Learning to Speak Christian. Stanley Hauerwas

emptied himself,

      taking the form of a slave,

      being born in human likeness.

      And found in human form,

      He humbled himself

      And became obedient to the point of

      Death—

      Even death on a cross.

      Therefore God also highly exalted him

      and gave him the name

      that is above every name,

      so that at the name of Jesus

      every knee should bend,

      in heaven and on earth and under

      the earth,

      and every tongue should confess

      that Jesus Christ is Lord,

      to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5–11)

      The fire that burned but did not consume the bush is Jesus Christ. Just as the fire did not consume the bush so our God has come to us by becoming one of us. Yet the humanity of the one he became was not replaced or destroyed. Rather our God is incarnate. Our God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There has never been a time that God has not been Trinity. The God that came to Moses in the burning bush, the God who called Moses to deliver his people, the God who game Moses his name, is Trinity. Only this God can be very God and very man.

      The God we worship is not a vague, “the more.” The God we worship is not “the biggest thing around.” The God we worship is not “something had to start it.” The God we worship is not a God that insures that we will somehow get out of life alive. The God we worship, as our passage from Luke makes clear, is not a God whose ways correspond to our presumptions about how God should be God. That God has come near to us in Christ does not mean that God is less than God. God is God and we are not.

      Yet we believe that the God we worship has made his name known. We believe we have been given the happy task of making his name known. We believe we can make his name known because the God we worship is nearer to us than we are to ourselves—a frightening reality that gives us life. We believe that in this meal of bread and wine, just as Jesus is fully God and fully man, this bread and this wine will through the work of the Spirit become for us the body and blood of Christ.

      To come to this meal is to stand before the burning bush. But we are not told to come no closer. Rather we are invited to eat this body and drink this blood and by so doing we are consumed by what we consume. So consumed we are made through the Holy Spirit God’s witnesses that the world may know the fire that is Jesus Christ.

      God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt. There is no God but this God. Blessed be his name.

      6

      Speaking Christian

      A Commencement Address

      For Eastern Mennonite Seminary

      May 1, 2010

      God knows what possesses anyone to enter the ministry in our day. The lack of clarity about what makes Christians Christian, what makes the church the church, continuing ambiguity in our diverse denominations about ordination itself should surely make anyone think twice about becoming a minister. Moreover the lack of consensus about what it might mean for anyone to act with authority in our society and the church cannot help but make those of us who are not ministers wonder about the psychological health of those who tell us they are called to the ministry.

      Too often I fear the ministry is understood by many Christians as well as many who become ministers to be but one expression of the more general category of something called a “helping profession.” A minister is a social worker with “a difference.” “The difference” is thought to have something to do with God, but it is not clear exactly what difference that difference is to make for the performance of your office.

      As a result, many who enter the ministry discover after a few years of doing the best they can to meet the expectations of those they serve, expectations such as whatever else you may do you should always be nice, end up feeling as if they have been nibbled to death by ducks. They do so because it is assumed that, since pastors do not work for a living, those whom ministers serve, or at least those who pay them, can ask ministers to be or do just about anything. Though it is often not clear how what they are asked to do is required by their ordination vows, those in the ministry cannot say “no” because it is not clear what their “job” is in the first place.

      Many in the ministry try to protect themselves from the unlimited demands and expectations of their congregations by taking refuge in their families, some alternative ministry such as counseling, or, God help us, a hobby. Such strategies may work for awhile, but often those who employ these strategies discover that no spouse can or should love another spouse that much, that even after you have done CPE you are still stuck with the life you had before you were trained in CPE, and a hobby turns out to be just that, namely, a hobby.

      The failure of such strategies I think throws some light on clergy misconduct. I wish I could attribute the sexual misconduct characteristic of some Methodist clergy to lust, but I fear that most people in the Methodist ministry do not have that much energy. I think the problem is not lust, but loneliness. Isolated by the expectations of the congregation, the challenge of developing friendships with some in the church without those friendships creating divisions in the church too often results in a profound loneliness for those in the ministry. Unfortunately, the attempt to overcome that loneliness can take the form of inappropriate behavior.

      There is another alternative. You can become a scold urging the church to become more socially active in causes of peace and justice. This may earn you the title of being “prophetic,” but such a strategy may contribute to the incoherence of the ministerial task. For it is not at all clear why you needed to be ordained to pursue causes of peace and justice. It is a great challenge for ministers who would lead their congregations to be more socially active to do so in a manner that does not result in the displacement of worship as the heart of the church.

      By now you may well be trying to understand why someone thought it a good idea to ask Stanley Hauerwas to deliver your commencement address. This is a celebratory day. You have graduated from Eastern Mennonite Seminary. You are going into the ministry. It is not as if you are unaware of the challenges facing you. You do not need me to catalogue those challenges. That is certainly true, but I have taken the time to characterize some of those challenges, a characterization that no doubt is a caricature, because I want to suggest how the work you have done in seminary is crucial for the work you will do as a minister if you are to sustain the ministry for a lifetime.

      For what you have learned to do in seminary is read. By learning to read you have learned to speak Christian. That you have learned to read and speak means you have been formed in a manner to avoid the pitfalls I have associated with the contemporary ministry. For I want to suggest to you that one of the essential tasks of those called to the ministry in our day is to be a teacher. In particular, you are called to be a teacher of language. I hope to convince you if you so understand your task you will discover that you have your work cut out for you. But that is very good news because now you clearly have something to do.

      Yet in the book of James we are told

      not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. (Jas 3:1–5)

      The problem, according to James, is that no one has found a way to tame the tongue. Because the tongue cannot be tamed it becomes a “restless evil,