Vulnerability

Vulnerability – for a Business Leaders Seminar on October 19th, 2002

I have a cousin who in his 53 years of living has done what would take most of us, 3 lifetimes to squeeze in.
When we were both 9 years old and went to the EX, he would be the one standing up while riding the Wild Mouse, while I’d be sitting white knuckled in the back seat of the Giant Swan ride. He’d be the one popping wheelies in his bumper car while I’d be crying out for Mom.
In his late teens he raced motorcycles until a near death accident meant he had to shift gears and race cars instead. He raced at Daytona and was one of the first Canadians to be asked to drive for a European Racing Car team in the world’s most renowned endurance race, Le Mans.
He went from there to the family Stock Brokerage business, which gave him time to become President of the Ontario Liberal Party. From there he assumed the top position of a prestigious European Automotive company and then on to be the Chief Financial Officer for 3 different advertising companies. Now he splits his time between Toronto and Vancouver running a company, which manufactures engines for the trucking business. He has had poems published in US literary magazines, released 3 music CD’s of his own compositions and one of his paintings hangs on our living room wall.
But none of the above explains why we are such close friends. If anything, his accomplishments might have been a barrier.
What makes us friends began with a lunch we had 14 years ago. At the time, he was the Chief Financial Officer of a major advertising company. I had booked the lunch in the hope that he might appoint me as the agent for his company’s employee benefits plan. I remember approaching the occasion with some trepidation, especially since the last time we’d spent more than a hour with each other was at the EX when we were nine.
The lunch started with the usual pleasantries but it was evident from his demeanor that something was wrong. I quickly concluded there was no sale to be made and switched gears to ask him how he was doing. 
‘Not good’, he said. He proceeded to tell me how he had been asked by the UK parent of his company to provide a financial statement for the Canadian operation. Prior to sending the report, the CEO and Founder of the company’s Canadian operation asked for a copy. ‘You can’t send this’, his CEO told him after reviewing the figures. ‘I want you to spice up the income figures, which among other things will provide the 2 of us with a healthy bonus.’
My cousin said that he couldn’t do that. The next morning, he was refused entrance into the company. He was simply told that his services would no longer be required. Subsequently he learned that the CEO had revised the financial statement and then sent it to the UK parent company with notice that David had been relieved of his responsibilities because of ‘financial impropriety’.
It was the very day he was barred from entering his company that we were to have lunch. He told me, that typically he would have cancelled, but he needed somebody to talk to. 
I can’t remember saying much – to be honest – other than commend him for his integrity, I didn’t know what to say. I remember that he was really hurting and I felt for him. But in one of his life’s darker moments, a deep friendship was born.
Since then we have become so close, he knows what my faith looks like and I know all the reservations he has about it. I know things about him that very few people know and he likewise of me. Why?
Because of vulnerability. When he was down and falsely accused, he found a hiding place, a person with whom he was safe.  
He once told me that he had learned in competitive racing how the race would start well in advance of the starter’s gun. Every occasion with his fellow racers was an exercise in trying to get under the other’s skin – to find the weak spot on the other and ‘drive the knife in so deep that there was no chance of recovery until the race was over’.
In the sports vernacular it’s called ‘trash talking’ – saying whatever to undermine your opponent – innuendos about one’s mother, one’s spouse, or one’s reputation. It happens in sport and in happens in business. It even happens in churches.
You know the tactics:
Stare down your opponent until he blinks. 
Bear down until they buckle.
Stake your territory no matter who gets in your way.
Wear the t-shirt with the bright red words across your chest: NO FEAR.
Be invincible…have no weak spots, even if you have to fake it.
It means never backing down, even when you’re wrong. Try it in marriage and watch the relationship die. Try it among business partners and quickly lose their trust. Use it to fatten up your bank account and it will dry up your soul. To build your life into an impenetrable fortress, you need a heart of stone. 
But the gift of Christ to us is not a heart of stone, but a heart of flesh … a heart capable of compassion towards the plight of others, regardless of whether friend or foe, ally or competitor.
But who likes to be vulnerable, to have a heart of flesh? It is to be open to attack, to being picked on. It means being susceptible to betrayal and accusation. It means your heart can be wounded; it means pain and hurt, feeling helpless and losing sleep. It means holding back from wanting to strike back and wound as you have been wounded.
But the truth is: in such moments of vulnerability we find the Lord. 
Raise you hand if in your case it was at the end of some great conquest – some successful takeover bid, or the occasion of your being acclaimed the top of your profession, or the day your income doubled, you turned to Christ and said: ‘Lord, I give my life to you!’
No – for most if not for all of us, it is at the opposite end of life’s spectrum that we find Christ…when the marriage fails, the business folds, the cancer is diagnosed, when life reaches a dead end. Why is that? Because the first step into the Christian life begins with: “not my will but yours be done Lord’… a statement we never make when doing our ‘own thing’ is reaping huge rewards.
But the vulnerability is not just on our part, but on Christ’s as well. Had God in Christ not become vulnerable, had not felt pain, had not been tempted, had not endured the failings of others, there is not a person in this room or anywhere else who would know God or know his forgiveness, or his inner peace, or his invincible love. As Isaiah wrote: it is by his wounds that we are healed. 
A dear friend in contrasting the God of the Bible with the God of Islam wrote recently:

