The Holy Machine

Happy New Year? Ready for some deep thoughts to start off 2011?

Today I came across a really interesting passage in The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey (Journal of Thomas Merton), which is the last volume in his journals before his untimely death in December of 1968.

On Christmas Eve of 1967, Merton was experiencing a lot of tension in the monastery and in his own life. He was questioning his calling in a very deep way, and it didn't help that Gethsemane was experiencing a divisive election of a new abbot. Merton was floated as a candidate for the position, but did not want it and made that quite clear to everyone.

He expressed his frustration in these words:

The Church is a great treadmill, and when you turn it, it churns out and ineffable substance called grace, and he who gets his pail full is thereafter untouchable, impervious to everything, neither man nor God can tell him anything. He is justified. He is right. He has a right to bash your head in if you even think of questioning it.


I can identify with Father Thomas' feelings. He is chest deep in "church politics", when people let the lesser sides of their humanness run the day and make others cynical about the real value of the church. Vietnam and contentious debates about "Just War" are also very much on his mind. Merton is talking specifically about the Roman Catholic Church, being part of a strict monastic order, but you could easily apply his comments to any organized religious group.

Anyone who spends much time deeply engaged in any type of faith community experiences this kind of disillusionment, and it can be a regular occurrence if you are a clergy-person. 2010 was a year full of these kind of low moments for me on a number of levels, and right now I'm finding myself in a place where I'm still climbing out of a deep funk.

The good news, though, is that God is with us in these low places as much as anywhere else, and it is in these low places that we experience God's grace more powerfully because we are much more aware of our need for it.

As stuck as I can feel sometimes, I know that God is leading me through these dark places into a better future where I will be stronger for having gone through it. And God will continue to use the Holy Machine of the Church, in spite of and even through its many flaws. In 2011, I'm going to try very hard to choose to not give up on the Church Universal, even in moments of frustration and anxiety. God hasn't given up on us, so why should we?

What is the real role of the clergy?

I've had one of those weeks. You know, one of those weeks where seemingly nothing has gone right. Without going into details or naming names, my week has largely consisted of having to scramble and cover for the fact that other people either didn't do what they were supposed to do or backed out of something they agreed to do. There's no real sense getting mad about it. That's life. Besides, I know for a fact that I've been the source of this same kind of consternation for people on innumerable occasions in the past, so perhaps it's karmic justice.

During times of high stress such as these, it's very comforting to talk to other clergy, who all have similar stories. At the very least, it helps me to know that I'm not the only one with problems. The fact that most other pastors I know spend most of their time planning the ideal way for things to do, then altering those plans when something inevitably goes wrong, makes me wonder about our theological understanding of the role of the pastor.

When you get right down to it, most denominational groups have a rather high ecclesiology (theological understanding of the nature and role of the church), especially when it comes to clergy. High church denominations focus on the sacramental authority of the clergy, whereas low church denominations focus on the pastors' role in bringing the gospel to the masses. Either way, they all have fairly high views of the set apart and unique nature of the role of pastors.

But is that really what clergy spend most of their time doing? One of the most meaningful things I do is presiding at the sacraments of baptism and Communion, but these things take up a relatively small portion of my working hours. I also treasure moments of evangelistic encounter, but again, if I were to categorize my work week, evangelism would only claim a small percentage of my time. At the risk of painting with too broad a brush (I have yet to hear of a preacher who doesn't have that nasty habit), this is more or less true for everyone who is called to ministry as a full time vocation.

So what is it that consumes most of our time? What label gets slapped on the biggest piece of the pie chart? I suggest that it is personality management. To have any kind of success as a minister, you have to have some skills in working with people and knowing how to interact with different personalities.

I heard someone say one time (I can't for the life of me remember where or when) that if everybody just did what they were supposed to do, then we wouldn't need leaders, so the job of a leader is to deal with those (frequent) times when people don't do what they are supposed to. We could pick apart that statement in all kinds of ways, and yet there is a real truth to it. 

If everybody did their work on time, if they all understood their roles and never needed any guidance, if nobody did anything they weren't supposed to, then leadership would be pretty easy. If churches actually functioned that way, the pastor could show up once a week, preach a sermon, and be done. I have a fantastic congregation with many gifted and responsible lay leaders, so some of my best weeks are almost that easy!

But anybody can lead when things are going smoothly. The measure of any leader, clergy leaders included, is shown when nothing is going right. Fortunately, clergy leaders don't just have to rely on the depth of their own gifts and graces. We are called to rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit all of the time, and particularly in those moments when chaos seems to reign supreme.

Perhaps my musings here run counter to the rather high ecclesiological views of the role of the clergy espoused by most denominations, but I wonder if our understanding of said role isn't somewhat clouded by these grand, largely esoteric statements. Perhaps an understanding of clerical leadership as personality management would help us better discern the gifts and graces of those who feel the call to vocational ministry.

Respectfully Disagreeing with Benedict

The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was headed up by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger until his election as Pope, has recently released a document with which I have to take issue. I know, a progressive American Methodist taking issue with Roman Catholic theology?

But I feel the need to comment on this one because of the extreme irony I see in the situation. The Congregation's document "clarifying" (reinterpreting) statements made by the Second Vatican Council states that churches outside of full communion with the Roman Catholic Church "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because we do not enjoy the full benefit of "apostolic succession in the sacrament of orders". Basically because I'm not ordained by a bishop that has been appointed by the Pope, I'm not a legitimate celebrant of the Eucharist.

(Here is the full text, and here is the short version, courtesy of CNN.)

I could play the proof-texting game here, throwing out verses like "wherever two or three are gathered in my name I am there" and whatnot. But someone could come back with "on this rock (Peter) I shall build my church", plus I don't believe in lobbing Bible verses back and forth. I could even question the legitimacy of true apostolic succession in the papal office because of the number of times there have been multiple claimants to the throne or how many times the office was achieved through simony. But I won't even do that because the ecclesiological practices in my own denomination are in need of great repair.

What I find ironic about this situation is that it represents the very thing that Jesus stood against: the hegemony and exclusivist practices of the religious establishment. Jesus broke Sabbath laws, reinterpreted Mosaic Law, taught without official authorization, and hung out with the unacceptable and "unclean" people to show that God's grace is available to everybody, regardless of whether the authority figures liked it or not. Grace is God's alone to give, and is not subject to the whims of any person wearing fancy robes- myself included.

What the Vatican is saying through this document is that ecclesial bodies who do not profess allegiance to Rome are at best second class citizens in the Kingdom, and at worst are totally left out, simply because they (we) do not choose to play by their rules. Jesus was executed because he flagrantly disregarded the rules of the system. We in the Protestant churches constantly fail to be truly Christlike communities, but perhaps in this one instance we find ourselves in very good company.