Finding God on My Journey

This cartoon from the November 25, 2015 issue of The Christian Century is not only an appropriate counterpoint to the unholy alliance of sports and religion in our culture, but also to a presumptuous view of God predicated on making our personal comfort and convenience the highest good and holding God accountable for satisfying us. From internet memes promising God’s blessing for reposting it to blatant prosperity gospel preaching, much of popular Christianity reduces God to our petty gofer, as though that evinced faith. Job’s words are prophetic corrective to such narcissism bordering on idolatry. “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:10)

In the six months since finishing my last interim pastorate, I have prayed diligently for another congregation to serve and to discern God’s presence and guidance on my path. Recently someone asked if I had a call yet. To which I responded, “No, and it doesn’t look like that’s on the horizon, so we’re recalculating our path with changing objectives.” The person who asked, chuckled a bit and said, “Usually I hear pious people cast that as God is changing my call. I found your candor refreshing.” I can’t say that I feel particularly refreshed in this process, but having received and thanked God for many wonderful gifts in 40+ years of pastoral ministry, should I now blame God for this uncertain, uncomfortable, confusing season?

Please understand, I do believe God called me not just into pastoral ministry in general but also to specific communities of service. Having said that, I am also very aware of painful seasons on this journey, often direct outcomes of human brokenness, my own and that of those with whom I have served. My understanding of God’s sovereignty is not that God orchestrates daily details to teach me lessons or manipulate my route, but that our human free will is not greater than God’s sovereignty, so that as life’s joys and disasters come in the natural order of things, God’s redemptive purposes will not be frustrated, and if I am spiritually alert, I may be allowed to discern God’s presence even in the dark.

As with much of what I have written, I am not so much seeking to teach or preach to others as to sort out my own thinking, yearning to discern the nudges of the Holy Spirit. So I give thanks for serendipitous provisions of financial means to keep on top of costs of living without implying, for example, that God made certain people die at specific times so I could get an honorarium for conducting their funerals. That would be perverse.

My family and I still have to make important decisions, not just about daily details but also about the direction our journeys are to go in this transition from one stage of life into the next. We must make those decisions by being as alert to possible to the whispers of the Holy Spirit bellowing in our hearts, knowing that God is much more concerned with the kind of person I am and how that influences my decisions that with the specific choices I make. No matter where I am or how I make the money to pay our bills, I need to be growing into “maturity, the measure of the full stature of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13) I need to beware of “selfish ambition” but look “to the interests of others” letting the Holy Spirit cultivate in me “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus” … emptying myself and taking on the form of a slave. (Philippians 2:3-7)

Brought to Completion

Contemplation
April Lawrence 

I greatly admired how my parents seemed to embrace what life brought next rather than clinging to what they had passed through. As their son I felt their joy as I started and finished high school and college, got married and had children, moved through my career from Christian education editing, writing and research into pastoral ministry. Several time when I spoke with my mother on the phone as she approached her death at 94 she said to me, “I’ve had a full, wonderful life and done everything I wanted to do. The only thing I haven’t experienced is dying and I’m looking forward to finding out what that’s like.”

I was able to embrace intentional interim pastoral ministry as wonderful transition from my full career of pastoral ministry. I was deeply enriched by the four congregations I served as interim pastor. The last one concluded in May, and I had two positive interviews with other congregations who decided to go in a different direction. Though somewhat disappointed, I accepted it with an expectation that something else awaited me if I would be alert for God’s presence. I have been driving funeral cars (hearse/coach and limousine) and conducted a few funerals. This seemed an appropriate way to wait for the next congregation to serve. But now I am discerning that a full-time interim pastorate is not what is next for me. So I am wrestling with God about how to understand and embrace this stage of my journey.

The Epistle reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for next Sunday, the second Sunday of Advent this year, is Philippians 1:3-11. As I have meditated on this through the week, I have been arrested by verse 6. “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” In 69+ years of life and 40+ years of pastoral ministry, I could often have prayed along with Thomas Merton, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.” As I have been transitioning out of pastoral ministry, I have looked back at my preaching and teaching and the congregations with whom I have served and recognized how God has formed me with several clear themes. I have felt some satisfaction and been able to also echo the conclusion of Merton’s prayer, My Lord God, “you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Right now I am again feeling that I do not see the road ahead of me and listening acutely for the signs God is with me on this leg of my journey. As I review not only how God began good work in me but how God has added to that work over the years, Philippians 1:6 tells me to trust that God will finish it. Only, right now I am not clear about what God is working in me during this transition and the path ahead that seems obscure. As I meditate on this line, I hear myself encouraging others who were stumbling on their journeys and wrestle with how to incorporate this as the Holy Spirit’s nudging. I want to embrace where I am, but I am struggling to perceive and understand where I am.

What does it mean for me to think of myself as funeral man at this time? How do I respond to what I can only describe as grieving that I will not be preaching regularly again, with the intimate connection that has brought me with the text, the Spirit and the people of the congregations I have served. For some time I have imagined myself as a storyteller, a sort of “old man of the mountains.” This emerged clearly in my interim pastorates, but now no one is listening to me tell the holy stories. Yes, I write, but publishing is still elusive. Candy and I feel the ambivalence of our responsibility to support her father in the twilight of his years and to support our son Erik as he launches as a full-fledged adult and musician. I ache to embrace the present stage of my journey, but am having trouble identifying what it is I am to embrace.

As I meditated on Philippians 1:6, I notice that it is plural, not singular. While some translations say, “good work in you,” the NRSV and other translations say more precisely, “good work among you.” Though not a Greek scholar, a little checking does suggest that the “you” is also plural, not singular. So perhaps I should not be asking so much what God is completing in me but what God is completing in us.

As I meditated on this, I thought of Jeremiah 29:11, which is often used to encourage young people when they are uncertain about their futures, typically individually. “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” But as I look at that whole passage, it is not addressed to individuals but to the community of Judah in exile in Babylon. They were encouraged to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (v. 7) I sense the Spirit telling me not to be so concerned about my individual, personal path, but to seek the completion of God’s goodness for those around me.

First of course, is my wife Candy who is feeling the instability of this time even more than I am. Then for our son Erik that God will take him on the next steps toward the completion of God’s plans for him, though he seems to be searching for the path ahead of him more than I am. And yes, for the rest of our family, for Northway Christian Church with whom we are worshipping and fellowshipping as we take these steps. And yes, for the families and funeral personnel with whom I work almost every day. I am writing and posting this as a concrete way of embracing what is coming now in my life and watching for signs that God is with not just me but us on the journey, even when I have no idea where I am going.