Colossians 4:6

 

1]”Sticksand stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me!” They won’t? Someone else’s tongue can’t hurt us? Ask Captain Dreyfus. Albert Dreyfus was an officer in the French Army at the turn of the century. He was Jewish. The under‑the­-surface antisemitism which is never much beneath the surface broke through. The name Dreyfus was called was “traitor”. There was no foundation for the label; in his case the word was devoid of truth. Dreyfus was accused nonetheless. Then he was tried, shunted aside and shunned for years, then tried again. Eventually he was exonerated. But his exoneration meant little. By now his military career was in ruins, his life a shambles, his family devastated. In addition the “Dreyfus affair”, as it came to be known, unleashed a wave of lethal antisemitism throughout France . Not only did the one word “traitor” destroy him, it traumatized thousands of others as well. It was as if one stone only had been thrown into the water, yet the ripples were as unending as they were countless.

 

 

2] It is plain that a word, once uttered, is not merely a grammatical unit. The spoken word is an event. And in fact the Hebrew language honours this truth, for the Hebrew word DABAR means both “word” and “event”. Our Hebrew foreparents knew that the chief characteristic of God is that he speaks. They knew too that when God speaks something happens. It is not the case that God speaks, and then silence swallows up his word as though it had never been uttered, with the result that nothing significant has occurred. God speaks, we are told, and the universe with its inexhaustible complexity is fashioned out of nothing. God speaks, and the prophets themselves are “voice‑activated”. Elijah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah; these men are prophets whose entire existence is “voice‑activated” by the Holy One of Israel. Amos acquaints us with the irrefutable ground of his vocation: “The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?

 

Jesus, the Word of God incarnate, utters that Word which he himself is, and Lazarus is quickened from the dead. (We might as well add that the same thing happens every time the gospelis preached.) Jesus sends out his disciples to many different towns. They are to preach in hisname. If their word (his word) is not heeded in this or that town, says the master, “it shall be more tolerableon the day of judgement for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town”. In short, to disdain and dismiss those words which attest Jesus Christ and his kingdom is to guarantee one’s non‑survival in the coming judgement. DABAR: the word is an event.

 

It is difficult for us twentieth century-types to grasp this, because we think that speech and act are entirely distinct. Speaking is speaking and acting is acting. They are as unlike as sunbeams and creamed cheese. We have to work at thinking our way back into a Hebrew understanding where speaking and doing are one. Imagine yourself standing alongside the Grand Canyon ; standing alongside it, but not too close, for suddenly a word is uttered. In that instant the jagged outcroppings of rock are crumbled and the canyon floor is filled in as hills and valleys are levelled. Difficult to grasp? No! After all, we use ultrasound to pulverize kidney stones, don’t we? Our familiarity with ultrasound pulverizing kidney stones helps us understand the psalmist when he writes, “God utters his voice; the earth melts.” Word and event are one: DABAR.

 

3] If we think about this for a moment it’s obvious. One purpose of speech is to disseminate information. If I am told that Paris is the capital city of France or Lake Superior is the coldest of the Great Lakes or the sun is ninety‑two million miles from the earth, then more than speech has occurred: ignorance has been dispelled. That’s the event in this case: ignorance has been dispelled, and the foundation for greater learning has been put in place. More profoundly, another purpose of speech isn’t merely to disseminate information but also to be that vehicle which conveys us ourselves in our self­giving to another person. The words, “I love you”, don’t merely disseminate information; they are the vehicle which conveys the speaker herself in her self‑giving to another person. Word and act are one.

 

A moment’s reflection on the power of dysfunctional speech reminds us terrifyingly of what speech does. Sarcasm, for example. Sarcasm is contemptuous, biting speech whose aim is the opposite of what the words mean. The baseball hitter strikes out with the bases loaded in the ninth inning. As he stumbles back to the dugout, head down, a fan shouts, “Well done, all‑star!” The words mean that the batter is a superior player who has just performed outstandingly. What the fan intends to say, however, is the exact opposite: the hitter is an incompetent who belongs in the lowest level of the minor leagues. And it is all said with deliberate intent to wound.

 

The child brings home his report card with a glaring “ID” in arithmetic. His mother can’t help noticing it and comments, “I see that you are another Einstein; my child is a genius!” The meaning the parent intends is the exact opposite of the meaning the words have, and the intent isto hurt the child. The child is hurt, stabbed in fact. My psychiatrist‑friends tell me that sarcasm destroys children, simply destroys them. The child understands the meaning of the words, yet also notes contempt and anger and rejection in the speaker’s voice and on her face; the child is wholly confused by the contradiction and knows at the same time that he has been stabbed in the heart. Sarcasm destroys children. (it doesn’t do much to help adults, either.)

 

Humorous speech is often a form of dysfunctional utterance. The purpose of humour, ostensibly, is to amuse. But often humour is used to ridicule or mock; sometimes humour is used to taunt and taunt and taunt until the taunted person explodes and lashes back. Whereupon the taunter, insisting that the purpose of his humour is never to upset, smirks self ‑righteously, “I always knew that fellow had a bad temper!”

