During my student days, an elderly Pentecostal pastor came to address us one day in Chapel. He told the story of an occasion in his ministry when, after he preached a sermon challenging all present to dedicate their lives to Christian service, people streamed forward to offer themselves to serve the Lord. As they prayed, the “glory fell” on them, and the whole throng was “lost in wonder, love and praise,” to borrow a phrase from Charles Wesley.
The preacher was quite pleased to see this obvious evidence of God’s blessing on his ministry, when abruptly, he said, the Holy Spirit caught him short: “I’m blessing these people not because of what you said, but in order to help them forget what you said.”
Some years later I was pastor of a congregation that included an elder who had a stock line for me most Sundays as I greeted the people departing the sanctuary: “That was a great sermon this morning! I don’t remember a thing you said, but it made me feel good.” It was good medicine for me to be reminded that in the grand scheme of things, who I am and what I have to say aren’t all that important after all. I was discovering the truth of Eugene Peterson’s and Marva Dawn’s marvelous book title, The Unnecessary Pastor.
It is vital that we, as God’s servants, neither take our vocation too lightly, nor our ministry too seriously. God will get done what God purposes to get done — whether we are part of the program or not. God calls pastors to play an active, particular role in the grand drama of the Kingdom of Heaven breaking into this world. Ultimately, however, our ministry and the Gospel cause we serve do not rise or fall on whether we get it exactly right — on whether we work long hours, on the level of our pastoral and management skills, or for sure on how “spiritual” we are.
It’s not about me, nor about you; rather, it is all about the Master who calls us to service, and whose ministry we extend, in the power of His Spirit.
Exodus 16 finds Moses and Aaron with plenty of good reason to give up on their ministry to the surly congregation they had been trying their level best to lead. Despite their ministry rich in energy, intelligence, imagination, and love, over and again they heard from the congregation a litany of complaints about how things used to be so much better in the old days. In this case, the people complain that Moses and Aaron have led them from Egyptian slavery only to starve them in the desert. Their pastors were no longer feeding them, they charged, and they were mighty displeased.
The same song of woe is still being sung in congregations everywhere, as well as about denominations as a whole — either in sorrow or in thinly disguised glee, depending on whether the singers love the church. And of course the proposed solution is always to replace the leadership — let’s get a different pastor, we need a new stated clerk, this teacher has just got to go, etc.
Now let’s be honest – the Exodus 16 crisis with its happy resolution of manna and quail falling from heaven is far from the end of that congregation’s complaining. In fact, it only builds to even higher crescendos in following episodes. How did Moses carry on for forty years shepherding this bunch anyway? In fact, we’re told he outlived virtually the whole lot of his complaining flock, and that when he died at age 120 he still had a spring in his step, his vision was still clear (in more ways than one), and he was capable of delivering powerfully what Eugene Peterson calls “the longest sermon in the Bible and maybe the longest sermon ever” (referring to the book of Deuteronomy in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 248).
As good pastors, Moses and Aaron know that, just as the people’s deliverance from Egypt had nothing to do with their power, the current struggle is not about their failures as leaders. It is impossible to continue serving God’s people well in times of struggle if we take credit for the good things God has done through our ministry in better times. So Moses and Aaron are free to see what’s really going on, and thus are able to set the disgruntled crowd straight: “It is not against us that you are complaining, but against God.” Because they take seriously their vocation as the Lord’s servants (rather than as the people’s servants), they are free not to take their ministry too seriously when it comes under attack. In spite of the people’s strident chorus of blame, Moses and Aaron know that their congregation is resisting not their pastors, but their God.
As ordained officers of the church, we vow to execute the responsibilities of our office with energy, imagination, intelligence, and love. Perhaps we should supplement those characteristics with yet another — a holy sense of proportion. I promise I will never forget that God is God, and I am not; I won’t let minor things, like people’s intractable and willful sinfulness (what else could we possibly expect of each other anyway?), cause me to dismiss them or to leave them. This commitment to a holy sense of proportion won’t make the Book of Order, but maybe it should.
Moses understood what mattered most — not what the congregation thought about him, but whether the congregation trusted God. He was crystal clear that God’s salvation program had precious little to do with his ability to lead God’s people — that is why he tried repeatedly to refuse his call to ministry rather than rushing headlong into it.
This holy sense of proportion is what the Bible calls “meekness” – a word often badly misunderstood as a cousin of “weakness.” Only two persons in the Bible are specifically labeled “meek” – Moses, the “meekest man on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3) and Jesus, who described himself as “meek and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). In neither case is there a shred of weakness; rather, their holy sense of proportion enables them steadfastly to avoid both being puffed up by their successes and being dismayed or derailed by apparent failure or opposition.
Meekness, a holy sense of proportion, is foundational to vocational steadfastness. A gentle relentlessness attends the ministry of those who maintain a holy sense of proportion — that this is the Lord’s work, not ours. We conduct this work gently because we know that any excellence and power comes from and belongs to God, not us (2 Cor. 4:7). And yet we are persistent, persuaded that our ministry serves a cause that inevitably shall prevail, that the peace and reconciliation we proclaim through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not only Good News, but also the Final Word.
Sheldon W. Sorge is associate for theology in the Congregation Ministries Division, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Louisville, Ky.