But just how great is the Allah of the prophet, Mohammed? Great enough to save man? No, that belittles Allah.  Great enough to love man? No, Allah is above all such emotions. Great enough to be Father? Never! Allah exceeds all such human vocabulary. How then does the Bible reveal a God who is greater than the deity revealed in the Qur’an? It lies in this: only God can become weaker. The Allah who was revealed to Mohammed cannot fathom this…
The truth lies in the humblest paradox. The greatest has become the least.
You, Lord God are greater than the ultimate claims of any rival god since you alone can become lesser, humbler, lower, sacrificial, incognito and little.

When Jesus identified himself in Matthew 11:28 as the ‘one who is gentle and humble in heart’, he defined himself as vulnerable. It was through vulnerability he rescued us and it is through our vulnerability he seeks to rescue others. 
In reflecting on how vulnerability is to influence our lives as leaders, I thought of Jesus’ encounter with the woman in the opening verses of John 8. As I read it, note all the references John makes to Jesus’ posture. Had John not been an apostle, he might have been a playwright, a stage director skilled in the art of defining his characters by the postures they assume on stage. From John’s account:

At dawn Jesus appeared at the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them: ‘If any of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’
Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’
‘No one, sir,’ she said.
Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin’.
John 8:2-11

I don’t think there is a passage in all of scripture that makes so many references to posture. In the context of vulnerability, this is key  - for vulnerability is first of all, a posture one assumes.
The opening verse indicates that as the people gathered around him, Jesus sat down to teach them. His method of teaching was not from the position of being over people. He was ‘on their level’ if not beneath them. Not only should this encourage vertically challenged preachers everywhere, but anyone who seeks to be consoled by his words. He who holds the scepter as Ruler of us all, also held the towel of a servant.
So even when the Pharisees came with their stones and their accusations, Jesus remained seated. His was not a top-down type of authority…it was rather from the ground up… not only beneath his adversaries, but beneath the woman who had been publicly accused. It was from this posture of vulnerability that Jesus not only confronted his enemies, but rescued the woman they’ve condemned.
‘Teacher’, they lord over him, ‘this woman was caught in the act of adultery. Moses says we are to stone such women. Now what do you say?’
Clearly they were baiting him. He was their real target. The real reason they had come with stones was not to stone the woman, but to trap Jesus for teaching something contrary to Moses. If they could prove that, then the Law was clear. Jesus must be stoned for being a false prophet.
Yet Jesus didn’t bite. He didn’t stand up to go ‘toe to toe’ with his adversaries. Instead he bent over to write something on the ground. He retained his vulnerability though his opponents were armed with stones.
But his vulnerability didn’t mean that he had no recourse in the face of their attack. It’s just he had a different kind of arsenal. So when their pestering continued, he slowly straightened himself and countered with a sentence that has worked its way into common usage by both Christian and non-Christian alike: ‘Let the one who is without sin, throw the first stone at her.’
Suddenly every man stood condemned. Were they to throw stones they would first have to take aim at themselves.
But again, notice Jesus’ posture. While his adversaries were wrestling with their consciences as to whether they were guilty or not, Jesus hid his face from them. He again took to writing on the ground. He was not going to add insult to injury. He remained bent over, perfectly positioned should even one of his adversaries ask for forgiveness.
None did. Instead, one by one, they withdrew.
Finally only two remained…Jesus and the woman. What the woman feared would be the sentence of death, had been reduced to a quiet conversation between two accused: one guilty and one innocent, one unfaithful and one true. 
“Has no one condemned you?” he asked her.
“No one, sir”, she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you”, Jesus declared. “Go and sin no more.”
In the woman’s vulnerability compounded by public accusation, guilt and overwhelming shame; she found the man for whom vulnerability was no shame but rather the means by which he rescued her.