 

Sometimes humour is used to cloak a dagger‑thrust. Person A, with malice in his heart, wants to say something nasty to person B, without exposing himself to retaliation from person B. If A simply spoke nastily, B might turn the tables on him and with superior verbal skill demolish A in a devastating counterthrust. A decides to cloak his dagger‑thrust in humour. If B replies sharply, A takes refuge in his humour saying, “I was only being funny; can’t you take a joke?” On the other hand, if B pretends to “take the joke” and says nothing, he knows that he has been stabbed and can’t do anything about it! When humour is used not to amuse but rather to leave a victim defenceless, speech has been used dysfunctionally; and used dysfunctionally with terrifying power.

 

The crudest, bluntest, baldest form of dysfunctional speech, of course, is the outright lie. A lie, by definition, corresponds to nothing substantive at all; nothing in actuality corresponds to the lie. A lie, therefore, is like a vacuum. A vacuum, by definition, is nothing. Yet a vacuum has immense power. A lie has immense power. The worst feature of a lie isn’t that misrepresentation has occurred (serious though this is); the worst feature of a lie is that the person telling it can no longer be trusted; forgiven, yes, but never trusted. What is lied about may be of little importance; the fact that someone can no longer be trusted couldn’t be more important.

 

The so‑called “white” lie, “white” in that the teller intends no malice but is simply taking an easy way out of a stickysituation; the so‑called white lie has the same end‑result:utter breakdown of trust. Many people have told me white lies thinking they were sparing my feelings. But why spare my feelingsat the price of forfeiting trust? The people we find lying to us we can forgive and engage politely thereafter. But it would be unreasonable to trust them.

 

It is little wonder that the apostle James speaks so severely of the tongue. While the biggest ship or horse can be directed by the smallest rudder or bit ‑‑ any man or woman being able to control the small bit or rudder ‑‑ no man or woman can direct his or her life by controlling the smallest tongue. The tongue, small as it is, escapes human control, with the result that the whole person careens dangerously and disastrously like a rudderless ship or a bitless horse. In only twelve verses James tells us that the tongue is a fire, is a stain which stains the entire body, is a match which ignites huge conflagrations, is itself set on fire from hell, is a restless evil, is as untameable as the wildest animal, is as full of deadly poison as a cobra. James gathers up all his teaching about the tongue by naming it “an unrighteous world”. The tongue is a world. “World”, for James, always means the culture and institutions of the universe organized without God and as such the antithesis of the kingdom of God . Think of it: the sum total of the universe’s culture and institutions, sunk in ungodliness, organized to oppose God’s kingdom ‑‑ all of this concentrated in three inches of flexible tissue. Little wonder that grace is needed; grace and grit. God’s grace is needed if we are to have the capacity and the desire to do something better; our grit, our determination, our resolve are needed if in fact we are going to do something better.

 

4] The men and women upon whom Jesus Christ first stamped himself knew what we must do. First, we must speak the truth. This is simple. I didn’t say easy; to speak the truth in a world of mendacity is never easy. I said simple. Jesus insists that the evil one is a liar and a murderer. This is no surprise; to be a liar is to be a murderer. We have already seen how the liar slays; the liar slays trust, therefore slays relationships, therefore slays people. We saw even earlier in the sermon that the prohibition forbidding the bearing of false witness is found in the prohibitions forbidding theft and adultery and murder. The lie slays. Liars are killers. Since God is one who eternally has life in himself; since God imparts life, sustains life, redeems life, fulfils life, his people must always choose life rather than death. Therefore we speak the truth.

 

It is important that we speak the truth, important as well that we speak. In the church we hear endlessly of the sin of speaking when we shouldn’t, yet we hear nothing of the sin of remaining silent when we should speak. Everything that James says about the tongue’s hyperactivity applies as well to the tongue’s inertia. After all, when the truth is known but not spoken, then falsehood triumphs. I have come home from church‑court meetings sick and heartbroken at the silence of clergy who knew in their hearts what the truth was but who remained silent at critical times. Next day they have phoned me and said, “Victor, we have read the stuff you write; we agree with what you said last night; we are with you all the way.” But silent at the critical moment, so fearful that they phoned me next morning lest they be seen talking to me. Silence, let us remember, is a form of speech. When a false statement is met with silence, the silence is a left-handed way of expressing agreement with the statement, however false.

 

James insists that the tongue is an unrighteous world. It is. Silence is an unrighteous world too. The unrighteous world is the only world the world knows. But Christians do not aspire to ape the world; we aspire to that kingdom which cannot be shaken and which unfailingly contradicts the world. Therefore we speak the truth, giving equal weight to both “truth” and “speak”.

