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Vocational Temptation
By William H. Willimon

Early in my ministry, very early, at what was my first, or perhaps my second, United Methodist Annual Conference, that yearly congregating of clergy that defines our church, I had a memorable conversation with an older, experienced pastor.

"I can tell you're a young man with talent," he said.

I said, "Thanks."

"I can tell you are ambitious," he continued.

I said nothing.

"Let me give you some advice, advice I wish someone had given me when I was your age, just beginning ministry. Buy property at Lake Junaluska.”

"Sir?" I asked, not quite getting his drift.

"Buy property at Lake Junaluska. A lot. Later, you can build a cottage there. Start with the lot."

"But why?" I asked. "I don't really like vacations at Junaluska." Junaluska is our denomination's retreat center, a former campground, now a sort of genteel, religious resort for Methodists. "Three hundred acres without an ashtray," is how some wag described it.

"Think about it," my advisor continued. "Can you name me one man on the Bishop's Cabinet who does not have a cottage at Junaluska? Name me one pastor at a large church who doesn't have property there. I rest my case. Buy a lot at Junaluska."

An anguished decision to enter seminary, a great struggle with my vocation to ministry, three years of seminary, three more of graduate

William H. Willimon, a frequent contributor to THEOLOGY TODAY, is Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University. He has written many books, including a commentary, Acts (1988), and Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized (1992).

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school, and it had all come to this. My life poured out for a ashtrayless cottage at Junaluska.

Mark's good news begins with a terse account of Jesus' baptism (Mark 1:9-15). Jesus stands in the Jordan. A dove descends. There is voice. But then the story takes a typically Markan turn. Immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. Ekballei. It didn't lead, didn't invite. It drove him into the wilderness. Immediately. As Barbara Brown Taylor noted, here is no sweet dove. This Spirit thing has claws, talons. And there, in the wilderness, Jesus is tempted. Other Gospels do this temptation in some detail. Mark says only that Jesus was tempted there, in the wilderness where there were "wild beasts." It is a dark, fierce, enigmatic tale with which to open a Gospel.

I believe that some sort of connection is being made here between baptism, Jesus' call, his vocation, the beginning of his ministry, and temptation, wilderness, and wild beasts. Vocation and temptation are being linked.

And 1, called as I am, get nervous.

I fear it is a parable of ministry. First the call: "Thou art my beloved Son," my instrument of ministry. Then, immediately, driven into the desert where there are wild beasts and fierce temptation.

'Every time I read Mark's temptation tale, I can't get my mind off those wild beasts. "

It's Mark's peculiar touch, these wild beasts. Every time I read Mark's temptation tale, I can't get my mind off those wild beasts. Is not temptation like this-some wild thing waiting to jump us? Cain is warned that, if he does well, fine. But, "Take care, sin is crouching at the door." Sin as the wild beast crouching outside the door.

So should I say to the seminarians whom I teach, You've been called to seminary? Called into the pastoral ministry? Take care, sin is crouching at the door. The beasts. It's a parable of ministry, linked so closely, this vocation and temptation.

We had been buddies in high school. I had not seen him since the time I did a retreat for his church's board of deacons. He was a lay leader in that large congregation. He called saying, "I need to talk. I have no one to talk to. Last week I discovered that our associate pastor has embezzled $20,000 from the church. Yesterday, another associate has revealed that his wife has been having an affair with our senior pastor."

I was shocked, outraged. All right, I was embarrassed by my fellow clergy. Then I felt a deep sense of sadness when this layperson told me, "Here are two men who have been spiritual guides for me, mentors, better people than 1. One explains to me why it was necessary for him to

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steal from the church. Another, tells me why it was OK for him to betray his marriage vows. It does something to a layperson to hear that."

I have now positively identified one of those "wild beasts" with which our Lord had to wrestle. It was named "self-deceit." I am a person of God, I have made great sacrifice to be here. I go about doing so much good for so many. Therefore, the rules are made for lesser mortals, not for me.

Robert Coles spent the summer of 1960 in Mississippi interviewing folk, black and white, caught up in the troubles there. He interviewed a white supremacist named John, spending hours listening to this man who had planned crimes of hate. What made him do it? What made him brag about horrible deeds? What made this apparently rather decent man stoop to such evil?

Coles later wrote in Children of Crisis, "We must all know the animal in us can be elaborately rationalized in a society until an act of murder is called self defense, and dynamited houses become evidence of moral courage." The animal in us, the wild beast in the wilderness.

And I think Mark may be right. Early on, somewhere close to the initiating call, is a time to confront the beasts, to name them in order that you might subdue them. The self-deceit begins in seminary. At this

“At this moment, one thousand books are missing from our seminary's library, taken by budding pastors who have some well-wrought theological rationale for their thievery.”

moment, one thousand books are Missing from our seminary's library, taken by budding pastors who have some well-wrought theological rationale for their thievery. The beasts confront us early on.

Richard Neuhaus tells of overhearing a talk by Saul Alinsky, the great organizer in the 60s, to a group of young Lutheran seminarians. "How many of you want to be a bishop?" Alinsky asked. A couple of hands were raised.

"Go ahead then. That will be all you'll ever be."

Thus, Neuhaus says in a similar vein, that there are few decisions a new ministerial couple can make that are more important than a decision about how much money they need to have in order to be happy. Unless that decision is made, we are in danger of selling our souls for a two-hundred-dollar raise.

We served our first churches near one another. Last year, he was asked to surrender his ministerial credentials after it was revealed that he had an affair with one of his counselees.

I wanted to ask, but didn't know that I wanted to ask, until I wrestled with this parable of Jesus' vocation-temptation-what were the names of the beasts? Tell me. What did they look like? Was it called sex? No. Power? Yes, that's it, wasn't it? Power. We clergy enjoy thinking of

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ourselves as powerless people who are incapable of hurting anyone. The only power left to us in society is personal, that is, sexual. So we make what moves we can. And I ask, not to take some superior stand against my fallen friend, but rather out of pure self-concern. I want to know the name, the face of the beast. I want to know, could your wild beast be mine?

Let this text serve as stark warning to those of us who stand before God's sacrificial altars: There is some kind of connection here between vocation and temptation.

I had a group of students come over to the house for lunch after service this fall. We were sitting on my deck, looking out on fall leaves, eating subs. I know it's going beyond the call of duty to have students over to my house, at my expense, for lunch after church, but I feel it's important for me to relate to them thus. It's all part of being a good pastor.

One student said what an attractive home we had, and I thanked her. Another said the setting, the deck, the trees, were beautiful.

Then one said, "Dr. Willimon, are you bothered, as a preacher, to be living in such a nice home? How have you thought through that?"

And I said, "Now, now I'm remembering why I really didn't want you students snooping around over here!"

Now I remember why I didn't want that vocational Bird, that Heavenly Dove, roosting on my head....

How does the story of Jesus' temptation end? Mark doesn't say, does he? He doesn't say if this contest between Jesus and beasts ended in vocational triumph for Jesus as Jesus shouted, "Begone Satan!" We don't know the end of the story.

Of course, we assume that Jesus did triumph. But Mark doesn't say for sure. Elsewhere, such as at Mark's account of Easter, Mark doesn't say for sure what happened after Easter, either. Maybe this lack of ending is meant to throw the thing back into our laps, to remind us that the story on temptation and ministry is never quite finished for any of us. No pastor sleeps secure, even if you sleep alone. You and I are still busy finishing this story and the head upon which the heavenly dove alights is also the head to be turned by the beasts.