nakedpastor

I watched the tail end of one of my favorite movies last night: Babette’s Feast. I absolutely love that whole feast sequence. I was powerfully moved by Babette’s selfless generosity to do what she loves doing: being a chef. She generously and sacrificially spent all 10,000 francs of her lottery winnings to give 12 people the feast of their lives.

I believe in divine timing. Just that day I was wrestling with being a pastor. Lately, it has been a real struggle serving the church. I went for a therapeutic ride on my motorcycle and just prayed as I glided through the dusk. I heard, in my heart, the words, “Do you love me? Then feed my sheep. Don’t feed on my sheep!” I then realized that I’m still far from being a selfless servant who is willing to serve without reward and to love unconditionally without strings attached or expectations to fulfill. I’ve a long way to go. But I want to get there. Jesus loves the church and gave himself up for her. Paul didn’t want to burden his churches, not as a power trip, but because he loved them.

So, like Babette, I aspire to feed and nurture and love people, not because I want or expect something in return, but because this is what a servant does. This is what a lover does. I’m thankful that my mindless, vegetative channel-surfing turned into an artistic, creative, divine lesson that service is an inspiring work of art, that giving generously is a beautiful, gracious act never to be regretted.

Jeanne Murray Walker in her essay, “Breaking the Illusions: What Playwrights Owe to Actors,” in the journal IMAGE (summer, 2005):
“Kafka said that art is like an ax that chops through the frozen sea within us” (p.88).

This is why I write, play, and listen to music. This is why I paint and look at art. This is why I write and read. This is why I watch movies. This is why I teach and listen to teachers.

When we crystallize ourselves into a position, most often it has the effect of freezing us. We solidify and harden. We become impenetrable and calloused. I appreciate art in all forms, and I welcome the ax. I don’t want to be frozen, but fluid.

“This is eternal life, that they may know you” (John 17:3). This verse got me thinking the other day about the fullness of life in the here and now. Then I read Chambers sometime this weekend, and he also says that knowing God in Christ is “one amazing, glorious NOW!” This is the fullness of the moment, doxology, benediction, blessing, abundance, right now, this second.

I didn’t preach yesterday. My good friend and co-pastor Doug Mawer did. But I lead worship. I am a part of a congregation and movement that has a history of desiring more of God’s presence. But while I lead worship, I was impressed by the fact that God is fully present, right now. I don’t have to work anything up, or conjure up his presence. God in Christ is fully present as he promised. The problem isn’t that God needs to be more fully present. The problem is that I need to be more fully present with God. That’s always the problem. It’s our thinking that is deficient.

Which gets me thinking about good friends of mine who feel alienated from the church. For many of them, their experience of church has been painful and frustrating. I think, for many of them, it stems back to this false belief that God isn’t really present, and that we can work it up by purity, heartfelt emotion, knowledge, intensity, and intention. In other words: by our desires, wills and efforts. Many people immediately see through that never-ending spiral downward into religiosity. They, like me, have no tolerance for that anymore.

Can we as a church affirm to people that God is with them in Christ? Can we tell people the good news that the Kingdom of God is HERE, right now? Can we tell people, that without any work on their part, that they have been reconciled to God through Christ? That is the cure to the religiosity that is, frankly, destroying true fellowship.

Listen to this passage from N. T. Wright’s, What Saint Paul Really Said:

“A brief word about love. Paul does not mean that all Christians should feel warm fuzzy feelings for each other. That romantic and existentialist reading of agape does not begin to capture what is really going on. The critical thing is that the church, those who worship God in Christ Jesus, should function as a family in which every member is accepted as an equal member, no matter what their social, cultural or moral background. The very existence of such a community demonstrates to the principalities and powers, the hidden but powerful forces of prejudice and suspicion, that their time is up, that the living God has indeed won the victory over them, that there is now launched upon the world a different way of being human, a way in which the traditional distinctions between human beings are done away with. That is why we find in Ephesians the climactic statement: the purpose of the gospel is that ‘through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 3:10). The very existence of a community of love, love where before there was mutual suspicion and distrust, is the crucial piece of evidence that tells Paul that God’s spirit has been at work (Colossians 1:8)” (p. 146).

Pastors, do you HEAR this? Church members, do you HEAR this?