 

In the second place we are to speak the truth in love. “Truth” describes the content of what we say; “love” describes our motive for saying it. Our motive is never to bludgeon (truth can be used as a hammer, all of us know). Our motive is never to mislead (truth can mislead whenever what is said is true but not the whole truth). Since love “builds up”, according to the apostle Paul, our motive in truth‑telling must be edification alone. And if the truth wounds temporarily, it must only be a surgical wound, a last‑resort necessity to promote life.

 

Lastly our truth-telling must “fit the occasion”, says the apostle, “so that it may impart grace to those who hear”. There is always the fitting occasion for saying what we have to say; there is always an appropriate context for saying what we have to say. Only as the truth is spoken and heard in the appropriate context does it impart grace; only here will it reflect the word of the God who comes to save rather than destroy.

 

5] The God who comes to save; the God who comes to bind saved people to himself, inviting them to bind themselves to him; he will always be their God, he promises them, even as he invites them to promise him their lifelong love and loyalty, gratitude and obedience. All of this recalls the covenant. The covenant, biblically, is God’s declaration

 

that he wants a holy people so badly he will give himself, holding nothing back, at whatever cost to him, to free and woo and win a people for himself. That people which he has freed and wooed and won through blood-shed grace; so grateful are they that they abandon themselves to him and henceforth live in eager, cheerful obedience to him, reflecting in all of this his own lifegiving goodness. This is the covenant.

 

In scripture the covenant is celebrated with salt. The offerings which God’s people bring to worship are sprinkled with salt. The incense which is burned in the temple is seasoned with salt. Not surprisingly the Hebrew bible speaks of God’s covenant with his people as “a covenant of salt”. (Numbers 18:19 ; 2nd Chronicles 13:5) When an Israelite baby is newly born it is rubbed with salt, a sign that this child, born into the covenant people, must be nurtured so as to grow up reflecting the lifegiving goodness of God himself.

 

With this much salt before us we can grasp immediately what Paul means when he tells the Christians in Colosse that their speech is to be “gracious, seasoned with salt”. Salty speech is speech which befits the people of the salt-covenant. The speech of God’s covenant people is to embody the lifegiving goodness, death‑defeating goodness, of the God who comes only to save. “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt ……

 

Eight hundred years before Paul many people complained to the prophet Elisha that the spring-water in the city of Jericho was rendering the people of Jericho infertile, unfruitful. Elisha poured salt into the spring and declared, “Thus says the Lord, I have made this water wholesome; henceforth neither death nor miscarriage shall come forth from it”.

 

According to Elisha’s descendant, Paul, we who are God’s covenant people are to speak in such a way that our speech brings forth not death, not even something which betokens life yet finally emerges dead; our speech is to embody the lifegiving goodness of him who is the world’s only saviour and therefore its only hope.

F I N I S

 

                                                                                         Victor A. Shepherd  

February 1993

 

Exodus 20:16*
Numbers 18:19
2 Kings 2:19-22
2 Chronicles 13:5
Psalm 46:6b
Isaiah 55:1
Jeremiah 1:9
Amos 3:8
Ephesians 4:15
Colossians 4:6*
James 3:1-12 *

1st Thessalonians 1:1- 2:8

 

     John Calvin suffered atrociously.  He was afflicted with chronic tophacceous gout, deposits of calcified material around his joints.  In 1562 he wrote to Theodore Beza, “God keeps me bound by my feet…. it is difficult for me to creep from the bed to the table.  Today I preached. But I had to be carried to the church.”

In addition Calvin suffered terribly from kidney stones.  His physician advised him to ride his horse vigorously in hope of discharging a stone. At the end of the agonizing horseback ride Calvin wrote, “On my return home I was surprised to find that I emitted discoloured blood rather than urine. The following day the calculus had forced its way from the bladder into the urethra.  Hence still more excruciating tortures….the urinary canal was so much lacerated that copious discharges of blood flowed from it.”

Calvin also suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, and at one point coughed up so much blood that he had to be confined to bed for eight months. While he was in bed for the eight months he dictated the 1559 edition of his Institutes and translated it from Latin into French andrevised his commentary on Isaiah.

Calvin also had intestinal parasites.  (He describes in detail the hookworms and tapeworms that he passed, but I shall spare you the details tonight.)

Calvin also suffered from irritable bowel syndrome (also known as spastic colon), with its cramping abdominal pain.  For ten years he could eat only one meal per day.

He endured migraine headaches, often for days on end.

Not least he was afflicted with haemorrhoids.

The immediate cause of his death was probably septicaemia, shock caused by bacteria growing in his bloodstream.

Repeatedly he had to be carried into the pulpit in a chair. Why didn’t he quit? Or if not quit altogether, why didn’t he take it easy on himself?  Why didn’t he take a few more days off and enter upon a life of ease?

Why not? He tells us himself in the dedication to his commentary on 2^nd Thessalonians: “My ministry…is dearer to me than life.”

