Pastoral Care

A Friend's Introduction

One of the things that Professor Leith has had to suffer with during his time here is extended introductions. All of you have noticed his discomfort with this, which I think is a reflection of his biblical and Calvinistic abhorrence of many words of flattery. But you will have to suffer a minute longer, Professor Leith. For now 30 years, John Leith has been my teacher, my colleague, my neighbor, and my friend in his matter of personal privilege to introduce him today another way equally accurately of putting it is that for 30 years I have put up with him and I now reserve the right to say some words about him and I may not have another occasion to do so. Three things I want to say about John Leith, one I expect you do not know about him, second I expect you to suspect, and the third is what matters most to me.

What you may not know about Professor Leith is a thing that many of us have enjoyed about him that you will not get a chance to enjoy, and that is if there is anything that he may do better than the teaching of theology, it is gardening. That John Leith is a consummate gardener, his garden is the best in Northside Richmond, even Ahab would look at it with envy. I have learned a lot of theology from John Leith. I have learned everything I know about gardening from him. And I suspect that more theology has been discussed. And Church Scuttlebutt passed on by persons picking grapes off the vines in his backyard on a summer evening than in most of the studies and ministerial offices in Richmond. The second thing about John that I suspect that you realize is the case is that in his faith and in his life, he genuinely embodies what it is he is talking to us about and about which he writes.

He manifests the frugality and simplicity of style of life, his characteristic of Calvinism, although he has the means for more elaborate lifestyle and as much temptation toward it is the rest of us. He is also a person of urbanity and enjoying the richness of culture. When he is in Princeton, he isn't likely to be sitting and talking with a George Kennan or a Peter Brown as he is with those of us who are ministers and theological professors. Also those of you who have attended the lectures have heard almost ad nauseam the words teaching, teaching and pastoral care. If you feel like they have been being drilled into you, that is because they have been being drilled into you. But they are a part of his own life. And I think it's important to recognize that while we speak about his having been a pastor, he has never left those enterprises.

This afternoon he will be lecturing on pastoral care. I have no idea what he's going to say. I do not know whether he's ever read Seward Hiltner. I do know that while he left the pastorate he has never given up the practice of pastoral care. It is a part of his daily life. A number of years ago our neighbors and good friends went through the deepest tragedy of their life. The first member of the Christian community who appeared at their door to bring them the sympathy and word of the gospel was John Lee, although he was not particularly a friend but he was their neighbor and they were members of the community. And the last thing, the thing that matters most to me, it is said that by some that no person can have more than five or six good friends.

I think John Lee shows that it is possible to have a much larger number. Whether he would articulate it this way or not, I do not know but I know he believes that one of the good provisions that God has given for human existence is the richness of friendship and because he believes that many many people have been enriched by his friendship. Professor Leith we welcome you once more to your fifth lecture on pastoral care. My friend Pat Miller is a very generous person. I can assure you on some occasions he said other things to me than what he said here. Pat's a very remarkable person but a lot of it simply comes to him by heredity, by grace from the past, by the grace of God and the grace of his ancestors. My wife has hanging in the dining room diploma which she treasures very much which was received by her her grandmother sometime in the middle of the 19th century signed by Pat Miller's great-great-grandfather wouldn't be great-grandfather and if there were to if they've ever been too remarkable human beings in the Presbyterian Church, they are Pat Miller's mother and father.

So Pat's a great person, but it comes to him by grace. And so is Mary Ann. She's not here, but I would like to say Mary Ann's a great friend. We had talked about pastoral care, and in pastoral care as in every other aspect of the church's work, we live by justification, by grace through faith. No matter how good you are, the pastor, you can always imagine yourself having done better. Pastor has the same dilemma parents have. Some of us who are parents like to think on occasion that we did everything we could, but we know we did not do everything we could. we can always imagine many things we did not do that we ought to have done in rearing our children. And so it is with pastoral care. But this is the way I've come to reflect on pastoral care in being a pastor and out of the theology of the church.

Pastoral Care Arises From Theology

Pastoral care as well as teaching and preaching arises out of theological commitment and is determined by theology and in some measure in the practice by those commitments. John Calvin was a pastor. He was a theologian in order to be a pastor, not a pastor in order to be a theologian. A pastor was his preferred definition for the minister. He himself, in an exceedingly busy life, exercised pastoral duties to individuals, as well as serving as a member of the consistory and exercising official leadership in the church. His letters are frequently pastoral in served substance. He was, through his letters, a pastor of the Reformed congregations and Reformed individuals throughout Europe. Karl Barth, a theologian of theologians and church dogmatics four, has written as part of his own theology some of the finest writing available anywhere on practical theology and on pastoral care.

