On Leaving Home: Confessions of a Rich Young Ruler
“Surpriiiiiise!”
A large stuffed bunny clad in polka dots plops into my lap, hand delivered by my little niece who is hurrying to make my big day as special as she possibly can. A toddler, but a self-assured one. She has taken charge of tonight’s festivities and is coordinating all the details. Meticulous glee. She’s focused.
At only two years old, she understands: birthdays are sacred in our family. So, polka dotted bunny in place, she scurries back around the corner to find “just one more little, tiny present.” Her playful voice hushes as she rummages around the sitting room next to me, then loudens again:
“No peeking, Jonny!”
I bury my eyes in my hands, but after 31 years on this earth I’ve learned a trick. In situations like these, a nimble person can carefully widen the gap between your middle and ring fingers and, if you’re quick, sneak a few forbidden peeks while avoiding detection. I risk the rebellion, and peek to watch her little golden ringlets of hair swinging and bouncing as she dips and searches under plaid chairs and an old wooden piano stool for my next present. Nine seconds later she bounds around the corner again with all the enthusiasm but only half the dexterity of Tigger,
“Surpriiiiiiiiiise!”
Goodness, it’s another bunny. Smaller, porcelain, painted green and yellow — a piece still left out from my mother’s Easter decorations that haven’t quite come down. I unbury my eyes and release elation: “Ohh Reesey, Jonny loves this one!! THANK YOUUUUU!” I add this bunny to all the other bunnies of different shapes and sizes I’ve been given in the last 12 minutes. I am surrounded now by a sea of misfit gifts, each burglarized from a nearby room and promptly delivered to me by the little golden-headed party planner. There are baskets and board games and balls and crayons and all manner of crumpled things in my lap and around my feet.
Today is not my birthday, of course. August 27th is still three months away, but who’s counting? Reese has deemed it a good day for a birthday, and so it is. Besides, I am, under strict orders, currently sitting in my family’s ceremonial comfy birthday chair.
My sweet tooth suddenly wakes, and I play for the switch from presents to treats.
“Reesey, can Uncle Jonny pleeeease have some cake now???”
The party planner approves. Reese jets around the opposite corner. She returns with a massive cake on an ornate platter. She sits it in my lap atop a few jostled presents. There are candles to blow out before we cut into it, so I ask if I might hear the birthday song from her so we can get to the sweet stuff:
“Haaaappy birthday hmm hmmm….”
This is as much of the song as she has time for apparently, so I blow out my candles, and Reese makes quick work of the cutting. “Cut, cut, cut.” She is fearfully fast, but when your cake is invisible, concern for a big birthday mess is much diminished.
“This cake is so yummy, Reesey. Oh my GOODNESS,” I say twirling my make-believe fork.
Through foggy pink wraparound glasses, her eyes find mine and she smiles, a big stripe of imaginary yellow icing riding up to her nose.
“Are there brownies too? And donuts?”
To my delight, there are. Reese has outdone herself. This party was clearly in the works for whole minutes before I walked in the living room, probably. How else could she have amassed this many presents? This much dessert? This much pomp and circumstance?
And they say the perfect birthday party doesn’t exist, I begin to joke with myself when a wave of emotion interrupts. Too fast, a throbbing of soul takes over, and tears water my eyes.
I draw a stabilizing breath, fighting them back.
“Surpriiiiiiiiiiiiiise!”
Goodness, my birthday basket can hardly accommodate another gift, but Reese’s conception of “just one more little, tiny present” is apparently less literal than mine. This is perhaps the tenth “one more” gift I’ve gotten. And the nearby sitting room doesn’t seem to be running low on rummageable knickknacks, even if my lap is running out of real estate.
How, Father? How can someone leave this?
A swarm of reluctance rushes like blood to my head. After a year of preparing and biding our time, the transition from family and home to a mission field is upon me and my wife. Ten days from now, we drive away.
