We come back to preaching, but are all preachers ministers? Is ordination just a matter of full time vs. part time? What is a call to preach? Again this year I sat in a candidates review and wondered about myself. This even longer ago. I think I believed the Christian faith is true and if true it must be proclaimed and that the fundamental form of proclaiming was preaching. And I believe this now, but it’s nothing like Exod. 3 or Jerm. 1 or Acts 9. After all this I add, not for self defense, I do all this that a minister does and if someone steps up for baptism, I baptize them.
And now we come to a second set of questions– ministers in relationship to the church, and this is a large part of my difficulty since I have not been serving a particular church day by day for many decades. In any case the minister owes his people a) the Gospel, and b) an understanding of life in relationship to the Gospel. The minister then as some have said ‘a grass-roots theologian’ and that is fair. But we come back to the questions– what is the Gospel and what amounts to being a Christian?
Is preaching an offer, or a demand? If the answer is offer– What is being offered? Do we quote Wesley– ‘I offered Christ’? If so, what does it mean? Melanchthon said ‘Christ we know, benefits we would know. Benefits: especially forgiveness. Must we add ‘did know, did feel my sins forgiven?’ Do we offer Christ as a person, or as logos? When we make an appeal, what is it? Again, if preaching is not demand, we are not urging people to join the church (though we may advise them to do so), that is the church as a social institution or a salvation place. I am thinking in practical terms of my former colleagues and others who bury people. e.g. Wesley Guild or the mid-week preaching service or Bible study. What of more requirements? A changing world world requires a changing church. Do we ban cigarettes and drugs, but not alcohol? Do we leave it to the individual conscience? Of so, do we leave practical and social action in the same way. We need a rethinking and reapplying of the old evangelical terms.
When I make a sermon: 1) I have a passage of the Bible to expound. I believe this to be the way God speaks, historically, and through history, in the present. Not that all the Bible speaks with equal clarity. But next Sunday’s will speak to us (is this what a call to preach amounts to?), if I can add interest and relatedness it will speak to the congregation, 2) by means of this, they will learn the meaning of God, seen through Christ, the meaning of truth. 3) after this it is up to him and receiving Him and giving their hearts to Him are two sides of one coin; 4) if this happens they will be grateful and according to the Heidelburg catechism, I must do something to guide and instruct their gratitude.
III. I am not thinking of deliberate self-chosen isolation (though Methodist emphasis on fellowship is sometimes over done) but if individual comfort as opposed of corporate. A minister has to be on his own a good deal. But I am thinking of those like myself who have to go the hard way. Not the naturally religious but those who wonder whether it is all true, and do not take to ‘religion’ naturally. You may say this sounds like the religionless Christianity of the 60s. No that was stupid and got most things wrong, including Bonhoeffer who was very religious.
Consider the NT. Jesus at first appears anti-religion, in fact he takes religion so seriously it kills Him. Paul uses religious terms for common life, but he too is religious enough to be flogged for it. Both live with religion in creative tension. Religion, whether we like it or not, makes us face altruistic questions, breaks people into two halves– that long drawn out groan that is 2 Corinthians. So of course do other things like birth and death (but regrettably no longer marriage). I have to take God seriously. If nothing else Jesus compels us to do so, and in a particular sense.
When the teenager asks How do you know? Some may be able to answer ‘He lives within my heart’ or the like. Others may be content (but is this inferior?) t0 to say. I do not know, I believe. ‘A guilty weak and helpless worm/ into thy hands I fall/Be thou my life, my righteousness/ My Jesus and my all’. That is we live by faith which in itself is a gift from God. What is my side in the matter? Loyalty. Both dangerous and other lesser loyalties have to be constantly checked by the higher one. We see this clearly in loyalty to bricks and mortar, which may be splendid but has to be transcended. Loyalty to persons, institutions, Methodism, corrected by loyalty to ‘ecclesia catholica’. But lower loyalties are not to be cast away. Butterfield’s ‘Hold fast to Christ, as for the rest be totally uncommitted’. This is not quite satisfactory. But do not be unconditionally committed to lesser loyalties would be better.
The other side of loyalty is trust, which always has a future element. Rom. 8.4ff. Hope that is seen is not hope. Now we see through a glass darkly. It is encouraging that Paul too knew this. All his great moments have to be bracketed with this. Hoskyns once said ‘incapable of assuming that what He worked for those times was what the Lord had always intended.’ Hence, as the last word about all this crucifixion and resurrection.
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