Professor Robert Johnson of Yale Divinity School teaches a course on pastoral care as taught by the fourth volume of Barth's Dogmatics. For Calvin and for Barth, being a pastor is a theological task. The cure of souls, Barth writes, thus means in general concern for the individual in the light of God's purposes for him, of the divine promise and claim addressed to him, of the witness specifically demanded of him. God is the one who is primarily and properly concerned about souls. They are always in his hand. In pastoral care, we serve God and human beings in that order, and the service of human beings is determined by God's gracious and merciful act. For Calvin and for Barth, as for the Reformed tradition historically, pastoral care is determined theologically.

Created In God's Image

The Christian understanding of what it is to be a human being of the Church of Grace give content and direction to pastoral care. Four theological rubrics, it seems to me, are fundamental for determining pastoral care today. The first, every human being, is created in the image of God, and the purpose of human life is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. Creation means that we are creatures whose lives are expressions of God's purpose. God thought of us before we were and called us into being. Our very existence is rooted in the grace of God. human beings do not just happen. They are because God thought of them before they were, called them into being, gave to them their individuality, their identity, their name. Herbert Butterfield has observed that one of the distinctive contributions of Christian faith to Western culture was a sense of the preciousness of human life.

Human beings are valuable not because of any inherent characteristics, not because of what they produce, but because God, the creator of heaven and earth, will that they should exist and knows them by name, numbering the hairs on their head. This is surely no easy doctrine in the light of the observable facts about the origin of human life. Nevertheless, it is basic to a Christian understanding of human existence and it is fundamental for pastoral care. Nikolai Berdyaev, in a very telling observation, once wrote, Where there is no God, there is no man. By this he meant that when God is left out, a human being has value only as he or she is a member of the right family, the right class, the right political party, the right culture. Christian faith has has affirmed that every human being is the child of God, even the dwelling place of the living God.

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me. The second creation means we are limited by space and time, by intelligence, by energy. There are limits to what we can do. Creation means that we are creatures of flesh and blood, of instinct and impulse. Augustine, according to Peter Brown, was distraught by the powerful impulse of sex, not because sex in itself is evil, but because of the power of sex over the human will. The power of the person to determine life was not only disoriented, but overwhelmed by the power of one's biological existence. In Paradise, Augustine imagined not life without sex, but life in which there was a harmony between sexual desire and will. The fact is that human life, from personal disorientation and depression, to anger and sex, is overwhelmed by human vitalities and energies.

The biochemical inheritance that is part of the givenness of human life means that for many persons, life is a very uphill battle and indeed an impossible task. Whatever may appear to be a Christian person, what may appear to be a Christian personality, may in reality reflect little more than a good biochemical inheritance. Only God knows what individuals have done with the givenness of their creaturely existence. Our society is very much aware of the power of the social matrix over human life. It has been less willing to admit the power of genetic inheritance, the power of one's biochemical maker in determining human personality. Indeed, one Nobel Prize winner, Professor Baltimore, has observed that Americans are unable, psychologically, to accept what biologists know about the biochemical determination of life.

We're not only creatures, however, we're the limitations of creaturely existence, time, space, limited energy, limited intelligence. Not only creatures with biochemical characteristics and powers, but we are unique creatures made in the image of God. The human self has the remarkable capacity to objectify and to observe its creaturely existence, its social matrix, its own history. This very remarkable capacity for self-objectification and for self-reflection is the uniqueness of human life. To be a human is to be free, answerable, responsible. The freedom we have may be, in many instances, very little, Presbyterians in society probably have more freedom than anybody else. When we think about our own existence, we ought to emphasize our freedom.

When we think about our neighbor's existence, We ought to be aware that freedom, in many cases, is very limited. To be made in the image of God with the power of the human spirit to transcend every human achievement means also that human life is fulfilled by no human achievement, but by God. One of the heiresses in our time is that human life can be fulfilled in history, and human life can be fulfilled by human achievements, by careers, by marriages. Therefore, we come to have unrealistic expectations of careers, of marriages. Human life cannot be fulfilled in history or by any human achievement. Every human achievement always opens up new possibilities of achievement, and every act of love opens up new possibilities of love. Our highest achievements are those which we can transcend and know that there is something further.

