...Of Like Passions With You
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House
on Nantucket Island, Sunday June 8, 2003
READING: Acts 14: 8-18
***
In many ways, I feel like I’ve been looking forward to this Sunday for almost two years now. Since the moment I arrived here on Nantucket, some twenty-two months ago, to serve as your interim minister, all of my efforts have essentially been focused on one overarching objective: helping you to prepare for the day when you would be ready to call your next settled minister. And now, one week from today, your search committee’s chosen candidate, Jennifer Brooks, will be here in this pulpit to preach to you for the first time, and I, for one, am just thrilled about it. Not only does it mean that we can ALL pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, it also means that I can look forward now to four straight weeks in a row out of the pulpit, as well as moving on to my own new, settled ministry in Carlisle this August confident in the knowledge that you will be in good hands, and ready to begin writing yet another illustrious chapter in the 195-year history of this congregation.
Our form of church governance, or “polity,” is based on 355-year-old document known as the Cambridge Platform, or more accurately “A Platform of Church Discipline gathered out of the Word of God and agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New England.” Obviously, we’ve made a few modifications over the years (I like to think of them as “upgrades”), but the basic principles are still intact. And one of the fundamental features of the Platform is the authority of local congregations to call and ordain their own clergy. This may not seem like such a big deal to you, since in this day and age most congregations have some say at least , either directly or indirectly, about who their ministers will be. But there’s a lot more to it than simply being able to choose your own pastor.
The authors of the Cambridge Platform believed that the model of church government which they had articulated was grounded in the authority of Scripture. And they believed that Scripture taught that the church was a community of the faithful -- whom they called “saints” -- who had been gathered together under a covenant of mutual accountability in order to worship God and to do God’s work in the world. The authority of a congregation to elect its own leaders -- not just Pastors and Teachers, but also Elders and Deacons -- was a right and a power, a “prerogative or privilege which the church exercises...for its own preservation & subsist[en]ce.” It was essential to its very existence, a right AND a responsibility ordained by God in order to empower the church in its ability to fulfill its mission and purpose as the people of God.
I want to say just a little bit more about this, not only because it’s important, but also because it’s interesting. Ministers were understood to be “Ambassador[s] for Christ,” and were charged with the responsibility “to preach and teach the pure doctrine of the Divine Word, to administer the Holy Sacraments, according to the institution and ordinance of Christ as revealed in Scripture, to instruct the young in the way of salvation, to counsel the inquiring, to strengthen the weak, to seek the lost and reclaim the erring, to comfort the sorrowing, to care for the needy, to visit the sick, to minister to the dying, and ever to pray for the welfare of all under th[eir] care.”
Nowadays we tend to simplify this list a little; often times at ordinations and installation services ministers will be charged “to preach the truth in love,” and occasionally one will also hear talk of “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” But you can see, the job description really hasn’t changed that much in the last three and a half centuries. And at its center is the covenantal relationship between the pastor and the people. Having exercised their God-given prerogative of selecting their own minister, the people were then expected to “sit under” that person’s ministry, and to support their minister -- spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially -- in the neverending effort to do God’s work, both in the church and in the world, on their behalf.
Since in those days a minister’s tenure, like that of a Supreme Court justice, was generally understood to be for life (and without possibility of parole, or time off for good behavior), obviously the selection of a minister was a very important decision. And local congregations were thus strongly encouraged to seek the assistance of other, neighboring churches in evaluating the worthiness of prospective candidates for the ministry. Perhaps the most important resource in this regard were people who were already serving in the profession themselves. There were basically three criteria which were considered crucial. The first was education (which would have meant the ability to read theology and the Bible in their original languages: Latin, Greek, and Hebrew); the second was personal piety; and the third moral character.
Typically, potential ministers who appeared to possess the latter two qualifications would be identified by their own ministers when they were still quite young, and then be “fitted for Harvard” (or Yale or Princeton) by being taken aside and tutored in the ancient languages until they achieved a proficiency sufficient to pass the entrance exam. Upon completion of their college educations, they would then ordinarily apprentice themselves to yet another minister who would supervise their theological reading and instruct them in the ways of the profession. When it was felt they were ready, they would next appear in front of their local ministerial association, who would examine them for knowledge, piety, and character, and if they were found worthy, grant them a “certificate of approbation” recommending them as qualified for the pastoral office.
