Tuesday 14 October 2014

The bit I hate about pastoral ministry

What do you imagine your pastor or vicar hates about pastoral ministry?  I guess there might be a number of things: meetings, politics, admin.  I don't hate any of those things but I was powerfully reminded again yesterday of the bit I do hate.  I hate the brokenness of the world in which we live and it's devastating effects of those in our church family that I love in Christ.

Some days as a pastor your calling is to sit and listen as people pour out their hearts and lament the brokenness of the world and its impact on them and their families.  You are not called to be a dispassionate observer, or even a cool detached listener.  Your calling is to weep with those who weep, not in a professional or detached way but in a way that reflects your love of those you are called by God to care for.  It is not that their grief becomes your grief in an overly empathetic way but your compassion for them means you enter into their suffering and hurt with them, from that view point you look to minister to them.

One of those passages I turn to again and again in such circumstances is Psalm 42.  It beautifully and powerfully mixes lament at brokenness with a desperate determination to cling to God as our only hope:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”
These things I remember
    as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
    under the protection of the Mighty One[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
    among the festive throng.
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
    therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
    the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
    in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
    have swept over me.
By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God my Rock,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
    oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
    as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”
11 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.

No comments: