A Lesson About The Redemptive Value of Tending to the Little Things in Life
by Carl Trueman
No doubt my two children would cringe at the title of this short piece. Indeed, I can hear their cries now, ‘Dad, barbers are soooo yesterday. Nobody has one of those anymore. It’s a hair stylist or personal grooming consultant you need today!’ Well, that’s a moot point. Age has certainly reduced my need for anybody other than my wife and a set of electric clippers to address my cranial thatch; and as somebody the wrong side of forty, I quite like to think of myself as ‘sooo yesterday,’ particularly in terms of tastes in rock music, movies, and worship styles. It is, after all, what I am: a yesterday’s man.
The Peter the Barber in the title is, however, even more ‘sooo yesterday’ than I am myself. He was none other than the hairdresser—or personal grooming consultant—of the most famous man in sixteenth-century Europe: Martin Luther. No doubt, there were those who would have paid Master Peter a hefty sum to have been a little more casual with the razor than he was. In fact, had Peter been less competent in his profession, he could certainly have altered the path of European history with the proverbial flick of the wrist.
But Peter’s significance lies not so much in his ability to style hair (contemporary portraits of Luther indicate a better cut than that sported by Donald Trump but nothing as suave as, say, a Clive Owen). No, his significance lay in the fact that he struggled to pray, and one day he shared his problem with his most famous customer. Despite the mountain of work which he typically faced, his most famous customer still found time to go home and write him a treatise on the same.
The incident is instructive for a whole host of reasons. Now I am not of the school that sees the need as constituting the call. Just because somebody approaches me with a problem does not mean that I am called upon to help them solve the problem. In some cases this might actually be a mercy to the one in difficulty: if anyone comes to me with a problem with their computer, car engine, or anything involving mechanical or technological skill, then I need to resist the temptation to help them as their condition at the end of my assistance will be guaranteed to be worse than it was at the start. No, the need does not necessarily constitute the call: that is crucial wisdom for anyone in any kind of leadership position, especially in the church, if they wish to retain their sanity and limit the damage which they do.
Yet the Peter incident reminds us that one key element of Christian leadership is caring about people, even those who might be considered ‘little people’ in the eyes of the world. Peter was a humble barber; he was not even a model citizen; but he was one of Luther’s parishioners, for whose soul Luther was supposed to care. Luther’s response—to write him a special treatise on prayer—speaks volumes of the true heart of a man who really cared for his people. Luther was without doubt one of the busiest and most hard-pressed men in Electoral Saxony at the time, if not in the whole of Europe, and he had a million and one more important duties pressing in on him from all sides; but he found time to write a letter of spiritual counsel to this individual. All of Luther’s learning, all of the things he had done, all of the adulation he received, all of the great and the good who called on him for advice—none of this distracted him from caring for the people in his congregation. Indeed, this is exactly what one would expect from a leader who tried (and on occasion spectacularly failed) to work in accordance with Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor 1 and 2.
To continue, visit http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/34-1/minority-report-a-lesson-from-peter-the-barber/
A Lesson About The Redemptive Value of Tending to the ‘Little ‘ Things in Life
by Carl Trueman
No doubt my two children would cringe at the title of this short piece. Indeed, I can hear their cries now, ‘Dad, barbers are soooo yesterday. Nobody has one of those anymore. It’s a hair stylist or personal grooming consultant you need today!’ Well, that’s a moot point. Age has certainly reduced my need for anybody other than my wife and a set of electric clippers to address my cranial thatch; and as somebody the wrong side of forty, I quite like to think of myself as ‘sooo yesterday,’ particularly in terms of tastes in rock music, movies, and worship styles. It is, after all, what I am: a yesterday’s man.
The Peter the Barber in the title is, however, even more ‘sooo yesterday’ than I am myself. He was none other than the hairdresser—or personal grooming consultant—of the most famous man in sixteenth-century Europe: Martin Luther. No doubt, there were those who would have paid Master Peter a hefty sum to have been a little more casual with the razor than he was. In fact, had Peter been less competent in his profession, he could certainly have altered the path of European history with the proverbial flick of the wrist.
But Peter’s significance lies not so much in his ability to style hair (contemporary portraits of Luther indicate a better cut than that sported by Donald Trump but nothing as suave as, say, a Clive Owen). No, his significance lay in the fact that he struggled to pray, and one day he shared his problem with his most famous customer. Despite the mountain of work which he typically faced, his most famous customer still found time to go home and write him a treatise on the same.
The incident is instructive for a whole host of reasons. Now I am not of the school that sees the need as constituting the call. Just because somebody approaches me with a problem does not mean that I am called upon to help them solve the problem. In some cases this might actually be a mercy to the one in difficulty: if anyone comes to me with a problem with their computer, car engine, or anything involving mechanical or technological skill, then I need to resist the temptation to help them as their condition at the end of my assistance will be guaranteed to be worse than it was at the start. No, the need does not necessarily constitute the call: that is crucial wisdom for anyone in any kind of leadership position, especially in the church, if they wish to retain their sanity and limit the damage which they do.
Yet the Peter incident reminds us that one key element of Christian leadership is caring about people, even those who might be considered ‘little people’ in the eyes of the world. Peter was a humble barber; he was not even a model citizen; but he was one of Luther’s parishioners, for whose soul Luther was supposed to care. Luther’s response—to write him a special treatise on prayer—speaks volumes of the true heart of a man who really cared for his people. Luther was without doubt one of the busiest and most hard-pressed men in Electoral Saxony at the time, if not in the whole of Europe, and he had a million and one more important duties pressing in on him from all sides; but he found time to write a letter of spiritual counsel to this individual. All of Luther’s learning, all of the things he had done, all of the adulation he received, all of the great and the good who called on him for advice—none of this distracted him from caring for the people in his congregation. Indeed, this is exactly what one would expect from a leader who tried (and on occasion spectacularly failed) to work in accordance with Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor 1 and 2.
To continue, visit http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/34-1/minority-report-a-lesson-from-peter-the-barber/
