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When God Has His Way

The Bible is littered with them: Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, Isaiah. They are people with greatness in them but who can’t see it. Gideon does not recognize the divine portrait of him: “mighty man of valor.” The reluctance of Moses goes far beyond modesty—he is insistent that he is absolutely not the man for the job. The refusal of the call takes place at the point where there is a jarring dissonance between heaven and earth, a clash of perspectives, a collision of narratives. Trouble is, there is one party to the argument that won’t back down. God has never been known to agree to disagree. He is not interested in managing such conflicts towards a mutually agreeable outcome. Or is he?

Perhaps the most celebrated biblical instance of a reluctant recipient of a heavenly summons is Moses. He stands out because he objects to God calling him, not with a single voicing of self-doubt (as in Jeremiah, for instance), but in a succession of five increasingly strident objections. The ludicrous act of trying five times to refuse God is so striking that many Old Testament scholars have put this multiple objection down to the existence of a number of different source documents that are here rather clumsily sewn together resulting in needless repetition. But this negotiation with God is, of course, something that proves entirely characteristic of Moses later on. In Exodus 33–34, Moses is seen bargaining with God in four successive waves, each one succeeding in some way until God, who at the start of the bargaining was ready to destroy Israel and start all over again with Moses, promises first to relent, then to send an angel, then his own presence, and finally to reveal more about this “I AM” name that he gave at the burning bush. It is as though, on that later occasion, Moses wins. But here, on this first encounter with, God must triumph over Moses. Even here, however, there are some gains for Moses:

Moses says, “Who am I to be doing this?” God says, “I will be with you.”

Moses says, “What will I say when they say ‘who sent you?’” Moses says, “Say I AM has sent you.”

Moses says, “But supposing they don’t believe me?” God says, “I will give you these signs.”

Moses says, “But I’m slow of speech (literally ‘heavy of mouth’), God says, “I will be with your mouth.”

Moses says, “Nope. Send someone else.” Angry, God says, “I am sending Aaron to be your spokesman.”

Moses walks away from the encounter with the promise of God’s presence to be with him and help him speak, with the beginnings of a revelation of the name and nature God, the ability to work miraculous signs and the assistance of his brother Aaron. Reluctant he may be, timid he is not. The shoulders of God, it seems, are broad enough for honest doubts and objections, even if these are strident and insistent.

History is a tale of human reluctance to answer God’s call, and God’s determination to draw out the right answer from us. The story of many a great saint follows this pattern, perhaps none more so than in the case of Italian born St Bonaventure (1221–1274). At heart he was the simple Franciscan friar who wanted nothing more than a life of simple devotion. The Vatican had other ideas—and so, perhaps, had God. He rose to become a colleague of the great St Thomas Aquinas, Minister General of his order, spiritual director for the king’s sister, and, at the age of 44, was elected to the position of Archbishop of York. This last position was too great an honor for him to accept. Butler’s Lives of the Saints informs us of the tears with which he begged to be released from such a dignity, and was duly allowed to resign a year later. Having escaped this appointment, he was then offered the position of Cardinal by Pope Gregory X, at which point he ran away. He was then summoned to Rome but stopped at a Franciscan convent in Florence along the way. Two messengers from the Pope found him there doing the washing up. They presented him with the Cardinal’s hat. He looked at it with dread. His response was, (something like), “Can you just hang it on that bush over there until I’ve finished all my duties. Thanks.” With great sadness, he eventually donned the hat and came to Rome to become the Pope’s right hand man. His first achievement was at the Council of Lyon where he was instrumental in bringing about a union, albeit temporary, between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Sadly he died before the Council was over.

If harnessed in the right way, this natural reluctance that most of us feel when sensing the call can be an important time of counting the cost. We feel that the call is to be something greater than seems possible, or nobler than seems fitting. We cannot bear it. Yet if this agony is faced, and we surrender our will to God’s, power will come.

It was about 2am and some Passover pilgrims were already making their way to the magnificent temple, not wanting to miss a moment of the awe and celebration that filled the atmosphere. But just across the valley, surrounded by olive trees and bent over a rock was a man sweating blood.15 He was about to face his greatest trial of strength and prayed, “Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” Every moment spent at the threshold of an ordeal is a moment spent in Gethsemane. The encounter, if it is to conclude well, must finish with, “Your will be done.”