I believe true unity, the kind of unity that can only be made manifest in the climate of Wright’s statement above, does not necessarily feel warm and fuzzy. True unity is something that has already been accomplished in the cross of Christ (Ephesians 2: 14), and continually sustained by the Spirit. Our assignment, if we choose to accept it, is to practice it (Ephesians 4:3). I’ve experienced division in the church, and some of it quite ugly. What usually follows is pressure from well-wishers to restore the warm, fuzzy feelings that were obviously lost. I’ve never felt that was necessary because I’m certain that the truest unity at the deepest level wasn’t severed. It is true that “mutual suspicion”, “distrust”, and “prejudice” need to be fought against. What I’ve discovered is that the spirit of distrust, prejudice, and suspicion prospers in the church more than anywhere else, because many believe that the church is THE place where people are categorized according to their morals, ideologies, theologies, lifestyles, opinions, and so on. The church quickly becomes a place where people are distinguished from each other, often with judgment following close on its heels.

This topic gets tricky because the Spirit challenges us to practice unity. Do we practice unity with those who practice disunity? Do we practice unconditional love with those who love conditionally? Do we practice trust with people who distrust others? The bible says have nothing to do with a divisive person. Often that is translated to mean anyone who tries to overthrow a pastor or break up a congregation. But I now believe a divisive person is anyone who excludes people based on their differences. The catch-22: do we exclude exclusivists?

Wright continues later in the book:

“… (we must tell them), in the name of Jesus, that there is a different way of being human, a way characterized by self-giving love, by justice, by honesty, and by the breaking down of the traditional barriers that reinforce the divisions which keep human beings separate from, and as often as not at odds with, one another. And, of course, it is no good saying all this if the church is not saying it by its very life. As I shall suggest presently, this message is at its most powerful when it is presented in symbols and praxis, not merely in dogma and story” (pp. 154ff).

He continues:
“Any attempt to define church membership by any other than allegiance to Jesus Christ is, quite simply, idolatrous… It is by the church living as the one believing community, in which barriers of race, class, gender and so forth are irrelevant to membership and to holding office, that the principalities and powers are informed in no uncertain terms that their time is up, that there is indeed a new way of being human” (p. 161).

So, here at Rothesay Vineyard, my home church, we probably err on the side of trying to practice unconditional love. What more can be said? What more can be done?

The August 10th entry in Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost For His Highest is a commentary on 1 Peter 4:19, a difficult verse to read, understand, and live: “Let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good…”

Chambers says, “Choosing to suffer means that there must be something wrong with you, but choosing God’s will—even if it means you will suffer—is something very different. No normal, healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he simply chooses God’s will, just as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not… (Jesus) refused the sympathy of people because in His great wisdom He knew that no one on earth understood His purpose… Look at God’s incredible waste of His saints, according to the world’s judgment. God seems to plant His saints in the most useless places… Yet Jesus never measured His life by how or where He was of the greatest use.”

This kind of thinking has no place in much of the literature I read these days. It is considered too austere, too morbid, too depressing. It is treated like the yeast of old that had to be completely abolished from the household, lest the smallest amount leaven the whole lump of dough. If we allow even the slightest degree of this theology to enter into our thinking, everything changes! Everything has to readjust. Everything must be questioned.

We can no longer entertain ideas and theologies that don’t make room for God’s freedom. We can no longer flirt with triumphalistic notions of faith. They are just escapisms in religious garments.

I read Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost For His Highest this morning, as I do most mornings. I love the sheer honesty of his insights. In today’s entry he comments on Revelation 1:17: “And when I saw Him, I fell at his feet as dead.”

“It may be that like the apostle John you know Jesus Christ intimately, when suddenly He appears with no familiar characteristic at all, and the only thing you can do is to fall at His feet as dead. There are times when God cannot reveal Himself in any other way than in His majesty, and it is the awfulness of the vision which brings you to the delight of despair; if you are ever to be raised up, it must be by the hand of God.”

This reminds me of a prayer of Thomas Merton’s:
“Dear God, I have no idea where I’m going. I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself… and the fact that I think that I am following you will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe this:
I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
I hope I have that desire in everything I do.
I hope I never persist in anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it at the time.
Therefore I will trust You always, for thought I may be lost—and in the shadow of death—I will not be afraid, because I know You will never leave me to face my troubles all alone.”