Of course his ministry was dearer to him than life in light of how he understood the ministry.  Consider what he wrote in his Commentary on Galatians: “When the gospel is preached, the blood of Jesus flows”; and in his Commentary on Hebrews: “When the gospel is preached, the blood of Jesus falls on the congregation together with the words.”  It almost sounds like a Protestant version of transubstantiation, the transubstantiation of the ministry.

To be sure, the ministry is more than preaching.  Calvin knew that. At the same time, Calvin knew that every aspect of the pastor’s work – preaching, teaching, visiting, listening, consoling – embodied the logic of that work. And the logic of the work of the ministry was that in every aspect of the gospel-ministry that a pastor exercises the blood of Jesus flows; through every aspect of the ministry that a pastor exercises the blood of Jesus drips salvifically on the congregation that has been entrusted to the pastor.

It’s a singular honour to be a pastor.  I am moved every time I recall the remark of Jean Vianney, an early-nineteenth century Roman Catholic priest from the city of Ars in post-Napoleonic France . “If we really knew what it is to be a pastor”, Vianney said, “we couldn’t endure it.”  What did he mean, “We couldn’t endure it”? I have glimpsed what he means, for in the course of my pastoral work, especially in situations of distress and anguish, grief and pain, I have staggered home stunned at how eager people are to see their minister and what comfort they derive from his presence.  I have slowly learned why they are eager and how they derive comfort: it’s because they are trusting the pastor’s faith to support their own faith when their own faith is assaulted by tragedy or turbulence or sin. They are counting on the pastor’s heart-knowledge of God when a wall has fallen on them and mere head-knowledge isn’t going to help.  They want to lean on the pastor’s assurance, borrow from it (as it were). They are hoping the pastor’s assurance concerning God’s truth and God’s triumph will reassure them that God hasn’t abandoned them despite shocking evidence to the contrary.  They are hoping that the pastor’s confidence will restore their confidence that God will never forsake them even though God seems to have. And therefore while a pastor who appears to be a know-it-all is a nuisance, a pastor who never exudes unselfconscious intimacy with God is useless.

What is it, then, to be a pastor?  It’s to have the conviction of God’s mercy and faithfulness so deep in one’s bloodstream that the suffering person will feel the foundations of her life to be in place once more.  It’s to be so unselfconsciously a conduit of the Spirit that the same “current” will be induced in the person whom mishap has made to feel unplugged. Every high school student knows that if a current is passing through electrical wire and another wire is laid alongside it, the current in the first wire will induce a current in the second.  This is what it means to be a pastor.

Robert Coles is a psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard. In one of his video-taped lectures Coles branches out into a discussion of painting, especially the work of Edward Hopper, an American artist. Coles points out that the people depicted in Hopper’s paintings sit close to each other but never look at each other.  They share the same space geographically but are humanly remote.  Coles points out that it’s easy for people to be proximate to each other physically, to chatter, even to meet conventionally; yet it’s rare — because difficult — for people to communicate intimately, heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, deep-to-deep.  Coles is correct: such communication is rare because difficult.

But not so difficult and therefore so rare in the ministry. The human intimacy characteristic of pastoral work guarantees that a smaller congregation of even one hundred people is assailed with enough pain and perplexity, enough anguish and anxiety, to give a minister no rest.

Plainly, regardless of what else pastor and people need in the midst of life’s contradictions, above all we need courage.  We always need courage. Few books in scripture speak as much about courage as the book of Hebrews.         It likens the Christian life to a race, a relay race. Those who have run their leg of the race ahead of us (i.e., Christians of an earlier era who have predeceased us) are awaiting us at the finish line. They remained courageous throughout their leg of the relay race.  They remained courageous: that’s why they finished (rather than quit) and are awaiting us at the finish line.  The unknown author of Hebrews cries, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…. Therefore lift up your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees.” Because any Christian congregation is surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, wecan lift up our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees.  One task of the pastor is constantly to point the people to the cloud of witnesses.

 

It’s the cloud of witnesses that becomes for us a vehicle of the grace of God. One such witness in the great cloud is John Calvin.  Calvin was a giant among the Protestant Reformers.  Calvin spoke characteristically of the grandeur of God and the majesty of God. No one else seems as awed with God’s sheer Godness.  God, for Calvin, infinitely transcends all that we can say or think of him. And yet when Calvin pens a comment on Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian congregation he writes what we don’t expect him to.  Paul has written, “We give thanks to God always for you all”.  In other words, the apostle thanks God for the congregation.  Calvin comments, “Is there anything more worthy of our love than God?” Of course there isn’t. But here comes the surprise. “There is nothing, therefore, which ought to make us seek the friendship of men (and women) more than God’s manifestation of himself among them through the gifts of the Spirit”.   How startling! The Reformer who is awed at the sheer, overwhelming Godness of God maintains that our friends in the congregation mirror God to us.  Our friends in the congregation aren’t friends chiefly because we get along with them or they like us; our friends in the congregation are those whom we are to cherish just because they mirror to us the mercy and patience and truth of God himself.

