of my favorite people is Sydney Smith (1771–1845), an Anglican divine, not much read today or even remarked upon, but who was and is as refreshing and delightful a companion as one could ever desire. As a young man, he wanted to be a lawyer, but his father prevailed upon him to become ordained. He submitted reluctantly, embarking on a career of parish ministry, political engagement, and intellectual endeavor remarkable by any standards. He was known in his day for being dangerously witty, often sending up the powerful or pompous and just as often defending the excluded or downtrodden. He is best-known today, I suspect, for being one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review, the first or one of the first literary and critical periodicals. But what interests me most was his allergic reaction to any form of self-pity, his theological refusal to play the victim, his joy in embracing the ordinary gifts of life.
He was not a Mr. Rogersish character. He did not believe in “the power of positive thinking.” He would have been appalled at anyone proclaiming the gospel of “your best self now.” He rarely served in a parish considered fashionable or prestigious, never made bishop, never rose to high office, either in his church or in the government. (His brother rose to a very high position in the British East India Company. Sydney, who had offended some higher-ups in the Anglican communion, once said of his brother, that “he had risen as a result of his gravity, while I have fallen due to my levity.”) His only son, Douglas, an intellectually gifted young man, died in 1829, a loss that devastated his father. Sydney Smith had reason to be something less than cheerful.
But he was not. A leader in the anti-slavery movement, a proponent of Catholic emancipation and female suffrage, Sydney Smith was ahead of his time in many ways, but he never took on the mantle of an embittered prophet preaching to the incorrigible, or a self-righteous parson ashamed to be lumbered with the dullards of his own congregation.
One of my favorite quotes from Smith is contained in a letter he wrote following a visit to some puritanical sect. He wrote: “I endeavored in vain to give them more cheerful ideas of religion, to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that he is best served by a regular tenor of good actions—not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhappy.”37 The luxury of false religion is to be unhappy. This luxury is possible, I believe, only as a form of hopelessness. It is so easy to lose hope, not just about the world or our own failings, but about the church and the weakness of its message, the brokenness of its witness, the anger that seems to rage just below the surface of our attempts to live the Christian life.
So, it is good to be reminded that such luxury is not something the gospel ever affords. It is much poorer. Its people must exist on manna, on bread and wine, on words of grace. Yet, such poverty is always a happier thing. Not in the sense of being unremittingly upbeat, but happy in the simple confidence that knows the deep goodness of God, that knows something important, that knows that Jesus has won and the battle is no longer in doubt. To be unhappy in the face of that decisively good gift is to sin, to reject the manna that God daily provides.
Read Sydney Smith. He knows something about the deep joy that is at the heart of the gospel.
November 9, 2011
In a course I have been teaching this fall, we have been reading Will Willimon’s book, Pastor, The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry (Abingdon, 2002). In this book Willimon has a chapter entitled, “Why Some Pastors Call It Quits.” The title is not meant to be facetious. Willimon knows how hard ministry can be, how exhausting are its demands, how seemingly small are our resources, how indifferent if not hostile the culture appears to be, how frustrating the church and its governing bodies and congregations often prove to be, and how weary any pastor can become. This book is not a recruiting tool for seminaries.
But neither is it a cry of despair or a rant at the impossible nature of the job. Curiously the book inspires. So many of the reasons that are given for calling it quits are exactly what reveal this impossible work to be a gift. It is when ministry turns into a project that we are tempted to “call it quits.” It is when ministry becomes a career that we burn out. It is when the impossible nature of ministry is forgotten or reduced to something that can be managed that it ceases to be a joy.
I know that ministry is hard. But it is not heavy. It becomes heavy only when we make it so, only when it becomes about our strategies for success, or more likely, our explanations for failures. No, this yoke is light. Hard but light. We are playing with house money. That is what ministry really is.
In trying to frame a response to Willimon’s book, I kept thinking of Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We think of that hymn, rightly, as a great Reformation text and we sing it lustily at the end of October, celebrating its triumphal notes. Its lyrics constitute one of the best and most succinct statements of the Christus Victor theory of the Atonement. But the lyrics also have a great deal to say to those who are foolish enough or daring enough to take up the work of ministry. “Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing.” What makes ministry possible, not to put too fine a point on it, is the fact that “the right man is on our side, the man of God’s own choosing.” Luther knows that the most implacable foes of ministry are not the relentless demands of the work or the paucity of resources but the “principalities and powers” that are capable of making us despair of God’s work in the world, giving into the temptation to believe our self-doubts and manifold failures to be more powerful than God’s grace. Behind such despair, of course, is an even larger pride, and behind that, an even more massive amount of self-absorption from which only God can deliver us.
“Dost ask who that [Deliverer] may be? Christ Jesus, it is he; Lord Sabaoth his name, From age to age the same.” And, oh yes, lest we forget, “He must win the battle.” This “little word” is stronger than all the things that “threaten to undo us.”
So, knowing all of the reasons not to enter into this work becomes an occasion for laughter. Who did we think we were kidding? Did we think it was our virtues, our charming personalities, our expertise that was at stake here? Did we think this “career” would allow us to finish on top? Like who? The disciples? The prophets? Jesus? No, the only reason to go into this work is for the joy of it all, the dumb, stupid joy of it all, the joy that knows that in proclaiming the word, entering into the hearts of fellow pilgrims, pulling out of the treasure of the gospel what is new and old, we have been given a surpassingly marvelous gift, and are engaging mysteries beyond our capacity to state or comprehend.
Yes, the work is hard, very hard. But it is not heavy.
26. Schmemann, The Journals, 129.
27. Ibid., 137.
28. Ibid., 193.
29. Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, 123.
30. Schmemann, The Journals, 193.
31. Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4, 68.
32. Weil, Waiting for God, 61.
33. Brown, Introduction to Hope Against Hope, xxii.
34. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 234.
35. Cf. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand, 177.
36. Schmemann,