How restless is your timing. How unpleasantly prompt your call. Could you not slow the clock a month more? Two? There are birthdays, real ones, I’m going to miss if we leave now.
Apparently Christ has missed what my two-year-old niece has not: Campbell family party business is nothing to shrug at. Birthdays are sacred.
Through the happy clamor of my make-believe party, I now hear the living room clock thudding with cruel rhythm. It spins all this time. All these moments, come and now gone, it spins and spins away, doing its job objectively, facelessly. The clock means no offense as it winds life into memory, joy into nostalgia. It only reminds me that what I have now in my hands is the very thing I prayed for: a chance to find out that Christ surpasses all treasure by laying all treasure down at his feet.
How our most beautiful prayers do produce the most pain in the end.
12 years ago, when I met you Jesus, I told you I was ready to sign up for what my cultural Christianity had hidden from me and from so many others for so long. I wanted You: the Person and the Mission. I was ready to add the Lord to the Savior. Ready to discover the beauty behind all those heroic things Paul and the faith heroes say. That to live is Christ, and to die is gain. That to tell you, “here am I, send me,” is the chief expression of obedient love. An obedience and a life we are all invited to.
But did I know then that it would mean leaving home? Did I know then that your timing would interrupt a sacred birthday schedule? Did I know then that, when it comes to resurrection fruit, growing involves dying, and death precedes living.
Now that I’ve come to it, I know my youth was doing the praying back then. It was young love, romanticized; young foolishness, enflamed in heartfelt passion. How I wanted to be reckless for you. How I prized the idea of abandon. How I spoke up about it in group texts and group gatherings. How I ate the popular attention it garnered for me from those I wanted to impress.
Tonight, I see those young prayers more honestly. Now, I confess dear God, the sweet voice of my golden-headed niece has exposed me for the weakling I am. A poorly scheduled yet masterfully executed surprise birthday party has revealed the fool hiding behind the grad student. The coward behind the missionary.
12 years of following you later, Jesus, and perhaps I am really still a boy. Like that rich, boyish ruler who couldn’t stomach what it takes to go after you and walked away from your invitation forlorn. Can I pretend to be otherwise? Do you not see me clearly, naked, behind the self-image I have curated for others to look at? Here, in my calling moment, I see you standing beyond the borders of my security, my comfort. There you are on the shore. Before me is the water, in my hands are the fishing nets of all I’ve ever known, and in my throbbing heart is the decision I asked through years of young prayer for an opportunity to make. An opportunity to leap out of my father’s boat, follow you to the end of myself, and learn your trade from you.
12 years of following you later, Jesus, and I no longer care to pray beautiful prayers. In the face of calling, youthful flame is reduced to flicker. In the face of cost, rich men do so struggle to pay. I can now only voice the honest confession I have found here at the end of myself.
Perhaps I am still a boy who would rather stay home and attend birthday parties. Perhaps I am just a human who wishes time would stop passing so fast.
But Jesus, you know something of haste and sacrifice, do you not?
I see you now in Cana. You the wedding goer, like me the birthday attender. Time came for you when it shouldn’t have, pulling you from the joy and ease of anonymity into the hard current of calling. And you faced it. The eternal One handed himself over to the thudding, cruel rhythm of eternity’s pace which had now come to lead a lamb to slaughter.
You stood that day, helped your mother, trusting your Father, and refilled the wine vessels of those needing your obedience. To the bitter end of yourself, you did what I struggle to do tonight from this comfy birthday chair. You allowed timing to invade a sacred party and pull you toward greater glory. You gave Cana for Gethsemane, Galilee for Golgotha.
Now, in view of you, my Lord, I pray only an ugly, unsophisticated prayer, desperately:
Will you help me leave this party?
Will you help me leave where and what and whom I love?
Will you help me step into the wildlands beyond my heart’s borders?
Will you help me die?
Take this rich man and make him poor. I do still so crave your resurrection life.
When the rich young ruler heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
…Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus replied,
“What is impossible with men is possible with God.”
