Preaching and Social Ethics
The Iliff School of Theology
Profs. Thomas H. Troeger and Dana Wilbanks
Sermon #3, 23 May 2001
©2001 Khrysso Heart LeFey
RESPONSIVE READING: “A Network of Mutuality” by Martin Luther King, Jr. (reading #584 in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition)
SERMON: FOUR BASIC TASKS OF A MINISTER
Professors Troeger and Wilbanks, graduating seniors, honored guests:
It is my privilege, especially as the new Joan Van Becelaere Chair of Pagan Studies at Iliff, to be invited to preach to you on such a momentous occasion so soon after my own installation.
I remember the last quarter of my masters program at Iliff and my panic-filled days of losing hope that I would ever graduate. But for you the time is here. You’ve made it, and in just minutes you’ll have a bunch of shiny new letters to tack on to the ends of your names if you care to take advantage of them.
But of course you’ll have more than letters hung on you, and I’m not talking only about the years of memories or the wonderful relationships or the overgrown libraries with which you’ll leave this place. I’m talking about all the expectations that come with the degree, especially the expectations of those of you with MDiv’s who will be entering professional ministry and who will suddenly be expected to live “as ministers” around the clock and around the Wheel of the Year.
Because this is a theological school as well as a seminary, even those of you who are graduating from here, as I did, with an academic degree will carry with you the dirty little secret about what this place is really like. You know what I mean: I mean that because we study religion, they expect us to be “spiritual.” They expect us to have "character." And no matter how we present ourselves to the world, no matter how much we may try to get away with not having to be "good" (because after all, we’re academicians instead of clerics), somehow, somewhere, people find out that we have been formed by this place, and they will expect you, too, you who leave this place with MA’s and MTS’s and PhD’s, in some way to be good to them--to be ministers.
As a musician, I am aware that all vocal musicians, the finest opera singer and the most humble folksinger alike, have to draw upon the same basic fact if they are to be successful in delivering their voices to the world: It all depends on breath. Into making our breath work for us for song comes the need for good posture, for forming our consonants well, for breathing from deep down.
And so it is with ministers, that we have to draw on some of the same basics if we are to deliver our good news to the world. It doesn’t matter whether we worship and serve Jesus Christ, as most of you do, or whether we are accountable to the interdependent web of all existence and the wholeness of Mother Gaia, as I am as a Pagan, or whether we observe the statutes of the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Leah and Rachel. Eventually, it comes down to our character.
In my first quarter as a regular student at Iliff, I learned four basic tasks of a minster. I present them to you today, now that you’re all edumicated and ready to take on the world... and your student loans... because they’ll be just as important to you when you’re a pastor emeritus as they were during your basic field ed. Here they come: they all begin with “P” so that you can go off to your lives having memorized them:
Four of a minister’s basic tasks are to be priest, prophet, preacher, and pastor.
Say them with me so you don’t forget: priest, prophet, preacher, pastor.
Martin Luther was persuaded of the priesthood of all believers. By that he meant, in part, that all the faithful are equipped to mediate for themselves with the Divine, that we could have direct access to the source of our power and salvation. It also means, I think, that we are to make ourselves available to present one another with truth, to help one another find our ways when we lose them, even though we are all equipped. (In practice, we’re just not all ready with our equipment at the same time.)
It’s not our job to rescue people—if you think it is, you’re bound for burnout—but it is our job, when called upon, to present each other at the altars at which we find our sustenance and authenticity and renewal and yes, sometimes, sacrifice.
Did you know that the words “preach” and “predict” are related? They both come from related Late Latin roots meaning “to tell forth,” or, with a little interpretive spin, to prophesy, not in the sense of telling the future but of reminding people what they already know but still need to do--sort of how I’m doing by reminding you to be priest, prophet, preacher, and pastor. Unitarian Universalists have a saint of sorts, a contemporary prophet named James Luther Adams who did Luther one better and preached on the prophethood, as well as the priesthood, of all believers.
It is a great advantage to us at Iliff that we have the Justice and Peace Studies program here—we are all touched by it, whether we have applied ourselves to its curriculum or not, for, as Martin Luther King said in our responsive reading earlier, we are caught in an inescapable web of mutuality: the people we have bumped into in this place have rubbed off on us. It’s a precious good thing that we have chosen a place with such find people to bump into. Now the challenge is to go out into a world that may not be the treasure trove of conscience and moral fiber that this place has been, and find others worth bumping into, for we will always continue to be formed by our company, and what is formed in us is what we will prophesy.
Dr. King also said, “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” May we all, especially those of us in the majority—whatever that means—be mindful that character is not only for the marginalized nor for those who have not yet “arrived,” but for all of us, forever.
As an undergraduate I was introduced to the work of philosopher and rhetorician Richard Weaver, who wrote a famous essay called “Language is Sermonic.” Weaver says:
“We are all of us preachers in private or public capacities. We have no sooner uttered words than we have given impulse to other people to look at the world, or some small part of it, in our way. Thus caught up in a great web of inter-communication and inter-influence, we speak as rhetoricians affecting one another for good or ill.”
What Weaver’s words can mean for those of us here today is that we are always preaching, whether it’s our job to or not, and those of us who do it for a living are especially well advised to make sure that the content of our character is up to date with the self-images that we think we want to be projecting, because our character is the sacred text from which we preach.
Pastors, we know, are shepherds. In that most famous of biblical passages, Psalm 23, we know that the ideal shepherd sustains, leads, restores, feeds, anoints, and houses. Many of you have studied pastoral theology, here and elsewhere, and you know that that means wise counsel, but basically, pastoral care is about care. Don’t forget, my friends and my colleagues, to care: don’t forget to care for yourself, and don’t forget to love. Nothing is as bad as all that, that it should remove us from the path of love.
Again, prophecy—telling forth—is often about telling people what they already know. I hope that you’ll just consider my exhortations to be a handy summary of your experience at this place, and that my little play on the “P” sound—you remember: priest, prophet, preacher, pastor—will serve as a handy reminder to re-orient you when the going in your life as a minister gets tough.
There is life after Iliff, and if you feel excited about yours today, well, you’re entitled to. As we say in the Pagan community, “merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again. Blessed Be.”