Field Notes from a Religion-Less Christian: 40 Years a Pastor

          December 18, 2021 

On 40 Years of Public Ministry

Pastors: Delivering Everything But Accomplishing Nothing

October 11, 2021

40 years ago today I was ordained into the Office of Public Ministry. 44 years ago, after graduating from college, I entered seminary, a 4 year graduate degree program, motivated to unpack and then use the weapon of God’s love to get at and destroy the core of human sin that is the cause of environmental and social injustice (my undergraduate degree in environmental education taught me well of our ecological calamity). I thought that justice (distributive justice that means peace comes by sharing, through non-violence, rather than retributive justice that means peace comes by victory, through violence) would come by knowing and practicing a better law, the law of love, the law that is Jesus, to change injustice. 

What I came to learn and then live over these years of public ministry of Word and Sacrament (aka being a pastor) is that, of course, we don’t and can’t use Jesus for anything or do anything of agency in our relationship with God. We can do lots to fight injustice, and well we should, and please, let’s get on with it. But we can’t do anything to impact what God has decided to do with the likes of us and our world. We’d like to think we have agency there, and sin is the thinking and acting as though we do. But we don’t. We have nothing when it comes to God. But we see that the life and message of Jesus is that this is actually just well and good. In fact, it is good news because God has decided our destiny willy-nilly without our cooperation, and that destiny is unmerited, unconditional mercy, no holds barred. 

Yes, in fact, the world would be a better place if we practiced the love that Jesus lived: peace comes from distributive justice (sharing), through non-violence. But that way of life in our hands only becomes a new violence if we force it on others – which is what religion of any stripe, the Jesus type or any type, is wont to do. Jesus lived it, but we forget what happened. We killed him for it. He forced nothing and in many ways changed nothing (the poor still wake up today, even after his resurrection). 

But if the way of Jesus is righteous and benevolent but changed nothing then, and the poor are still with us now,  but, “Jesus saves,” what gives?

This saving must be of a different sort. 

And so we have discovered and so the office of public ministry is here to declare and accomplish (not just talk about, but deliver): the saving is from our own self-righteousness, the place we go to do spiritual calisthenics to get a leg up on the divine, for the world’s righteousness (where we can actually do some good and actually accomplish something – namely the restoration of humanity and the entire world order!)

The world needs pastors to shut up our spiritualities and close up our religious enterprise and simply change us, free us, by delivering the promise of God that is unmerited mercy given at all costs. Pastors mostly get popular today because they deliver a message of human potentialities (by God’s mercy, of course!), and manage a community (church, congregation) where the push to making a difference in the world (for God, of course) is central. Jesus is not central. Our potential and our difference making is central. Pastors that don’t deliver the message, the message that says Jesus saves by giving us all we need to maximize our life if we but participate by assent and action (it’s usually called “faith,” a misnomer if there ever was one) don’t get much attention these days. But they are life giving.

But, does distributive justice not matter? And our ability to make justice happen, does it not matter? 

Of course it does. It makes all the difference in the world, but no difference to God. This is to say not that God does not care. It’s pretty clear that by looking at Jesus and what he did with the poor and marginalized that God cares about justice. But this: no difference in how God see us or treats us or will treat us by how well we perform, be that action (behaviors) or speech (beliefs). 

We need pastors to deliver (in Word and Sacrament) the goods. Not tell us to be better or how to be better, but tell us we are now and forever better because of Jesus Christ. And do all this not so that we wonder if we will ever know or experience this liberation, as if we stand now gazing at a beautiful artifact but not experiencing it. But do this so that we actually know it and own it now. That, my friends, doing that, being that pastor, is truly an art and a science and is a work not to be taken up lightly, which is why, of course, the church doesn’t confer the office simply because somebody feels moved by God, but rather takes pains to evaluate and graduate to such an office. 

So, I went to seminary to use Jesus to save the world and I found that Jesus uses me to declare that the world is already saved by him and since we are taken out of the salvation business we can turn to the only business we have: taking care of neighbor and creation. 

So, maybe I can use Jesus to save the world after all. He takes care of our relationship to God (“saves” us) so that we can take care of the world (“save” the world). Let’s get busy