Calvin was born in 1509 in the town of Noyon , fifty miles outside Paris . At age eleven he went to Paris to begin university studies. His father steered him into law, having noted (his father said) that lawyers never starve. Calvin graduated with a doctorate in legal studies at age twenty-three.  Soon he left behind the technical details of the law for the riches of Renaissance humanism. Then in 1534 the gospel seized him.  He moved to Geneva , Switzerland , and quickly became known for his first major work in theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion.  The first edition had only six chapters; the final edition, eighty. It had grown into a two-thousand page primer for preachers.         Subsequently Calvin became the leading thinker of the Reformation outside German-speaking lands, a prolific writer, and a diligent worker on behalf of the citizens of the city.

Before Calvin died in 1564 he had written commentaries on most books of the bible, including 1^st Thessalonians.         I am moved every time I open it, for here Calvin speaks so very warmly of the pastor’s life with the congregation that the pastor serves. In 1^st Thessalonians the apostle Paul speaks of the style of his ministry with the congregation in the city. Paul writes, “We were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” Calvin comments on this passage, “A mother, in nursing her child, makes no show of authority and does not stand on any dignity.   This, says Paul, was his attitude, since he willingly refrained from claiming the honour that was due him [i.e., as an apostle], and undertook any kind of duty without being ruffled or making any show.  In the second place, a mother, in rearing her child, reveals a wonderful and extraordinary love…and even gives her own life blood to be drained…. We must remember that those who want to be counted true pastors must entertain the same feelings as Paul — to have higher regard for the church [i.e., the congregation] than for their own life.” When Paul maintains that one mark of an apostle is his willingness to make any sacrifice for the edification of the congregation, Calvin adds, “All pastors are reminded by this of the kind of relationship which ought to exist between them and the church”.

Calvin always knew that a dictatorial, tyrannical pastor is a contradiction in terms. The pastor is to lead the congregation, not hammer it; he is to plead, not whip; he is to model the gospel, not hurl it. When Paul says to the congregation in Thessalonica, “We beseech you”, Calvin adds, “His beseeching them, when he might rightfully command them, is a mark of the courtesy and restraint which pastors should imitate, in order to win their people, if possible, with kindliness, rather than coerce them with force.”  The pastor is always to plead rather than pummel.         Calvin summarizes this issue: “Those who exercise an absolute power that is completely opposed to Christ are far from the order of pastors and overseers”.

To be sure, Calvin speaks of two kinds of pastors who give the ministry a bad name. Class one: “stupid, ignorant men who blurt out their worthless brainwaves from the pulpit”. Class two: “ungodly, irreverent individuals who babble on with their detestable blasphemies”. Any minister who reads Calvin here must search her own heart.         I search mine, and trust that you will never find me blurting out worthless brainwaves or babbling detestable blasphemies.

Calvin had the highest estimation of the ministry.  Such work, he said, is “…the edification of the church, the salvation of souls, the restoration of the world…. The excellence and splendour of this work are beyond value”.         There is no greater privilege than being a pastor.

Realistically Calvin knew that pastoral existence could be difficult, even dangerous. He had seen congregations trample ministers.         When he reflects on the disputes and feuds which make life miserable for a minister he writes something that is, regrettably, true of too many congregations: “So we see daily how pastors are treated with hostility by their churches for some trivial reason, or for no reason at all.” Yet Calvin also knew that no one is cherished as much as a diligent pastor is cherished by a grateful congregation.

One day in May, 1954, Stan Musial, the superb right fielder for the St.Louis Cardinals, hit five home runs in a single game.  A few years later Musial was in the twilight of his baseball career. His legs no longer ran fast; his arm was no longer a cannon; and opposing pitchers with even a mediocre fastball were starting to sneak it past him.  He knew that he could now play only occasionally as a pinch-hitter. “Even if I know I’m going to sit on the bench for most of the game”, he told a sportswriter, “every time I go to the ballpark and put on my uniform I get a thrill”.

I am 64-years old. I am in the twilight of my ministry. Nonetheless, every time I exercise this ministry I get a thrill.  Whether it’s when I step into a pulpit on Sunday morning and see the expectant faces of the congregation, or whether it’s when I’m helping someone to die in peace, or whether it’s when I sit by myself and intercede for those whom God has laid on my heart – whenever I exercise the ministry to which I’ve been called I get a thrill. And as often as I’m thrilled I’m also startled, sobered and awed, for I recall Jean Vianney: “If we really knew what it is to be a pastor, we couldn’t endure it.”