The final step remained in the hands of the local congregations, who would invite these fledgling ministers to come preach for them, in much the same way that you will be hearing Jennifer in the next two weeks. If the “candidate” proved acceptable, the congregation would then vote to “call” them as their minister, and offer them a “settlement” -- generally a house and land, a cash salary, so many cords of firewood cut and stacked, grazing rights on the common, and whatever other inducements they could come up with in order to convince the minister to come and make a home in the community. The people provided for their pastor’s material needs, so that the pastor could provide for their spiritual needs. And because the minister was expected to be a leader in the community, is was strongly felt (at least by the ministers) that their social position, like the position of their pulpits, should be “slightly elevated” above the norm.
You may well be wondering how I just so happen to know all this. When I was researching my doctoral dissertation, I had the opportunity to read dozens of 18th and 19th century ordinations sermons, in which these themes are hammered away at over and over and over again. A service of ordination is really a rather unique event, when you stop to think about it. Not only does the nature of the occasion give ministers carte blanc to talk about their profession to the laity, it is also one of the few opportunities ministers have to speak and listen to one another in a formal, organized way about what we do for a living, and what it means to us.
I think my favorite of all the ordinations sermons I looked at during my research was one preached by the Reverend Ebenezer Gay on May 12th, 1725, at the ordination of Joseph Green as the Pastor of a newly-gathered church in the East Part of the town of Barnstable. Ebenezer Gay graduated from Harvard in 1714, at the age of 19, and served as the minister of the Old Ship Church in Hingham from 1717 until his death in 1787, a period of nearly seventy years. He started his career as an orthodox Puritan, and ended it a full-blown Unitarian, one of the first in North America. Yet even early in his career, his thought betrays a direction which hints at his later destination. Gay took as his text that day a verse from the book of Acts, και ημειs ομοιιπατηειs εσμεν υμιν ανθροποι -- “we also are human beings [anthropoi] of like passions [homoiopatheis] with you” -- which he used in order to illustrate the doctrine that it is not the “exalted” quality of the ministry that gives it its effectiveness, but rather the fact that ministers are human beings just like us, and who struggle with the same issues and problems that we do, which makes their example so effective.
“If GOD should send his Holy Angels...to Preach unto us; yet the Lustre of Seraphim would dazzle and confound, rather then inform and edify us,” Gay proclaimed. Human beings “of like passions with others are appointed to be ministers, because such can be Examples unto the Flock....Preachers of Religion should be Patterns of it....This is the Shortest and easiest way of Instruction: and without it our Preaching is commonly in vain.” “Our spiritual Pilots do not stand on the shore, looking upon us, and only Calling to us in a Sea of Dangers,” he continued, “but they embark with us, and venture their Souls with ours.”
Of course education, and piety, and moral character are important. But the PERFECT example is less important than the SINCERE example; perfection is meaningless, since none of us are perfect; all human beings have their “[f]aults and failures.” But “if people wont receive them as Ministers, with these,” Gay said, “they must refuse all such whom GOD sendeth unto them. To reject them, because they are not perfect, is to impeach the Wisdom & Goodness of GOD, from whom they receive their Commission.” Thus (and this is my favorite quote) “Sins of Infirmity, and of daily surreption, ought not to be pried into, with Eagle-ey’d Malice: nor expos’d, to their disgrace, when they are no other than such as are common to Humanity. Their Failings should be cover’d with the Mantle of Christian Charity.” According to Gay, a “Superstitious Reverence” of the “persons” of ministers borders on idolatry. Likewise, ministers themselves should always endeavor to maintain an attitude of humility, which both shelters them from the sin of Pride, and can “yield them some comfort, when they are unsuccessful in their work.”
Inasmuch as Gay’s sermon that day probably lasted a couple of hours, I could go on and on in this vein for some time, but I think you probably get the idea. But he does make two other additional points which I feel are worthy of mentioning in passing. The recognition that ministers are human beings of like passions with others is also a warning against “blind obedience” to their authority -- people should always examine and compare what a minister says against their own understanding of religious truth. Furthermore, the awareness of a minister’s personal shortcomings should not be allowed to “prejudice the due reception of the Truth which they preach,” since “Many seek to excuse their Disregard of the Message, by their dislike of the Messenger.” Because ministers are human, we will always be imperfect servants of God. But because all human beings are likewise imperfect, the faithful efforts of a sincere and devoted minister are often the best example of how we might ourselves become better, or (as Gay would have put it) more “godly,” than we presently are.
