Why I Became and Remain a Pastor!
The Rev. Mark Sherwindt, Pastor
Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Advent 2: December 9, 2007
Recently, I was asked why I became a Pastor. It's not an unusual question. In fact, it is a question I am asked quite often. So, I went through the litany of the usual points. I was raised in the Lutheran church, but never thought I'd be much interested in being a pastor - in fact, I never thought I'd be much interested in being a Christian - until my late teens. I was almost twenty when I was really struck by kids my own age, and older, who were really excited and engaged by knowing Jesus as their Lord. I knew the terminology, but I had never thought of using it with such joy and conviction! Their interest and their lives attracted my interest. What had they found that I seemed to have overlooked?
I was traveling during the summer of 1970, and discovered these real, live Christians in Missoula, Montana. Some were making a go of it on a Christian ranch outside of Missoula. Others were developing a coffee-house ministry in town. All of them were connected to an ordinary congregation that was reaching out to university students, and young folks just passing through, with all sorts of new ministries. The coffee-house offered temporary lodgings, and paid expenses with a wood products workshop. The church created jobs by making and selling western-style dining room tables, and they opened a restaurant called Emmaus Road, with all sorts of wonderful entrees. It was an exciting time, for me and for born-again Christians in Missoula who were discovering God's presence and power active in their lives in new and creative ways.
Like I said, I had grown up with the language of Christian faith. I knew the words and said them on time and in tempo with everyone else in church every Sunday. But these folks in Montana invited me to stop thinking of my faith as an objective observer, and they challenged me to look for the Lord who wants to teach us the meaning of the words we use at worship so that we can mean it when we say that Jesus is Lord. When I got back to Connecticut, I became involved in a Youth Encounter ministry that went into Lutheran churches using a weekend retreat format to breathe new life into local youth groups. It worked on the same principle I had experienced in Missoula, real kids witnessing to other kids about how the love of God could change our lives.
By the time I graduated from UConn, I knew that I wanted to be a pastor. I wound up choosing Trinity in Columbus as my seminary, and my journey of faith became even more interesting with some new twists and some surprising turns. I discovered that there was more to the language of faith than I could have imagined. I moved on to the Roman Catholic stronghold of Notre Dame, and when it came to faith seeking understanding, I found that our Christian faith was up to the task of taking on all questions and inviting all comers who might challenge the meaning and truth of faith's claims about God's love, our sin, the gift of salvation, and our call to believe it, and live it.
As I answered the question, I began to realize that I was focusing on the wrong story, my own. So, I began to switch my focus. After twenty-five plus years of pastoral ministry, the key question is not why I became a Pastor, but why I remain one. I mean, knowing the church, inside and out, with experiences that challenge one's early idealism and naïve expectations about what it means to live and lead in a community whose mission it is to grow in love and service by grace, why do I remain a Pastor? Why do I remain a Pastor, knowing as I do that we often fall short as we struggle to grow into our Lord's love, failing to live up to our own expectations, never mind God's? Sure, like all of you, I am often lifted up by our accomplishments and weighed down by the struggles that inevitably and invariably accompany our living and working together in this community we call the church.
But it is not these accomplishments or struggles that drive my interest and fuel my passion. It is this core conviction that grows deeper with every year that the church is the place God has chosen to proclaim the good news of salvation. The church is the community God has chosen to serve as the herald of good news by embodying it in our struggle to trust God's grace and live Christ's love by the Spirit's power. With every additional year in ministry, with each passing year in life, it becomes more compellingly clear that the Gospel is not a disembodied truth floating above the realities of everyday life. God enters the history of flesh-and-blood lives because that's where we are. God enters our world in the story of Jesus, and this story lives on in the on-going life of the church, in ordinary congregations like ours.
The church is more than just a random place where the gospel is proclaimed and the message of salvation is heard, as if hearing this Good News on the radio could be just as good as gathering with real life Christians worshipping and serving our Lord. The church is more than the bricks and mortar that stand here on the corner of Portage Street and Lindy Lane. It is more even than the people who gather inside its doors and under its steeple. For the church - not invisible radio waves, and not these bricks, blessed or otherwise - is that special community that has been chosen and called to show the world what God's Word looks like, by speaking the language of Christian faith in worship and living it through service. For two thousand years the community of the church has kept the language of faith alive, bringing the story of Jesus to life as we retell it, and finding new life through the very activity of its retelling. Jesus lives through the stories of his life and ministry among us. These stories breathe God's presence and power into the life of those communities that gather and live in his name.
Yes, it now seems to me that I was focusing on the wrong story because what drives and empowers us all is not our own stories but Jesus' story. For his is the story that creates this community we call the church, and his is the story that guides us as we find new life and true life listening to God's Word and living in Christ's love. I think that John the Baptist had this same perspective. He had lived an interesting life, carving out quite a memorable spot for himself in the annals of history. Even his peculiar wardrobe and unusual diet of natural foods have been remembered and celebrated. The truth is that he shocked his world by becoming the first prophet to walk and talk among God's people in three hundred years! People listened to him. Local rulers feared him, even as they revered the man and respected his office. But John the Baptist knows that it's not about him or his story. “There is one who is coming that is more powerful than I.” [Matthew 3:11] His is the story in which we will find salvation. His is the life that will give new life, true life, to God's people. And John was right. That's what Jesus will confirm next week, when we encounter John the Baptist in prison. “Truly, I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen that is greater than John the Baptist.” None have a more interesting story. None have lived more interesting lives. “Yet, the very least among those who are in the kingdom of heaven are far greater than he.” (Matthew 11:11) Our lives, our stories cannot deliver what Jesus' life offers, what Jesus' story makes possible among us.
When it comes to being a Pastor, the work is fine, better than fine. I must confess that I enjoy such things as the annual ritual of setting goals with each new budget year, especially the satisfaction that comes when we reach our goals, sometimes exceed them, and set the bar higher as we grow in faithfulness. These are challenges that make life interesting and keep us engaged. But it isn't these everyday tasks and annual rituals that get to the heart of the matter. It is the creative, life-giving power of the story of Jesus and its indelible and undeniable connection to the life of the church that offers the key to answering questions about why I remain a Pastor. The indispensable role of the church in relaying the story and the life of Jesus: that's what fuels my passion for pastoral ministry.
These two - the story of Jesus and the life of the church - are linked scripturally, historically, and philosophically. The Scriptures narrate this connection in the bridge that is drawn between the four Gospels and the Book of Acts. History attests to this indelible link, narrating its unbroken continuity from antiquity through the middle ages right into the modern world. Empires have arisen and fallen. Nations have come and gone. But the Christian community lives on, a miracle of divine proportions alive in our midst and thriving among us. Finally, and I don't want to lose anyone here, even though this point is kind of complicated, sophisticated philosophers and ordinary experience have taught us that words require the context of a language to have meaning, and these meanings come alive only when there is a community speaking the language and living it. In this way the miracle of the Word made flesh requires the miracle of the Church as a living, breathing body in order to take root in our world and take hold of our lives.
There you have it, scripturally, historically, and philosophically, the reality of the church is an absolutely essential link in how the Word of God speaks through the story of Jesus. This community has persisted and prospered through the centuries, across millennia, with the courage to raise and respond to issues of truth, growing its commitment to stand with the world in its quest for justice, learning to live the love and show the mercy that God lives and gives through the life of our Lord, which becomes ours as we join in this long line of witnesses gathered for worship and sent to serve … in Jesus' name. Amen