On the Admission and Licensing of Pastoral Workers
Psalm 43; Philippians 2.1-11; Mark 10.35-45.
Imagine a long wooden dining table. The prefect sat at the head of the table, facing the rest of us. Then came, (in pairs down the table), sixth formers, fifth formers, fourth formers, third formers, and then the vital split, second formers and first formers. Food only found its way to these last two groups if it wasn’t liked by the earlier sections of the table —first and second formers got plenty of cabbage and custard skin, but little roast meat and never any chocolate pudding! Regimented and hierarchical tables that made it very plain where the power was. No coincidence, I think, that meal times were segregated by gender—it was a boys only arrangement.
Years later I sat at another long table where the seating was according to rank. At the head matron, then the ward sisters, then the staff nurses, then the senior enrolled nurse, then the registered nurses, then the enrolled nurses, then the unqualified nurses, and then me—the only male nurse, unqualified and recently appointed. Plates of cabbage and nothing else came immediately to mind, but it wasn’t like that.
This time the biggest portions came my way, and it was always assumed that seconds of pudding would be passed in my direction! I was being mothered and it was an absolutely different kind of experience, quite unlike the power play of the all boys, by rank, dinner hour.
Jesus said to them, “…their rulers lord it over them … but it is not so among you …”
We rejoice today with those to be admitted and licensed as Pastoral Workers. The Church recognizes their calling to a specific ministry – tested through prayer, selection and training. And we celebrate godly gifts, freely shared. Pastoral Workers are called into a community of service—as we heard Bishop Robert say: to work in partnership; caring for people; serving their communities. This incident with James and John tells us how power is to be handled in a community of service.
Remember that Jesus and his disciples were on the Way, going up to Jerusalem (that’s verse 32, just before our reading). As always Jesus is walking ahead of them. In other words in the life of discipleship Jesus is always out in front—both literally, the Christian never goes anywhere where Christ has not gone before; and symbolically, Jesus is always demonstrating in his own activity what the Christian’s behaviour should be like. To keep Christ before us is to acknowledge his saving presence in all things, and to face the challenge of living our lives after his example.
How we deal with one another, how we handle power, the way we receive and give authority, our attitudes, are very much to the point in being people of faith. What you do at the dinner table may well declare very plainly just how close you are in following the way after Jesus, as do a thousand and one other circumstances where we lord it over other people, or experience ourselves being lorded over. Mark is telling us of Jesus’ other way—the God alternative to the sterile power plays of human society.
And I really do mean ‘human society’ – the destructive power play that comes naturally to us, to all of us. But Jesus doesn’t do what comes naturally. He does what love chooses, and that means determination, resolve, and free choice. The mind that was in Christ we heard of in the Philippians reading has an implied comparison, and that comparison is with the stereotypical person ‘Adam’:
· Adam like Christ was a being in the image of God,
· like Christ he was in human shape,
but unlike Christ
· he thought equality with God was something to be sought,
· he spurned being God’s servant,
· he exalted himself,
· he was disobedient.
In all these things Christ did the opposite. That was his mind; that was his determination. ‘Let that mind be in you,’ says St Paul.
It sounds so beautiful in St Paul’s words. It is beautiful, but it’s not easy. Even Jesus’ closest disciples don’t get it. When Peter hears Jesus tell of his coming sufferings, he flares up in temper and rebukes his leader (that’s 8.32). John wants Jesus’ reassurance that he has done the right thing in bawling out people who weren’t part of their group who had been healing in Jesus’ name (that’s 9.38). “We’re the ones with the authority, not them.” Be alert, whenever you hear someone refer to “those kind of people.” That’s John-style thinking, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it.
Now James in our reading joins with Peter and John’s rejection of the Jesus way. When the Messianic coup d’état comes he, with John, wants a cabinet position in the new regime. One Prime Minister, one Chancellor of the Exchequer—“Give us the power to assert your authority as King.” Characteristically, Jesus turns the question back to them—with exasperation, no doubt. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” This is the cup of suffering he must drink, the baptism of death he must undergo? And they reply, “No problem, certainly we can.”
Interestingly, Mark’s readers, of course, know that that is indeed what happened. James was imprisoned by Herod Antipas, tortured and beheaded.
