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Mark Hatfield shouldn't have had time for me, but all he needed was three minutes to redirect my whole life. And I still don't know exactly what he was trying to say.

When I heard this week that Hatfield, the 89 year-old former United States senator from Oregon, had died, I didn't think immediately of his anti-war passion during the Vietnam era, his denunciations of the nuclear arms race, or even his writings on being a Christian in public life. I thought instead about those three minutes when I, at the very beginning of my career, stood in a busy intersection at the U.S. Capitol talking with Hatfield about Christ.

He was probably on autopilot, rehearsing in his mind what he would say at the Appropriations Committee meeting later, for all I know. An annoyed staffer stood just behind him checking his watch, while he talked to one of thousands of young nobodies working on Capitol Hill. But three minutes was enough to change everything for me.

Hatfield, of course, was a prominent and respected U.S. senator, and I was nobody, one more young staffer working for a congressman who was then himself young and early in his tenure. But I had read a second-hand copy of a book by Hatfield on reconciling his faith with his political career, and, passing him in the hall of the Capitol, I stopped him to ask his counsel. Early in my teenage years, I'd experienced what I'd believed to be a call to ministry, but I had outgrown that, and now wanted to chase a political career.

There in Washington, working for a U.S. congressman, I was feeling really guilty and conflicted about that, though, and was being drawn more and more toward ministry. I thought Hatfield would give me a pep talk about how Christians were needed in politics, about how God's calling wasn't limited to vocational ministry, and so on. After all, this was a senator who had, after declaring he wanted "to live the rest of my life only for Jesus Christ" at age 31, rejected church members' urging to "get out of that horrible slime of politics and go to seminary." I knew all the talking points I wanted to hear from him.

Hatfield leaned in and listened to me. He told me, as I thought, that politics was a noble calling, but he said, "You should really be sure that the Lord isn't calling you to ministry, though, because that would be a shame to miss." As he left, he turned back and said, "Remember 1 Corinthians 4:20."

 I didn't have the text of 1 Corinthians memorized, and I was sure that Hatfield's statement was some kind of code, giving me firm direction. I repeated the verse reference over and over in my mind so I wouldn't forget it before I could get back to my office and look it up.

When I did, I was frustrated. "The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power." What did that mean? Was the senator saying I should avoid ministry, as just "talk," for political action, "power"? Or was he saying the opposite, that political power is based on just talk compared to the surpassing dynamism of the word of God? I didn't know, and I still don't, though I suspect he just loved that verse, and wanted to encourage a young Christian with it. What eventually drew me in about that conversation wasn't the talk or the power, but the kingdom of God.

Hatfield and I had little in common at all, by Washington terms. He was chairman of the Appropriations Committee; I the lowest level staffer. He was a liberal, near-pacifist Eisenhower Republican from Oregon; I a New Deal Democrat from Mississippi. But when I mentioned Jesus, Hatfield's face changed. He looked earnest and joyful, and he whispered to me with a seriousness that seemed to surpass political diplomacy, just for a moment. The kingdom of God was bigger and more important to him than all those categories that seemed so important to me at the time.

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August (Web-only) 2011, Vol. 55