“Preach the gospel always, and when necessary use words.” – Attributed to St. Francis of Assisi
How do I know I’m old? This June will mark a full decade since I graduated from High School. Ten years since I sat on the lip of the auditorium stage after my last concert, not wanting to leave, not wanting to give it up quite yet. Ten years since I looked with excitement and trepidation at college and the career of music and teaching that I thought would follow. This also means that an unknown day late this fall will mark ten years since I decided to go to seminary. Note the wording there, “since I decided to go to seminary,” not, “since I decided to become a pastor.” I am beginning to realize that in describing the path of my life and the path of my calling, those two statements are entirely different.
When asked about my call into ministry, I usually tell about the moment in college when I was helping to serve communion. I was in the middle of my first semester, at a Sunday evening meeting of our Methodist Student Fellowship. After dinner, as usual, we went into the chapel for worship, and our pastor asked me to help offer communion, you know, hold a loaf of bread, offer to my friends the body of Christ. I tell about how I offered the blessed elements with hands that I knew were dirty. Incidentally, the reason behind my guilt is nothing extraordinary, and only between myself and God. I tell about this moment, about how my heart was filled, about how the spirit moved, but I am usually unable to connect that story to why I feel called to ministry any more solidly than by saying, “I knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
What did I want to do? Did I want to serve communion? Did I want to preside over it? Did I just want to be around it? Because I can do that and still work at the mall. What brought me to seminary? What brings me to ministry? I described what happened. I synthesized it with other parts of my life, with how God moves, with how faith seems to work. I feel, though, as if I have not yet analyzed the whole situation. And that analysis, my friends, is what we call discernment. Perhaps I can begin the analysis right now.
On Sunday mornings I have been talking with my middle school class about sacraments. In the United Methodist Church, as in most Protestant churches, we recognize two sacraments: Baptism and Holy Communion. These sacraments are sign-acts, rituals ordained by Jesus Christ, moments that John Wesley called special means of grace. God uses the sacraments–along with all the other tools at God’s disposal–to reach into a person’s heart, to show God’s incredible love, to strengthen that person with God’s grace, to turn that heart toward love for all people. That is, regardless of words spoken, these rites communicate things which we cannot comprehend, let alone fit into any of Earth’s languages.
I love to talk about faith, truly I do. In a couple of weeks I get another chance to stand in my church’s pulpit and, I pray by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, proclaim words of faith. But then they are just words. Words are important, yes. It is important to speak of faith in ways we can understand. It is important to teach with logic, important to inspire with rhetoric, important to impart the words of life; but they are just words and there are so many ways to communicate this thing we call faith. We live a life of love, grace, and compassion; we offer and accept sacraments; we teach and preach; we support others; we speak with them about life, about troubles; we laugh with them in times of joy; we sit with them in times of sorrow and fear; we work for justice and for peace; and, at the risk of repeating myself, we love, we love, we love.
This is what I really enjoy; preaching and teaching yes, but it is broader than that. I love to learn about and study matters of faith and find ways to communicate these incredible truths of hope, grace, and love to those around me. So the question of the day asks how I connect this communion experience I had in college to my calling into ministry. Frederick Buechner explains, “The place to which God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I just explained where my deep gladness is, and what could be a greater need than for the world to know that there is unquenchable love which is now, always has been, and always will be for every blessed child of creation.
So there is my calling. Now, I am not done yet. This is, I realize, a pretty broad description of a calling, and there are many ways something like this might be acted upon in the real world. There is more thinking and discernment ahead of us, but I am comfortable in calling this a pretty good start.
Is Baseball Theological? 