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October 15, 2002

In his book, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, Will Willimon reflects at length on one of the great readers of the faith, Augustine.

One reason Augustine makes for such good reading in this century is that he had a life-long fear that we might be alone in the world. Our age is widely noted as a time of widespread alienation and loneliness. Fear of isolation, of loneliness, permeates much of Augustine’s account of his life. Are we here by ourselves? Is there anyone else out there or in here, or are we left to our own devices? “Was I anywhere? Was I anybody?” he asks. Without the means to make connection with others, we are others even to ourselves. C.S. Lewis says, We read to know that we are not alone.”38

Words are the means toward community, communion.

The Confessions begins with “I, I,” and ends with “You, You.” All of our little words gesture toward the Word . . . . [Augustine’s] life in Christ really begins by being confronted by the Word, “Take up and read, (tolle, lege) . . . . His is a journey through words to the Word . . . . His life culminates in, of all endeavors, biblical exegesis. The goal of life is the interpretation and performance of Scripture. All of our words are meant to find rest in the Word . . . . Augustine’s testimony is an invitation to risk vocation, to go on the journey he has made, to venture forth with the expectation of discovering (or being discovered by) a new world, of learning to read as a primary way to God.39

Willimon thinks that it was Ambrose who taught Augustine how to read scripture “and thus, how to read the world.” I don’t know if that is right or not, but I do know that learning how to read scripture teaches us how to re-describe our world, that is, to describe it not just as the scene of getting and spending or self-realization, but as the scene of God’s life-giving and person-making forgiveness and grace.

The word that is spoken to us invites us not only to hear but to read.

February 23, 2005

In the most recent edition of The Christian Century, the editors have asked various luminaries to reflect upon the teachers they had in seminary who changed their lives. I was particularly struck by Will Willimon’s memory of being at Yale in the late 1960’s, and his remembering of Paul Holmer, a Lutheran theologian. Those days were turbulent times. One night the students gathered to hear Holmer and

our great hero, William Sloane Coffin [a Presbyterian minister, and at the time, Chaplain to the University, whose most recent book, Credo, is currently a bestseller.] debate the role of the pastor. I don’t know why someone invited Holmer to such a debate; like Soren Kierkegaard [whose work constituted part of Holmer’s own field of interest], he was generally contemptuous of clergy. Coffin opened with an exciting exposition of the pastor as agent of social change. ‘Because you visit and work with people in a variety of settings, you can organize them to work for justice. You will have important people in your churches—bankers, lawyers. You can do much good getting folk motivated to get together and work great change in your community.’ When it came time for him to respond, Holmer said, ‘I disagree with about everything that Bill has said. Your job can’t be to organize people, to bring them together. People hide in groups. It’s one of their best defenses against God. Your job as pastor is to break up the groups, strip them naked, render them exposed and vulnerable. That way God can get to them. Besides, Jesus despised bankers and lawyers.

Willimon concludes: “Though that was opposed to just about everything that we believed at that time about ministry, and though I was mostly ignorant about what it took to be a pastor, I knew Holmer had it right.”40

Well, I am not sure he had it exactly right. People can hide in more places than groups, and in America, one of the best places to hide out is in our own “individuality.” Moreover, I don’t think God is depending on me to render sinners accessible to his grace. Still, I do think Holmer was right that by preaching the gospel we bear a far more radical witness than by becoming a “change agent.” We worship One whose love for us is not an agenda but a life, whose Word heals precisely as it wounds, lifts up as it casts down, inviting us to do something far more daring than “organizing” others. This God invites us all to follow Jesus Christ and in following him, to discover what it means to be taken from one place to another. That happens not as we become agents of change but as we become disciples. Holmer may have been a bit hard on bankers and lawyers, but he was right that the Kingdom does not come through better organizational skills. Rather there is something far more mysterious and miraculous in the gospel’s working, a grace that can transform bankers, lawyers, and even clergy into instruments of peace.

September 21, 2005

Stephen Webb has written an important book on preaching, entitled, The Divine Voice (Wipf and Stock, 2012). He argues that we show that we have understood the gospel’s message to the extent that we proclaim it. That is to say, the gospel is not just to be studied or thought about but finally intends its own proclamation. To miss that is to miss the gospel itself.

Like many of us, Webb thinks that he does not know what he knows until he says it. Our words do not just contain what we know, he thinks, they more often constitute what we know. In this respect, he thinks we are like God, whose triune life is constituted by the conversation made articulate in the Father’s uttering the Word with the breath of the Spirit. Jesus is the way God speaks, Webb writes. And grace is God’s way of uniting us to Christ so that we are included in this conversation. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, worship itself are the means of grace by which God helps us hear and teaches us how to speak, i.e., teaches us the language of praise and witness.

If what Webb is arguing is true, then his claim must represent the most difficult challenge facing a seminary. It suggests that the learning we do here is not simply digesting vast quantities of information or even acquiring certain pastoral or homiletical skills. Rather our aim must be to enable students to speak the grace of God idiomatically, helping them to become proficient in the language of praise and thanksgiving. Truly, that is the work of the Holy Spirit, i.e., to render us articulate and courageous witnesses to the gospel, but just so our teaching and learning need to reflect this gift even if we are embarrassed at our stammering timidity in making use of it.