I’m having trouble sitting in the library and in my classrooms and in my chapel, preparing. We’re preparing for ministry, which requires endless hours of reading and writing and filling our brains with information that we will then be able to pass on to the next generation of Christians. Lovely and honorable work, and I am so so happy to do it. I’m having a hard time, though, with this “trickle-down” mentality. This idea that this is important because eventually it will matter. Eventually, we’ll be in a congregation that will want to do an Old Testament Bible study and we will be there to change their worldviews about those rough texts we leave out of the lectionary. (What up, Hosea?)
And for Paul class, we just wrote 10-page exegeses on any pericope out of all of the Pauline epistles that we felt like writing 10 pages about. This is all well and good. When Galatians 2:15-21 is the scripture for the week, I will have SO MUCH to say. I’m sure that my time here will require further exegesis, and that I will then have much to say about many things. This is why we have education for pastors – so we know what to say every Sunday morning.
But what the hell do you say when it’s more complicated than scripture? There are things that happen in the world that cannot be explained away by looking at the original Greek. There are things that don’t break down to etiological constructs. There are things that don’t have footnotes with answers and further reading.
And we devote one semester – our first semester, at that – to a class called Pastoral Care. We go through role-play exercises about lost jobs, deaths in families, delinquent teenagers. But we’re not allowed to say stuff like “that sucks.” We’re not allowed to cry about it. We’re not allowed to say, “I don’t know what to say.” But how often is someone going to step into my office and unload their troubles and I’m going to say the perfect, right thing immediately off the top of my head? That’s not pastoral – that’s inhuman.
When do we just get to be human?
And for Paul class, we just wrote 10-page exegeses on any pericope out of all of the Pauline epistles that we felt like writing 10 pages about. This is all well and good. When Galatians 2:15-21 is the scripture for the week, I will have SO MUCH to say. I’m sure that my time here will require further exegesis, and that I will then have much to say about many things. This is why we have education for pastors – so we know what to say every Sunday morning.
But what the hell do you say when it’s more complicated than scripture? There are things that happen in the world that cannot be explained away by looking at the original Greek. There are things that don’t break down to etiological constructs. There are things that don’t have footnotes with answers and further reading.
And we devote one semester – our first semester, at that – to a class called Pastoral Care. We go through role-play exercises about lost jobs, deaths in families, delinquent teenagers. But we’re not allowed to say stuff like “that sucks.” We’re not allowed to cry about it. We’re not allowed to say, “I don’t know what to say.” But how often is someone going to step into my office and unload their troubles and I’m going to say the perfect, right thing immediately off the top of my head? That’s not pastoral – that’s inhuman.
When do we just get to be human?