Preaching, worship, and reality

(Further thoughts, relating both to my George Beasley-Murray memorial lecture, text available here in case anyone is interested, and to this post.)

Somewhere near the heart of the argument in my GBM lecture was the question, does preaching reflect reality or change it? To take the classic historical example, most of the Lutheran debates about the preaching of the law and the preaching of the gospel turn on the supposition that the preaching of the gospel is effective proclamation: an authoritative declaration that the hearer, merely by virtue of having heard the declaration, is now forgiven and reborn through the atoning sacrifice of Christ (which declaration, of course, demands the response of faith, and permits of no other response).

It seems to me that many of the recent ‘preaching wars’ have been between people who think preaching should reflect the realities of our lives as lived, and people who think preaching should reflect the reality of life as narrated in Scripture. (In Hans Frei’s terms, when preaching do we read the text into the world, or the world into the text?) I suspect that both are wrong: our life as lived is broken, fragmented, partial, unnarratable (‘fallen’) – it has no nameable reality. The only proper response to any proposed metanarrative is incredulity; we live in a theatre of the absurd, with no plot, no meaning, to interpret our various exits and entrances. In this context, preaching is an act of re-narration; it is a moment within God’s overarching salvific work of gathering up the broken pieces of life and world and, through Christ, weaving them into new creation, a moment in which the new story of life and world is written, and, by being told, is (at least potentially) actualised.

But this is not merely the announcement of the eternal reality, the unchanging truth, of things as revealed by the text of Scripture; as far as I can see, when it comes to created realities, Scripture is not very interested in unchanging truths. Rather, it is a series of announcements that God is doing a new thing – each new thing, of course, is perfectly congruent with what went before, but it is nonetheless, new, unpredicted, unexepected. The ongoing reality of salvation and sanctification is the weaving together of the broken fragments of our lives into a new story that can make sense. Preaching, thus understood, is a moment in which the Sovereign Lord is making all things new, it is the writing of names thus-far unspoken and unknown (Rev. 3:12) – the creation of hitherto-unimagined identities and meanings. It is, fundamentally, the effectual announcement that in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has determined that your life, also, will be changed decisively from this moment on.

(Theological aside 1: As some readers will realise, somewhere beneath all this is a particular account of the relation of created time to God’s eternity, such that election is something eternally real and so actual and happening at every moment in time. Call it ‘Barthian’ if you must, but it is splattered all over the earlier tradition if you bother to look for it (try tracing the doctrine of creatio continua for an extreme example) – as Barth well knew.)

(Theological aside 2: what, then, of Frei? He was, of course, describing an observed shift in hermenuetics when he came up with his memorable phrase (it’s somewhere early in Eclipse; I don’t have either book or precise reference with me); I suspect that the implicit ontology of the post-liberal theology developed by Frei, Lindbeck, and others might tend in the sort of direction I’m describing here, even if none of them would particularly locate the decisive re-narration in the ministry of preaching – Will Willimon has come closest to working it through in these directions, although with a more political slant than I’ve given here.)

If all this is right, then what of worship? Clearly, there is a liturgical place for both the narratings of reality that I have rejected: in worship we do recall and celebrate the eternal truths of God’s deity; and in worship we also hold the contingent and fractured reality of the world before God in intercession and petition. But is that all we do? Does worship change reality also?

The tradition of charismatic hymnody which was one half of the soundtrack of my Christian formation assumed, quite emphatically, that it does: ‘By the power of His blood we now claim this ground’; ‘Come and sing this song with gladness, as your hearts are filled with joy…’; and so on. There are strands of declaratory pronouncement in all traditional liturgy as well: the declaration of forgiveness following the confession; the epiclesis (in the Eastern tradition), or Eucharistic prayer (in the more Catholic end of the Western tradition); almost paradigmatically ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’. In each case, the saying of the words is liturgically assumed to effect a difference in reality. Presumably petitionary or intercessory prayer assumes something similar. A properly-pronounced benediction also tends in the same direction (‘The Lord bless you and keep you…’ as opposed to ‘May the Lord…’).

In worship, the community brings the fragments of its several partial and shattered lives before the Lord, not because those fragments are interesting, or even nameable, but because in God’s presence and by God’s Spirit they may and will be made into something new. And so worship ends with dismissal: ‘As God’s redeemed people…’; ‘Go into all the world…’; ‘Our worship is ended; our service begins.’

