A Call to Ministry

I have recently taken the first steps towards ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church.  As part of that, I have been asked to share with my local church a statement of my ministry call.  I'm including part of it here, so let me know what you all think!

I spend a lot of time thinking about unanswered prayers. Specifically, I think about that person sitting alone in a room, wondering it’s safe to hope, and praying for God to show up in their lives.  I think about that person all the time.  Maybe they are praying for an end to abuse or suffering in their lives, or for community and connection, or simply to feel the presence of a higher power to lift them up.  However, I do know one thing about those who utter unanswered prayers: we haven’t showed up for them yet.  They do not yet sit in our congregations, feeling Grace, like I did 3 years ago when I found my current church.  God is trying to answer their call, but needs our help with that.  I could spend the rest of my life making excuses for why some theological detail of the church as a whole does not fit with me, or why some imperfection in my own life or faith disqualifies me from the job, but that’s not answering that person’s prayer.  That’s not answering God’s call. 

Much of my call to ministry is because of the prayers that we. as a community of faith, as a denomination, as disciples of Christ, have yet to answer.  The world is full people trying to find God, of God trying to find them.  However, according current trends in our society, each generation finds less relevance for their spiritual life in a traditional church.  But their spiritual needs are increasing – not decreasing.  My Master’s work in community-based sociological networks looked at how break-downs in interpersonal connections in communities dramatically impacted their ability to solve shared problems, and psychological researchers are documenting similar impacts on basic human relationships.  Recent studies at Duke and the University of Arizona concluded that most American have only 1-2 close confidants with whom they can share their most important life concerns, while 25% have no one at all.  How many of these people live near our churches?  How many of these people go to our churches?

The theologian Frederick Buechner has written, ”vocation is where our greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.”  My greatest joy is that look in a people’s eyes when they experience the Love and power of God in their lives.  Stripped down to its most basic element, Christianity is about connecting people to God and each other with that love – Christ’s Love.  The Methodist faith talks about transforming the world by connecting people to Christ’s love through Discipleship.  My vision in ministry is to help make Christ relevant again in peoples’ lives, by listening to the spiritual story of each person, and learning how to be the face of Christ for them.  It does not matter what shape or color or size their faith comes in.  It just matters that they have someone who shows up for them after they pray.  If we can do that, God only knows what’s possible.

(A clarification here:  I know many who read my blog posts are not Christian per se.  As I hope you already know, my aim in this blog is not to evangelize and convert, but rather to share my own stories of spirit.  Despite our spiritual lens, I believe we are all  ministers in our way, Christian or not, ordained or not, if we decide to heed that call.  So even in this post where I am talking about my own plans for ministry, I am aware that all of us, all of the time, are ministering in our own ways.)

Like I’ve done so well the last 20 plus years, I can easily list the excuses for why I should not go into ministry.  However, I’m left with that call of the unanswered prayer.  How will I respond to that voice crying in the wilderness, once I have heard it?

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,

Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low:

and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: (Isaiah 40:3)

O righteous Father, the world doesn't know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. And I have revealed you to them and will keep on revealing you. I will do this so that your love for me may be in them and I in them. (John 17:25-26)

Forgive us our trespasses/sins/debts/whatever

Trespasses? debts? sins? Our relationship with our faults is fraught with challenges. The word "sin" brings up a lot of resistance and baggage for people, including me. So, when I was asked to fill in to preach for our pastor this Sunday on the part of the Lord's Prayer that says "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us", I had more questions than answers.

 So what's in a word? Matthew and Luke include the Lord's Prayer in their respective Gospels, but even they used different words here. Matthew used a word which means debts, while Luke used a word which means sins. Meanwhile, several translations later, the word trespasses appears. After some admittedly lazy google-based research, I gathered that a plurality of biblical historians agree that Jesus taught/preached in the local Galilean dialect, a form of his native Aramaic. In that language, the word hobha means both sin and debt, but the Gospels were written in Hebrew, and the two disciples used the two different words. Of course, after subsequent translations in latin, greek, etc, on the way to English, the same translations led to "trespasses" in the current form. In other parts of the New Testament, Jesus actually replaces hobha with another word that means trespasses.