The Doctrine Of Sin

As Augustine puts it, thou hast made us for thyself and restless are our hearts until they find their rest in thee. Christ's human beings are finally defined by the fact that they hear the word of God, not by any human achievement. So I think pastoral care begins with an awareness of who we are, theologically, creatures of God, therefore limited by creation, but unique creatures of God with the tremendous power of the human spirit to transcend life, to objectify life, and therefore to win some freedom over life. The second theological rubric, which bears a fantastical care, is the Christian doctrine of sin. Human beings were made mutably good, by the immutably good God, as Augustine said, and now they are broken by sin. This theological conviction tells us something not only about human beings, but also about the nature of the church.

Peter Brown, in his remarkable biography of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, contends that the Pelagian-Augustinian controversy was in the final analysis, a debate about the nature of the church, and therefore, about pastoral care. Human society at the turn of the fifth century was chaotic and confused. In that situation, the old Romans, as well as the Christians, were concerned to bring order out of chaos and discipline to life. Into that situation, there came a great hulk of a person with a powerful personality, probably from Britain by the name of Pelagius. Pelagius wanted a church without spot and without wrinkle. As Brown puts it, Pelagius thought of the church as a small group of elite in a pagan world. It was an elite community which had achieved a clear understanding of who they were in contrast to the mediocrity of society in general.

The church was composed of superior people who stood in judgment upon society. Pelagius wanted not only the perfect individual but also the perfect community. He imposed perfection not only on individuals, but on the church. He also wanted to reform society. He and his followers were outspoken in their criticism of Roman society. And under his influence, rich young nobility gave up their wealth to renounce self-seeking. The Pelagians were committed, for example, to the redistribution of wealth. Perhaps nowhere, as Brown observes, is the heart of Pelagianism and its optimism more clearly revealed than in the conviction of some Pelagian groups that accumulated wealth was, in quote, just another bad habit that could be shrugged off by Christians on baptism.

This vision of the Christian life and of a society transformed by human willpower and discipline is very compelling. Here is the triumph of the human spirit over passion, over weakness, over temptation, over every obstacle. Here is the superiority of the human person over the heritage of the past, over faith, over corruptions of the social order. The Pelagians were determined to triumph over the disordered, undisciplined mediocrity of the society around them. They would maintain a different life from the convention, mediocre lives of their neighbors. There is something very Christian in Pelagius' concern. and certainly every Calvinist should know this. Like Calvin, Pelagius wanted every Christian to be a monk. The Councils of Perfection rest upon all.

Unlike Calvin, he believed a sinless life was a simple possibility, or at least a relatively sinless life was a simple possibility. He exalted in the grace of God in creation and in the power of the human will. Whenever this vision of the possibilities of human existence is lost, and whenever the zeal to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect dies, the Christian community will be the loser. There ought to be a few Pelagians in every Christian community, so as long as they're not too many. Pelagius' position challenged Augustine's fundamental understanding of Christian faith, especially of the Church and of Christian life. Pelagius Augustine thought obscured the difference between the church and a community of good pagans. Augustine thought of the church as an end for convalescence, not an aristocratic elite, certainly not as an elite core for social reform.

Augustine, Doctor Of Grace

Augustine knew, as few in the history of the human race have ever known, the significance of the human will. He defined a person in terms of the human will. A person is not what he or she eats. A person is not what he or she thinks. A person is as the person wills. More specifically, a person is as a person loves. But Augustine knew that many achievements in life are beyond the power of the human will. Augustine made the case not so much for the power of the human will, but for the power of grace. No subject, he said, gives me greater pleasure. But what ought to be more attractive to us sick men than grace, grace by which we are healed, for us lazy people than grace, grace by which we are stood up, for us longing to act than grace, grace by which we are helped.

For such declarations as this, the church called Augustine the doctor of grace. Augustine's case is far more difficult to make than the case of Pelagius. Pelagius simply told people to shape up, get their lives in order, and to depart from the mediocrity of society to the true human excellence, which had been the aim of ancient society for centuries. The ordinary Christians saw in Pelagius only a sincere believer who wanted Christians to take their faith seriously. Pelagius had popular Christianity on his side. He could appeal to the theological tradition in the East, which had exalted in human freedom and the capacity of human beings for communion with God. In a sense, it was Augustine and a provincial church in North Africa against the world.

