The Insufficiency of the Law

"Then what advantage has the Jew?"

It's a logical question given the kind of claims that Paul has made in Romans 2. In the verses leading up to this question in 3:1, Paul has talked about the possibility of Gentiles being a law to themselves and keeping the law without being circumcised. He has even said that such Gentiles are better off than Jews who have the law but fail to follow it. So its worth asking "Is there any advantage to being a Jew?" One could have easily misunderstood Paul as saying that Jews and Gentiles were just alike with absolutely no difference between them. Paul makes clear here at the beginning of chapter 3 that this is not the idea he intended to communicate. The Jews are still God's chosen people to whom were entrusted "the oracles of God".

But there is some sense in which Paul wants to communicate that Jews and Gentiles stand on equal footing. Even though Israel is God's chosen people and hold certain advantages by virtue of their election, they are still basically in the same boat as Gentiles when it comes to being counted as righteous before God. That is what Paul has been saying for most of these three opening chapters and it is the point he is driving home in these verses. As he says in V.9:

"What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin."

Greeks, that is, Gentiles being "under sin" would have been a given in the mind of any first century Jew (as we saw in Romans 1:18-32). Paul spent all of chapter 2 arguing that the same is true for Jews as well, despite having the law. Just in case there is any doubt left on the matter, Paul adds a litany of quotations to his argument; quotations from Israel's very own Scriptures pointing out Israel's very own sinfulness. Paul is at great pains to demonstrate that however good and perfect a gift God's law might have been to Israel, Israel's own Scriptures testify to the reality that the law alone was not capable of assuring the righteousness of Israel. Page after page of Israel's own story speaks to the reality of Israel's idolatry, sinfulness, and injustice despite the presence of God's law to guide them. That is why Paul can say that even though there is an advantage to being a Jew, "both Jews and Greeks are under sin."

It is also why Paul closes this section by saying

"For by works of the law no human being will be made righteous in his sight for through the law comes the knowledge of sin." 

I suspect that this statement and much of this chapter are often read as a kind of eternal decree from God as if Paul were saying "No one will be saved by works because God said so (and God said so because God also said we are sinful thus our works are sinful)." In other words, we could read this chapter as a very blunt statement of the doctrine of original sin; that every human being is corrupted from birth and as a result even our best works will not justify us in God's sight. Without debating the merits of such a doctrine, I would argue that isn't exactly what Paul is saying here. Rather than repeating an eternal maxim from God, I think Paul is making an inference from human experience. He is essentially saying "Look, we know no one is going to be made righteous by works of the law because for hundreds of years of Israelite history the law has failed to make us truly righteous. In fact, the law's only real accomplishment has been to point out sin in all its sinfulness (something on which Paul will elaborate in chapter 7).  

In short, we are in need of something more than law. Even the law given by the creator of the universe was not enough to make us righteous. It couldn't prevent sin or produce justice. It couldn't make us whole. So if we are to be righteous before God, if we are to be made new and whole, we will need God to do something new, something in contrast to what has gone before, something more powerful than law. We need this:

"But now..."

Circumcision of the Heart

In the last half of Romans 1, we saw what was probably a typical first century Jewish view of Gentiles. That is, they are a people to whom God has not been revealed in the same way that God was revealed to Israel. Paul says that the Gentiles still should have been able to observe the attributes of the creator by way of his creation. However, they have not received God's good and perfect law. As a result of their ignorance of God and God's law, their lives have become ones that pervert justice and produce unrighteousness. In contrast to the Gentiles, Jews understood themselves as the chosen people of God who had been given God's law. As a result, Israel's life together was to be one where righteousness prevailed. Jews presumed that they were to be a light to the Gentiles.

Paul, a Jew himself, agreed with these presumptions. He understood (even after his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus) God's law to be a good and perfect gift and he continued to believe that Israel was a people chosen by God to be a light to the rest of the world. Paul's point in Romans 2 is not to denigrate either of those realities. His point is to argue that neither of those intertwined realities - the gift of the law to Israel and Israel's election - automatically make Israel righteous. Righteousness is not a matter of being ethnically Jewish or even knowing the law but of faithfulness to God.

Paul begins by arguing that God does not show partiality. Even though God has chosen Israel that election is not a matter of favoritism. It is an election to live faithfully before God. As such, Paul says that God will judge Jew and Gentile alike according to their works. V.12-13 sum up Paul's point well when he says that those who don't have the law (Gentiles) will perish because they don't have it to lead them to righteousness but that those who have the law (Jews) and still commit sin aren't any better off because they will be judged by the law they have broken. It is not merely hearing the law that makes one righteous but doing it.

