Ministers Are Not Messiahs
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Contents
"Ministers Are Not Messiahs" by Lamar Massingill
"Supernatural" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * * *
Ministers Are Not Messiahs
by Lamar Massingill
Hebrews 5:1-10
Let's talk about preachers on this week's journey (did I lose anybody's attention?). This should be a most comforting passage of scripture to me and every other clergyperson who reads it. Thank God we clergy are like everyone else! I especially like verses 2-3: "He (i.e. the high priest) can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is bound to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as for those of the people."
Any preacher should heave a sigh of relief whenever he or she reads that verse. My way of reminding myself of this profound truth is to remember an experience I had in one of the parishes I was privileged to serve. This memory is always a profound comfort for me.
This particular parish had clerical stoles that matched the liturgical colors of the paraments that adorned the pulpit and the Table of the Lord in the sanctuary. The white stole, however, had a wine stain on the right side. Although they bought another white stole, I continued to wear the older, stained one. Of course, when the Eucharist was celebrated, which was often in that parish, I wore white. And it was always the old stained one.
A couple of months after the new stole was purchased, I continued to wear the old white stained one, and a parishioner came up to me after worship and asked why I still wore it when I had a new one hanging in my office closet. I told her simply that it is a reminder to me that I am stained too. So when I approached the Table to celebrate the Holy Meal that recalls the great story that heals us, I was always reminded that I am not only serving my parishioners by celebrating the Meal, I was serving myself and seeking grace for my own wounds.
I am sure you will agree with me that when people find out we are ordained ministers, apologies fly around like fireworks on the fourth of July, personalities change, religious duty and activity, not to mention discussion, take control and people begin acting differently. It really makes for a lonely life for those of us who are ordained.
I remember playing golf with a new parishioner at the golf club in the city to which I had just moved and did not know three of the people who were to play with us. After my parishioner introduced me as his new pastor, one of the three came up to me and said "Preacher, I want to apologize for anything I may say today that you consider profane." I told him, "Don't worry; I'll say it for you, because I was a golfer long before I was a preacher!" I knew that forgiveness was walking alongside of me while the other man was worried about what I was going to think of him.
This kind of thing is what we ordained (what the writer of Hebrews calls high priests) people get all the time. Some have even joked that ministers are of a different gender: men, women, and preachers, and I assure you in the vernacular, that ain't right! The only thing in this world that does not whitewash us is the Bible. It is honest about our wounds.
Ordination is but a practical setting apart of a person to preach, teach, and celebrate the sacraments. Ordination is not based on any kind of spiritual or moral superiority. I say that because many members of church sacrifice their clergy on the altars of perfection or goodness. But to believe that is to believe that the truth of the gospel and the grace of the sacraments depend upon the moral and spiritual superiority of the ordained person. The question, then, is not who is good enough to preach the gospel or celebrate the sacraments, but whether anyone deserves to do so, to which the answer is no. But for the grace of God, all are wounded and sinful, including the clergy.
There are no biblical characters except Jesus who ever won over the magnetic pull of their own temptations, wounds, and sins. In this area, we have to agree with Carlyle Marney, "It's too late to worry about innocence!" We've all been wounded and have wounded others by giving into the temptations of our own darkness. We are all in a constant struggle between right and wrong. It is really a conflict between the mind and the heart.
Saint Paul, in Romans 7:18-20, knew rationally that the wrong he did was indeed wrong. But he could not appropriate with his heart what he knew in his mind was wrong. Who can forget his impassioned cry, "Oh wretched man that I am!" Saint Paul, the giant in our faith, the missionary who began the church, needed the help that the grace and forgiveness of Christ offered, and he needed it daily. He is almost brutal in his honesty about this subject. We all need to get honest about it. This area of our lives is so painful to think about that I would just as soon avoid it, were it not for the deep conviction that in the avoiding, I betray our common struggle and I am dishonest with my own humanity. In order for the generous grace of Christ to uphold us in the struggle, we must acknowledge that we are incapable of dealing with our own darkness alone. In order to grow stronger in our broken places, we have to have the courage that grace gives us to confront these conflicts within. We can be immature forever by nourishing our denial. Maturity demands that we confront.