UPDATE: The link to the GBM lecture text is now fixed. Apologies.

Living in the real world

I’ve commented fairly often in conversation that the only downside of having moved to St Andrews is, when faced with the most irritating comment that comes to pastors and academics alike, ‘But you don’t live in the real world, do you?’ I now simply have to admit, no; this strange and marvelous town is many things, but it is just a little too like fairyland to be ‘the real world’.

The thought came back to me when I noticed that several friends (including Andy and Craig) had launched an initiative at the recent BUGB/BMS Assembly called Real Life Worship. The stated aim (in a post by Andy) is this:

It is an attempt to connect real life to worship. Worship that forms us relationally, politically, socially and economically.

Now, I understand the point, and I support it wholeheartedly (and I love the prayer that forms the first substantial blog post), but I find the language odd – and actually slightly disturbing. What is ‘real life,’ or ‘the real world’? If we interrogate the use of the terms, it tends to end up in one of two places: either finance, or a place of naked suffering. (To their credit, Andy, Craig, and friends seem not to have fallen into either of these traps; rather they are aiming at something like ‘the rest of life’ or ‘ordinary living’).

The notion that there is something ontologically basic (‘real’) about finance is merely ridiculous. Like all idols, money is a fiction, one which we once found useful but now have imbued with so much authority over our lives that it has the ability to destroy us. (This concept of idolatry from 1 Cor 8.) Money may be powerful, but it is in no way ‘real’. It makes promises that it is unable to keep (‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand…’ – the notes I current have in my wallet carry this promise from RBS, and it seems a little hollow), on which we choose to build our lives (and so we have reconstructed our society in far-reaching ways to protect me, and RBS, from their defaulting on that promise). Our choice does not make it ‘real’ – it merely makes us foolish.

Alternatively, ‘the real world’ is the place where struggle and suffering is most visible and desperate. There is something more ‘authentic’ about life on an urban estate (or in the face of urban poverty) than in the comfortable suburbs. This idea is more explicable than the previous one: human reactions in contexts of suffering and poverty are generally more immediate and direct, less covered over by the mores of polite society. But still, is this ‘real’?

I presume that God is real. Our reality is the truth of our being as intended and determined by God. It would be tempting to become slightly Buddhist at this point, and claim suffering as illusion, but that would be wrong. East of Eden, God’s determination of human life is gospel shaped, following the pattern of cross-and-resurrection. Suffering is real, but only within this wider narrative.

What, however, of where I started: pastoral ministry; academic life; the practice of worship?

I claim no privilege for the academy, but I’m not sure that I am prepared to accept any necessary deficit, either. A particular moment of  academic life, or a whole academic career, may proceed at some disconnection from reality, but there is nothing necessary or even likely about that. We are as capable as surrending to the idol of financially-driven priorities, and so living unreal lives, as anyone else, but not more so, as far as I can see; we are capable of devoting ourselves to chasing irrelevancies, but so are many others.

Pastoral ministry I do claim privilege for. The calling of the pastor is, by the ministry of Word and sacrament, to be a constant reminder of the real world in the lives of those who chase idols or illusions, and to fit them for reality.

Worship, finally, and back to Andy’s language: ‘connecting real life to worship’? How can we imagine worship that is not connected to ‘real life,’ the life God is forming within us and fitting us for? Worship is real life, pretty much; all other life is ‘real’ only insofar as it is ordered by worship.

(Of course, I realise that the ‘Real Life Worship’ folks know this, and are precisely aiming to find modes of worship that usefully order the rest of life so it becomes real – an urgent and necessary task; I’m not trying to criticise what they are doing, only reflecting on a chance turn of phrase.)

Pastoral eschatology

More thoughts on eschatology…

I am fully convinced–and became so in pastoral ministry, performing funerals–that we cannot and should not speculate about the eternal fate of any particular person. God will judge, and (my other Spring Harvest soundbite) when we see God’s judgement we will be astonished by the depths of His mercy, and by the heights of His justice.

