Marks of Authentic Ministry
May 13, 2006
StoreyView streaming video of the divinity school’s May 13 baccalaureate |
Soon, very soon, the rubber hits the road.
You enter ministry in a sobering time. This is not quite the same nation Elizabeth and I arrived in, in the late 1990s. Nine/Eleven battered its sense of invulnerability, and those voices claiming so confidently in 2003 that a sole superpower could play God with this planet are now muted. Katrina has exposed massive social fissures and the nation appears to be in denial about the mountains of wreckage where once a city stood. Pricey gas pumps mock the thirsty SUVs that drive up to them and the Hummer goes off into history to be remembered as a gigantic conceit. Messianic promises to reshape the world in our image have given way to the humbler hope of salvaging approval ratings. It’s a different, more sober America – and perhaps a different Duke University too, chastened by the presence of an under–culture we don’t like to acknowledge.
A less certain, more confused time.
This is not a bad thing. It is never a bad thing to remember that there is only one God, and God is not about to share God’s glory with a mere nation – or even a great university. A troubled, anxious people may even be a fraction more open to what the true God has to say, but only if there are those truthful, compassionate and courageous enough to declare it. I hope that you will be such persons, authentic and truthful ministers of God.
What are the marks of authentic ministry? Where do we find them and how do we hold on to them over the long haul?
46 years ago I sat where you are sitting, full of great plans and big ideas. Looking back I wish I had been less preoccupied with the obvious stuff – where I was to be appointed, who my Superintendent was to be, what I would be paid (A princely eleven pounds a month I recall it was) and where I would live (a rooming house run by an ex-Jehovah’s Witness who had become a Baptist). I wish I had given more attention to how Jesus began his ministry, because the ministry to which you and I are called is not in the first instant that of some denomination or church bureaucracy: it is the ministry of Jesus. There is no other.
The ministry of Jesus began in a great affirmation. There can be no ministry without that.
Before Jesus began his work, Luke puts him among the crowds pressing into the waters of the Jordan , waiting humbly in line for baptism, and when he had been baptized, “the heavens opened...” In that moment all the unshaped intimations of vocation within him came at last to a focused clarity ... and there came a voice from heaven and God said, “That’s my boy! ... my Son, my Beloved... my favour rests on him”
Jesus received this affirmation by right; how much more do we need it by grace? I long ago came to understand that there were two truths about me. There is the “me-truth,” if you like, that witnesses to my frailties and worse, my disobediences and betrayals. It’s a hard truth to live with and if it were the only truth about me, there could be no ministry. But there is also the “God-truth” about me, words spoken from God’s heart into mine telling me that amazingly that I am God’s child.
In 1994, after the liberation of SA from tyranny, two of our newly appointed black Provincial Premiers (State Governors) invited church leaders to a party. They had both been on trial under the apartheid regime and had spent time on death row before freedom came. Now they said they wanted to thank the churches for support during their ordeal. The “party” turned out to be 30,000 people gathered in a football stadium, with us sitting down below on the field, under a large tent. There was much festivity and many speeches, but the words I remember most clearly came from Premier Patrick Lekota. He thanked us for many things, for standing by the families of the accused, for visiting them in prison, for attending the trial and speaking for them before they were sentenced. “All these things, we thank you for,” he said, “but above all else, we thank you for baptizing us. When you baptized us you told us that we were not rubbish, that we were infinitely precious to God. That is the certainty that held us through our long struggle.”
Authentic ministry over the long haul begins when you hear God say, “You’re my daughter, my son. I made you. I love you, you belong to me, my favour – my grace – rests on you” Now, that is what your baptism declares. Hold on to that great affirmation of God’s loving ownership over your life and it will hold you.
But ... I want you also to know what to let go.Our text tells us that Jesus’ ministry also began with a great renunciation.Jesus had to let go of the world’s way of getting things done. In most Baptismal liturgies we are required to renounce “the world, the flesh and the Devil” – and the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry show us that these words are not to be taken lightly.
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, finds himself led into the wilderness of choice, where, in Daniel Erlander’s book, Manna and Mercy, Satan, dressed as a motivational speaker at the “Messiah Success Seminar,” talks to him about methodologies for winning the world.
- “Plan A” offers military force and impressive displays of power. It promises rewards and uses tried political methods (with Satan as campaign manager of course), and recommends the consolidation of authority and power.
