Walking in Wonder

Resilience in Ministry

Sinclair

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781630876661
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In ministry as in life, we get knocked down. Sometimes, due to our folly or despair or fatigue or external opposition, we stumble and fall. How do we get back up--again and again and again? Resiliency, the ability to bounce back, is a gift of God. Leaders are able to get up and follow the crucified and risen Lord when they are drawn, when they are enchanted by the awesome mystery of the triune God. Discipleship has never been easy. The way, staying on the narrow path that leads to abundant life, is hard. Today, no less than the first disciples, followers of Christ face an array of challenges, not the least of which is disenchantment: "We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21). Seen through an Enlightenment lens, disenchantment may be more acute and prevalent in our times, but it is not new. We walk our own Emmaus Road. And when we keep walking, when we follow the one who joins us on the Road, eyes are opened, hearts burn, the one standing before us is recognized, and we are sustained for the journey. This collection of theological essays on ministry is an invitation to "run and not be weary... to walk and not faint" (Isa 40:31) by walking in wonder with the wholly other God who is near.

chapter one

Wonder: Enchanted by Awesome Mystery

Density

Have you ever experienced the holy? When was the last time you experienced the holy? What did you experience?

I have been asking these questions a lot lately, not only of others but myself. Here is some of the testimony I have heard.

I experienced the holy when my child was born.

I experienced the holy when I was delivered from addiction to prescription pain medication.

I experienced the holy when my daughter was married.

I experienced the holy when I watched the sun come up on a clear morning at the beach.

I experienced the holy when I witnessed the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

I experienced the holy at a graveside service when a mother of triplets born three months prematurely knelt and gently placed her hand on the small coffin of the four-month-old she and her husband had named Madeline. Seven months later, I experienced the holy when Madeline’s parents stood before a baptismal font for the baptism of Maddie’s siblings.

I experienced the holy when I held the leathery hand of an eighty-six -year-old woman as the sister she had long cared for lay dying in the next room.

I experienced the holy when a sixty-year-old shared the pain and sorrow of her brother’s suicide while thanking her church for the care and support she and her family had received.

I experienced the holy when two men, alienated by hard feelings of misunderstanding, spoke in hushed tones of embrace on a quiet Sunday morning before worship.

I experienced the holy when a twenty-eight-year-old homeless man asked me to pray for him. I was just going to give him bus fare and leave. He asked me to pray.

I experienced the holy when . . .

How would you complete the sentence?

Asking about the holy is a bit like asking about gravity. We don’t notice gravity unless we are riding a roller coaster or pushing a child on a swing. Gravity just is. We don’t have to think about it or believe in it for it to exist. Aside from particle physicists, most of us don’t go through our day considering the forces of nature. We don’t have to understand equations defining the interactions of strong force and weak force and electromagnetism and gravity to borrow a cup of sugar. We just walk across the street and hope our neighbor is not only home but generous. To borrow sugar, we don’t have to understand that above a temperature of a million billion Kelvin the four forces of nature merge again into one­­­­—or so it is theorized. Sugar borrowers (and lenders for that matter) don’t have to understand the Grand Unified Theory to bake birthday cakes.

Experiences of the holy are like that—they don’t require a specialist’s knowledge. You don’t have to be a theologian or biblical scholar or even consider yourself religious or spiritual to be enchanted—you need only be alive and notice the silence, a silence that is always speaking: “the voice of the Lord is over the waters” (Ps 29:3). Notice may be faint and inchoate or loud and clear. Enchantment is not singular except that we are drawn, pulled, fascinated, and sometimes undone or made still. The voice “over the waters” speaks.

My wife teaches eighth grade Honors Algebra I. When the first semester begins, she teaches a lesson on the definition of the density of rational numbers: between any two rational numbers there exists an infinite number of other rational numbers. When teaching this concept, my wife says something extraordinary unfolds in her classroom. While most of her students may remember a lesson about population density or the density of water molecules, few if any have ever considered number density until my wife talks about something middle school students love—pizza!

Before talking about pizza, my wife draws a number line on her smart board, marking zero and one-half. She then asks her students to name the fraction that comes exactly between zero and one-half.

“That’s easy; 1/4,” they say.

“Okay, what number is exactly between 0 and 1/4?”

“1/8,” they answer.

“How about between 0 and 1/8?”

“1/16.”

“How about between 0 and 1/16?”

“1/32.”

“How about between 0 and 1/32?”

“1/64.”