The NT offers many chillingly serious warnings about the reality of God’s eschatological severity (the main reason I find universalism too easy a way out), but will never speak of any named human person in hell. (In a parable, Lazarus is received into Abraham’s embrace, ‘a certain rich man’ is condemned to suffer; the most the New Testament will say of Judas is that he will ‘go to the place prepared for him’.) Those condemned to torment are classes of people–’the idolaters, the sexually immoral, …’–and of course any class can potentially turn out to be empty. If the NT will not speculate about the particular inhabitants of hell, nor should we.

At the trivial level, this is no more than the old ‘we never know what went on in someone’s heart in the minutes before death,’ which remains true as far as it goes. But I want to take it much further than this. Too many Evangelical accounts of personal eschatology are simply Pelagian: I make decisions, and God responds to them. This has to be wrong. If salvation always coincides with visible faith, then it is because God decides to save, and as a result grants faith (see Edwards’s sermon on justification by faith for some very close analysis of this), not because I decide to have faith and thereby force God to do something different. (Almost no-one ever held that salvation always coincides with visible faith, though; the 10-20% mortality rate amongst infants in pre-penicillin Europe & America saw to that.) What determines the outcome is not what goes on in my heart, but what goes on in God’s heart, and what God does to my heart.

All of which is to say that my hope of salvation for myself, or any other human being, is primarily based on what I know of God, not on what I believe to be true about me, or about them. If our level of eschatological questioning is ‘where’s grandma?’, this will not be a helpful perspective, but–as I want to keep saying–that is almost certainly not the right place to start.

(How, though, in pastoral ministry to answer it? Point to the gospel promises, of course; point to the passages of Scripture that speak of God’s desire that all may be saved; and then stand with Abraham in the face of the deadly serious threats of God’s severity and ask ‘will not the judge of all the earth do justly?’ – Abraham understood doing justly as showing an astonishing level of mercy.)

Ordained academics

Geordie asked a question in response to this post which seemed to demand a longer answer. How is a vocation to ordained ministry lived out on the academy? It seems to me that there are two sides to this question: one theological and one existential.

On the theological question there are probably two basic ways to jump: one might acknowledge the presence of different orders of ministry within the church, of which an academic role could be one. Calvin included ‘doctors’ alongside ‘pastors’ amongst the ordinary ministers of the church (Inst. IV.3.iv), calling on Eph. 4 as his justification. The Baptist Union of Great Britain is beginning to head in this direction, recognising specialist ministries in evangelism and in youth ministry on its list of accredited pastors. One might, then, offer an account of ministry that included within the basic vocation a call specifically to the study, explication, and defence of the doctrines of the church. Such a vocation might of course be exercised in various places, but a university theology department would seem a particularly hospitable one…

The problem with this line would seem to be the movement from ‘doctoral’ ministry to ‘pastoral’ ministry, and vice-versa; is God’s calling mutable? Well, possibly, or God may call some to both roles, to be exercised in different ways at different times. The problem is not insuperable.

If, instead, we regard ordination as to a unitary ministry of ‘pastor-teacher’ (as other readers of Eph. 4 find the text affirming), the question needs to be answered a different way. I once argued in connection with ’sector ministries’ (hospital chaplaincies and the like) that it is the visible practice of every denomination I know to regard other roles (national or regional leadership; translocal charitable or preaching work; chaplaincies; …) as legitimate exercises of a calling to pastoral ministry. (‘Visible practice’ here meaning that even if they don’t admit it, by not excluding ordained ministers who take on such roles, and not re-ordaining them should they return to pastoral ministry, they imply that these roles offer the potential for an adequate fulfilment of their calling and ordination vows.)

In a word, my theological answer to Geordie’s question is here: I am able to fulfil my ordination vows, and the vocation God placed on my life, in my current employment. This is a judgement I have made, but it has been guided and confirmed by my church fellowships and denominational officers.

An existential answer may have to wait till another post.

Being with pastors

Over the past month I have traveled more than I should have, probably; there was a day when, feeling rather overwhelmed by life, I looked for a reason, and realised that I was about to sleep in my sixth different bed in six nights…

The traveling included some great times, though. I spent three days at continuing education events for pastors, one with the Free Church of Scotland, and two with the Scottish Baptists. Days like these remind me of several things: my own vocation; the purpose of theology; and the goodness of God.