 Perhaps it doesn't really matter, after all. Jesus was trying to get people to stop thinking about the words, the laws, the recipes of religion at the time. So, he didn't preach in the educated language of Hebrew, but in the accessible language of Aramaic. Also, he used several different words, ideas, parables, and more because he didn't want people to get lost in the words. He wanted them to find the point. He wanted to open the door that connected everyone to God and that had been locked far too long by an exclusive religious community. He wanted everyone to have the choice to walk through that door and find a spiritual life with God.

 As I myself move beyond the words, there are two things about forgiveness that I feel very deeply. One is what I wrote about before, which is that living in a state of forgiveness and graciousness to those around us allows us to live in that state ourselves:

... we choose which state we decide to live in with the world. We can choose resentment and revenge, based on a fear of self protection, or we can choose to live in a state of forgiveness, based on a connection with the higher power of love to transform our relationships.

The other has to do with how the act of confiding in God and each other about our mistakes improves our relationships with both. The best examples I can think of why this is important are in parenting and interpersonal relationships.

As a parent, one of the things that's always on the list of things to figure out is how to deal with a child that has misbehaved. It's easy to get caught up in our kids bad behavior, to become frustrated with it, to try to control it through some combination of punishing, pleading, or preaching. However, the worst thing that can happen with our kids is not that they behave badly. The worst thing that can happen with our kids is that they stop talking to us. Usually, poor choices in a child's behavior happen because they are trying to deal with a problem or situation, or impulse, and don't know how. Maybe they're forcing you to drag them out of the door and power-buckle them in the car when you're already 10 minutes late for school because they're afraid of a situation there, or they were in the middle of playing with or watching something. It's easy to see, with a little bit of space, that most of the problems that lead to bad behavior are resolvable. What we as parents hope for is that we can teach our children how to come to us when they've made mistakes, or are making mistakes, and let us help them figure out a better way to live.

 I misbehaved as a child, on occasion. I remember one time, in Jr. High, when I got into a fist fight on a friday night. My mom or dad picked me up from the teen club at the church, and I quickly got into the back seat to hide my black eye in the dark. I knew fighting was wrong, and I feared getting in trouble. But there was a lot more going on than just that. Even though I made it to my room without being noticed, I was in a great deal of turmoil. I had not chosen the fight - it was orchestrated by other kids so that they could see a fight that night, and my entire social standing would hinge on whether or not I fought this other kid that I had no desire to fight. The black eye didn't hurt, but the feeling of being forced so viciously into something I didn't want to do was unbearable. It was hard, but I walked out of the room, and told my parents "I got in a fight". I was lucky to have parents that didn't rush to judge me, but instead asked "what happened?". In fact, it was my faith and hope in that response from them that brought me out of my room. It helped them to help me, and though refusing to join the game in the future challenges led to an excruciating loss of social standing, it also eventually allowed me to find better friends.

 It's not about our sin, or the defeatist notion of us all being sinners. The power of asking for forgiveness from God is that it allows us to engage a dialogue and a connection with Him/Her. As spiritual beings, this dialogue with a benevolent higher power means everything. It allows God to help us during our darkest and weakest times, and creates a connection between our searching souls and a deeper source of power. It's kind of one of the main points.

 In our personal relationships, such as in our marriages, family ties, professional or church communities, and friendships, how we deal with mistakes and trespasses in ourselves and others may be the most important thing we learn how to do. The best relationships don't come from perfect people - they come from people who learn how to own their imperfections, and accept them in others.

 Do we identify with our mistakes, and own them? Do we feel like we need forgiveness? For many of us sometimes, the goal is to not let people see our sins and imperfections. We try to hide that from each other. We try to hide that from ourselves. We even try to hide it from God. But acknowledging, and confessing, our imperfection and transgressions - our sins - is the first step to healing and freedom. Doing so unleashes our authentic selves; not that filtered version we're trying to appease everyone with all the time. Wouldn't you rather be that person? Wouldn't you rather be around that person?

 How do you interact with your sin? Do you rack yourself with guilt? Do you systematically ignore it as it builds up to 100 times it's actual size? Do you blame others for your mistakes? Do you find other ways of cutting yourself off from redemption and healing?

 It's strange how the whole passage about sin/trespasses in the Lord's Prayer elicits so much resistance and negativity, when the it's inclusion is actually about hope. The point is not that we make mistakes - the point is that, despite our mistakes and brokenness, we can come to God and find healing amidst our struggles.