Yes, I can hear the pain in Saint Paul's words. They have been my words before and I'm sure yours as well. But I can also hear, like a comforting stream of cool water, the grace in Saint Paul's words: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord…" In other words, God has not left us alone in the struggle. He has promised help through the generous grace of Christ. Jesus makes it possible for us to struggle responsibly and deal realistically with our temptations without worrying that they will destroy us, for in Christ, nothing can destroy us. So what do we do in light of this good news? It is this: When we fall down, we don't have to stay down.
John Claypool used to love to tell the story of the monks who occupied the monastery on top of the mountain. Every week one of the younger monks would go down the mountain into the small village to buy supplies and food for the monastery. When he came down the mountain, the villagers would surround the young monk, asking, "What do you men of God do up on the mountain? What is it like?" And the younger monk would always answer, "We pray five times a day, we fast one week out of the month, we hear the lectures the abbot gives, we take the Eucharist every morning and evening, and we spend our days in quiet spiritual reflection." The people were always impressed by this, for they knew the monks were better than they, and they thought that they lived perfect lives up there on the mountain.
One day, the younger monk was sick and could not go to get supplies. Many of the other monks volunteered to go, but it was the abbot, the spiritual leader of the monastery, by this time well up in years, who decided to go. When the elder abbot came to the village, and the villagers surrounded him with the same question, "What do you holy men do up there on the mountain?" his answer was quite different than the younger monk's was. He stopped, treated the villagers less like a distraction, and more like human beings like himself, and thought a long time as to how he would answer. Finally, after the people were silent, the abbot said, "What do we holy men do up there on the mountain? I'll tell you, we fall down, and we get up. We fall down, and we get up. We fall down and we get up."
This is the dance of our lives and the only way any of us, clergy or lay, are getting home.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
Supernatural
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c
Once in a while, when I'm trying to sit still, I watch science fiction. It offers another view of reality, like ours, but tangential. If the story violates too many normalities, it isn't grounded in a here and now that makes any sense. Gravity needs to work, light needs to cast shadows, people need to bleed. But then the drama takes one detail and runs off, offering a "what if" moment. If it's done well, we can identify with the characters, becoming absorbed in the story as it takes us to places of imagination and possibility.
In one rerun I watched over my second cup of coffee, an angel appeared to two mystified men. The celestial being was awkward with the normalities of human conversation and behavior. When it was brought to his attention he said, "Hey give me a break. I've just spent the last few millennia as a multi-dimensional being." Thus began the drama.
Our willingness to deal with the true nature of the God we worship is very shallow at best. We'll put up with a moment of puzzlement at the visions of Ezekiel and Revelation as too weird to do much of anything with, as if these moments of clarity and expressions of transcendence can be fit into categories defined by logic and reason. Logic and reason developed by us to make sense of the three-dimensional universe. God's own name for identity transcends pronouns, translating to a verb of being, "I am," or simply "being." A rabbi once told me that when someone tries to put God in a box, you know they're on the wrong track.
Jesus gives us as much a problem as a solution. If we mean business with the Incarnation, we're caught in a paradox. If He was truly God and truly human being, then He's as much of a verb that can be fit into a noun. Headache time....
This Psalm uses all kinds of analogies that are directly grounded in the psalmist's normality. Chariots, wings, foundations all come from places of definition and physical experience. But these are put into juxtapositions that point toward another reality, another dimension. "...wrapped in light as a garment." That's trans-dimensional. Science fiction? The difference here is that we have the temerity to believe that it's not a sophisticated fairy tale, it's the real thing. Weird, but the real thing. Maybe we should work harder at letting God out of our paltry boxes.