Augustine based his case on the complexity of the human situation, which he believed the Pelagius had oversimplified. For Augustine, in our mortal life, goodness is never simple. Augustine admired Pelagius' zeal for righteousness, but he did not believe this zeal for righteousness was according to knowledge. For example, Augustine had the statue doctrine of original sin. Augustine knew that no baby is born into a situation of innocence. The sin of Adam and all of Adam's descendants infects the life of every newborn person. Original sin has always been an offensive idea. Interesting, at the end of his life, Reinhold Niebuhr confessed that one of his mistakes was to believe that he could rehabilitate an American society. What literary time supplement said is the only empirically verifiable doctrine in Christian faith, namely original sin.

Our neighbor mentioned in the end that this had been a tactical mistake. Augustine did not state the doctrine in its origin and its transmission in very effective and powerful ways, but he was convinced that original sin is a fact. We are born into a situation where sin precedes us and penetrates our lives before our first conscious choice. Surely, few articles of Christian faith are so empirically verifiable. Once human beings sinned, sin became part of the heritage of the human race and a part of the structure of society. It penetrates the life of every newborn person in those mysterious ways in which one person penetrates another person's life so that the sinful community, I do not exaggerate the center of the family because anywhere we're Christian, it's in the family.

The center of the family, the center of the society penetrates the child's life and personality before the child's first conscious decision. Augustine knew that the corruption of human existence is not superficial. It was not a recent habit which could be easily extended. It reached into the depths of the human person, even beyond conscious awareness. He also knew that the corruption was so pervasive in society that in many cases the only option open to human beings are options which involve us in evil. In one of the most remarkable sentences in all of Augustine's writings and in a very remarkable sentence which has always meant a great deal to me personally, Augustine puts it this way. Many sins are committed through pride, but not all happen proudly.

They happen so often by ignorance, by human weakness. Many are committed by men weeping and groaning in their distress. This is a profundity about human life that Pelagius never understood. also knew that we frequently conquer one's sin only to fall victim to another. He once wrote a rich Pelagian, I have, however, often observed this fact of human behavior that with certain people when sexuality is repressed, avarice seems to grow in its place. Peter Brown comments that the Pelagians in their thrilled denunciation of the way of of the world never said anything so profound as that. Augustine knew that human life is never simple. The good are never as good as they think they are, and the bad are never as bad as they are thought to be. The good is never a simple possibility.

Augustine's favorite word for sin was concupiscence, but he meant by it not sensuality but self-assertiveness. And he knew that it infects our best deeds as well our worst deeds. As Reinhold Niebuhr has put it, for contemporary pelagians, our causes are never as righteous as we think they are, and our participation in them never as devoid of self-interest as we think. T.S. Eliot, in some remarkable lines about the gifts which are reserved for age, was truly Augustinian when he declared that the third gift reserved for age was the rending pain of reenactment of all that you have done and been, the shame of motives late revealed, and the awareness of things ill done and done to others harm, which once you took for exercises of virtue. Augustine's case was more difficult to present than Pelagius's but far truer to the facts.

The The difficulty of Augustine's case can, I think, be easily demonstrated. Albert Molygian was a very remarkable human being, taught New Testament and theology and apologetics and so forth for many years at the Episcopal seminary in Alexandria. And in the late 40s and early 50s, he made a habit of converting pagans in the State Department to Christian faith. I wish he'd converted them to Presbyterianism, but first companionism is better than nothing. He was a very remarkable human being, and incidentally he had defected from the Presbyterian Church. He measured the reaction of congregations to three types of sermons which he preached. The first type of sermon carried the popular title of prophetic. It was the denunciation of social evils, and the reaction to this sermon was generally enthusiastic.

The second type of sermon he called religious, which exalted in the religious nature of things which requires us even to pray to tennis balls. The reaction to this sermon was less dramatic but still obvious. The third type of preaching was proclaiming the gospel. God's grace is mercy which forgives our sins and God's grace is power which enables us to overcome them. The reaction to this sermon was the least of all. Having heard this from Albert Mulligan, I have confirmed it, in some measure, in my own preaching. Yet, I would have to say this, a sermon which emphasizes the gospel, that God is for us, even if everybody is against us, that God forgives our sins, that the last word is not the evil in the situation, that the last word is the grace of God, which brings good out of evil for those who work with God, who love God.