This is a place where the narrative of Habakkuk, which Paul quoted in 1:17, proves illustrative once again. In the days of the prophets, many in Israel thought that destruction could never come their way simply because they were God's chosen people. Habakkuk is shocked when he hears that God will use the Babylonians to clean up Israel. Likewise, we hear in Jeremiah the refrain "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord" reflecting the belief that no harm would come to Israel so long as God's temple stood among them. But God warns through Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and the other prophets that this is not the case; that God's people must turn back to God or destruction will be brought upon them even though they are God's people and even though they have the law and the temple. As Habakkuk says, it is out of faithfulness that the righteous will live. Paul is arguing a similar point in Romans 2; that merely being Jewish or having the law will not save or make righteous. One must put God's law into practice through faithful living.

So far, so good. I don't think Paul has said much there that is terribly different from what any first century Jew would have said. Faithful Jews would have been very happy for Jews and Gentiles alike to live faithfully by putting God's law into practice. But Paul also goes on to say something that Habakkuk and Jeremiah do not say. In v.14-15 Paul states:

"For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts..".

And in v.25-29

"For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God."

This is surprising because circumcision is itself a part of the law that Paul is talking about. When Paul says "if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law," I imagine that most of his fellows Jews would immediately object saying "How can one be uncircumcised and keep the law when circumcision is itself a central part of the law?" This is a question we will hear Paul begin to answer in more detail in Romans 4 where he writes about the faith/fulness of Abraham. For now, it is enough to notice the consequences of what Paul is arguing here: Gentiles can live just as faithfully in God's righteousness as Jews even without fulfilling certain parts of the law such as circumcision. Indeed, Paul go so far as to say that an uncircumcised Gentile who lives faithfully to God is more righteous than a circumcised Jew who breaks other parts of the law. We Gentile Christians may take this for granted but it was an enormous and controversial claim on Paul's part; one that puts him at odds with his fellow Jews, even at times with his fellow apostles (see Peter in Galatians), and one that will take him the rest of Romans to fully unravel.

As Gentile Christians it would be foolish of us if we did not see that Paul's admonition, which is here directed to his Jewish brothers and sisters, also applies to us. We might hear the Spirit speaking through Paul's words to us saying "You who call yourselves Christians and rely on the Spirit and boast in God and know his will and approve of what is excellent because you are instructed by the Scriptures, you who consider yourself a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in Jesus the embodiment of knowledge and truth, - you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?" Merely bearing the title "Christian" or knowing the Bible or being baptized is not enough. The righteous will live out of faithfulness to God.

The Mercy of Unwashed Hands

How do you envision the wrath of God?

In Romans 1:18, Paul says that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the idolatry and injustice of humanity. For several verses, Paul rails against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of human beings who skew and obstruct knowledge of God even though Paul says that they themselves should have been able to come to this knowledge by observing what has been made. In all likelihood, Paul's words here are probably representative of Jewish caricatures of Gentiles in the first century. At the root of all of this caricature is the failure of Gentiles to worship the one true God of Israel. Everything else Paul describes here is mere symptom. Idolatry is the disease.

Given that Paul sees us Gentiles as so terribly godless and idolatrous, when Paul starts to talk about wrath being revealed from heaven one might expect the lightning bolts to start flying any minute. Quite to the contrary, we hear Paul say three times in the next several verses "God gave them over...". In v. 24, God gave them over to the lusts of their hearts...". In v. 26, "God gave them over to dishonorable passions...". In v. 28, "God gave them over to a debased mind...". The wrath of God being revealed from heaven is simply a matter of the Creator letting the created pursue their own idolatrous tendencies without interference. It seems the worst wrath that Paul can imagine from God is not lightning bolts and plague but apathy. The worst possible scenario for us is a God who washes his hands of us.