I relish teaching in a seminary, and relish it for several reasons. One reason is that it keeps me probing the work of the giants in theology.  Another reason is that it keeps me acquainted with men and women (younger than I) who are preparing for ordination.  Entirely too often, however, a student remarks that after his first degree in theology he plans to do a second and third degree – i.e., a doctorate – because a doctorate will be the ticket out of the pastorate and into a professorship.  The first degree in theology lets one into the pastorate; the final degree lets one out. The truth is, I heard as much when I was a seminary student myself forty-one years ago. Whenever I hear this I tell students most emphatically that the real Doctores Ecclesiae, teachers of the church, were pastors first.  Luther worked as a pastor every day in addition to teaching, writing, travelling, and wrestling with most vexatious problems in church life; e.g., the predicament of nuns who left the convent in response to the message of the Reformation and then had no means of support. Calvin preached on average every second day. Yet his writings are so massive that his 2000-page Institutes represents only 6.8% of his written output.  In addition he sat with the dying, married the living, visited the sick, sorted out conflicts in the wider church (rural pastors, for instance, complained vociferously that they should be paid the same as urban pastors in Geneva .) He ordered provisions for the city hospital. And he had to endure the humiliation of his sister-in-law’s repeated adulteries.
Why did the real giants of theology persist in shouldering such a hugely variegated pastoral work, doing vastly more than merely the scholarship for which they will never be forgotten? Calvin spoke for them all when he wrote 450 years ago, “My ministry is dearer to me than life.”

                                                                                                           Victor Shepherd                        

June 2008

Dr. Shepherd received The Best Preacher Award by the Centre of Mentorship and Theological Reflection at Tyndale University College & Seminary, June 5, 2008.  Following is the sermon he delivered at that event.

 

 

 1st Thessalonians 1:2-7; 2:1-8

 

A few years ago I was standing at the end of a cottage-dock chit-chatting with the cottage owner, Bob Giuliano. (Bob used to be the pastor at Erindale United Church , the first United Church south of me in Mississauga .) While we were chatting, a woman in a motorboat offshore suddenly altered course and veered toward us. She began waving and shouting, “Victor, Victor”. I didn’t recognize her. I didn’t expect anyone to recognize me, since I hadn’t told anyone I was going to be visiting Bob in Haliburton. As the boat came closer I saw that it was a woman from my congregation. She docked the boat, hugged me ardently, talked for a minute or two, and then motored off. When she had left I saw that Bob seemed startled, preoccupied and wistful all at once. I asked him what he was thinking. “In thirty years in the ministry,” he replied, “I have never seen such joy upon running across one’s pastor; never.”

It’s a singular honour to be a pastor. No other work is to be envied. I am moved every time I recall the remark of Jean Vianney, an early-nineteenth century Roman Catholic priest from the city of Ars in post-Napoleonic France . “If we really knew what it is to be a pastor”, Vianney said, “We couldn’t endure it.” What did he mean, “We couldn’t endure it”? I think I have glimpsed what he means. For in the course of my pastoral work, especially in situations of distress and anguish, grief and pain, I have staggered home stunned at how eager people are to see their minister and what comfort they derive from his presence. I have slowly learned why they are eager and how they derive comfort: it’s because they are trusting the pastor’s faith to support their own faith when their own faith is assaulted by tragedy or turbulence or sin. They are counting on the pastor’s heart-knowledge of God — God’s mercy, God’s wisdom, God’s way, God’s triumph, God’s faithfulness. They are casting themselves on the pastor’s throbbing acquaintance with God. They want to lean on the pastor’s faith, borrow from it (as it were). They are hoping the pastor’s assurance concerning God’s truth and triumph will restore their assurance that God hasn’t abandoned them despite shocking evidence to the contrary, restore their assurance that God will never forsake them even though he seems to have. And therefore while a pastor who appeared to be a know-it-all would be a nuisance, a pastor who never exuded unselfconscious intimacy with God would be useless. What is it, then, to be a pastor? It’s to have the conviction of God’s enduring truth and unswerving nature so deep in one’s bloodstream that the suffering person will feel the foundations of her life to be in place once more. It’s to be unselfconsciously a conduit of the Spirit that the same “current” will be induced in the person whom mishap has made to feel unplugged. Every high school student knows that if a current is passing through electrical wire and another wire is laid alongside it, the current in the first wire will induce a current in the second. This is what it means to be a pastor.

Alexander Whyte, a turn-of-the-century Scottish pastor, used to say to young ministers, “Be much at deathbeds”. Whyte wasn’t morose. He simply knew where people most need the pastor’s quiet confidence. Whyte also knew that it’s at deathbeds that the fewest words are used; it’s also at deathbeds that the pastor’s spiritual authenticity is most evident or spiritual vacuity most exposed.

Robert Coles is a paediatric psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard. I first came upon him when I read his book reviews in the New York Times. In addition to psychiatry he teaches “Great Literature” to Harvard medical students. (He says he’s anxious lest medical students leave school with a full head and a shrivelled heart.) In one of his video-taped lectures Coles branches out into a discussion of painting, especially the work of Edward Hopper, an American artist. Coles points out that the people depicted in Hopper’s paintings sit close to each other but never look at each other. They share the same space geographically but are humanly remote. Coles points out that it’s easy for people to be proximate to each other physically, to chatter, even to meet conventionally; yet it’s exceedingly rare — because exceedingly difficult — for people to communicate intimately, heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, deep-to-deep. Coles is correct: such communication is rare because difficult.