I do believe that during the times of greatest confusion, that they may actually be times of greatest revelation. I think Luther stated that confusion and faith are closely related. In fact, I think he said certainty and faith are opposites, enemies of each other! Here’s Barth:

“Just as surely as the recognition of the sovereignty of God overthrows all confidence in human righteousness, it sets erect no other ground of confidence. Men are not deprived of one security, in order that they may immediately discover for themselves another. No man can shelter himself behind the triumphant will of God; rather, when it is once perceived, he comes under judgment and enters into a condition of shattering confusion—from which he can never escape… neither forwards nor backwards can we escape from this narrow gorge. There is therefore no alternative for us but to remain under the indictment; and only he who remains here without making any attempts to escape, even by spinning sophistries of human logic… is able to praise God in His faithfulness…” (Barth, Romans, p. 85).

Welcome to the deep struggles of faith!

In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, he relates a story of a man called Moishe. They would have theological discussions now and then. Moishe asked Elie who he prayed to and why. Elie asked Moishe the same question in return. Moishe said, “I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions” (p. 5). Yes, the courage to ask the real questions!

So, I’m just asking questions… questions that have haunted me for years and years. Here’s something that directly applies to the ministry and church life. Read this and ask, “How does this fly in the face of popular religion today?”

“The desire we so often hear expressed today for ‘episcopal figures’, ‘priestly men’, ‘authoritative personalities’ springs frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive” (Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 108).

Leadership is a hot topic today. Everyone’s reading about it. Me too. But I’m having problems with what I’m reading. I agree with it on one level, but then my mind IMMEDIATELY asks the question: But does this apply to pastoral ministry? Does it apply to the church? I’m serious! Does it? To put Jesus’ statement in question form, “If the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, is this how you are to behave?” What’s most interesting is that this comment of Jesus is in reaction to the disciples: “A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest” (Mark 22: 24f). Dynamic and deserved leadership was the rule back then too. Look at this:

“Leaders have always played a primordial emotional role. No doubt humankind’s original leaders- whether tribal chieftans or shamanesses- earned their place in large part because their leadership was emotionally compelling. Throughout history and in cultures everywhere, the leader in any human group has been the one to whom others look for assurance and clarity when faces uncertainty or threat, or when there’s a job to be done. The leader acts as the group’s emotional guide” (Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee, Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence, Harvard Business Press, p. 5).

I have no doubt this is correct, but for some reason I don’t think it always should apply to spiritual leadership. God granting Israel’s demand for a king like other nations was a concession that lead to innumerable woes. Moses was not a natural leader, and he knew it. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, now THERE’S emotional assurance! Paul… emotionally compelling? Jesus? How did Jesus’ emotions fair in the field of “talent retention” (Primal Leadership, p. 5)?

I don’t know… just questions. Another field that has incredible popularity these days is money and wealth. Book after book is being published and read. I read them too. But even though I agree with what they say, I have a very hard time applying their principals to my life. In his book, Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me, Evans claims, even before you hit lesson number one, is that I have to decide RIGHT NOW, before I read on, that I want more than anything else to be a millionaire. Same with Harv Eker’s book, Secrets of a Millionaire Mind… before I go any further, I must decide that becoming wealthy is my number one priority! Well, I can understand that. But I have a huge problem jumping over this first hurdle to enter that kind of race. Do I want wealth acquisition to be my first priority?

Back to Bonhoeffer… what kind of church did he envision with the kind of leadership he wrote about? The pressure to be a charismatic, influential, contagious, and attractive leader is enormous today. But it seems that if you want the kind of church that is most desirable today, you have to agree to play by its rules of leadership. Like the books I mentioned on wealth: am I willing to jump over that first hurdle in order to enter that kind of race? Am I willing to be the kind of leader so promoted today in order to get the kind of church so proudly paraded today?

I’ve been thinking a bit about ministry and what it means to be a pastor. I keep asking myself the question: “Is it possible for all kinds of different people to dwell together in unity?” That is, can a particular local church be made up of a wide variety of people, and yet be united? Can there be true unity in vast diversity? I’m not just talking about diversity in appearance or superficial issues, but diversity in beliefs, theology, and lifestyles. This is the kind of church I envision and work hard for. Sometimes I lose hope, but sometimes I see glimspes of possibility.

