Hearing Anew the Call to Communion with the Caller

By Joe S

“Jesus entered into that prayer to be completely absorbed in that intimacy that gives him this total sense of belonging, this total sense of safety, this total sense of ‘at-homeness.’ And I say this to you, because I am more convinced than ever, that you and I are called to communion. And it is only to the degree that you taste that communion that you will ever be able to enter into the complexity of a human society, without becoming a manipulative and violent person.”

Henri Nouwen

These words from the first week of 2HC’s seventh station landed on me very heavily. Nouwen was right. Community and Mission had to flow out of Communion. But I realized in a coaching call and in my spiritual direction times that I was not feeling that communion. And I had seen the fruit of this in the way I saw the world and was inclined to relate to others.

Manipulation and violence were harsh words. But they were accurate for the danger I sensed as my communion with the Lord failed to reach the depth I once knew. So as I responded first with tears, I then asked the Lord to give this kind of communion to me. I longed for it, but I didn’t taste it yet. 

Much of this had to do with the series of losses we had experienced over the past 20 months.

We lost our home in Central Asia, and because of the way the chaos of war displaces peoples, we lost almost all of our friends. With the loss of these things, I was grappling with what it meant to be called by God for the work we thought we were supposed to do. After living under security threats for 15 years I was drained. And having had most of my friends displaced or disappointed by their new reality after 20 years of war, I was questioning the worth of all that sacrifice. “Calling” had started to lodge in my heart as a term to describe self-destruction for God’s purposes.

The 2HC process has been helpful for engaging these heart responses. Part of that process was for my wife and me to do deep level discernment for our next steps as a family. While in the midst of that process, I sensed clearly that I needed to take an extended time away at a retreat center in Virginia run by some colleagues of ours. So, with my wife’s support, I reached out to them and booked tickets for the trip. 

Part of the grounds where Joe spent time on retreat

While there, I was able to process more of the grief I had at the loss of my local friends, particularly for some betrayals I had experienced. I used the practice of lament to process this. I experienced some relief from the anger and grief I was feeling. But then a couple of days later, the real impact came. Spontaneously, I sat down with one of my hosts for lunch. The day before, he had asked me about calling and I told him how I felt about the term these days after the trauma I’d experienced. So as lunch drew to an end, I asked him about his calling. 

Now, this man had been a pioneer for the very work that we had done in our ministry. He was the catalyst for work among the people group we sought to reach and in the country where we sought to reach them. So I wasn’t surprised when he started off by saying, “When I was younger, I would have said my calling was to tell Muslims about Jesus, particularly the people group you and I served.” But it was his next sentence that has got me thinking since the words exited his mouth: “The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that my calling is the Caller. I just want deeper communion with Jesus.” 

I teared up as he said this. Of all people, I expected him to urge me towards that initial calling, to get back in the game, to keep working at the things he had catalyzed in the 80s. But no. He didn’t. He said to pursue the Caller. That was the key objective.

During the week of my retreat, I had also been reading the Gospel of John. I had just read John 4 and 5. After lunch, I went off to pray and reflect and the Lord spoke to me again through those passages. I noticed that in both stories, one of the Samaritan woman (John 4) and one of the lame man (John 5), each person encounters Jesus but offers logistical excuses that guard them from engaging him directly. The Samaritan woman is worried about well-drawing utensils. The lame man, after being offered Jesus’ most provocative question (“What do you want?), describes his decades-long struggle with speedy movement. But in both cases, the answer they long for, the “gift” as Jesus puts it, stands before them, offering himself. 

As the days of my retreat drew to a close, I started to experiment again with the apophatic and kataphatic traditions of prayer we explored in Station 3. Mostly, I just sat silently in Jesus’ presence. As I did so, he started to open up my heart-- all the fears, anger, disappointments-- and I started to experience a sense of joy and delight from him that I had not experienced since we returned to the US. I literally started to dance as I felt his presence.

I don’t know how long this experience will last, but I’m grateful for a renewed taste of communion with the Lord. I’ve sensed from the Lord this fundamental invitation: what if every day was just another opportunity to be with Me? 

I’ll close with a poem I wrote in response to this invitation: 

Calling

What if all my life was for this?
I thought I was something significant.
I thought I had an offering to make.
But I see it’s all been invitation.
And every turn another call.
Not to prove or succeed or accomplish.
But a summons to dance.
With you.