Thoughts on 1:1-7
I began reading 2 Corinthians in my cycle of daily bible readings on August 26th last year. The weather was hot and exceedingly humid, and in that week it had felt as if one freight train after another had been rolling over me. In my journal a day or two earlier I had prayed, "Quieten my fears, O Lord," and again on that particularly day I was worrying over finances, several families who were leaving our congregation, and a woman who had gone off on an alcoholic bender. Added to all this, I was having trouble sleeping, there were difficulties in the diocese, and I was beginning to wonder whether the Church of the Apostles would survive -- and if it did, whether I would survive the burden that was crushing me.
Any priest who has been doing this job for more than five minutes knows the toll that the accumulation of things takes on both your health and your sanity. I suspect I was looking for a word from the Lord when I picked up my bible that August morning. I wanted comfort, I wanted Someone to stroke me and tell me that everything was going to be alright. Instead I got Paul pouring out his soul onto the page -- but what startled me was that his soul was in as many tatters as my own.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort," (1:3) he begins after his familiar introduction of himself to the Corinthians. Then he goes on to speak of this God being the one who comforts us in all our afflictions, and in the following handful of verses the Apostle tells us just what he is going through.
"We share Christ's sufferings... we are afflicted... we suffer" and he urges the Corinthians to share his sufferings.
As I read these words I knew they were being written by a man on the very edge. He was torn apart over what the Corinthians were up to, and there were all sorts of other ministry and pastoral burdens that were weighing him down. There are those moments in all our lives when everything is just too much for us, and that, I think, is how it was for Paul as he poured out his soul to the Corinthians who he loved so much, but who were causing him such pain and anxiety.
The word which really caught my attention, and which Paul uses over and over again is affliction, or thlipsis which is the word used in the original Greek. During one of my readings of 2 Corinthians during the fall I found myself going through the whole letter in one sitting and circling every time that Paul uses the word. It is a perfect word to describe the agony of the burden of ministry. The KJV translates it tribulation, and one of the older commentators calls it "the anguish of spirit caused by the revolt and estrangement of Paul's Corinthian converts."
Some of those writing about Paul's response to the news from Corinth have tended to dismiss this as much too strong a response, but I would hazard that those scholars have never found their souls caught in the mangle of pastoral life at a time of crisis in the wider church. One of the things that strikes me about the responsible pastors I have known all over the world through the years, is that they are intensely involved with the lives of those in their congregations, however small or large those congregations might be. There are few faithful clergy I know who in the last couple of years have not suffered sleepless nights and nailbiting days which have brought them to their wits' end. So was Paul as he churned his "anxiety for all the churches" (11:28).
But Paul does not dwell on his pain, his agony, and his suffering. Even in these early verses when he seems to be having trouble keeping his emotions under control, he points us back to the God "who comforts us in all our afflictions" (1:4), telling us that although we share in Christ's sufferings, we also "share abundantly in comfort too" (1:5). Perhaps Paul had in mind the words of Jesus on the night before he was betrayed that the Comforter would soon come, and maybe this is who he drew upon as he prayed over the circumstances in which he found himself.
Dependence upon God came no more naturally to Paul than it does to us. It was, as Mike Thompson points out in his commmentary, "something he learned repeatedly through the 'ups' and especially through the 'downs' of his Christian experience. Recollection of how God had rescued him in the past fuelled further confidence that God could be trusted to deliver him in the future" (Thompson p. 19).
Which brings it back to us and our struggles. The afflictions at the grassroots and in the wider church are not going to go away. I suspect that those of us who are by nature worriers will continue to worry, occasionally (like me) catastrophizing over the outcomes from all that is happening. We want our circumstances to change, God wants us to be transformed by our circumstances. We might think that what is happening is the worst kind of disaster, yet in the divine economy it could very well be that this is precisely the pruning we need by the Spirit so that we can bear more and healthier fruit.
There is a funny little saying that I sometimes use. It is that we have been sold a pup. What it means is that when we purchase a puppy we don't have the slightest idea what we are getting. There are few clues about the temperament, size, or appetite of this little creature when it is placed in our hands as a small furry bundle. Only as it grows us do we discover that it was a cross between a Great Dane and a Rottweiler, will eat you out of house and home, and ought not to be allowed to be left unattended around children!
So is the ordained ministry. I remember my ordination to the priesthood in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, well. It was Anglican pomp and pageantry at its finest and I thought that with the bishop's hands laid on my head I was going to be able to change the world and all would be on the up and up from here. Very quickly I realized that this would not be the case as I found myself working for an unbalanced man who was sinking into deep mental illness. In three and a half decades of ordained life I have discovered just how untrained and demanding the pup that I was handed on my ordination day is. We need to face its realities, but we also need to recognize that as we set about this work, we do not do it alone but have the Comforter who is with us forever (John 14:16), and he will guide us into all truth.
Any priest who has been doing this job for more than five minutes knows the toll that the accumulation of things takes on both your health and your sanity. I suspect I was looking for a word from the Lord when I picked up my bible that August morning. I wanted comfort, I wanted Someone to stroke me and tell me that everything was going to be alright. Instead I got Paul pouring out his soul onto the page -- but what startled me was that his soul was in as many tatters as my own.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort," (1:3) he begins after his familiar introduction of himself to the Corinthians. Then he goes on to speak of this God being the one who comforts us in all our afflictions, and in the following handful of verses the Apostle tells us just what he is going through.
