening Eucharist Service. Over the past year, I’ve realized God has been calling me into ministry and have begun the process of discerning that vocation. As a part of this discernment process, I have made it a point to take the opportunity to speak at Eucharist as frequently as I have the opportunity to. Although I take great joy in each homily I give, I have found myself to be surprisingly nervous and uncomfortable during my most recent homilies.
This feeling confuses me. It seems that pursuing a vocation in ministry would cause me to feel more comfortable preaching. And yet, it was soon after I accepted this calling that I first noticed this fear. I started to wonder if maybe I was doing something wrong in how I prepared and delivered a homily. There were times I even wondered if I was right about my calling to ministry. Surely, somebody who God has chosen to preach the Gospel to His people would be comfortable doing exactly that.
Not surprisingly, this is not how God does things. At no point in Scripture does God promise us that the things He calls us to will be within our skillset, much less skills we are comfortable using. In fact, God seems to have a pattern of calling people outside of their comfort zones. Time and time again, He seems to overlook the obvious choices and instead choose the people who are the least comfortable, the least confident, and the least able.
As I continue to give homilies, and continue to be very nervous while giving them, I believe I have found two main causes for this nervousness. The first is a sense of unworthiness. By all accounts, it is brazenly presumptuous for anyone to attempt to describe or even to simply speak about God. It is only by His grace that we are allowed to even try, and no words could ever do so sufficiently. The sheer impossibility of a broken creation attempting to speak aptly of its perfect creator should make it impossible to approach such a task without a solemn, dreadful reverence. This is not to say that I dread talking about God, in fact I find great joy in doing so, but the difficulty and importance of the task cannot be understated.
It is in this impossibility, however, that I find the most comfort. I am unable to perform the task set before me, but for this reason the pressure to do so does not fall on me. When I am speaking of God, it is no longer I who am speaking, but God speaking through me. Only by the help of the Holy Spirit can I faithfully speak of God, and only by the same help can those who hear me be built up by what I say. When we allow God to move and speak through us, we become the most full, but it is only by first letting ourselves be emptied of our own thoughts and words that we can be filled.
This emptying is where I feel the most hesitation and resistance to God’s direction. I have placed a significant amount of personal value in my intelligence and ability to present ideas. Often, when writing a homily, my first instinct is to approach it from an intellectual perspective. I write as though my thoughts and interpretations can add meaning and clarity to the scripture, or that I might be able to discover and express a new idea that nobody else has read deeply enough to come across. In my pride, I have deluded myself into thinking that I am something more than a vessel, that my words and thoughts are good enough without God’s guidance. I convince myself that, since the words are coming out of my mouth, I am the driving force behind what is being said.
It is from this pride, this elevation of the importance of my role in preaching the Gospel, that I suffer the most stress. I am burdening myself with the task of putting into words that which cannot be expressed even in thoughts. Of course I will never be satisfied with how I communicate the truths that I am still barely even beginning to conceptualize, much less truly understand. Of course I am afraid to attempt something I have only ever failed to do, because I have yet to accept that it cannot be done by any of us.
It was only after arriving at The Wesley that I began to hear the term “mystery of faith” used, both in liturgy and conversation. This was a term that I initially was uncomfortable with. If we simply define faith as knowing Jesus, it does not make any sense that there would be any element of mystery to what we believe. I was under the impression that growing closer to Jesus consisted primarily of growing in knowledge and understanding. I now realize that, while a closer relationship with Jesus entails some growth in knowledge, that knowledge only exists as a product of our faith, not a metric. Faith is the conviction of things not seen, the trust in things we do not understand. A good, scholarly Christian can get up and talk about the literary elements and historical context, but faith is what says, “I’m not sure how to interpret this part of the passage, but this is what I know to be true.” Faith admits to having no idea what’s going on most of the time, but sees that all things ultimately point back to God’s glory.
None of this is to say that preparation is unnecessary or wrong. Of course, it is wise to study scripture, so that the words you say, whether in front of an entire congregation or in a conversation with one other person, can clearly and accurately reveal a glimpse of God’s love and goodness. But when we deny our limited understanding, we only serve to obstruct this view of God. Instead, it is both despite and through our lack of knowledge that God chooses to make Himself known.
Caleb (right) is a joy to be around. Filled with the Holy Spirit, he is always ready with a dad joke, a smile, or a word of consolation. He’s a junior at LA Tech this year studying Business, as well as a second year member of our Wesley Discipleship Team. We are so blessed to have him!