This is perhaps not that surprising when we consider that the wrath of God is depicted in much the same way in the fundamental story of idolatry in the Old Testament. In Exodus 33, after Aaron and the people of Israel construct a golden calf to worship, God says to Moses:

"Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’ I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

Despite the people's sin, Yahweh still intends to keep his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by giving the promised land to their descendants. But God will send an angel to do this work rather than God's own presence dwelling with the people of Israel. On the surface, this might seem like a pretty good deal - Israel still get God's blessing if not God's presence - but Moses will have none of it. He says:

"If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. ¹⁶ For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

Moses knows that the worst conceivable fate for the people of Israel is that the presence of the God who delivered them from slavery would be withdrawn from among them. In similar fashion, Paul characterizes the wrath of God being revealed against Gentile idolatry as God handing them over to their own devices. This action on God's part is in stark contrast to the actions of God that Paul has just described in the previous verses using some of the very same vocabulary. Whereas in v 18-32 Paul says that God's wrath is revealed against unrighteousness that is manifested in shameful acts, in v. 16-17 Paul has just said that he is not ashamed of the gospel in part because the righteousness of God is revealed in it.

It is especially important here to keep in mind what Paul means by some of those words. The gospel is the story of Jesus Christ who "was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead." That is, this good news is centered around the Son of God who stepped into human flesh and died our human death. This is the story of a God who got involved, who intervened. This is a God who, far from washing his hands of us, got his hands dirty in the most profound of all possible ways, plunging those hands into the mess of our own flesh, taking on the very kinds of hands that had themselves committed unrighteousness and idolatry so many times over and having nails put through them. Furthermore, the righteousness of God that is being revealed in this gospel is not only what God has already done in Jesus Christ but also the transforming work that God continues to do to bring about righteousness in our own lives, even the lives of unrighteous and idolatrous Gentiles like us.

I imagine that this is contrary to the way we usually think about things. It is easy to think that God's mercy surrounds us so long as things are going well. We tend to ask questions about God's wrath when tragedy strikes. But Paul makes me wonder if the worst possible thing that God could do for us would be to simply let everything go according to our plans and our desires all the time. Perhaps the wrath of God in American culture isn't manifested in disasters and economic downturns but just the opposite; in God's allowing us to run unfettered into our never ending pursuit of happiness, security, and prosperity; when God hands us over from being his beloved possession to being possessed by the very things we so desperately seek to obtain.

Its not that happiness or even our own passions and desires are inherently evil. Its that they are malleable and if left unattended they effortlessly take on the shape and pattern of the broken world that surrounds them. Fortunately, a critical piece of the gospel that Paul proclaims is that leaving our desires and passions unattended is the very last thing that God wants to do. God so badly wants to shape us into the marvelous creatures we were created to be that God plunged the two hands of Son and Spirit into our humanity for that very purpose. The mercy of God isn't when God washes his hands of us and lets us be. The mercy and righteousness of God are revealed in the divine hands that are covered in dirt and clay from the work of shaping the dust of the earth into creatures that begin to resemble the very divinity that has shaped and formed them.

The Source of Faithfulness

For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God leading to salvation for all who believe, to the Jew first and to the Greek. For the righteousness of God is revealed in it from faith to faith, just as it is written "The righteous out of faithfulness will live."  Romans 1:16-17*

These are widely recognized as the theme verses of Paul's letter to the church at Rome. They are the thesis of what turns out to be one very long, sustained argument. As a result, there is a lot to unpack here. (After all, Paul will spend the rest of the letter doing just that.) But it is those final words, the quotation from Habakkuk 2:4 which I find most interesting and most enlightening for understanding these verses and the whole of Romans.

Habakkuk is a little prophetic book that begins with a familiar question:

"O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save?"

 The first four verses of Habakkuk paint a bleak picture of Israel as a violent and unjust place. Habakkuk says that the law is "paralyzed" and "justice goes forth perverted." This is an especially poignant depiction of corruption given that the law to which Habakkuk refers is the good and perfect law given by God. The corruption and injustice in Israel are so severe that even God's perfect law is powerless to correct it. The overwhelming sin of Israel perverts the instrument of God's own justice so badly that it only serves to produce more injustice. It is this dismal circumstance which causes the prophet to cry out to God asking "How long?".

To say that God's response to Habakkuk in 1:5-11 would have been "surprising" or "unexpected" would be an understatement overwhelming in its imprecision. "Jaw-dropping, difficult to wrap your brain around, alternative reality" would come closer to an apt description. God proclaims that his answer to the problem of violence in Israel will be Babylon: the pagan, know-nothing about Yahweh, worshipping other gods, soul-crushingingly-powerful nation of Babylon. This is the evil empire of the Bible; a nation so infamously etched in the memory of God's people that the writer of Revelation would still use them as a code name centuries later for the pagan, know-nothing about Yahweh, soul crushingly-powerful empire of his own day (Rome). In spite of this, God intends to use Babylon to clean up Israel.