I think all preachers should get trans-dimensional once in a while. We should "...boldly go where no one has gone before." That's from Star Trek for those of you who aren't Trekkies.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 21, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Ministers Are Not Messiahs" by Lamar Massingill
"Supernatural" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * * *
Ministers Are Not Messiahs
by Lamar Massingill
Hebrews 5:1-10
Let's talk about preachers on this week's journey (did I lose anybody's attention?). This should be a most comforting passage of scripture to me and every other clergyperson who reads it. Thank God we clergy are like everyone else! I especially like verses 2-3: "He (i.e. the high priest) can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is bound to offer sacrifices for his own sins as well as for those of the people."
Any preacher should heave a sigh of relief whenever he or she reads that verse. My way of reminding myself of this profound truth is to remember an experience I had in one of the parishes I was privileged to serve. This memory is always a profound comfort for me.
This particular parish had clerical stoles that matched the liturgical colors of the paraments that adorned the pulpit and the Table of the Lord in the sanctuary. The white stole, however, had a wine stain on the right side. Although they bought another white stole, I continued to wear the older, stained one. Of course, when the Eucharist was celebrated, which was often in that parish, I wore white. And it was always the old stained one.
A couple of months after the new stole was purchased, I continued to wear the old white stained one, and a parishioner came up to me after worship and asked why I still wore it when I had a new one hanging in my office closet. I told her simply that it is a reminder to me that I am stained too. So when I approached the Table to celebrate the Holy Meal that recalls the great story that heals us, I was always reminded that I am not only serving my parishioners by celebrating the Meal, I was serving myself and seeking grace for my own wounds.
I am sure you will agree with me that when people find out we are ordained ministers, apologies fly around like fireworks on the fourth of July, personalities change, religious duty and activity, not to mention discussion, take control and people begin acting differently. It really makes for a lonely life for those of us who are ordained.
I remember playing golf with a new parishioner at the golf club in the city to which I had just moved and did not know three of the people who were to play with us. After my parishioner introduced me as his new pastor, one of the three came up to me and said "Preacher, I want to apologize for anything I may say today that you consider profane." I told him, "Don't worry; I'll say it for you, because I was a golfer long before I was a preacher!" I knew that forgiveness was walking alongside of me while the other man was worried about what I was going to think of him.
This kind of thing is what we ordained (what the writer of Hebrews calls high priests) people get all the time. Some have even joked that ministers are of a different gender: men, women, and preachers, and I assure you in the vernacular, that ain't right! The only thing in this world that does not whitewash us is the Bible. It is honest about our wounds.
Ordination is but a practical setting apart of a person to preach, teach, and celebrate the sacraments. Ordination is not based on any kind of spiritual or moral superiority. I say that because many members of church sacrifice their clergy on the altars of perfection or goodness. But to believe that is to believe that the truth of the gospel and the grace of the sacraments depend upon the moral and spiritual superiority of the ordained person. The question, then, is not who is good enough to preach the gospel or celebrate the sacraments, but whether anyone deserves to do so, to which the answer is no. But for the grace of God, all are wounded and sinful, including the clergy.
There are no biblical characters except Jesus who ever won over the magnetic pull of their own temptations, wounds, and sins. In this area, we have to agree with Carlyle Marney, "It's too late to worry about innocence!" We've all been wounded and have wounded others by giving into the temptations of our own darkness. We are all in a constant struggle between right and wrong. It is really a conflict between the mind and the heart.
Saint Paul, in Romans 7:18-20, knew rationally that the wrong he did was indeed wrong. But he could not appropriate with his heart what he knew in his mind was wrong. Who can forget his impassioned cry, "Oh wretched man that I am!" Saint Paul, the giant in our faith, the missionary who began the church, needed the help that the grace and forgiveness of Christ offered, and he needed it daily. He is almost brutal in his honesty about this subject. We all need to get honest about it. This area of our lives is so painful to think about that I would just as soon avoid it, were it not for the deep conviction that in the avoiding, I betray our common struggle and I am dishonest with my own humanity. In order for the generous grace of Christ to uphold us in the struggle, we must acknowledge that we are incapable of dealing with our own darkness alone. In order to grow stronger in our broken places, we have to have the courage that grace gives us to confront these conflicts within. We can be immature forever by nourishing our denial. Maturity demands that we confront.