I wanted to share all this with you, so that you can try to bring some of this information forward to the here and now, and perhaps better understand the continuities between the early days of our tradition, and the task that you will be performing, as a congregation, in the next few weeks. Obviously, some things have changed a lot since 1725, or even 1808. We see the world through slightly different eyes; our understandings of the nature of God, and of the role that the church should play in our lives, even of the ministry itself, have evolved and developed over time. Your Ministerial Search Committee has literally searched the world over in order to find the minister they feel is best suited to serving the needs of this congregation at this precise moment in its history. As a congregation, you are not necessarily being asked to re-evaluate her education, or her piety, or her moral character (although I’m certain if you did you would find them exemplary, just as your Search Committee has). What you ARE being asked to do is to affirm the hard work which your Search Committee has done on your behalf, and also to express your willingness to support your new minister in the hard work she is about to do, also on your behalf, here in Nantucket as a “settled” member of your community.
No minister is ever “perfect” -- so let’s just get that off the table right way. If you have learned anything from me during my two-year tenure as your interim minister, you must have at least learned that. So cover whatever normal human faults you may see, or think you see, shortcomings real or imagined, with the “mantle of Christian Charity,” and look instead at her considerable strengths. Ask yourself whether you think this is someone you can learn from, someone who inspires you, someone you would like to get to know better, and who will grow on you over time. And if after all that, you still find yourself harboring doubts, take another bit of advice from your religious forebearers, like Ebenezer Gay, and ask yourself why it is that God, or Providence, or Fate or Destiny, or even just all of your neighbors sitting around you (and especially the members of the Ministerial Search Committee whom you elected to the task), have decided that this is the spiritual leader and teacher under whose ministry this congregation needs to be sitting at this point in time. Ask yourself what lessons YOU still need to learn, and what changes you need to make in your own life and attitude, in order to become capable of learning them. Often times the faults we perceive in others simply mirror our own. But when we learn how to look beyond them, and mimic the strengths we discover in the midst of the shortcomings, the pathway to our own religious growth becomes more clear.
Exercising the prerogative of calling and ordaining a new minister is a significant moment in the life of a congregation. It’s not only a right which you enjoy, a privilege which goes part and parcel with the very nature of BEING a religious community, it is also a duty and a responsibility which you exercise on behalf of the entire “church universal.” By designating a specific individual of high moral character, exemplary piety, and outstanding intellectual preparation, as the spiritual leader and teacher of your community, you are not only affirming their ministry, you are affirming the value of ALL ministry, as something worthy of our attention, and support and beneficial to human happiness. So exercise this duty seriously and responsibly, but also joyously and enthusiastically. Because a good minister is a human being of like passions with you. And it is only in partnership that you can walk together humbly into your glorious shared future.
at the Second Congregational Meeting House
on Nantucket Island, Sunday June 8, 2003
READING: Acts 14: 8-18
***
In many ways, I feel like I’ve been looking forward to this Sunday for almost two years now. Since the moment I arrived here on Nantucket, some twenty-two months ago, to serve as your interim minister, all of my efforts have essentially been focused on one overarching objective: helping you to prepare for the day when you would be ready to call your next settled minister. And now, one week from today, your search committee’s chosen candidate, Jennifer Brooks, will be here in this pulpit to preach to you for the first time, and I, for one, am just thrilled about it. Not only does it mean that we can ALL pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, it also means that I can look forward now to four straight weeks in a row out of the pulpit, as well as moving on to my own new, settled ministry in Carlisle this August confident in the knowledge that you will be in good hands, and ready to begin writing yet another illustrious chapter in the 195-year history of this congregation.
Our form of church governance, or “polity,” is based on 355-year-old document known as the Cambridge Platform, or more accurately “A Platform of Church Discipline gathered out of the Word of God and agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New England.” Obviously, we’ve made a few modifications over the years (I like to think of them as “upgrades”), but the basic principles are still intact. And one of the fundamental features of the Platform is the authority of local congregations to call and ordain their own clergy. This may not seem like such a big deal to you, since in this day and age most congregations have some say at least , either directly or indirectly, about who their ministers will be. But there’s a lot more to it than simply being able to choose your own pastor.
The authors of the Cambridge Platform believed that the model of church government which they had articulated was grounded in the authority of Scripture. And they believed that Scripture taught that the church was a community of the faithful -- whom they called “saints” -- who had been gathered together under a covenant of mutual accountability in order to worship God and to do God’s work in the world. The authority of a congregation to elect its own leaders -- not just Pastors and Teachers, but also Elders and Deacons -- was a right and a power, a “prerogative or privilege which the church exercises...for its own preservation & subsist[en]ce.” It was essential to its very existence, a right AND a responsibility ordained by God in order to empower the church in its ability to fulfill its mission and purpose as the people of God.