But not so difficult and therefore so rare as to be non-existent here. For I have found many people in Schomberg who have admitted me to their innermost heart, even as I trust I have admitted them to mine. When I was only a teenager I read anything I could find by Dr Leslie Weatherhead, a British Methodist clergyman with immense gifts in psychology, literature, and speech. In one of his books Weatherhead stated simply that if we knew the suffering, the sum total of the suffering, in the smallest hamlet in England , we wouldn’t sleep at night. He happens to be right. I’m always amazed at ministers who tell me their congregation is small (although not as small as Schomberg) and therefore they don’t have much pastoral work to do. A congregation of even one hundred people is visited with enough pain and perplexity and distress to give a minister no rest.

Then regardless of what else we need in the midst of life’s contradictions (certainly we need wisdom and patience and persistence and ever so much more), above all we need courage. We always need courage. Few books in scripture speak as much about courage as the book of Hebrews. It likens the Christian life to a race, a relay race. Those who have run their leg of the race ahead of us (i.e., Christians of an earlier era who have predeceased us) are awaiting us at the finish line. They remained courageous throughout their leg of the relay race. They remained courageous: that’s why they finished (rather than quit) and are awaiting us at the finish line. The unknown author of Hebrews cries, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself…. Therefore lift up your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees.” Because Schomberg congregation is surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, we can lift up our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees.

 

It’s the cloud of witnesses – fellow-believers past and present – that becomes for us a vehicle of the grace of God. One such witness in the great cloud is John Calvin, the foreparent of this congregation. Calvin was a giant (some would say the giant) among the Protestant Reformers. Calvin spoke characteristically of the grandeur of God, the glory of God, the sufficiency of God. Calvin always insisted too that the being of God must never be confused with the being of God’s creatures. God is irreducibly God. God isn’t humankind talking to itself with a loud voice. God isn’t a projection, unconsciously disguised as divine, of our overheated imagination. God is uniquely God, and must never be confused with that which isn’t God. And yet when Calvin pens a comment on Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian congregation he writes what we should never expect him to. Paul has written, “We give thanks to God always for you all”. In other words, the apostle thanks God for the congregation. Calvin comments, “Is there anything more worthy of our love than God?” Of course there isn’t. But here comes the surprise. “There is nothing, therefore, which ought to make us seek the friendship of men (and women) more than God’s manifestation of himself among them through the gifts of the Spirit”.   How startling! The Reformer who insists that God is uniquely God and insists elsewhere that God is the only fit witness to himself here maintains that our friends in the congregation mirror God to us. Our friends in the congregation aren’t friends chiefly because we get along with them or they like us; our friends in the congregation are those whom we are to cherish just because they mirror to us the mercy and patience and persistence of God himself.

Calvin was born in 1509 in the town of Noyon , fifty miles outside Paris . At age eleven he went to Paris to begin university studies. His father steered him into law, having noted (he said) that lawyers never starve. Calvin graduated with a doctorate in legal studies at age twenty-three. Soon he left behind the technical details of the law for the riches of Renaissance humanism. Then in 1534 the gospel seized him. Concerning his about-face coming-to-faith Calvin would only write, “God subdued me and made me teachable”. He moved to Geneva , Switzerland , and quickly became known for his first major work in theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The first edition had only six chapters; the final edition, eighty. It had grown into a two-thousand page primer for preachers. Subsequently Calvin became the leading thinker of the Reformation outside German-speaking lands, a prolific writer, and a diligent worker on behalf of the citizens of the city. (He drafted the city’s first constitution, for instance. Although he didn’t practise law he was still the ablest lawyer in the city). His written French did as much to establish modern French as Shakespeare’s English did for modern English. He was humanist, linguist, theologian, biblical commentator, city advisor. All of this, however, he understood as subordinate to the one task that was before all other tasks and above all others and permeated all others: pastor.

Before Calvin died in 1564 he had written commentaries on most books of the bible, including 1^st Thessalonians. I am moved every time I open it, for here Calvin speaks so very warmly of the pastor’s life with that congregation which the pastor serves. In 1^st Thessalonians the apostle Paul speaks of the style of his ministry with the congregation in the city; Paul writes, “We were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” Calvin comments on this passage, “A mother, in nursing her child, makes no show of authority and does not stand on any dignity. This, says Paul, was his attitude, since he willingly refrained from claiming the honour that was due him [i.e., as an apostle], and undertook any kind of duty without being ruffled or making any show. In the second place, a mother, in rearing her child, reveals a wonderful and extraordinary love…and even gives her own life blood to be drained…. We must remember that those who want to be counted true pastors must entertain the same feelings as Paul — to have higher regard for the church [i.e., the congregation] than for their own life.” When Paul maintains that one mark of an apostle is his willingness to make any sacrifice for the edification of the congregation, Calvin adds, “All pastors are reminded by this of the kind of relationship which ought to exist between them and the church”.

