A New Vocation
It is important for us to realize that when Jesus says, “It is accomplished” (John 19:30), he does not simply mean, “I have done all the things I wanted to do.” He also means, “I have allowed things to be done to me that needed to be done to me in order for me to fulfill my vocation.” Jesus does not fulfill his vocation in action only, but also in passion.
– Henri Nouwen
I still remember the first sentinel lymph node biopsy I saw as a third-year medical student. I hadn’t been lucky enough to scrub in, so I stood peering over the attending’s shoulder as he grilled me endlessly with questions that seemed like cruel attempts to shame me before the entire room, but which were in reality so textbook that I was able to rattle off all the answers from the handbook I had just skimmed before stepping into the room (the book, Surgical Recall, was still stuffed into my back scrub pocket at the time, and included questions like: how can the long thoracic and thoracodorsal nerves be identified during an axillary dissection? How is the sentinel lymph node found?).
I have only the vaguest recollection of the surgical field—blue dye shot through yellowish, lumpy breast tissue—and I recall nothing of the patient herself. I was more concerned with making a good impression, with ascending the ranks of medical hierarchy in the most prestigious institutions. And so I did, up from student to intern to resident to fellow to attending, from Harvard to Hopkins, until I was the one making the cuts and calling the shots. Until I was the one grilling the students and telling them what to do.
How strange, then, that in two days I’ll be the patient being wheeled into an operating room to have the very procedure I watched so casually long ago. It happened in the blink of an eye—a picture was taken, a diagnosis made, and for the past three months my body has become the object upon which things are done, biopsies and injections and surgeries. My job now is not to make the cut, but to allow it. Not to act, but to be acted upon. Not to have control, but to cede it.
In our world, value is found in doing, and my early forties found me at the height of that doing—busy clinics; bustling kids to various schools, practices and lessons; taking seminary classes and preparing sermons. I ruled the operating theater of my life. But all that’s grinding to a halt. What does it mean, I wonder, to exist with purpose in a place where you can no longer do things? Where all sorts of people are now doing things to you over which you have no control?
In his book The Stature of Waiting, British author V. H. Vanstone points out the significance of the moment when Jesus is “handed over” by Judas to the authorities. Before that moment, Jesus is the active subject of his ministry, constantly moving, instigating and intervening and determining events. But once he is handed over by Judas, everything changes—he’s being arrested, led to tribunals, crowned with thorns, nailed on a cross. He remains the focus of the story, but his centrality is not that of being a subject of activity but an object of it. He becomes the bearer and recipient of events, the one to whom things are done. This, Vanstone points out, is the real meaning of the word “passion”—not necessarily to suffer, but “to be done to,” “to be affected,” “to have something happen to one.” When Jesus is handed over, the point is not so much that he passes from pleasure to pain: the point is that he passes from doing to receiving what others do to him, from working to waiting. He enters a state of dependence and exposure. That is what it means to pass from action to passion.
Most of us would say that such a change is to move from success to failure, from gain to loss: but reading the gospels, you don’t get that sense at all. In fact, the passion of Jesus is the climax of the story, the means through which he accomplishes his work, achieves his glory, and manifests his divinity. It is not the loss of his vocation but the key to its fulfillment.
And so for us: our vocation as human beings is fulfilled not just in our actions but also in our passion. My life is not any less meaningful now that I’m the one lying on the stretcher instead of standing over it. My purpose is not lessened: just different. And this feels like a kind of relearning. I am good at producing answers under pressure, at moving efficiently from one task to another—but now I must learn how to wait without answers. How to surrender control. How to endure pain. How to ask for help.
And more: how to leave things undone. How to let people in. How to receive even if I can’t give anything back. How to be unable to plan. How to face loss.
This is not the story I would have written for myself. And I’m sure Jesus’ passion was not the story any of his disciples would have written either—they wanted a political and military hero, not their beloved teacher led without a word like a helpless lamb to slaughter. But isn’t it true that this is how I most know God loves me? That he allowed these things to be done to him? Isn’t this how the mysterious resurrection life breaks through? The passion is not merely the thing to be gotten through until the good stuff happens at the end. It is our very window into the glorious love and life of Jesus.
This morning, I walked our younger son to school late after a dentist appointment. “You know you don’t have to walk me in, Mom,” he said. “I won’t be able to do it after the surgery for a bit,” I replied, taking his hand in mine, “so it’s kind of nice to do it now.” “Oh yeah, your surgery’s in two days. Are you worried?” he asked. “Mm, I don’t know if I’m worried,” I say slowly. “I know it has to happen.” “Well, I would be worried,” he said, but he said it in a reassuring way, in a way that said, it’s okay if you don’t feel great about it. Yeah, I thought. I don’t feel great about it. If I had the power to heal myself without facing another needle, I would. And there in the sunny morning light, I thought of what Jesus whispered in sweat and blood and the lonely darkness: not my will, but yours be done. Before Judas ever handed him over, the movement from action to passion had already begun. And we walked the rest of the way to the school office in silence, hand-in-hand.
