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Common Clay Pots Philip W. Butin
In Protestant Christianity, we've often had a tendency to put our ministers up on pedestals. To have superhuman expectations of what "ministerial competence" is all about.
Pretend it's 1950 in the United States. And listen to the way a pastor joked about the irony of what search committees seemed to be looking for in that decade:
Preach for no more than 15 minutes and without notes. But do it with perfect grammar, theological depth, sound biblical scholarship, thoroughness, and an insightful, clear, moving, humorous, and practical illustration for each point...
Prophetically speak out against the sins of society. But do it without offending anyone...
Work from 8 in the morning until 10 in the evening every day doing all kinds of work cheerfully and well, from therapist to theologian to custodian... Earn $50 a week, but still wear attractive, fashionable clothes, buy all the latest ministry resources, drive a nice car, and tithe to the church....
Spend every evening at the church, and also has a strong marriage, a close family, and attractive, happy, well-mannered children...
Be no older than 40, but bring 25 years of pastoral experience...
Develop an effective Sunday School and youth ministry, and still be fully dedicated to ministry with older members....
Makes 15 pastoral visits every day, and also always be available at the church to take my call.
That was fifty five years ago. But just a few months ago, I heard the results of a survey about what people expect of their pastors. About the only thing that's changed is that the $50 a week salary might be more like $55 a week now.
Somehow, we've tended to hope or even expect that our ministers can transcend the normal limitations of being ordinary human beings.
It's a tendency that can have devastating results.
Every pastor knows the "fish-bowl" syndrome. When pastors and their spouses and children are expected to live up to higher standards than everyone else, incredible frustration or anger or even worse can result.
And it's surprising how many times pastoral sexual misconduct is at least partly connected with a church's tendency to idolize their pastor.
The church is focused on how wonderful the pastor is. The pastor needs constant boosts for his or her self-esteem. As the pastor's self-perception adjusts to the congregation's perceptions, the pastor begins to act omnipotent. Invulnerable. The results are tragic and predictable.
When our leaders are too closely associated with the divine, human presumption and idolatry take over. And then our fallen, sinful humanity becomes all too clear.
But there's opposite tendency that sometimes starts to operate in our Protestant congregations as well. Sometimes in some cultures, we seem to want to destroy our leaders. To knock strong leaders down a peg. To "demythologize" the life of anybody who rises above the pack, so that we can keep everyone on the same level.
I've seen presbyteries filled with resentment against the pastors of their most successful congregations.
I've seen elders deliberately sabotage the ministry efforts of lay leaders who really start to lead a congregation forward.
And too many of our pastors and lay leaders have gotten the message.
Do what everyone else does. Talk like everyone else talks. Live like everyone else lives. Think like everyone else thinks.
Too many pastors have stopped even trying to reflect God's grace in any distinctive way.
We just do our best to fit into current cultural conceptions of leadership. And that's a tough order. Cultural images of the "ideal pastor" are constantly shifting. Who can keep up?
Should I be a "scholar" or a "social activist?" A "pulpiteer" or a popular-media style communicator?" A "leader" or a "listener?" A "politician?" A "CEO?" A "church growth expert?"
As long as we let any particular culture's leadership aspirations determine our models for the church's ministry, the list isn't likely to stop there.
Ministry is fraught with equal and opposite temptations. We can overemphasize the divine aspects of ministry, or we can overemphasize its sources in ordinary human cultural norms.
Like all logs, this is one you can fall off on either side. And either way we fall-- we misrepresent the Good News of the transforming power of God's grace in Jesus Christ.
One of our great contemporary challenges in theological education is to imagine a paradigm for ministry that does justice to both its divine and human elements.
The apostle Paul faced this same ministry dilemma in his painful interactions with the church at Corinth. And in that struggle, he articulated the relationship of the human and the divine in Christian ministry in a remarkable way. A way that breaks through the dichotomy I've been pointing out.
Paul's solution is that the divine reality of God's grace is truly and genuinely communicated in and through ordinary human beings. In his words, the "transcendent power" of God's grace normally comes to us in ordinary "earthen vessels." Common clay pots.
Have you ever hidden money or jewelry in a sock?
In the ancient Near East, houses were very small and there was almost no place to hide something valuable. There were no locks. So when a family needed to leave the house, they weren't likely to put their most valuable treasure in a beautiful container that would attract a thief's gaze. Instead, they would often put a valuable piece of jewelry or a bottle of perfume in the most ordinary looking pot, hoping no one would notice.
In a similar way, Paul is saying, God has chosen to conceal the extraordinary power of God's own grace in the ordinary, common clay pots of fallible, vulnerable, imperfect human lives.
We see the principle of the "treasure in earthen vessels" first and foremost in Jesus Christ.
In the incarnation, Jesus Christ was fully and authentically human. Subject to all the uncertainties and ambiguities of the same human life we live.
But at the same time, Jesus Christ was fully and authentically divine. God in the flesh. The one who authentically revealed God's truth and glory. The one who embodied God's love and compassion. Who demonstrated God's power and sovereignty.
And the same principle applies, Paul says, to our ministries in and for the church.
II Corinthians 3-4 is all about grace. It's about the way we really encounter God's grace?in and through the ministry of ordinary human beings. It's about the way we discover the extraordinary treasure of God's transforming power?in ordinary, breakable clay pots.
It turns out God has a radical, unexpected, unlikely understanding of "ministerial competence."
According to Paul, in the first instance ministry just isn't about us. In the first instance, it's about God in us.
I think four words sum up Paul's practical teaching about how-- by the Holy Spirit-- our ministry can faithfully reflect both the divine and the human realities of God's own ministry to us in Christ.
The first word is transparency. It's suggested by the imagery of verses 3:17-18: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit."
According to these verses, we are mirrors reflecting God's glory. We can freely sharing our weaknesses and how God meets us precisely there. We can let others see us being transformed by grace.
The second word is authenticity. I'm drawing it from the picture Paul paints of himself in chapter 4, verse 2. "We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God." Authenticity is about being real. No acts. No deception. It's about being clear that it is God's word and God's truth that make the difference in who we are and what we do.
The third word is servanthood. It's taken from chapter 4, verse 5. "For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake." When we are slaves of others for Jesus' sake, our motives are focused on the good of those to whom we minister. By serving God alongside others, servant-leaders show that the difference in us is not human virtue, but divine grace.
The fourth and final word is vulnerability. I've used it to summarize what Paul is depicting in chapter 4, verses 8-12: "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you." When we live vulnerably as Paul recommends, others are attracted to the Christian life when they see God sustaining us in our weakness and need. Vulnerable leaders realize others will see God in us most clearly when we are clear about receiving God's grace even in our sin; not when we're trying to impress them with our strength, or with how "together" we are. It's by being vulnerable in this way that we reflect the pattern of Christ's death and resurrection in our ministry.
Every one of us here today has a ministry. Each of us is a minister. And each of us has a special call this morning to "have this treasure?the treasure of God's grace?in an ordinary clay jar, so that it can be made clear that the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us."
Based on Christ's incarnation, we're called to minister in transparency, authenticity, servanthood, and vulnerability.
When we live this way?when we give this way?when we offer our time and talents and gifts to the church in this Spirit, others will see in us the reflection of the glory of God in the face of Jesus. In us! And grace, as it extends to more and more people, will increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
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