- “Plan B” suggests that Jesus offer vulnerable love and compassion, that he should live and teach dignity and mercy and manna for all, that he should get into trouble and die on a cross, trusting only in God for his vindication.
It’s a no-brainer ... except that Jesus goes for Plan B.
Now you too will be led into that wilderness, not once, but many times. The choices we make occupy a tiny fraction of our lives, but they are the hinges upon which all of life hangs. Some are obviously momentous, like our choices of spouse or vocation; others may seem at the time to be of little consequence – and those are the ones to watch! Those apparently ‘minor’ choices – especially when they involve compromise with the world’s way of getting things done – have an exponential effect on the kind of persons and ministers we become.
Most of your temptations will come from within. You know the ones I mean – if you don’t, then read Richard Foster on Money, Sex and Power – but sadly, some will come from the very institutions you are preparing to serve. The church has a serious balance of payments deficit with the world right now: it imports more than it exports. It is caught up in the illusory idea that size, prosperity and comfort with the culture’s divides are important to win followers of Jesus. Some church officials, more desperate to save the church than the world, look upon local congregations as franchises where the barometer of effectiveness is measured in money and membership. Some denominations put you in competition with each other for higher salaries, with the notion that if covenant is too hard to live by, maybe capitalism will do the trick. They like God’s plan but they think they have a better way of getting it done.
I hope you will know what to walk away from. I hope we’ve somehow managed to train you to be conscienscious objectors against that model of church. I hope that you have eyes to recognize within that model the world the flesh and the devil. In the “Messiah Success Seminar” it seemed to be a no-brainer, yet Jesus chose “Plan B,” but only after much struggle and fasting and prayer. John Wesley could not have put it better than when he prayed, “For your dear Son’s sake, suffer us not to acquire the miseries we so eagerly pursue!” In churches often snared by the love of power and the wisdom of the world I hope that you will make the renunciations necessary to be messengers of the power of love, and of the foolishness of the cross.
Yes, messengers! Our text tells us that affirmation and renunciation are followed by declaration. Jesus, knows he is owned and loved by God. He has made those choices that set him free to be an entirely new Word for the world. Now he comes home to Nazareth. Now he has a message. Isaiah’s amazing vision of God’s dream for the world rings out in this country synagogue ...
- “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me ...
he has sent me to announce good news to the poor,
to proclaim release for prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind,
to let the broken victims go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Here is a message that makes our church–growth literature look positively tepid! If they thought young Jesus was coming home to show them how to manage a successful, “purpose–driven” synagogue, they were mistaken. Instead, he uses this local platform to announce a costly journey outwards and downwards, exploring the infinite, relentless hospitality of God’s heart. This is about all those who his audience thought were abandoned by God, the people whose infirmities and poverty they were told were proof of God’s displeasure. Jesus’ “Nazareth Manifesto” announces God’s favour to all such, declaring them to be made, loved and cherished by God, and promising life, healing and liberation. This is not about entertaining the church, it is about healing the world. It’s about Mother Theresa’s daily prayer:
“O God, I pray that you break my heart so wide open that the whole world falls in.”
Resist with all your might the temptation to play “church” while the world bleeds. Until you lead your congregation to engage with that real world, your pastoring will be mere pampering, your proclamation will be a religious form of talking to yourself. Jesus wants to lead us past our self–absorption into the only place where it costs something to be the Church – the world. God invites us to join Jesus there declaring the good news that God’s heart breaks in love for that world... that God’s arms are nailed wide open in welcome to all, especially those broken by poverty and bigotry, and shackled by injustice. That’s your message!
Will you be truthful, compassionate and courageous bearers of that good news? Will you be authentic? Not without help. Note how for Jesus his three movements into authentic ministry are each overshadowed by the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit descends at his baptism, it is the Spirit who leads him in the wilderness of choice, and the Spirit who arms and empowers him for his great declaration.
Without the Spirit there can be no ministry
Last year, Richard Hays wonderfully reminded us that the red hoods that will shortly be placed upon your shoulders might appropriately be symbols, not only of your academic achievement, but also of the tongues of fire that rested on the disciples at Pentecost. As each of you is hooded this night, I invite the rest of us, faculty and staff, families and friends to pray – earnestly pray for the coming of God’s good Spirit yet again, upon you, so that authentic ministry may be born in you, and shared with God’s world.
Dr. Peter Storey
Duke University Divinity School Baccalaureate
May 13, 2006