Some years ago, in a little history book published by the United Church of Christ (UCC), my grandfather, as editor of the German Reformed publication the Messenger, was listed as a leader in the movement to merge that denomination with the German Evangelical Church, a merger that occurred in 1934. It became known as the “E&R” Church.
Three years later, in 1937, the Congregational Church (of the Pilgrims fame) and the Christian Church joined to form the “C&C” Church. Finally, in 1957, the C&C and the E&R combined to form the UCC, the denomination in which I was ordained and served as pastor. It also is the one denomination closest to my ancestral roots.
My path to ordained ministry, however, was tortured. Once, as a kid, my father told me I had the perfect personality to be a minister. I did not consider this a great compliment, as I recall.
After completing divinity school I still wasn’t too sure. At first I thought I’d go into pastoral counseling and took a second master’s degree toward that end.
Though I had accumulated the necessary credentials, including the required hours of supervised counseling, I still had to work in a parish for 2-3 years in order to be able to “hang out a shingle.”
I hesitated. With the help of some very good professors (and in spite of some not-so-good ones), I eventually concluded that Christianity made sense (more on that later).
But I still wasn’t sold on the church. I thought it too political and worried that its everyday life wasn’t deep enough. I was concerned that it might be more a social club or familial clan than a spiritual, theological community.
But after much prayer and reflection, I decided that the church was the only place where I could even discuss the kinds of issues important to me. In college, it was entirely possible to talk about metaphysical things, but as friends found jobs, got married, and started having children, I quickly realized that they’d developed other priorities. Spiritual matters no longer seemed of particular interest to most of them, if ever they had.
So I plunged ahead. I was asked at the ecclesiastical council convened to assess my fitness for ordained ministry how I knew I had a “calling.” It was because I had backed through every door, I told them, kicking and screaming. I had never chosen it, it had chosen me.
Now, as I look back on my life and ministry, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Apparently God knew better than I, which, when you stop to think about it, is hardly surprising. I can’t think of a better avenue for using the gifts God gave me. But this insight is, of course, in retrospect.
My first challenge as a pastor had to do with sin. Nobody seemed to know what it was, that is. Or at least what it meant biblically.
Sin means “separation from God.” It’s a relational term. It’s not a list of do’s and don’t’s. And it’s not, as we often suppose, confined to criminals and miscreants. It is the state all humans find themselves in, cut off relationally from the source of all Being, and in varying degrees.
The great mythological story of the Fall in the beginning pages of the Book of Genesis tells the simple yet profound truth. What the Serpent offers is the greatest temptation of them all: the temptation to be God.
The Garden of Eden symbolizes the origins (and destiny) of humanity, that place where no separation from God exists. In their innocence, and dependent solely on God for their well-being, Adam and Eve know only bliss, as God intends life.
But when the Serpent, knowing they possess free will, promises that if they eat of the fruit their eyes will be opened and they will be just like gods themselves, they jump at the chance. Who wouldn’t?
We play God all the time, or at least try to. Our self-centeredness comes about as naturally to us as breathing. And it is this very self-centeredness that betrays our compromised and often tenuous relationship with our Creator.
In the receiving line after worship one Sunday, following a sermon I’d preached on sin, a woman approached me purposefully. Looking me straight in the eyes, all the while wagging her finger, she announced, indignantly, “I just want you to know. I’m not a sinner!”
I responded with all the pastoral sensitivity I could muster. “Well,” I offered, “you’re the first one I’ve ever met!”