I want to say just a little bit more about this, not only because it’s important, but also because it’s interesting. Ministers were understood to be “Ambassador[s] for Christ,” and were charged with the responsibility “to preach and teach the pure doctrine of the Divine Word, to administer the Holy Sacraments, according to the institution and ordinance of Christ as revealed in Scripture, to instruct the young in the way of salvation, to counsel the inquiring, to strengthen the weak, to seek the lost and reclaim the erring, to comfort the sorrowing, to care for the needy, to visit the sick, to minister to the dying, and ever to pray for the welfare of all under th[eir] care.”
Nowadays we tend to simplify this list a little; often times at ordinations and installation services ministers will be charged “to preach the truth in love,” and occasionally one will also hear talk of “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” But you can see, the job description really hasn’t changed that much in the last three and a half centuries. And at its center is the covenantal relationship between the pastor and the people. Having exercised their God-given prerogative of selecting their own minister, the people were then expected to “sit under” that person’s ministry, and to support their minister -- spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially -- in the neverending effort to do God’s work, both in the church and in the world, on their behalf.
Since in those days a minister’s tenure, like that of a Supreme Court justice, was generally understood to be for life (and without possibility of parole, or time off for good behavior), obviously the selection of a minister was a very important decision. And local congregations were thus strongly encouraged to seek the assistance of other, neighboring churches in evaluating the worthiness of prospective candidates for the ministry. Perhaps the most important resource in this regard were people who were already serving in the profession themselves. There were basically three criteria which were considered crucial. The first was education (which would have meant the ability to read theology and the Bible in their original languages: Latin, Greek, and Hebrew); the second was personal piety; and the third moral character.
Typically, potential ministers who appeared to possess the latter two qualifications would be identified by their own ministers when they were still quite young, and then be “fitted for Harvard” (or Yale or Princeton) by being taken aside and tutored in the ancient languages until they achieved a proficiency sufficient to pass the entrance exam. Upon completion of their college educations, they would then ordinarily apprentice themselves to yet another minister who would supervise their theological reading and instruct them in the ways of the profession. When it was felt they were ready, they would next appear in front of their local ministerial association, who would examine them for knowledge, piety, and character, and if they were found worthy, grant them a “certificate of approbation” recommending them as qualified for the pastoral office.
The final step remained in the hands of the local congregations, who would invite these fledgling ministers to come preach for them, in much the same way that you will be hearing Jennifer in the next two weeks. If the “candidate” proved acceptable, the congregation would then vote to “call” them as their minister, and offer them a “settlement” -- generally a house and land, a cash salary, so many cords of firewood cut and stacked, grazing rights on the common, and whatever other inducements they could come up with in order to convince the minister to come and make a home in the community. The people provided for their pastor’s material needs, so that the pastor could provide for their spiritual needs. And because the minister was expected to be a leader in the community, is was strongly felt (at least by the ministers) that their social position, like the position of their pulpits, should be “slightly elevated” above the norm.
You may well be wondering how I just so happen to know all this. When I was researching my doctoral dissertation, I had the opportunity to read dozens of 18th and 19th century ordinations sermons, in which these themes are hammered away at over and over and over again. A service of ordination is really a rather unique event, when you stop to think about it. Not only does the nature of the occasion give ministers carte blanc to talk about their profession to the laity, it is also one of the few opportunities ministers have to speak and listen to one another in a formal, organized way about what we do for a living, and what it means to us.
I think my favorite of all the ordinations sermons I looked at during my research was one preached by the Reverend Ebenezer Gay on May 12th, 1725, at the ordination of Joseph Green as the Pastor of a newly-gathered church in the East Part of the town of Barnstable. Ebenezer Gay graduated from Harvard in 1714, at the age of 19, and served as the minister of the Old Ship Church in Hingham from 1717 until his death in 1787, a period of nearly seventy years. He started his career as an orthodox Puritan, and ended it a full-blown Unitarian, one of the first in North America. Yet even early in his career, his thought betrays a direction which hints at his later destination. Gay took as his text that day a verse from the book of Acts, και ημειs ομοιιπατηειs εσμεν υμιν ανθροποι -- “we also are human beings [anthropoi] of like passions [homoiopatheis] with you” -- which he used in order to illustrate the doctrine that it is not the “exalted” quality of the ministry that gives it its effectiveness, but rather the fact that ministers are human beings just like us, and who struggle with the same issues and problems that we do, which makes their example so effective.
“If GOD should send his Holy Angels...to Preach unto us; yet the Lustre of Seraphim would dazzle and confound, rather then inform and edify us,” Gay proclaimed. Human beings “of like passions with others are appointed to be ministers, because such can be Examples unto the Flock....Preachers of Religion should be Patterns of it....This is the Shortest and easiest way of Instruction: and without it our Preaching is commonly in vain.” “Our spiritual Pilots do not stand on the shore, looking upon us, and only Calling to us in a Sea of Dangers,” he continued, “but they embark with us, and venture their Souls with ours.”