This is a hard pill for Habakkuk to swallow to say the least. Habakkuk questions it, wondering how a holy God can use such an unholy instrument to correct the people God called to be holy. It is in the midst of this exceedingly strange circumstance, this frighteningly new and uncertain action by God that we hear the words "The righteous will live by his faithfulness." The call of God through Habakkuk is for the righteous to live out of faithfulness (whether their own or God's is, perhaps purposely, ambiguous)** even in these violent and terribly uncertain times.

In the context of Romans 1:17, the quote from Habakkuk is often seen as a call to a righteousness by faith rather than by works. Correspondingly, the whole of Romans is thought to be Paul's detailed exposition of the righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus rather than good deeds. There may be a shade of truth to such a reading of Romans but I think that truth has more to do with Martin Luther's guilt-laden conscience and his reading of Paul than it has to do with Paul's own writing.*** Instead, if we allow the narrative of Habakkuk to set the tone for Romans as Paul himself seems to do, we will find that there are remarkable similarities between the two.

Similar to what we have seen in Habakkuk, much of Paul's writings are about the strange, completely unexpected, frighteningly new thing that God has done in Jesus Christ. No one, no one, expected a crucified messiah. "Crucified" and "messiah" are themselves mutually exclusive terms. If you were one, you couldn't be the other. As if that weren't odd enough, Paul's experience was that Gentiles, not Jews, were the ones responding most readily to God's, that is, Yahweh's, the Jewish God's crucified messiah. These were strange, new actions on God's part, indeed. So strange that Paul referred to them as a new era, a totally new epoch in the history of the world, the beginning of a new creation. 

With this in mind, we can see why Paul would feel the need to say that he was "not ashamed of the gospel" (a religion with a crucified leader would have been a very shameful thing) but we can also see why he would call it the "power of God" (powerful enough to cause non-Jews to proclaim Israel's failed messiah as "Lord"). We can see just how it is that "the righteousness of God is revealed in it" as it makes sinful people (Romans 1-3) into righteous, just, and faithful people (Romans 6 and 8); something God's own perfect law had been powerless to accomplish (Romans 7). Likewise, we can see that just as the prophet Habakkuk has some questions about God's righteousness, Paul wonders aloud how it is that God will remain faithful to the promises God made to the people of Israel (Romans 9-11) even as this new righteousness/faithfulness is revealed in Christ (Romans 3-5). But in the midst of all this newness and uncertainty, the call upon those who proclaim Jesus as Lord is to live out of the faithfulness of Christ into a faithful imitation of Christ (1:17; chapters 12-15).

After 2000 years of Christian history and tradition, we too easily forget what an odd thing it is that we, who are nearly all Gentile, worship a crucified Jew. By doing so, we also forget what a strange, new thing God did in Jesus. If we read it carefully, Romans will help to remind us just how unbelievably good this good news really is for us. It will remind us that God keeps his promises even when it looks like they are most certainly being abandoned, whether it be as Abraham raises the knife over Isaac or as Jesus lays in the tomb or as Paul's kin reject their own savior. It is especially in these most uncertain of times that God calls the righteous to find in God's own faithfulness the source of their endurance to live faithfully.





*This is my own translation. Readers familiar with most English translations may be surprised by my use of the word "faithfulness" rather than "faith." The Greek word Paul uses here can be translated either way and really means both. Separating faith as a kind of mere cognitive belief from faithful action would have likely been a foreign idea to Paul. The single word faith/fulness encompassed both and bound them together. Furthermore, the Hebrew word Habakkuk uses has a much stronger leaning toward the idea of faithfulness than mere belief. 

**It is ambiguous for a couple reasons. First, the "his" in Hebrew probably refers to "the righteous one" but it is possible that it refers to God. Second, the Greek version of the Old Testament known as the the Septuagint, reads "my faithfulness" and portrays the verse as being spoken by God thus making it God's faithfulness. To make things even more interesting, Paul leaves out the pronoun entirely in his quotation of the verse so rather than "his faithfulness" or "my faithfulness" we have simply "The righteous will live out of faithfulness." This serves Paul's purposes well because he wishes to talk about both God's faithfulness in Christ and and faithful human response. 

