Rev. James R. Gorman
Some worn and familiar stories persist because they touch us truly; so it is with the old story of the child who was sent to the neighborhood store on an errand. She did not return when expected, and her father, going out to hunt for her, encountered her just arriving home. The child explained she had been delayed because she had come across her friend, who had dropped her favorite china doll on the sidewalk. "It was all broken," she soberly told her father. "I'm sorry," he responded. "It was nice of you to stay and help her pick up the pieces." "Oh no," she said. "I stayed to help her cry."
That is caring for the soul.
These little girls were friends who know what it means to be wounded healers. That is the first step toward being tenders of the soul.
A huge billboard has appeared on Appleton Avenue just a block away from our church. It says, "Doctors of the Soul Wanted," or some such message. It is an advertisement for candidates for the Roman Catholic priesthood. It seems that the Roman Catholic Church is facing a severe shortage of priests in our time, but that shortage is not just confined to that denomination of the Christian faith. It extends to the Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and even our own United Church of Christ. For the Roman Catholics, the reasons might have to do with vows of celibacy and the prohibition of the office of priesthood to women, but that excuse is not available to our denominations. The reasons for our shortage are a bit more complex and I'm not even sure what all the reasons are.
The Lutherans just put out a call for more young people to consider the vocation of pastor and priest. We call it, by the way, a vocation rather than a profession. The word comes from the word "vocal" and it means literally, a "calling." It is a calling rather than a job. And for some reason, not many young people among us are hearing or obeying the call to ministry. And I agree with ELCA Bishop Rogness, who said a week ago in this pulpit that this is a great time to be the Church, and a leader in the church. And it is a great time to renew the call to ministry among our young folks.
But how?
I think it might help to understand first what the calling is about. I started to make a list of what the calling to pastoral ministry or priesthood is not. It's not a high paying profession, but it's more than comfortable. It's not a very technical job and it's not always easy to measure success or failure. That may be why I love my newfound hobby of working on my son's '81 Mustang (with the help of Mike Kiedrowski and others). When you put a clutch cable in and you press the clutch down and feel the give and resistance of the clutch, there is a reward that doesn't come often in pastoral ministry, and that is a sense of completion. Completion sometimes comes years down the road. But it is the more satisfying for that delay.
But lists of what pastoral ministry is not may not be the most effective way to communicate the hopefulness that I think pastoral ministry is all about.
I have always believed that the work that I do, when I do it well, is about being a tender of the soul. Doctor of the Soul sounds a bit too pretentious to me, but maybe it means the same thing. A tender of the soul is one who has the skill to help folks cry and knows that, in most of the important venues of life's crises, that's all that we can do. We don't know how to fix the doll, we just know how to cry.
The story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus is just so very moving in this very regard.
Two disciples (we only know one of their names) are leaving Jerusalem. We don't even know if they are one of the twelve Apostles, since the word "disciple" had a broader meaning that just the Twelve. In fact, it just says "two of them." And Cleopas is not on the list of twelve that I learned: "Matthew, Thomas, John and James the first of two; Phillip, Peter, Andrew and Bartholomew; the other James, zealous Simon, fickle Judas and nothing rhymes with Thaddeaus." In fact, when these two go back to Jerusalem they find "the eleven" there, so these two were not among the eleven. So, it's just "two of them."
My 8th grade grammar teacher, Mrs. Donahue, always counseled us aspiring writers not to have unidentified pronouns in our sentences. But the New Testament is filled with unidentified pronouns. My favorite is the story of Zachaeus who climbed up into a Jericho sycamore tree to see the Lord for "he was short of stature." Who was? Jesus or Zacheaus? This ambiguity in pronouns has led the great preacher, Fred Craddock (who is himself vertically challenged) to assert that Jesus was short just like himself and Craddock uses this story as his proof text. "Zacheaus climbed a sycamore tree to see the Lord, for he was short of stature."
In any case, it is just "two of them." These two followers of Jesus are heading away from Jerusalem on the afternoon of the day of resurrection. Rumors have reached them that the tomb of Jesus has been found empty. They don't know whether or not to believe the reports, but in any case, it's not enough to build our faith on something that's not there. The empty tomb story is not something on which you can found the Church.
They are wounded by their loss and given over to confusion and despair. As Luke reports it, they were "walking along, looking sad." And they were kept from recognizing the resurrected Jesus who was, it turns out, walking with them. It's hard to see clearly with tears in your eyes. Jesus says, "What are you guys talking about?" And out comes the story in an abbreviated version.
What things? Why, "The things of Jesus of Nazareth. Who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word, who was handed over to be crucified. We had placed all our hopes in him and alas, it is the third day since all that has taken place and nothing's happened. Well, there is this odd rumor reported by our women and then confirmed by some of our number that the tomb in which Jesus was laid is now empty and certain angels were seen that attested to Jesus' resurrection."
And this man who is walking with these two followers of Jesus is not identified until he does two things. He interprets scripture and he breaks bread. Actually he took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Note the four verbs. Took, blessed, broke and gave. It's a pattern that the disciples knew all too well, for "on the night of his betrayal, our Lord took the bread and after he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, 'This is my body which is broken for you.' "
But this time, all he has to do are the actions, so powerful is the experience that it needs no explanation, "This is my body." And they recognize him in the breaking of the bread.
The calling to pastoral ministry is simply about this. We don't really know how to fix the doll that's broken on the sidewalk. Thinking that we can always gets us into trouble. When we pastors are not certain of the power of our own calling we tend to act like other professions. The worst is in the hospital room. I spend a good deal of time in hospitals, but what I know about medicine can only get me in trouble. "Oh, yeah, that's the metastisis of the hemoglobin and the framzoozie of the whazzizname." And we are not trained psychotherapists (though what we do may be closer to psychotherapy than medicine).
The tender of souls (or doctor of souls) does not know much about medicine. We just know how to be companions to those whose souls ache. And we have learned long ago that we have no drugs or therapies that will stop the soul from aching, but we can place that ache in some kind of context of suffering shared by a whole community of the brokenhearted. That's what is called interpreting Scripture. "Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures."
And even then, the two disciples don't immediately get it. It is later--after the breaking of the bread--that they say, "Did not our hearts burn while he was opening the scriptures to us?" So the pastoral minister, as tender of the soul, just interprets scripture and waits for results some time further down the road, when our companion remembers that bit of soul recognition that comes in the midst of tears.
And when that happens, the fulfillment of pastoral ministry is wonderful and complete. Almost as final as the feel on the foot of a clutch after replacing the cable. But actually infinitely more complete and infinitely more wonderful. I do hope that some of our own young folks would consider such a calling as pastoral ministry. For all its shortcomings, it is just a wonderful way in which to act out one's faith.
But the real satisfaction is to see how others in the congregation take on the role of soul tending because of something we have taught. For even a child can help a friend cry. It is not a sophisticated challenge, this tending of souls.
It is just perhaps the most satisfying challenge of all.