I remember with a chuckle the day a reader asked me if I was a real pastor. Well, yes, I am a real pastor of a real church with real people in it. I’ve been a pastor for some 27 years now. That’s 27 years of doing time in the pulpit, well over 1,000 sermons, hundreds of articles, dozens of speeches, marrying and burying, baptizing and counseling, reconciling pissed-off enemies, presiding over worship, creating rituals, explaining mysteries, and most of all, simply being present with those who go through the agonies and ecstasies of life. I’ve been arrested, pepper sprayed, threatened with a gun, a crowbar, a neighbor’s fists and even had to cross an angry neighborhood picket line just to get into my church. I’ve marched in countless protests and tried to organize an alternative to the military-corporate capitalism that has destroyed democracy in this country.
As a pastor, I try to follow the way of Jesus. It’s an odd way. Jesus combined two difficult pathways. On the one hand he was a role model of extraordinary compassion, believing that God was all in all, therefore God, the source of love and mercy and goodness, was found in the least of the esteemed. God was in the worst of sinners. Such compassion is, for me, most often beyond my reach, but it is an ideal that I strive for, and, most certainly, evaluate myself through.
Jesus’ second pathway was the way of justice. Compassion is expressed through the insistence that everyone be treated with hospitality and mercy so that we all, each one of us, both survive and thrive. Justice is about the common good, commonwealth not segregated wealth and the good of a segregated elite.
For 27 years, I’ve been involved in communities that struggle trying to live those ideals of compassion and courageous justice. The Church, for all its mediocrity, hypocrisy and irrelevance is, for me, still the best institution in town. It is still the place I find my grounding and my hope. I don’t think it’s the only game in town, nor the only place to find one’s grounding and hope, but in my case, it is the best place.
But after 27 years, I’m about to do something different. I’m taking leave of being a pastor in an actual church. I’m moving into a different function. In my denomination, we call it a District Superintendent, which is a bit like becoming a regional manager of a bunch of local franchises. In my case there are 56 United Methodist churches in Seattle and King County. My new function will be to pastor the pastors, helping them to embrace more deeply a lifestyle of compassion and creative courage of doing justice.
I’m a little intimidated by that, so I’m asking that you pray for me. Let’s see what happens.