Monday, June 27, 2005
Keeping and Talking the Word 4
After a relaxing weekend, we gathered together again and spent the day reading Augustine, Kirkegaard, Heschel, and Acts 8.
We first returned to Acts 8 to learn about the kind of preacher Philip was. Tim said that Philip had three traits that all ought to be characteristic of all preachers.
First, Philip was a pastor. Tim had a few creative definitions of what this meant. “Pastors are sheepdogs. We run around the flock and bark.” He continued, “Pastors remind the people of God - that they belong to God… We remind people how these incidents [in the Bible] connect to other incidents and make a whole. It’s your job to talk about God and tell them who God is and how God is at play… We tell them their names, we tell them about their family, we tell them about significant events in their past.”
Jim noted that this functions as a starting point for confession. God reminds us of the covenant; we know where we need to be by being reminded of who we are and where we’ve been.
Second, Philip was a theologian. Although we have no record of what Philip said, we do have record of his theological method. He was a spiritual director, he gave careful attention to Scripture, and he attended to the administration of the sacraments. “All of these,” Tim said, “are what pastors do when they conceive of themselves primarily as theologians. They work the angles of attentiveness to the Word, the people, the sacraments of the church.” Tim also noted that the eunuch in Acts 8 “is changing the location of the interpretive act to the hands and feet – the things that I must do in order to live this passage out.” He continued, “At the very least, pastors as theologians must be practical theologians – that is, the lived life of the people.”
Mid-sentence, Tim illustrated this by leaving the room and beckoning us to follow. He led us to the stairwell of the library and walked us to the top floor. As our breathing became heavier and our heart rate slowly increased, he reminded us of the stairs up to the temple mount. They were long, irregular, and slow-going. Approaching God requires one foot in front of the other – it is a long journey of walking and not simply an instant of spiritual satisfaction. In the same way, Philip walked the road with the eunuch, just as pastors ought to. Rather than provide data and pure exegesis, pastors ought to walk with others and not simply explain. They ought to show and do, keep and talk the Word, and this requires the same sweat required to climb five flights of stairs.
Third, Tim showed us how Philip was an evangelist. In the text, as Philip and the eunuch come out of the water, the Spirit snatches (literally “raptures”) Philip and plants him into Caesarea, which Tim described as the Las Vegas of Philistine country. Philip, as a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, fervently spread the Gospel there, just as pastors ought to. Tim asked of us, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where? If we as pastors are not interested, then who will be?” Closing our discussion, Tim said, “Every sermon ought to be evangelistic, because every point of doctrine, every aspect of revelation is a point of entry for someone into the faith.”
Closing our discussion, Tim quoted Bruce McCormick: “What churches need are theologians and pastors who are willing to die to self; who have so completely surrendered their lives, plans, hopes, fears, and concerns to the Lordship of Jesus Christ that their theologizing gives impression first and foremost to their own hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
As we left for lunch, Tim said, “Theology is manna. It is the stuff with which God feeds our souls. The Church doesn’t need more theological talking heads, it needs more theologians who crave God.”
Earlier: Keeping and Talking 3