So how can we do the same?
From this story, four things come to mind:
Posture
Perception
Time
Arsenal
Posture means we are not to lord over people. Our authority is meant to be from the ground up. We are to be vulnerable, accessible, approachable, and real. We are to serve the ones who serve us. Make the coffee sometime, or do the staff dishes – that kind of thing.
Perception means we are to see those we work with – those we lead – as diverse as we are – some who love sky-diving, some classical music, some jazz festivals at Toronto Island, some who have bickering in-laws and some who have children who don’t get enough of their time. 
But they are also people who like us are inclined to cover who they really are with mascara, or a Hugo Boss business suit, or crude jokes, or a fierce disdain for anything other than business. 
Some of those we work with come with labels: gay, Zen Buddhist, MBA, CEO, philanthropist, entrepreneur… all which can be a barrier to protect the thing most precious: their person – with its unique loves and hungers and yearning for God.  Like all things truly precious and worth safeguarding: it is where they are, as we are, most vulnerable.
Jesus in confronting his accusers was able to get behind the barrier to the spot where they were most vulnerable. But not as an adversary, but as one who really loved them. Had they been willing a deep relationship could have been born.
But they weren’t willing, which eventually left just him and the woman. In what can only be classified as genuine dialogue: he blessed her with forgiveness and the power to leave her life of sin.
If our ministry as Christians is truly to reconcile rather than to condemn, then we will have to give people our time. Jesus to free the woman had to wade through what we in business refer to as ‘time wasters’: interruption, antagonism, confrontation, patient endurance and resolution. It took time…much more than we are accustomed to giving to the people we know, let alone the people we work with.
There is no way to get there without its adversely affecting our other objectives:
The time we spend at work, the income we make, the successes we’d like to achieve.
Finally, we must drop the weapons standard to the world around us: trash-talking, intimidation, faking it and the insistence to be right even when we’re wrong.
Instead we are to rely on other weapons: being truthful; being just and fair; being  alert to what’s really going on; relying not on our own strength but on our weakness through which God shows himself strong.

To close with a story:
Every year, the CRC - an inner city ministry in Regent Park holds their annual Christmas party. It begins with a meal and then a carol sing in the small sanctuary at Regent Park United Church.
Seven years ago, I was asked if I would bring my guitar and play the part of a strolling minstrel. When I got there I was told by the party organizer, Daisy, that to play the part, I would have to dress in an elf suit, which she then gave me. The suit was predominantly green, had curly toes and was girlish enough that the cooking staff whistled at me every time I passed by.
After dinner, while seated in a pew of the church, I could feel someone stroking the back of my neck. I turned around to see a woman with a rather prominent 5 o'clock shadow. She quickly admitted to being a transvestite and I quickly admitted to wishing my wife were here.
During the carol sing, an invitation was given for individuals to come up and share Christmas reflections. One guy came up and shared a poem about the evil of the capitalist machine, a woman followed by singing Ave Maria as though the tune was up for grabs and then the bearded lady behind me got up and read a poem. The poem was very moving - a simple, yet profound expression of gratitude and love for the Christmas gift of God's son. It was also a confession of his inner anguish over not knowing who he was and a strong plea for God's help.
In his vulnerability, my mind saw beyond the transvestite to a man in deep anguish. I have only seen him a couple of times since - but I learned from others that as a child he was repeatedly subject to severe mental and sexual abuse. In his struggles as an adult, he has tried several times to commit suicide.
Had he been the one brought before Jesus - once his accusers had gone – I can only imagine Jesus saying the same words 'neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more'. The One who for our sakes had become vulnerable would have empowered him to leave both the shame and the sin behind.
Incredibly, we are commanded to do the same.