The Nature Of The Church

This type of sermon always, and I would say almost without exception, touches one or two hearts very profoundly in every congregation. The Pelagian controversy may have something to teach us about preaching, but it also has something very significant to teach us about the church. For Pelagius, the church was an aristocratic elite, a community of moral heroes and heroines. The church is a disciplined army of the Lord in conquest of the world of flesh and the devil. Augustine preferred to think of the church as an end for convalescence. He acknowledged that the Pelagians had a zeal for God, but the Pelagians were not realistic about who human beings are. The Pelagians taught that human beings needed illumination. Augustine thought they needed healing.

The center needs a true confession of weakness, not a false sense of capacity, Augustine believed. The center is not quickly healed, but must look forward to long, precarious convalescence in the end of the church. Augustine had faced the same question in his controversy with the Donatists. They too wanted a church without spot and wrinkle, though they concentrated on the priesthood. Actually, in the early church, you have a real controversy about the holiness of the church. There were those who believed, beginning with the Apostolic Fathers, they believed the church is holy because the people in the church are holy. That really made the existence of the church precarious. If the holiness of the church depends on the people, you have to ask every night, how are my neighbors doing to know whether you really still have a church?

And that didn't work. They transferred it to the ministry and the church is holy not because the people are holy, but because the ministers are holy. Well, that didn't work either. Finally, there was a deep and profound awareness that the holiness of the church is not in the holiness of the people, not in the holiness of the ministry, but in the work of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace, by which ordinary human beings are transformed into the image of Christ. Augustine was attempting to hold together against the Donatists, the holiness of the church and the Catholicity of the church. The Pelagians and the Donatists for denying the Catholicity of the church for the sake of the holiness of the church, which the Pelagians defined in moralistic terms and which the Donatists defined in sacramental as well as moralistic terms.

Augustine had a concern for morals and for sacraments, but he knew that the holiness of church is not in the holiness of its members, not in the holiness of its priests, but in the holiness of God, in the action of God through his word and spirit by which sinners heal. The church is composed of sinners and it lives by the forgiveness of sin. Whenever the church forgets this fact and whenever the church is tempted to believe that it is the righteous, then the very existence of the church is at stake, at least as Augustinian see it. God's grace is God's freedom to act without means or with means. God is free and we cannot program God's grace. But the church is in the context in which the appointed means of God's grace. The appointed means which the Holy Spirit uses to transform human life exist.

God's action in creation and judgment and redemption, God's action in the sermon, in the fellowship of the Christian community in the sacrament, God's grace incarnate in Jesus Christ, abides in the church through the work of the Holy Spirit. Senators who are looking for salvation need as their pastor. not a Pelagian, but an Augustinian. So if you're looking for a pastor, you better be sure that the pastor is an Augustinian. Yeah, this is not simply a matter of theological perversity. This is a human perversity. You have the Pelagians and political parties, and the thing that I have found very interesting is that the people on the right wing of the church are very Pelagian. One of the problems with the fundamentalist right was it really didn't believe in the forgiveness of sins.

Gospel, Law, And Salvation

But the same problem is true on the left wing of the church. The left wing and the right wing are like Pelagian. Now, they define righteousness in different ways, but they are like Pelagian in their understanding of human existence. If you're looking for a pastor, you had better find an Augustinian, not a Pelagian. Thirdly, pastoral care is determined, not simply by our creation in the image of God, not simply by the fact that we are sinners. Pastoral care is also determined by the doctrine of salvation. This doctrine can also be stated in, this doctrine can be stated in terms of the gospel and the law, or in terms of justification and sanctification. For Calvin, the law is gospel, and gospel is law. God's grace is prior to the law, and the law in and of itself is gracious.

It is God's gracious will for human life. The gospel, likewise, includes the law. It abrogates not the law, but the rigor of the law. The theological task, theoretically, doctrine and practically in the church is holding together gospel and love, knowing that the law is gospel and that the gospel includes the law. This is not simple and not easy, but it can be done perhaps more easily in the life of the congregation than in theological statements. It is implicit in the gospels themselves. For example, Jesus declares, "'Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them. But truly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away not one iota or not one dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.'" And then, on the other hand, Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners.

And when the Pharisees criticized him for eating with the tax collectors and and sinners he declares, those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. Go learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. The only people whom Jesus could not help were the righteous. He could help the rich and he could help the poor. He could help tax collectors and the elite of Israel. He could help the weak and the powerful. The only people whom Jesus could not help were those who thought they were righteous. It may be easier in actual life, I think, to hold together the gospel as law, with the gospel which includes law in it than it is the theoretical propositions of theology. The law is the enemy.