When did James and John realize the foolishness of their request—was it when they saw two tortured robbers lifted on crosses on Jesus right and left?
Anyway, when the other ten disciples hear what’s been talked about, they are indignant at James and John. All of them are into the power thing. They all fundamentally misunderstand what it is to follow Jesus. Jesus’ teaching is clear that his leadership, and all that flows from it, is not to be modelled on the way things are usually done. Yet we hanker after it, that everyday way of doing things, the way that comes naturally to us. “The love of bossing other people is even greater than the distaste for being bossed oneself” (Lesslie Newbigin). “But it must not be so amongst you …”
Jesus’ new style of leadership—from the bottom up, if you like, is something the male disciples simply don’t understand—they are absolutely clueless. The women, however, are different. In Mark’s account they know the significance of the servanthood he teaches. At the beginning of Mark’s gospel, Peter’s mother-in-law serves, and at its end, it is the women watching the crucifixion who are described as having served him. As one commentator has it, Mark’s Gospel is socially subversive:
…he understands that the whole social system of patriarchy, which renders tyrants strong in the world and women subject in the home, must be overturned. The first concrete step in the “last as first” revolution is to bring women into leadership, and in order to do that the rigid definitions of their proper social roles must be itself undermined. That is what Mark’s story does. [Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, p 281]
Jesus, the Messiah, reverses the prevailing order—the greatest one is the servant, and the first one is the slave of all. What the gospel rejects is power as domination—the desire to lord it over people. Instead it requires that creative, warm, initiating, and self-giving effort that builds others up, that contends against exclusion and is at the service of the marginalized and overlooked. ‘That cares for people, serves community, and works in partnership’ as the words of this service describe what Pastoral Workers do—representatives of what we are all called to do.
In every area of life we are tempted to the common way, to competitiveness, to protecting our own turf, to insisting on our own status. In every area of life we have to learn the ‘last as first’ revolution that sets us free to serve and in the serving find our Lord … and ourselves. That’s the light that should guide us. That’s the light we pray for these our companion disciples in the tasks God calls them to.
Christ our Lord,
you refused the way of domination
and died the death of a slave.
May we also refuse to lord it
over those who are subject to us,
but share the weight of authority
so that all may be empowered in your name.
(Janet Morley)
Imagine a long wooden dining table. The prefect sat at the head of the table, facing the rest of us. Then came, (in pairs down the table), sixth formers, fifth formers, fourth formers, third formers, and then the vital split, second formers and first formers. Food only found its way to these last two groups if it wasn’t liked by the earlier sections of the table —first and second formers got plenty of cabbage and custard skin, but little roast meat and never any chocolate pudding! Regimented and hierarchical tables that made it very plain where the power was. No coincidence, I think, that meal times were segregated by gender—it was a boys only arrangement.
Years later I sat at another long table where the seating was according to rank. At the head matron, then the ward sisters, then the staff nurses, then the senior enrolled nurse, then the registered nurses, then the enrolled nurses, then the unqualified nurses, and then me—the only male nurse, unqualified and recently appointed. Plates of cabbage and nothing else came immediately to mind, but it wasn’t like that.
This time the biggest portions came my way, and it was always assumed that seconds of pudding would be passed in my direction! I was being mothered and it was an absolutely different kind of experience, quite unlike the power play of the all boys, by rank, dinner hour.
Jesus said to them, “…their rulers lord it over them … but it is not so among you …”
We rejoice today with those to be admitted and licensed as Pastoral Workers. The Church recognizes their calling to a specific ministry – tested through prayer, selection and training. And we celebrate godly gifts, freely shared. Pastoral Workers are called into a community of service—as we heard Bishop Robert say: to work in partnership; caring for people; serving their communities. This incident with James and John tells us how power is to be handled in a community of service.
Remember that Jesus and his disciples were on the Way, going up to Jerusalem (that’s verse 32, just before our reading). As always Jesus is walking ahead of them. In other words in the life of discipleship Jesus is always out in front—both literally, the Christian never goes anywhere where Christ has not gone before; and symbolically, Jesus is always demonstrating in his own activity what the Christian’s behaviour should be like. To keep Christ before us is to acknowledge his saving presence in all things, and to face the challenge of living our lives after his example.
