It's been fascinating and fun to watch the new class settle in at VTS and I am happy to report they're considerably calmer than my class, which gained a reputation for being a bit "wild" last year. I didn't really contribute to that--mostly just because I'm old--and while I am relieved there don't seem to be as many strong personalities (and strong livers) in the new class, I do love my class. I told my friend and classmate who is essentially a big male version of me (we share all the same personality traits and even sub-traits according to the Meyers-Briggs) that I really think it was good for me to be part of the wildness that is the Class of 2015. (He agreed that he also loves our class.) It disabused me of any notion whatsoever that priests-to-be (and priests) are of a holier class than anybody else--not that I felt or feel in any way particularly holy. More than anything, I was a little worried before coming to seminary that I maybe wasn't quite holy enough. Thankfully, I've realized we're not called to be "holy." God knows I'd fail every single time.
This all makes me think of Eugene Peterson, the Presbyterian minister and translator (he's responsible for The Message paraphrase of the Bible) and something he wrote about pastors (stolen from bishopalan.blogspot.com):
The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. . . .
We know that you are launched on the same difficult belief venture in the same dangerous world as we are. We know that your emotions are as fickle as ours, and that your mind can play the same tricks on you as ours. That is why we are going to ordain you and why we are going to exact a vow from you.
We know that there are going to be days and months, maybe even years, when we won’t feel like we are believing anything and won’t want to hear it from you. And we know that there will be days and weeks and maybe even years when you won’t feel like saying it. It doesn’t matter. Do it. You are ordained to this ministry, vowed to it.
There may be times when we come to you as a committee or delegation and demand that you tell us something else than what we are telling you now. Promise, right now, that you won’t give in to what we demand of you then. You are not the minister of our changing desires, or our time-conditioned understanding of our needs, or our secularized hopes for something better. With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of word and sacrament so that you will be unable to respond to the siren voices.
There are a lot of other things to be done in this wrecked world and we are going to be doing at least some of them, but if we don’t know the basic terms with which we are working, the foundational realities with which we are dealing — God, kingdom, gospel — we are going to end up living futile, fantasy lives.
Your task is to keep telling the basic story, representing the presence of the Spirit, insisting on the priority of God, speaking the biblical words of command and promise and invitation.
