A pastor can’t really sit and write a memoir. There are things shared which are for no one else to know. Neither can he really sit and write in any specific terms about the ways in which pastoral ministry becomes a cost, however articulate Paul was about these things.
Just recently, more than one fellow leader from a bygone pastorate have written independent of each other and said that they wanted to express once again their deep gratitude for our work in that particular place, especially because they realised afresh what our difficult work now enabled. I initially said something dismissive and said, oh it’s all part of the process of ministry. One wrote back and said, ‘but I saw what it cost you personally.’ He was right, of course. He did see, and he listened and wept alongside several times.
I have served as a spiritual director for other pastors and leaders, and have sat listening to the stories of ministry. People who have been ‘poured out like a drink offering’ – something Paul identified in Philippians 2:17 as he considered both the joy AND the act of sacrificial worship that flows from what he himself faced as he carried out his commission from God.
I am not particularly reflecting on my own experience as I sit down to write now, but on the story of a dear and wonderful couple, also in pastoral ministry, who have been through the wringer. I’ve listened and watched from afar even, and that helplessness itself is a hard thing.
It was actually last Sunday evening at a service in Brodick Free Church where I had the opportunity to hear a message on Ephesians 4: 1 – 6. The preacher shared that our ultimate identity and security are based on the glorious biblical truths that have been expounded in Ephesians 1 – 3…and because of that firm identity in Christ and all that he has done, we can enact the grace that means that we can do the following things (vv 2 – 6):
- be completely humble and gentle
- be patient
- bear with one another in love
- make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace
- stand in the Lord who is One: one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
The preacher’s point was that grace is given to endure because, whilst ‘hurt people go on to hurt people’, we follow the way of Christ whose death is the ultimate example of doing all of those things in the list. The cycle of pain can be fed by us or broken by us: we can participate in the wounds of Christ, and let it die with us as we live in Him, by not seeking or revenge or the satisfaction of our own sense of justice. That belongs to God alone. This is the radical nature of Christian theology. It’s quite offensive, really, because it battles with us at the point of our deepest angst and wrestles down our need to be vindicated here and now.
Where I would add some nuance, however, is to say that even in spite of that, we must do our own work with our own wounds lest their festering starts to impact on others. That is something I have been so aware of in my own ministry – I am wounded, but I must become like the Wounded Healer.
I say the same thing to myself as I said to my friends, and as I say to you reading, and as I also said to my congregation recently when preaching from Revelation 1 about the church in Ephesus: the greatest and deepest call is to love, not just when its easy and light but when your face is on the floor. We dare not allow it to leak out. It is this ridiculous love, ludicrous and extravagantly gracious love which chooses to believe the best, and even when it can’t, loves anyway; a love that the world doesn’t know anything about, but which we have been schooled in through Christ as we see him on the Cross.
Now, we all know that Jesus is risen from the dead, and us Protestants like to see our crosses empty. But every now and again, we need to see Him hang there through the eyes of faith to get just a sense of what the real currency of love looks like. It’s a bloody mess that refused to flinch even in the face of false accusation and murderous atrocity. When I look at him, I see it all clearly and take the hit again.
The moment of transformation is when I understand that these are wounds which he has already borne for me.
Andrew S M Clark 