Yes, I can hear the pain in Saint Paul's words. They have been my words before and I'm sure yours as well. But I can also hear, like a comforting stream of cool water, the grace in Saint Paul's words: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord…" In other words, God has not left us alone in the struggle. He has promised help through the generous grace of Christ. Jesus makes it possible for us to struggle responsibly and deal realistically with our temptations without worrying that they will destroy us, for in Christ, nothing can destroy us. So what do we do in light of this good news? It is this: When we fall down, we don't have to stay down.
John Claypool used to love to tell the story of the monks who occupied the monastery on top of the mountain. Every week one of the younger monks would go down the mountain into the small village to buy supplies and food for the monastery. When he came down the mountain, the villagers would surround the young monk, asking, "What do you men of God do up on the mountain? What is it like?" And the younger monk would always answer, "We pray five times a day, we fast one week out of the month, we hear the lectures the abbot gives, we take the Eucharist every morning and evening, and we spend our days in quiet spiritual reflection." The people were always impressed by this, for they knew the monks were better than they, and they thought that they lived perfect lives up there on the mountain.
One day, the younger monk was sick and could not go to get supplies. Many of the other monks volunteered to go, but it was the abbot, the spiritual leader of the monastery, by this time well up in years, who decided to go. When the elder abbot came to the village, and the villagers surrounded him with the same question, "What do you holy men do up there on the mountain?" his answer was quite different than the younger monk's was. He stopped, treated the villagers less like a distraction, and more like human beings like himself, and thought a long time as to how he would answer. Finally, after the people were silent, the abbot said, "What do we holy men do up there on the mountain? I'll tell you, we fall down, and we get up. We fall down, and we get up. We fall down and we get up."
This is the dance of our lives and the only way any of us, clergy or lay, are getting home.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
Supernatural
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c
Once in a while, when I'm trying to sit still, I watch science fiction. It offers another view of reality, like ours, but tangential. If the story violates too many normalities, it isn't grounded in a here and now that makes any sense. Gravity needs to work, light needs to cast shadows, people need to bleed. But then the drama takes one detail and runs off, offering a "what if" moment. If it's done well, we can identify with the characters, becoming absorbed in the story as it takes us to places of imagination and possibility.
In one rerun I watched over my second cup of coffee, an angel appeared to two mystified men. The celestial being was awkward with the normalities of human conversation and behavior. When it was brought to his attention he said, "Hey give me a break. I've just spent the last few millennia as a multi-dimensional being." Thus began the drama.
Our willingness to deal with the true nature of the God we worship is very shallow at best. We'll put up with a moment of puzzlement at the visions of Ezekiel and Revelation as too weird to do much of anything with, as if these moments of clarity and expressions of transcendence can be fit into categories defined by logic and reason. Logic and reason developed by us to make sense of the three-dimensional universe. God's own name for identity transcends pronouns, translating to a verb of being, "I am," or simply "being." A rabbi once told me that when someone tries to put God in a box, you know they're on the wrong track.
Jesus gives us as much a problem as a solution. If we mean business with the Incarnation, we're caught in a paradox. If He was truly God and truly human being, then He's as much of a verb that can be fit into a noun. Headache time....
This Psalm uses all kinds of analogies that are directly grounded in the psalmist's normality. Chariots, wings, foundations all come from places of definition and physical experience. But these are put into juxtapositions that point toward another reality, another dimension. "...wrapped in light as a garment." That's trans-dimensional. Science fiction? The difference here is that we have the temerity to believe that it's not a sophisticated fairy tale, it's the real thing. Weird, but the real thing. Maybe we should work harder at letting God out of our paltry boxes.
I think all preachers should get trans-dimensional once in a while. We should "...boldly go where no one has gone before." That's from Star Trek for those of you who aren't Trekkies.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 21, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