As Luther knew, when it becomes the way we achieve our salvation before God, when it becomes the means by which we declare that we are righteous, the means by which we fulfill our lives. The Christian doctrine of salvation can also be stated, let me say it here, I think that can be combined in pastoral care. On the one hand, the deep and profound conviction that the law is grace, that the law is God's gracious intention for human life. And on the other hand, the gospel, which remits the rigor of the law, perhaps more easily than one can state this theologically. The Christian doctrine of salvation can also be stated in terms of justification by a third grace through faith and sanctification. God's grace is mercy which forgives our sins and God's grace as power which transforms us into the image of Christ.

In the Christian life, we hold together in one experience these two dimensions of the one Christian life. Justification by grace through faith and forgiveness of sins is the presupposition of everything else. It is the fountain from which everything flows, the base from which everything is built in Christian living. Apart from the experience of having been forgiven and of being forgiven not in terms that forgiveness is available as a general disposition of things but by a mighty act of God there is no such thing as the Christian life. This is the presupposition of everything else. Reinhold Niebuhr liked to say repeatedly, only those who have experienced mercy, only Only those who have received mercy can show mercy. I do not know many things that are truer in life than that.

Only those who have received mercy can show mercy. Yet, forgiveness of sins is not the end of the Christian life. The end of the Christian life is a human person transformed into Christian maturity into the image of Christ. When we look at the historical reality of the church, We are compelled to emphasize justification by faith and forgiveness of sin. Yet when we look at the promises of the New Testament, we have to place the emphasis, I think, upon a sanctification, place an emphasis upon sanctification, the renewal of life. The strength of the Wesleyan revival in another time of great declension in the church was the emphasis upon the possibilities of human existence which are implicit throughout the New Testament. an emphasis upon what has been called an optimism of grace, an optimism of grace that does not limit in advance the possibilities of goodness in a human life or in human society.

The images of the Christian life of what it is to be renewed in grace have varied. And what does it mean to be a Christian? This is a difficult question to answer. If you have to answer the question, what is a Christian person, who is a Christian person, What is the Christian character? I've puzzled with that somewhat in the writing of these lectures and as in Christian concern. And it seems to me that a Christian character is first of all trust in God. There was a time I would have started with love for neighbor, but I think the proper order is trust in God. The serenity, poise, and dignity which faith and the living God rest from the raw stuff of life. And the second quality is a certain awe in the presence of God and repentance. And the third quality would be humaneness, openness to the neighbor, readiness to forgive, a sense of accountability, answerability to God for our use of lifetime and energy.

In our own tradition, the Reformed tradition, the image of the Christian life is the embodiment of the purposes of God, at least in a broken and fragmentary way in the ordinary pursuits of life has been very influential. There is, in the New Testament, a concern for what can be called growth in character, growth in the consistency in which we act in specific ways. And there are other ways in which growth can take place, growth in the Christian imagination of what it is to be Christian, growth in the means of grace, growth in our capacity to detach ourselves from things, to live as though we had but did not have the things of life. One sign of Christian maturity is the willingness to separate one's life from things and I probably should have included that in the list I gave above.

The Church As Mother

To be a Christian is to know that one lives on the one hand by the forgiveness of sins and on the other hand by the power of the Holy Spirit to transform human life. To be a Christian is to know that one is forgiven, but also to know that growth and grace is possible. But we cannot forget, as Luther liked to remind us, that we sin not simply in our worst deeds, we sin in our best deeds. We have to be forgiven our best deeds as well as our worst deeds. But we cannot emphasize this to the exclusion that we ought to be always progressing in goodness. Pastoral care, it seems to me, needs to give great attention to the fact that on the one hand we are forgiven and the other hand we are renewed in the image of Christ. The fourth theological rubric that influences pastoral care is the doctrine of the church as the mother of the faithful.

In a very remarkable paragraph, Calvin declares, I shall start then with the church into whose bosom God is pleased to gather his sons not only that they may be nourished by our help and ministry as long as they're infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of faith. For what God has joined together, it is not lawful to put asunder. So that those for whom God is Father, the church may also be mother. The church is the fellowship in which God has placed the means of grace in which therefore nurtures, sustains, and supports Christian people in their earthly pilgrimage. A pluralistic secular society makes it all the more important to recover this nurturing character of the church which sustains and supports people in Christian living.