About this time (and sometimes the fractions run to 1/128 or 1/256 depending on her play and her students’ reactions) my wife asks, “How long can we keep dividing by two before we reach zero?” Puzzled looks appear, consternation, a few I-don’t-know frowns, but also, usually, cautious guesses, “Forever?” To which my wife replies, “Well, then, can we ever get to zero?” Again, puzzled frowns appear, along with a few eyes glimmering hints of recognition. That’s when Paula, the math teacher, delivers her imaginary pizza pie.

“Imagine you order a freshly baked pepperoni pizza but the maker forgot to slice it. Nobody wants to eat a whole pizza (okay some of you), but even if you want the whole pizza you will likely make right-sized pieces first. Say, you cut the pizza in half, give one half away and keep the other for yourself. That’s still a big slice of pizza so you cut it again and since you are feeling generous you give the other away. Now you have a quarter-slice. It’s still too big to handle so you cut it again, give half to your friend, and are left with a normal size single serving. Maybe you’re at a party. Your friends are there. You don’t want anyone left out. You cut your single serving in half again, give one piece away and keep the other for yourself. By now you have a pretty small piece of pizza, just a bite. Could you cut your bite-size pizza again? By this time some students begin waving excited hands, “Are you saying, Mrs. Sinclair, that we could keep on slicing that pizza forever?”

“That’s what I’m saying, which is why if you keep on slicing it, which everybody knows is physically impossible, about all you would have left is the smell of pepperoni. Nobody does that but theoretically you could slice your pizza forever, which is also why we never reach zero on our number line when dividing rational numbers by two.”

“That’s awesome, Mrs. Sinclair. I get it; between any two rational numbers there exists an infinite number of other rational numbers.” Density.

Furrowed brows relax. Imagination is released; a pattern previously hidden is seen; something resembling light turns on. Call it wonder.

“How about some pi?” the teacher asks. “And I am not talking pizza.”

“Mrs. Sinclair,” I don’t even like math but this is my favorite class. I think I’d like some pi.” The students are all ears. They are enchanted. They want more.

What would ministry become, how would it be different, if we lived with a greater sense of wonder, if we were more routinely “enchanted”? In part, I think we would take ourselves less seriously and God more seriously. And in the process, not only would life become far more interesting, we would grow far more resilient. We might learn to dance and sing or throw ourselves more fully into the song and dance life is. Before concluding that this sober, left-brain Presbyterian has taken leave of his senses, let me offer a caution: don’t add “wonder” to your to-do list. “Now I must not only work professionally with faith, hope, and love; I must have WONDER!” Not so fast. Yes, wonder may be a disposition, but before anything else wonder is a response.

Enchantment

Charles Taylor argues that we live in a disenchanted world. We no longer expect reality to impose meaning. Reality, we presume, is created or projected by our minds. In an enchanted world “charged” objects impose meaning.1 Today, we see the world differently. We define it. We “charge” it with meaning. We don’t expect the voice over the waters to define us; we define it, or, as Taylor puts it, we are “buffered.”2 The buffered self disengages from everything outside the mind. Ultimate purposes are created by us.

Taylor contrasts the buffered self with the porous self.3 The porous self, says Taylor, is “vulnerable.” As my wife’s eighth grade Algebra students demonstrate, we are gifted, despite buffering, with a porous nature. We can, when sufficiently paused, hear the “voice over the waters.” We may be enchanted. Apart from enchantment, discovery is impossible. Reality imposes itself. It speaks. The world is knowable not because we are knowledgeable but because the silence speaks. When we name reality (whether defining the density of rational numbers or puzzling over the Grand Unified Theory) we do so because reality has spoken. We don’t create the voice; the voice creates us. Our calling is to name the voice as the voice wishes to be heard.

I believe four things . . .

“No one has ever seen God” (1 John 4:12).

“Although you have not seen God, you love God” (1 Pet 1:8).

“We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

“Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

Ministers, no less than others, are susceptible to disenchantment. We may be “buffered.” In that regard, we are no different than the first disciples. They didn’t expect Jesus to show up or ask for supper. Yes, they talked about what happened on the road to Emmaus and perhaps some even planned what they would do next. But they didn’t expect Jesus. They were “buffered.” Disenchantment is not just a twenty-first-century phenomenon. It may be more prevalent today because we live anonymously and indoors, or because we don’t grow our own food, or because the trauma of birth and death is cushioned if not anesthetized by medical practices, or because we have explanations for everything under the sun including the sun itself, but our location in the twenty-first century is not the sole cause of buffering. Disenchantment resides in the nature of God—“no one has ever seen God.”

Enchantment and disenchantment exist because God is not obvious. If God were obvious, none of us would ever be enchanted. We are not enchanted by what we see but by what we don’t see; othe...