I recall a time when the late Pastor Eugene H. Peterson was asked by a young woman in his Church, “What do you like best about being a pastor?”
He said. “The mess”. Yes, he said that - the mess. That’s what came out of his mouth, unplugged. Later, he clarified: “Well, not exactly a mess, but coming upon something unexpected that I don’t know how to handle, where I feel inadequate. Another name for it is miracle that doesn’t look like a miracle but the exact opposite of miracle. A slow recognition of life, God’s life, taking form in a person and context, in words and action that takes me off-guard.”
He added: “Theologian Karl Rahner was once asked if he believed in miracles. His reply? “I live on miracles – I couldn’t make it through a day without them.” Still another name for it is mystery. Pastors have ringside seats to this kind of thing. Maybe everyone does, but I often feel that pastors get invited into intimacies that elude a more functional and performance way of life.””
Imagine one who wrote countless of books, won a Gold Medallion for The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, has a degree in Philosophy and several honorary doctoral degrees under his belt, and founded a church in 1962, “Christ Our King Presbyterian Church” in Maryland, which he had served for 29 years before retiring in 1991, and all that vast and deep experiences compressed into this answer: “the mess, the miracle, and the slow recognition of life, God’s life, taking form in a person and context, in words and action that takes me off-guard.”
(Off guard? Who and what can still surprise such a towering intellectual?)
Anyway, I believe that kind of miracle, that kind of unravelling and unfolding, the furnace-defying life, takes a lifetime to minister to a lifetime.
Alas, there’s no overnight changes. Be extremely wary of it. For a nocturnal turn of a life is largely superficial, mostly transient, if not wholly deceptive. True transformation is always about the anonymity of small changes, because sunlight burns when it is concentrated; but it nurtures when it is moderated, carefully measured, like a silent dance of trust, patience and hope.
The farmer knows that intimately. It is a truth that is timeless for him. He has no illusion about seeds. They are all the same. Their smallness is never alluring. Their uniformity doesn’t inspire hope.
A life like a seed is like that. It is messy. It is unsightly. It is even deformed. But the miracle is not in that seen state, that unripe condition. The miracle is in the slow recognition of a life, that dedication to press on, to bring that life into fruition, into the light.
For a farmer does not plant a nondescript seed and then return in an hour, clear the soil, exposing the seed, and expect a harvest. If he keeps doing that, he will kill that seed, smother a life.
Nothing grows in haste. Overnight changes is a myth. Life’s trajectory cannot end with one smug stroke. It needs to be drawn against the axis of time, hope, patience, resilience, and most of all, love.
Jesus’ parables is all about that; it is about a seed that wasn’t, that shouldn’t, that couldn’t, yet, in his hand, a life fully dedicated to another, that same seed bore a garden, and that garden enriched many lives. Indeed, gratitude begets gratitude because grace abounding transforms even a life most unlikely.
That is, to me, the highest definition of what it means to be pastoral, that is, a shepherd who tends to his flock in the most mundaneness of life, yet at the same time, surrounded by the most miraculous beauty of one’s life-source. That is why a true shepherd is never overwhelmed by circumstances because as he embraces his sheep, he knows deep within that he is in turn embraced by the one who tends to his life.
At the end of the day, as a pastor, it is never just about solving a problem, attending to an issue, fulfilling a target, astounding a crowd, or achieving worldly recognition. It is however about nurturing a life, even if no one ever gets to know about it.
The shepherd doesn’t care whether his rescue of a sheep would be photographed and published, archived for all to marvel. All he cares about is the rescue, even for only one who has gone astray. When a shepherd is obsessed with the fame of a rescue, he like the impatient farmer who couldn’t wait for an overnight harvest, kills the soul as well as his own.
Let me end with the good pastor’s words (Eugene Peterson), something we can all learn from: -
“Incrementally, without noticing what I was doing, I had been shifting from being a pastor dealing with God in people’s lives to treating them as persons dealing with problems in their lives. I was not being their pastor. I could have helped and still been their pastor. But by reducing them to problems to be fixed, I omitted the biggest thing of all in their lives, God and their souls, and the biggest thing in my life, my vocation as pastor.”
“I began to assess what was going on. Unaware of what I was doing, I had been making a subtle shift in attitude toward the people to whom I was pastor – and I had been doing it for several months. I was trading in the complexities of spiritual growth in congregation for the reduced dimensions of addressing a problem that could be named and understood. I had been doing this quite a lot.”
Indeed, not everything that could be named and understood cries out for a solution. At the risk of reducing a life to a religious label for targeted resolution, oftentimes, a companion in another’s life journey is silent, and the greatest comfort or encouragement one receives is the sound his companion’s feet makes, just to know he is nearby.
E.M. Bound once said: “The (pastor)…is not a professional man; his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution; a divine devotion.” And if I may add, his church is not in the walls he hides behind. Neither the hierarchies he has built for himself that tower in babellian wonders. His church however is in the heart of every sheep that walks into his life. That heart is open, wall-less, and it is not about trading problems for solutions, but one’s vulnerability for another.
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