"We share Christ's sufferings... we are afflicted... we suffer" and he urges the Corinthians to share his sufferings.
As I read these words I knew they were being written by a man on the very edge. He was torn apart over what the Corinthians were up to, and there were all sorts of other ministry and pastoral burdens that were weighing him down. There are those moments in all our lives when everything is just too much for us, and that, I think, is how it was for Paul as he poured out his soul to the Corinthians who he loved so much, but who were causing him such pain and anxiety.
The word which really caught my attention, and which Paul uses over and over again is affliction, or thlipsis which is the word used in the original Greek. During one of my readings of 2 Corinthians during the fall I found myself going through the whole letter in one sitting and circling every time that Paul uses the word. It is a perfect word to describe the agony of the burden of ministry. The KJV translates it tribulation, and one of the older commentators calls it "the anguish of spirit caused by the revolt and estrangement of Paul's Corinthian converts."
Some of those writing about Paul's response to the news from Corinth have tended to dismiss this as much too strong a response, but I would hazard that those scholars have never found their souls caught in the mangle of pastoral life at a time of crisis in the wider church. One of the things that strikes me about the responsible pastors I have known all over the world through the years, is that they are intensely involved with the lives of those in their congregations, however small or large those congregations might be. There are few faithful clergy I know who in the last couple of years have not suffered sleepless nights and nailbiting days which have brought them to their wits' end. So was Paul as he churned his "anxiety for all the churches" (11:28).
But Paul does not dwell on his pain, his agony, and his suffering. Even in these early verses when he seems to be having trouble keeping his emotions under control, he points us back to the God "who comforts us in all our afflictions" (1:4), telling us that although we share in Christ's sufferings, we also "share abundantly in comfort too" (1:5). Perhaps Paul had in mind the words of Jesus on the night before he was betrayed that the Comforter would soon come, and maybe this is who he drew upon as he prayed over the circumstances in which he found himself.
Dependence upon God came no more naturally to Paul than it does to us. It was, as Mike Thompson points out in his commmentary, "something he learned repeatedly through the 'ups' and especially through the 'downs' of his Christian experience. Recollection of how God had rescued him in the past fuelled further confidence that God could be trusted to deliver him in the future" (Thompson p. 19).
Which brings it back to us and our struggles. The afflictions at the grassroots and in the wider church are not going to go away. I suspect that those of us who are by nature worriers will continue to worry, occasionally (like me) catastrophizing over the outcomes from all that is happening. We want our circumstances to change, God wants us to be transformed by our circumstances. We might think that what is happening is the worst kind of disaster, yet in the divine economy it could very well be that this is precisely the pruning we need by the Spirit so that we can bear more and healthier fruit.
There is a funny little saying that I sometimes use. It is that we have been sold a pup. What it means is that when we purchase a puppy we don't have the slightest idea what we are getting. There are few clues about the temperament, size, or appetite of this little creature when it is placed in our hands as a small furry bundle. Only as it grows us do we discover that it was a cross between a Great Dane and a Rottweiler, will eat you out of house and home, and ought not to be allowed to be left unattended around children!
So is the ordained ministry. I remember my ordination to the priesthood in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, well. It was Anglican pomp and pageantry at its finest and I thought that with the bishop's hands laid on my head I was going to be able to change the world and all would be on the up and up from here. Very quickly I realized that this would not be the case as I found myself working for an unbalanced man who was sinking into deep mental illness. In three and a half decades of ordained life I have discovered just how untrained and demanding the pup that I was handed on my ordination day is. We need to face its realities, but we also need to recognize that as we set about this work, we do not do it alone but have the Comforter who is with us forever (John 14:16), and he will guide us into all truth.
posted by Richard Kew at 6:13 AM
3 Comments:
I have been at my current parish a little over 5 years. At first we grew in attendance - ASA peaking at 142 in 2001. Since then it has been downhill - 125 in 2004. The leadership has been to a number of conferences - Clear Vision, Easum and Bandy, etc., but at the leadership level, little effect has been seen on an organizational level.
Last night I explained to the Vestry that I was giving up the work of trying to grow in ASA numbers and was going to focus on the growth that has occurred - from a church community centered on social connections, duty and habit, to a community of faith, centered on Jesus Christ.
A new Vestry member who is very honest and open and struggles with their faith a lot - was overwhelmed and expressed their dismay - because hitherto they had been comfortable letting me carry the anxiety about growth and making ends meet. He surmised that there would be people who would flee when they discovered that the new model of church was that it was the church of the people, not simply of the priest.
I can't say I feel afflicted, but here in Connecticut where the Diocese is in financial crisis and the parishes are in the red in most cases and there is no vision apart from 'revision' it is pretty bleak.
Another member of the Vestry suggests: 'It sucks to be you.'
That being the case, it is all the more imperative that I lay down my bag of ministry tricks and find Jesus Christ's consolation.
What rivets me in this introduction is that Paul does not praise God for RESCUING from his (and our) afflictions, but for COMFORTING us in those afflictions.
I always struggle with how to preach suffering in the North American context. Suffering is something to be minimized (if not completely eliminated) in our culture, whereas for the NT writers, suffering is to be endured for the sake of the Gospel.
How do y'all address suffering in a Sunday morning sermon?
David
A little about suffering-
www.gypsyexpressions.org.uk
click the writing page
and then - Jimmy McPhee.
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