*** There are a plethora of books that make this argument. A few are: 
Krister Stendahl's Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Among-Gentiles-Krister-Stendahl/dp/0800612248/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379470781&sr=8-1&keywords=paul+among+jews+and+gentiles
E.P. Sanders Paul: A Very Short Introduction. http://www.amazon.com/Paul-A-Very-Short-Introduction/dp/0192854518/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1379470965&sr=8-2&keywords=e.p+sanders
http://www.amazon.com/Justification-And-The-Perspectives-Paul/dp/0875526497/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1379471201&sr=8-6&keywords=New+Perspective+on+Paul
http://www.amazon.com/Perspectives-Old-New-Paul-Lutheran/dp/0802848095/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1379471201&sr=8-5&keywords=New+Perspective+on+Paul

My Dad

Tomorrow I'll be headed to South Carolina to wrap up things with my dad's possessions there. As a result, I've been thinking about my dad a lot once again. Its actually been difficult to do that with everything else that has happened since his death - leaving our home, leaving our church, my grandmother's death. These are all things that need to be grieved in their own right. As a result, they have made it difficult to grieve the loss of my father the way I need to. As difficult as I know this trip will be, there is part of me that welcomes it as an entry point back into the grieving process that has been stunted but remains just as necessary. The words below are what I shared at my dad's funeral back in June. 

I’ve thought a lot about what I wanted to say about my dad here today. I’ve pondered how to put into words who he was. What was his defining quality? What am I most thankful for about him? What will I remember most? I’m sure that many of you would think of his warmth and friendliness, his ability to strike up a conversation with absolutely anyone about anything, his free and joyous laughter. These are things I will remember as well.

But as I thought about what it was I would remember the most about him, I realized it was one very simple but profound thing: his love for me. My dad loved me with a tremendous and unconditional love. Whatever I did, he was proud of it and he made sure he told me he was proud of it. And not just as a kid either. Even as an adult, my dad was always telling me how much he loved me and how proud he was of me as a husband, a father, and a pastor. He was always there for me, always rooting for me, always hoping for the best for me even if it wasn’t what was best for him.

In some ways, that may seem a small thing and I confess that at times I may have even taken it for granted. After all, these are the kinds of things that good fathers are supposed to do. But then I remember that we live in a world where good fathers are in short supply. In this world where fathers are often absent or distant, mine was always present. In this world where children often strive for their father’s love and approval, mine lavished his willingly and graciously. In this world where a man might choose to do all kinds of other things, where he might choose to pour his energies and passions into a million other “more important” tasks, my father willfully and joyfully chose the humble task of loving his one and only son, of pouring everything he had into me.

By doing that, he gave me what may be the greatest gift of all. He gave me an earthly image of our heavenly Father: a Father who is always present with us and one who is always lavishing his love upon us. In his love for me, my dad embodied the love of a God who could have quite literally poured his energy and his passion into a million other things but who willfully and joyfully chooses the humble task of loving his sons and daughters.

If that is who God is, if we are right to call God “Father” as we Christians do, then I am tempted to believe that perhaps the way my dad spent his life was no small thing at all. Perhaps it was a far greater accomplishment than our world usually acknowledges. Mother Theresa is often quoted as saying something along the lines of “Don’t aspire to do great things. Only aspire to do small things with great love.” My dad isn’t one who will be remembered for any great accomplishments. He’s just another guy who loved his son and brought joy to the people around him but I believe it is in those very things that he has given us a glimpse into the very heart of God. I, for one, will be forever grateful that my dad did small things with great love.

My Grandmother

I imagine that most people who knew my grandmother knew of the immense time and care she put into her garden. I eventually came to learn that if I was arriving for a visit and the weather was nice, there was little point in ringing the doorbell or knocking on the front door. I knew I might as well head toward the backyard where I would almost certainly find my grandmother bent over her garden, removing what didn’t belong and caring for what did. The love she poured into these plants even extended to our own home in Illinois where we planted what she had shared with us from her own garden.

It seems to me that my grandmother’s gardening was more than a mere hobby. In many ways, it was representative of who she was. It is remarkable to think that even the most beautiful plants have the simplest of beginnings as small and unremarkable, plain and ordinary seeds. But when those seeds are sown and properly cared for, they can blossom into extraordinary expressions of life. Gathered together and ordered into a garden, they can become a place of peace and tranquility; a small reminder of the creative power that God has sown into the fabric of our world.

Such was my grandmother’s life. By the standards of many, my grandmother’s life could be seen as quite plain and unremarkable. She spent much of her days doing small and ordinary things like gardening, cooking, and talking with friends and family; hardly anything that would cause the world to take notice. But in these small and unremarkable acts, my grandmother sowed seeds of grace and peace and hospitality, the very kinds of seeds that blossomed into extraordinary expressions of life in so many of us who knew her.