On the one hand, the church is a community which lives a shared life. To be a Christian is to be in the fellowship of the church. On the other hand, this doctrine is a practical significance So since human life is so made that faith, manner, style of living, hopes, commitments can only be sustained in a community. The community we participate in determines more about how we live, it seems to me, than any other one factor. In 1950 is a very remarkable book published by a fellow university professor named Jacobs on changing values among college students on university campuses, and it came to the a very demeaning conclusion for those of us who teach that instruction in a classroom had very little to do with changing values. I think he underestimated that.

But he said the community in which a student participates has more to do in the consolidation or the changing or the modification of ways one lives than any other single factor. The role of the church is the nurturing, sustaining institution, therefore, is all the more important. The old communities which were established and maintained by home place, by family traditions, by the settlement of a family in a particular community over many years, increasingly a thing of the past. Today, participation in a community of worship, of fellowship, of faith is critically important simply because of the diversity and the secularity of our culture. Well now, moving more specifically to what then is pastoral care in the light of these convictions. The Protestant conviction that the church is primarily the people has significant implications for pastoral care.

It is the community which shares in a common life, that is a common faith, a common hope, a common commitment, a common way of living. Not that all churches are this, no church is this finally, but this is what churches ought to be becoming. The church is the communion of saints in which people share the benefits of grace which have been entrusted to them. There can be no one definition of pastoral care. There have been a numbers which have been entrusted to them. There can be no one definition of pastoral care. There have been a numbers, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, Schleiermacher, but there cannot be one apart from the general one that pastoral care is the responsibility of the church to nurture, sustain, and support people in the living of Christian life.

Incorporation Into The Means Of Grace

Pastoral care, it seems to me, can be thought in our time preeminently as the incorporation of people into the life of the church, into the context of the means of grace. The really great task of pastoral care is to encourage people to gather as the people of God, to worship, to hear the sermon, to receive the sacrament. It is bringing people into the context of the fellowship, the communion of saints, into the context of the fellowship meal, by that I mean simply church supper, into the context of Christian conversation. Neither the church nor the pastor is the redeemer. God alone is the redeemer. The, what used to be a frequent definition of the church is a redemptive community can be very misleading. Redemption is God's work. Pastoral care is the bringing of people into the context of the means of grace, which have been appointed in the New Testament, and for which we have the promise that the Holy Spirit works, through which we have the promise the Holy Spirit works.

Human communities admittedly can be sustaining, and they can be helpful, and heaven knows we have enough support groups today, and they can ease the pain and struggle of life. Pastoral care, however, is more than human empathy, more than human love, which becomes a means of human grace. Pastoral care has to do with the redemptive activity of God and its responsibility to help persons to be Christian people in the context of this grace, in the context where this grace ordinarily works. How then does pastoral care accomplish this purpose? In recent years, it has been popular to belittle hints and suggestions how pastoral care is actually carried out. Yet hints and suggestions about how pastoral care is actually carried out are crucially important.

And let me give three or four hints and suggestions and without any apology because I think they're fundamental. Pastoral care, just as this case of education, takes place as people gather for worship. If it does not take place there, it does not take place anywhere. and the sermon ideally is pastoral in applying the grace of God to the problems of human life. Now say that with some culture, because this can be overdone. It's overdone, church I attend in Richmond, they developed the habit which I don't particularly like, having congregations send up prayer suggestions and we're now getting a number of people who are embarrassed to suddenly hear being prayed for in the congregation and folks come up and ask them why they're being prayed for.

I told a minister, I said, now if you have a pray for me in a way that can be identified, I will not be back in church. I think this is too personal. The prayers of the church, the pastoral prayers of the church are the best, I think, a general. I had that taught me very vividly once when litany on Christmas Eve and a friend of mine came out of the church with whom I always had controversies about one thing or another, and she said to me, she said, John Lee said, you have done violence to my person this night. I said, how is that? Well, I knew what you meant, and she said it almost. She said in the litany, you caused me to say something I did not want to say. Said, you used the litany to force me to make a statement I didn't want to make. Well, you know, I think she was right, and I never have forgotten that conversation in any case.

The Practice Of Visitation

The service is pastoral. Pastoral care, secondly, brings the resources of Christian faith to bear on the crises and passages of life. But in addition to the service and the bringing of the resources of Christian faith, pastoral care can also be very specific. The first is the visitation of people in their homes. I would like to say, both theoretically and practically, this is the basis for pastoral care. And I have never been convinced by any arguments that church life can be really sustained over a period of time without the visitation of people in their homes. This is a very ancient practice, especially in Protestantism. It was encouraged at the time of the Reformation. Richard Baxter in his book, The Reformed Past in the 17th Century insisted upon it.

