I always read and reflect on the cartoons created by David Hayward with benefit. Even when I disagree, there is sufficient content, along with the artistry, to repay the time spent on them. Recently, he pictured a pastor standing behind the pulpit with this message: “I’m sorry people. There’s been a change. I can no longer help you find. But I promise I can help you seek.”
The cartoon hit a positive note with some mainline clergy and there is little wonder why. The pastor as a seeker among seekers, as a person with questions but no answers has been the hallmark of ministry in some corners of mainline-progressive Protestantism for six decades now. And, arguably, it has a still older home in the Unitarian-Universalist movement.
But on reading it, my first reaction was:
There you go.
A perfect distillation of Boomer-esque spirituality. And a perfect summary of what is wrong with far too much of the modern American church.
“I don’t want answers. All that matters are the questions.” (Thank you, C. S. Lewis and The Great Divorce) A faith with no discovery to share. A spiritual director with no direction. A church without a creed. A proclamation with no reliable hope to offer. Clergy every bit as lost as anyone else.
Do people need clergy who are willing to stand with them in the middle of the struggle and confusion? Yes.
Do people need spiritual directors who are prepared to ask questions that prompt people to listen, even as they struggle to understand why they have made the choices that they make? Yes.
Do people need spiritual directors who can with them without playing spiritual wack-a-mole, when they struggle, stumble, and fall. Yes.
Do people need pastors and priests who are willing to limp alongside them, lifted up by the One who emptied himself and became one of us? Yes.
But do people need clergy who are just as lost as they are? Only if all that clergy have to offer is their own certainties or pride in their own uncertainties.
But that is not the calling of pastors, priests, and ministers. Like the Samaritan woman, they declare, “He told me everything I have done.” Like Peter, we confess, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
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