While I was thinking about this, I was reminded of a book I read a few years back by Michael Ford, Wounded Prophet. It is his biographical account of Henri Nouwen, a prominent Roman Catholic priest who taught Spiritual Theology and mysticism at Harvard, then ended up being a worker alongside Jean Vanier at a L’Arche community in Richmond Hill, ON, Canada. He died a few years ago, leaving behind him several books on spirituality and prayer. He touched many lives around the world, including mine in a significant way. In this book, he tells us about a time when Nouwen went on retreat to some friends’ in the country, and he began to just meet in the red barn on their property to prayer and celebrate mass. A friend joined him, then another friend, until there was quite a number of people meeting with him. This is his account:

At Nouwen’s sabbatical in the Red Barn Community, he comments:
“Ministry happens. I have done nothing here while on sabbatical to do ministry. I didn’t come here to get people who mostly don’t go to church to join me in prayer and the Eucharist. I just started to pray, and invited one person to join me, and these others—neighbors and friends—simply came. I’m not concerned with fixing the marriage of the one who is considering divorce or convincing the woman who doesn’t believe in Jesus. I’m here to say this is who I am, and to be there for others” (Michael Ford, Wounded Prophet, p. 198).

With his own struggles in mind, Nouwen could only ask himself the obvious question: “Who am I to judge?” When I read this, my heart said, “YES!” This community is something like what I envision. Is there a way, like this community, that we can all just gather with all our problems and issues and differing theologies and lifestyles without trying to fix each other? Is there a way we can serve each other without the ulterior motive of trying to change the ones we serve? Is there a way we can truly love each other without caution or reserve?

These, I feel, are significant questions that need to be asked if we have any concern at all for the future of the church, spiritual communities, or any community for that matter.

“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it has sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed be a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves” (Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pp. 26f).

The power of the truth of this statement is frightening, especially for anyone who has designs for a church. That would be me, as well as most other pastors and keen Christians. As I wrote yesterday, God graciously frustrates these designs. Bonhoeffer goes on to insist that God will not allow us to live even for a moment in a dream world. But it seems to be the fad of the day to live in a dream world when it comes to our Christianity and our churches. We honestly think we can change a group of people overnight into something we want them to be! If God does shatter these dreams, I think it is just as necessary that we be sensitive, somehow, to this shattering… open to it, invite it, embrace it. Because to live in the dream world prevents us from living in THIS world of reality with the people around us.

As a pastor, I constantly ask the question: “Is there a way we can just be a fellowship of believers, and put away our dreams and visions, which really are expectations, which quickly translates into coercion? Is there a way? Can all who will, gather in simple fellowship?”

Bonhoeffer continues: “Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community that cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. he who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial” (ibid, p. 27).

My church went through a split 9 years ago. I KNOW what it means to be shattered. We still live. We are survivors. I often wonder how much of the split was caused by illusions and dreams applied to the fellowship that it just couldn’t live up to or bear. Since then, we have tried so hard to live humbly and simply as a church, without complication, without illusion, without manipulation or coercion. I want to tell you, it is nearly impossible. In fact, I would say it is virtually humanly impossible as a Christian fellowship to live up to Bonhoeffer’s challenge. But we try, firmly believing that this is right and the best, even perfect, way, of being a Christian fellowship. It is the most humane and liberating to people. It is beautiful when it is given and experienced.

“… the cry of the sceptic and the defeated is revealed in Jesus’ own agony at Gethsemane and Golgotha. The choice to believe in the sovereignty of divine love, and to consent to the forgiveness of all, is much more hidden in the mystery of divine grace… The failure to recognize the difficulty of faith is, finally, a failure to comprehend the evil in the world with sufficient depth. The evil in the world, revealed on the cross, so hides God that only divine grace can reveal God and enable one to have faith and obey the call of forgiveness” (Harris Athanasiadis, George Grant and the Theology of the Cross, U of T Press, pp. 27f).

So much for simplifying life and the faith! It’s passages like this that slap me across my religious, pastoral face. As a pastor, there is so much temptation to succeed, get big, have influence, make a difference, be the best show in town. As a tonic to ward off these kinds of diseases, I absorb these kinds of readings. Prevention is the best cure! Jesus reminds me that all it takes is one grain of yeast to leaven the whole lump of dough. So often I have seen in other churches and pastors the common practice of mixing just enough of triumphalism and ambition, manipulation and coercion, rules and regulations, to make the thing work and succeed. And I’ve seen it in myself. Over and over again, even daily, I have to take up the cross and let the horrible instrument do its brutal work against my tendencies to do other than what the cross teaches: love and forgive.

Help me keep it simple! Complicate and frustrate my agenda. Nail my busy hands and feet. Surround my proud and frivolous head with a crown of thorns. Back me up against the cross where YOUR greatest work is achieved.