Calvin always knew that a dictatorial, tyrannical pastor is a contradiction in terms. The pastor is to lead the congregation, not hammer it; he is to plead, not whip; he is to model the gospel, not hurl it. When Paul says to the congregation in Thessalonica, “we beseech you”, Calvin adds, “His beseeching them, when he might rightfully command them, is a mark of the courtesy and restraint which pastors should imitate, in order to win their people, if possible, with kindliness, rather than coerce them with force.” The pastor is always to plead rather than pummel. Calvin summarizes this issue: “Those who exercise an absolute power that is completely opposed to Christ are far from the order of pastors and overseers”.

To be sure, Calvin speaks of two kinds of pastors who give the ministry a bad name. Class one: “stupid, ignorant men who blurt out their worthless brainwaves from the pulpit”. Class two: “ungodly, irreverent individuals who babble on with their detestable blasphemies”. Any minister who reads Calvin here must search his own heart. I search mine, and trust that you have never found me blurting out worthless brainwaves or babbling detestable blasphemies.

Calvin had the highest estimation of the ministry. Such work, he said, is “…the edification of the church, the salvation of souls, the restoration of the world…. The excellence and splendour of this work are beyond value”. It is a privilege to be a pastor, isn’t it.

Yet Calvin also knew that pastoral existence could be difficult, even dangerous. He had seen congregations ruin ministers. When he reflects on the disputes and feuds which make life miserable for a minister he writes something which is certainly true of many congregations but not true of Schomberg: “So we see daily how pastors are treated with hostility by their churches for some trivial reason, or for no reason at all.” Not here. Not only has the congregation never treated me with hostility for trivial reason or no reason; the congregation has never treated me with hostility at all.

One day in May, 1954, Stan Musial, the superb right fielder for the St.Louis Cardinals, hit five home runs in a single game. A few years later Musial was in the twilight of his baseball career. His legs no longer ran fast, his arm was no longer a cannon, and pitchers with even a mediocre fastball were starting to sneak it by him. He knew that he could now play only occasionally as a pinch-hitter. “Even if I know I’m going to sit on the bench for most of the game”, he told a sportswriter, “every time I go to the ballpark and put on my uniform I still get a thrill”. I’m not in my twilight years. Nonetheless, every time I come here I get a thrill. Whether it’s when I step into the sanctuary on Sunday morning and see the expectant faces of the congregation, or whether it’s when I’m meeting a few people in a mid-week meeting, or whether it’s when I sit by myself here and intercede for those who are especially needy — whenever I come here I get a thrill.

It mystifies me and saddens me that other clergy don’t get the same thrill. One of the professors alongside whom I teach has told me several times that when he left the pastorate he vowed never to return. “On-call seven days a week; being telephoned at any hour; having to go somewhere night after night; no sooner finished preparing one address than having to prepare another. When I left”, this fellow tells me, “I knew I’d do anything before I ever went back.” Compare that attitude with Jean Vianney: “If we knew what it is to be a pastor, we couldn’t endure it.”

I relish teaching in a seminary, and relish it for several reasons. One reason is that it keeps me probing the work of the giants in theology. Another reason is that it keeps me acquainted with men and women (younger than I) who are preparing for ordination. Entirely too often a student remarks that after his first degree in theology he plans to do a second and third degree – i.e., a doctorate – in that a doctorate is the ticket out of the pastorate and into a professorship.   The first degree in theology lets one into the pastorate; a doctorate lets one out. The truth is, I heard as much when I was a seminary student myself thirty-five years ago. Whenever I hear this I tell the students most emphatically that the real Doctores Ecclesiae, teachers of the church, were pastors first. Luther worked as a pastor every day in addition to teaching, writing, travelling, and wrestling with most vexatious problems in church life; e.g., the predicament of nuns who left the convent in response to the message of the Reformation and then had no means of support. Calvin preached on average every second day. His writings are so extensive that his 2000-page Institutes represents only 6.8% of his written output. In addition he sat with the dying, married the living, visited the sick, sorted out conflicts in the wider church (rural pastors, for instance, complained vociferously that they should be paid the same as urban pastors in Geneva .) He ordered provisions for the city hospital. And he had to endure the shame of his sister-in-law’s repeated adulteries.   Modern professors of theology who are full-time teachers are not the descendants of the Reformation’s giants; scholarly pastors are. Why did the real giants of theology persist in shouldering such a hugely variegated work, doing so very much more than just the scholarship for which they will never be forgotten? Calvin spoke for them all when he wrote 450 years ago, “My ministry is dearer to me than life.”

You people have allowed me both to pastor and to teach. For this I can’t thank you enough. For both pastoring and teaching are aspects of my vocation to the ministry. Calvin spoke for all zealous ministers when he said, “My ministry is dearer to me than life.”

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                    

 October 2004