So what is my Job? - Modelling

Part the second of my surrejoinder to the comments below focuses on the issue of 'modelling'.

I wrote:

'Those who are happy to come to the show and sing the happy songs and have their ears tickled - the day is coming when the battle will be engaged and you will find yourself 'not fit for purpose' - time to 'man up Church!

To which I received this response:

'How much more emotional manipulation are you going to employ on your site to get people to be doing what you, Vic, think people should be doing?

This isn't your job, Vic - your job is to seek after God and put yourself at his disposal.  Be loved by him and then love others as you are loved.

Your job is not to guilt-trip, embarrass or intimidate people into conforming to your ideology... this is the fast-track to burn-out.

Come back to me on this one, and tell me why I'm wrong.'

So I am doing exactly that.

The words, 'Your job is to seek after God and put yourself at his disposal. Be loved by him and then love others as you are loved,' are spot on and if each of us assume that were we to do this, all would be sweetness and light

.As a Christian, what you have described is the bedrock of my baptismal calling. What you have described is also correctly described as 'my job' in that, as a minister of the Gospel, this is indeed a part of my job too! This Leviticus 19 passage:

‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.'

Is someing in which we find the way of peaceful co-existence with others, for if we treat others as we treat ourselves then all will be well, won't it? Well it should be but this is often a one-sided transaction (but that still doesn't stop us, does it?) and the very act of trying to live in such a way is, at times, regarded as aggressive, arrogant or condemnatory; and if the way we treat ourselves and the 'love' we endow upon ourselves is 'different' to that which others consider to be love ( for instance 'permissive' or 'disciplined') then it become the path of conflict rather than peace.

For me, the tension becomes more marked, and demanding, when we unite those words with Deuteronomy 6 (something we often do in our Eucharist):

'Hear, O Israel:The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.'

For what we have now is an 'In, Out and Up' situation: Ourselves - Others - God

So I would answer to the call my critic makes regarding Leviticus 19 is that it is but the starting point not the pinnacle and with Deuteronomic utterances added, is something transformational and amazing. And my role is to model this and to live as a disciple in such a way that others can see me (warts and all) and hopefully in that point towards Him whom I (we) serve.

You see the reality is that my personal call, and responsibility, is to live out the realities about in such a way that others see this 'difference' and it challenges them to ask, 'How can I have that?' As I model the life (and attitudes) of a 'God lover' I model the life and attitudes of Him whom I follow, Jesus, and as I love - I encourage others to love in the same way for the same reason.

I am called to love the LORD (YHWH) with all my being - mental, emotional, spiritual and physical - and it is this that leads me to do more than just be happy. More than just be content to consume, for as my critic implies, the loving of others is an active, being out there part of the Christian life.

Unlike some of the advert's that tug at the heartstrings, we do not employ emotional manipulation (unless if course you think the cross and crucifixion is such) and we do not beat people into submission (verbally or physically) but rather we 'model' Christ. As I encounter those of no particular (and sometimes none) faith, I often hear them utter the words, 'I wish I could have your faith,' or the equally sad, 'I wish I could do what you do!' The reality is that they can have both and even if they don't embrace my faith, can still make the latter theirs (for non-theists do good stuff too!).

So I consider that I have not only a right, but a responsibility, to tell others that their life choices are not the best open to them. I also consider that this right demands that I practice what I preach, for there is no room for hypocrites in the Church, and model what is the right way in exactly the same way Jesus modelled it in NewTestament times.

If my thinking is right then, unless we consider Jesus to have used guilt-trips or intimidation that embarrased people (and I'm sure He never did that!), then I'm speaking the truth in love - another essential piece of modelling in a time when we so often neither live or speak truth, choosing merely to issue spin and deviance!

My call as Christian, and pastor, is therefore to model - and to do this in the manner, and in the footsteps, of Jesus - and I happen to think that this is what my words are doing.

Let those who have ears, let them listen - and for those who won't, or don't?

To quote Don McLean (Vincent):

'They would not listen, they're not listening still'

ps. It's no accident that I have kept this in the Old Testament - for it underpins the New and needs to be used as it deserves and demands. We are based on, and reside in, the whole word. Once we edit or re-invent we head for a world of potential self-justification rather than willing obedience :-)

Funeral Service - The usual please

Had a most interesting conversation with someone asking for advice for a funeral of a dearly departed in that whilst I'm not 'doing' the service, they wanted some advice about what they should ask for.

The reason for this was that they'd been to a funeral I'd done and wanted the service they were commissioning to be 'as good' but were worried because, having 'suffered' the local cleric twice before, they wanted to give them my 'usual' service to do.

This opened for me a raft of questions and a few positional bits, for there is no such thing as a 'usual' service when it comes to Church and even less so when dealing with funerals, and it is this that I think I am most sorely pressed and troubled!

Every time I meet with a family to arrange a funeral I am aware that there are many option before them and I seek, as much as possible, to get them to make the service theirs rather than have the elements imposed on them. This means that they select the music for entry and exit (although having left the crem' to a Gangsta Rap song - for an 80+ year old! - I am a little more wary these days) and they make their choices over the hymns (which will often hearken back to morning assembly at school) and the Bible reading (another issue as many are happy to 'leave it to you').

The funeral service is the most important of all the services we can do with a loved one for it is the last opportunity the mourners have to be physically present in the same place as their loved one and so it has to be the best experience they can have (can it ever be good I ask myself). So many people I meet tell me of nightmares where given names rather than familiars and facts and the like were incorrect. Times when the music was wrong (Love divine, all loves excelling - which tune? English or Welsh*) or, as happened last week the wrong track is selected and played.

The reality is that the funeral service is full of humans and so the potential for something going wrong increases with the number of people involved. After all there's the Undertaker's staff, the organist, the Minister and those who might contribute in the form of the eulogy (which is about the dead person, not the person talking - something some might bear in mind when offering!).

But error and omission apart the reality is that good preparation; sound note taking and the like mean that the service is as secure as anything can be.

I met someone who, after discussing a service for a former Royal Marine told me that they were about to do an 'ordinary' service at the crem' recently. No such thing - never met an 'ordinary' person yet - there's always something to commend or mark them out - many years of marriage, evacuee, Bevin Boy, work life, orphaned, provided for the family . . . and so much more. Each element conspires to make those we serve at the Crem' and by the graveside extremely special people.

So I answered the questions and made suggestions; explained how and why I do things in my services and I pray that my perspective led to something special - This week as I do my two funerals I will be looking to fulfil the greatest part of any minister's calling, that of being a neighbour when some one is in need of one.

dona eis requiem and 'comforting those who mourn' - two phrases that combine to make the high calling we have special and real.

Pax

* To name but two settings!