Of course education, and piety, and moral character are important. But the PERFECT example is less important than the SINCERE example; perfection is meaningless, since none of us are perfect; all human beings have their “[f]aults and failures.” But “if people wont receive them as Ministers, with these,” Gay said, “they must refuse all such whom GOD sendeth unto them. To reject them, because they are not perfect, is to impeach the Wisdom & Goodness of GOD, from whom they receive their Commission.” Thus (and this is my favorite quote) “Sins of Infirmity, and of daily surreption, ought not to be pried into, with Eagle-ey’d Malice: nor expos’d, to their disgrace, when they are no other than such as are common to Humanity. Their Failings should be cover’d with the Mantle of Christian Charity.” According to Gay, a “Superstitious Reverence” of the “persons” of ministers borders on idolatry. Likewise, ministers themselves should always endeavor to maintain an attitude of humility, which both shelters them from the sin of Pride, and can “yield them some comfort, when they are unsuccessful in their work.”
Inasmuch as Gay’s sermon that day probably lasted a couple of hours, I could go on and on in this vein for some time, but I think you probably get the idea. But he does make two other additional points which I feel are worthy of mentioning in passing. The recognition that ministers are human beings of like passions with others is also a warning against “blind obedience” to their authority -- people should always examine and compare what a minister says against their own understanding of religious truth. Furthermore, the awareness of a minister’s personal shortcomings should not be allowed to “prejudice the due reception of the Truth which they preach,” since “Many seek to excuse their Disregard of the Message, by their dislike of the Messenger.” Because ministers are human, we will always be imperfect servants of God. But because all human beings are likewise imperfect, the faithful efforts of a sincere and devoted minister are often the best example of how we might ourselves become better, or (as Gay would have put it) more “godly,” than we presently are.
I wanted to share all this with you, so that you can try to bring some of this information forward to the here and now, and perhaps better understand the continuities between the early days of our tradition, and the task that you will be performing, as a congregation, in the next few weeks. Obviously, some things have changed a lot since 1725, or even 1808. We see the world through slightly different eyes; our understandings of the nature of God, and of the role that the church should play in our lives, even of the ministry itself, have evolved and developed over time. Your Ministerial Search Committee has literally searched the world over in order to find the minister they feel is best suited to serving the needs of this congregation at this precise moment in its history. As a congregation, you are not necessarily being asked to re-evaluate her education, or her piety, or her moral character (although I’m certain if you did you would find them exemplary, just as your Search Committee has). What you ARE being asked to do is to affirm the hard work which your Search Committee has done on your behalf, and also to express your willingness to support your new minister in the hard work she is about to do, also on your behalf, here in Nantucket as a “settled” member of your community.
No minister is ever “perfect” -- so let’s just get that off the table right way. If you have learned anything from me during my two-year tenure as your interim minister, you must have at least learned that. So cover whatever normal human faults you may see, or think you see, shortcomings real or imagined, with the “mantle of Christian Charity,” and look instead at her considerable strengths. Ask yourself whether you think this is someone you can learn from, someone who inspires you, someone you would like to get to know better, and who will grow on you over time. And if after all that, you still find yourself harboring doubts, take another bit of advice from your religious forebearers, like Ebenezer Gay, and ask yourself why it is that God, or Providence, or Fate or Destiny, or even just all of your neighbors sitting around you (and especially the members of the Ministerial Search Committee whom you elected to the task), have decided that this is the spiritual leader and teacher under whose ministry this congregation needs to be sitting at this point in time. Ask yourself what lessons YOU still need to learn, and what changes you need to make in your own life and attitude, in order to become capable of learning them. Often times the faults we perceive in others simply mirror our own. But when we learn how to look beyond them, and mimic the strengths we discover in the midst of the shortcomings, the pathway to our own religious growth becomes more clear.
Exercising the prerogative of calling and ordaining a new minister is a significant moment in the life of a congregation. It’s not only a right which you enjoy, a privilege which goes part and parcel with the very nature of BEING a religious community, it is also a duty and a responsibility which you exercise on behalf of the entire “church universal.” By designating a specific individual of high moral character, exemplary piety, and outstanding intellectual preparation, as the spiritual leader and teacher of your community, you are not only affirming their ministry, you are affirming the value of ALL ministry, as something worthy of our attention, and support and beneficial to human happiness. So exercise this duty seriously and responsibly, but also joyously and enthusiastically. Because a good minister is a human being of like passions with you. And it is only in partnership that you can walk together humbly into your glorious shared future.
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 6:48 PM
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