I think especially of the few times in my adult life when my grandmother and I had the opportunity to sit down and talk together, just her and I, and how those conversations were grace filled occasions. I think of how she was always welcoming people into her home, including me and my friends from seminary, or even the youth group from our church. Teenagers from the church where I pastored still speak to this day of what a kind and gracious person my grandmother was and how glad they were to have had the opportunity to meet her.

I also think of the seeds of faith my grandmother sowed in my own life. She handed down a legacy of faith that came through my mom to me and now continues on in my own three children. As the only grandparent I had the opportunity to know beyond my childhood years, she also continued to be a formative example of faith and holiness for me even into my own adulthood.

My grandmother’s life was like a well ordered and cared for garden. Her presence became a place of peace of and tranquility for so many who came to know her. Her grace and hospitality were small reminders of the creative power that God has sown into the fabric of our world and our humanity. Her life was not unlike the garden described in Genesis as the original act of God’s creation; a place where one might walk with God in the cool of the day. We mourn because the body of that first creation has failed her but we look forward to the day when God’s new creation will fully take root in our world. I imagine that when it does we will once again find her sowing seeds of grace and peace and hospitality for the kingdom of God. 

What do you expect from your pastor?

A friend of mine posted this link recently and it got me thinking again about an issue I wrestled with in all my time as a pastor: meeting the expectations people have of you as their pastor. The article frames the discussion in terms of given hours in a work week but I've found it can also easily extend to other things like personality traits (Is he friendly enough? Is she a strong leader?).

At different times I've wanted to identify the problems in different ways. Sometimes it has taken the form of "People expect too much of pastors." That's true in a sense but it is also true that we should have high standards for those in ordained ministry. Other times I've thought of it as "People expect the wrong things of their pastor." There is probably truth in that statement as well but I think what this article helps to point out is that a lot of it has to do with the accumulation of expectations from a whole congregation of people. For one parishioner, the most important trait they look for in their pastor is that he or she be personable. For another, the pastor must be a prayer warrior. Others want a great preacher or a visionary leader. Its not that any of those desires are bad. It is just easy to see how expecting them all to be fulfilled by one person to everyone's liking is nothing short of impossible.

Of course, I think most people would recognize this in theory. The challenge is practicing it with your pastor. To be sure, there are unfortunate and painful instances when pastors really are failing to live up to their calling but, in my experience, many of the complaints I've heard about other pastors haven't fallen into that category. They often come down to differing expectations concerning the role of the pastor within the community of faith. I think it is actually good news that, scripturally and historically speaking, that role is actually fairly limited. That is to say, the pastor is not the foundation of the Church, it is not the pastor's job to "build" the Church, and the pastor is not the savior of a struggling church. In my opinion, the role of the pastor is nothing more and nothing less than to nurture the spiritual growth of those in his or her care. Surely this will take a variety of forms but that is essentially the pastor's role. If your pastor does this for you, be thankful. Anything else is just gravy.

It may be even more important and more challenging for the pastor to recognize and practice this reality for himself. I know that it was always a temptation for me to try to be everything that everyone wanted me to be and I suspect it is something with which most pastors wrestle at least occasionally. In this sense, the simple word "No" can be one of the most important words in a minister's vocabulary. While the pastor would do well to be aware of the expectations of those in her church, she will also do well to not always fulfill them. Given that we are finite human beings with limited time, energy, and resources, we can only say "Yes" to the things that really matter if we are able to say "No" to the things that are not the most important, even good things. Jesus knew how to say "No" the desires of the crowds and the religious leaders in order to say "Yes" to his Father's mission. Through long, arduous, and ongoing work, the minister of the gospel (and every disciple of Jesus, for that matter) must always be learning to do the same.

This idea always reminds me of the story of Mary and Martha in the Gospel of Luke. Martha is busy being hospitable, a good and important, even Christ-like activity. Jesus has just told a parable about the importance of loving and serving others in the previous story in Luke's Gospel. But when Martha complains because her sister is sitting at the feet of Jesus while she does all the work, Jesus responds "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things but Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

Whatever expectation others might have of us as pastors, our first task must always be to sit at the feet of Jesus, to delve deeper into the mystery of the Triune God, to nurture our relationship with our creator and redeemer. It is only by this that we will be of any help to others as they attempt to do the same.