Excellence with Humility

By David Williamson.

It has been a few years now, but have a lasting and profound image of Stephen Clapp, then dean of the Juilliard School, performing a solo in the middle of a communion service I was leading. Simply standing from where he had been seated, near the back of the worshiping group gathered for participation in the Lord’s Supper, he offered his solo on a violin from the Juilliard vault – perhaps a priceless Stradivarius.

Stephen stood and played this famous violin as a member of the worshipping congregation, not as a featured performer. The Lord’s Supper was the featured event, and Stephen did not want to distract worshippers from that experience. It was and continues to be a vivid picture.

It illustrates a key aspect of excellence in all vocations, one that applies in workplaces and churches alike: Excellence offered from a place or position of humility.

Accompanying Stephen that day was one of his students, Christopher Weldon, a recent Juilliard grad and a gifted piano player, with an international competition award in his portfolio. Two “world class” performers and a “world class” instrument were among the congregants offering their gifts to the worship of God. The person leading the service that morning was me, offering my position and training and certification as a “pastor.” All of us are ultimately ordinary people who offer up our gifts together, in every context, to God.

It was a unforgettable picture of God’s call to me to offer my gifts to facilitate the receiving of the extraordinary gift off God’s unique, personalized love. I can participate in the most extraordinary gift of the Lord’s broken body and poured-out blood for the ordinary, and of course in their own way extraordinary, people of God.

Few of us have the capacity for the technical excellence achieved by Stephen and Christopher, but we are all called to offer what we have, and to receive the gifts of God given for the people of God. We offer our particular gifts, not calling attention to ourselves, but offering them because they are what we have.

We offer whatever we have because we are really offering our very selves to God.

The common criminal on Rome’s cross offered to Jesus what he had. It was no more than the confession of his mouth. At that point he had lost literally everything else (by his own fault, as he admitted).

Christ gave himself for, and to, each of us ordinary folks.