I am called and vowed to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. It may be, at present it looks likely, that for the remainder of my life my salary will be paid by institutions of higher education, but vocation is not about employment; the day I stop believing that I can adequately fulfill my ordination vows in the academy will be the day my resignation goes in. This is not the same for every theologian, of course: I have good friends who have courageously held on to a vocation to lay theology, when ordination was offered by ecclesial authorities and looked an easy route to academic employment one way or another.

I am convinced, however, that theology is the church’s science. We do what we do to serve the people of God, the bride of Christ. Being Baptist, I am further convinced that theology is the churches’ science: we do what we do to serve not some idealised ecclesial entity, but messy and difficult local fellowships which gather Sunday by Sunday around Word and bread and wine. For me, this means that those occasions when I have the privilege of being with pastors are moments of testing and, by the grace of God, always thus far, of validation: have I got something to offer these brothers and sisters, that will feed, aid, and sustain their ministries? Not, of course, that everything done in the study or seminar must be immediately translatable to the pulpit or pastoral visit, but that the time spent in study and seminar has produced some fruit that is now ripe for the picking. I believe the Pope claims as one of his titles servum servorum Dei, ‘the servant of the servants of God’; perhaps the title is his pre-eminently, if his role in the determination of doctrine is as it is claimed to be, but for all of us who are called to wrestle with the teaching of the church, the implications of the gospel, this title offers an aspiration–to serve God’s ministers.

And the goodness of God. An old friend, with whom I have since lost touch, trained for Anglican priesthood as I trained for Baptist ministry; Moira’s wisdom and insight was remarkable, and talking to her enabled me more than once to name my own experiences. She said once of Wycliffe Hall, where she trained, ‘I have never been anywhere where people laughed so much.’ That’s it. That’s what being with pastors means to me. I came away, particularly from the Baptist meeting, with a sense of having been immersed in something remarkable–wholeness? wholesomeness? holiness? All of those and more–Moira would have known what to call it.

The events end, of course, with fulsome expressions of gratitude, a generous gift, and I depart, unable to articulate the truth that I received far, far more than I gave, or ever could give.

But it is ever thus in God’s economy of grace.

The pastor’s library (1)

Extracts from a letter to a pastor…

You were the second person this week to ask me for recommendations on how to spend money on books, which seemed odd to me-I’ve never had a problem doing this… Anyway, you got me thinking about what good advice for a pastor’s library might look like, so I’m afraid you get an essay rather than a shopping list-teach you to ask a theologian!

It is only in the last two or three years that I have taken to buying books because I wanted to read them; this is because we have both more money and more space than ever before in our lives. Before that I worked with a key distinction that I commend to you, between books I wanted to read and books I wanted to own. The latter I bought; the former I borrowed, unless I found them available very cheaply. (Spurgeon commends ‘a little judicious borrowing’ to his students somewhere, following it up with the sorts of dire imprecations about the morality of not returning books that can only come from long and painful experience.) There are a lot of books worth reading once; far fewer that you will want to return to again and again.

Whence to borrow? Well, my shelves are yours, to misquote the Bedouin, and you know some of our more established local pastors well enough to presume the same of them. Beyond that, you presently have the advantage of living in a university town with, perhaps, the fifth best theological collection in Britain-get the church to pay your fees as an occasional student each year, and that is a rich source, particularly of the formidably expensive commentaries and reference works. Further afield, the Evangelical Library in London offers a loan by mail service at a modest cost, and is worth knowing about. The National Library in Edinburgh won’t lend you books, but it is a copyright library and so has virtually everything-a half-day there browsing commentaries when planning a new sermon series, to determine which of them you might want to buy, will be time well-spent.

Which books might you want to buy? Let me suggest two reasons for buying books that should apply to a pastor: first, you will buy books to use repeatedly; second, you will buy books so that you can lend them to others. The first group consists of the standard reference works, commentaries, liturgical resources and the like; also of the particular pastoral manuals and theological and spiritual works that inform and sustain your life and ministry, and that you want to own so that you can read and re-read them regularly. The second consists of the sorts of books (and CDs and DVDs) that will benefit the people you are called to serve, and that you want to be able to place in their hands. (I think I am on my fifth copy of Fee & Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All it’s Worth, a book I repeatedly lend to people, and occasionally receive back.)