How we deal with one another, how we handle power, the way we receive and give authority, our attitudes, are very much to the point in being people of faith. What you do at the dinner table may well declare very plainly just how close you are in following the way after Jesus, as do a thousand and one other circumstances where we lord it over other people, or experience ourselves being lorded over. Mark is telling us of Jesus’ other way—the God alternative to the sterile power plays of human society.
And I really do mean ‘human society’ – the destructive power play that comes naturally to us, to all of us. But Jesus doesn’t do what comes naturally. He does what love chooses, and that means determination, resolve, and free choice. The mind that was in Christ we heard of in the Philippians reading has an implied comparison, and that comparison is with the stereotypical person ‘Adam’:
· Adam like Christ was a being in the image of God,
· like Christ he was in human shape,
but unlike Christ
· he thought equality with God was something to be sought,
· he spurned being God’s servant,
· he exalted himself,
· he was disobedient.
In all these things Christ did the opposite. That was his mind; that was his determination. ‘Let that mind be in you,’ says St Paul.
It sounds so beautiful in St Paul’s words. It is beautiful, but it’s not easy. Even Jesus’ closest disciples don’t get it. When Peter hears Jesus tell of his coming sufferings, he flares up in temper and rebukes his leader (that’s 8.32). John wants Jesus’ reassurance that he has done the right thing in bawling out people who weren’t part of their group who had been healing in Jesus’ name (that’s 9.38). “We’re the ones with the authority, not them.” Be alert, whenever you hear someone refer to “those kind of people.” That’s John-style thinking, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it.
Now James in our reading joins with Peter and John’s rejection of the Jesus way. When the Messianic coup d’état comes he, with John, wants a cabinet position in the new regime. One Prime Minister, one Chancellor of the Exchequer—“Give us the power to assert your authority as King.” Characteristically, Jesus turns the question back to them—with exasperation, no doubt. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” This is the cup of suffering he must drink, the baptism of death he must undergo? And they reply, “No problem, certainly we can.”
Interestingly, Mark’s readers, of course, know that that is indeed what happened. James was imprisoned by Herod Antipas, tortured and beheaded.
When did James and John realize the foolishness of their request—was it when they saw two tortured robbers lifted on crosses on Jesus right and left?
Anyway, when the other ten disciples hear what’s been talked about, they are indignant at James and John. All of them are into the power thing. They all fundamentally misunderstand what it is to follow Jesus. Jesus’ teaching is clear that his leadership, and all that flows from it, is not to be modelled on the way things are usually done. Yet we hanker after it, that everyday way of doing things, the way that comes naturally to us. “The love of bossing other people is even greater than the distaste for being bossed oneself” (Lesslie Newbigin). “But it must not be so amongst you …”
Jesus’ new style of leadership—from the bottom up, if you like, is something the male disciples simply don’t understand—they are absolutely clueless. The women, however, are different. In Mark’s account they know the significance of the servanthood he teaches. At the beginning of Mark’s gospel, Peter’s mother-in-law serves, and at its end, it is the women watching the crucifixion who are described as having served him. As one commentator has it, Mark’s Gospel is socially subversive:
…he understands that the whole social system of patriarchy, which renders tyrants strong in the world and women subject in the home, must be overturned. The first concrete step in the “last as first” revolution is to bring women into leadership, and in order to do that the rigid definitions of their proper social roles must be itself undermined. That is what Mark’s story does. [Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, p 281]
Jesus, the Messiah, reverses the prevailing order—the greatest one is the servant, and the first one is the slave of all. What the gospel rejects is power as domination—the desire to lord it over people. Instead it requires that creative, warm, initiating, and self-giving effort that builds others up, that contends against exclusion and is at the service of the marginalized and overlooked. ‘That cares for people, serves community, and works in partnership’ as the words of this service describe what Pastoral Workers do—representatives of what we are all called to do.
In every area of life we are tempted to the common way, to competitiveness, to protecting our own turf, to insisting on our own status. In every area of life we have to learn the ‘last as first’ revolution that sets us free to serve and in the serving find our Lord … and ourselves. That’s the light that should guide us. That’s the light we pray for these our companion disciples in the tasks God calls them to.
Christ our Lord,
you refused the way of domination
and died the death of a slave.
May we also refuse to lord it
over those who are subject to us,
but share the weight of authority
so that all may be empowered in your name.
(Janet Morley)