It became the characteristic action in life of the church in the 19th and 20th centuries. Few aspects of pastoral chaos are easily documented as the constructive consequences of simple pastoral visitation. It may not be so much what the pastor does or says when entering the home, but simply the presence of the pastor as the pastor of the church is sufficient. This becomes symbolic of the church's concern. The old advice that the first responsibility of a pastor entering a new field is to visit every home is, I think, still good and useful and highly important. A professor who taught me pastoral care, who had been a distinguished pastor, and all he did was simply tell you how he did it, which was a very good course in pastoral care, incidentally.

I'd like to say, I'd like to quote the old adage of some pastor from Fifth Avenue Church in New York in 19th century, who said, a house-going preacher makes a church-going people. In my own experience, I could document and have documented that if you visit 15 different families, the church attendance of those 15 families will improve over the next few weeks of what it was the month or so prior to the visit. The simple fact is there is no activity so productive of good for the pastor in a new church and the resolution to visit in as short a time as possible every home in the congregation. As Richard backs the new, there is no substitute for the pastor's knowing, the members of the congregation by name, and having been physically present in their home.

The second traditional activity of the pastor is the visitation of the sick. Again, it is not so much that what the minister does or what the minister knows, but his simple presence in the room of illness. Emil Brunner once wrote that a glass of water awkwardly given, spilling the water. But given in love is more effective than a glass of water given with clinical precision. In the pastoral care of the sick, it is useful to know many things. Such simple things as not to shake the bed, as well as the dynamics of illness. But the task of pastors is not to do what nurses and doctors do better, but simply to be the presence of the church and to witness to the concerns of the Christian community and to the Christian hope in the presence of illness.

I saw this debate very vividly once in the Torch Club in Richmond. The chief chaplain at the Medical College of Virginia was telling about what he did. And the reaction of people in the Torch Club was that it had very little to do with the ministry. And someone asked him if he bore witness to people who had come in from wrecks and so forth dying of Christian hope. And his response was, if they asked me to give the Christian witness, I do. Now, finally, some person in the audience, this is almost altogether highly secular group, said to the chaplain, well, you are a psychotherapist rather than a Christian minister. He said, well, I'm a Christian minister, but I accept the word of a psychotherapist. At which George Krigman, a Jewish psychiatrist said, no, Pat, you are not a psychotherapist.

He said, I'm a psychotherapist. that psychotherapists help people, said you are an empathist, you simply feel with them. Well, I thought that was a very interesting exchange and the Christian witness to the sick cannot simply become empathy. It has to be the mediation of the grace of God to affect people. And we have to ask ourselves in pastoral care, are we simply empathists or are we ministers? The third task of the pastor is the visitation of those who face unusual crises and trouble. I will not elaborate that. The fourth form of visitation is on prospective members. We hear a lot about evangelism today and there are various ways of doing it. There is the way Billy Graham does it and I'm glad he does it. There is the way the Carl Ridge Church in Fort Lauderdale does it and which has been widely used throughout the churches and pattern on the way you sell insurance And no doubt, God has used in His grace this means.

That's not the way I do it. I have done it, I've tried to do it. Evangelism, it seems to me, and this seems to me in a highly appropriate way in reformed thinking, evangelism is the activity of the church, the church service at 11 o'clock Sunday morning and so forth. The church evangelism is also people going out and inviting people to share in this community, bringing people into the context of the means of grace. Pastors cannot save people. And while I do not disparage those who try it, I do not know how you transform a person's life in a few minutes or a few hours in conversation or lead to a dramatic decision. Others may do it, but the more standard way, I think, the way that I find more appropriate and easier, and that maybe says more about me than it does about the way, is the simple task of incorporating people into, bringing them into the context of the means of grace.

Giving Real Help To People

Well, go on. In addition to visitation, pastoral care means giving real help to real people. And there is no substitute for this. Pastoral care cannot be simply theoretical. They are real people and they have real needs. And any effective pastoral care in the church has to give authentic help. This real help may involve financial concerns. It may involve meals. It may involve shopping for groceries. Many human services that the church has to have available. Maybe we cannot have them all available, but we ought to have as many as possible. And increasingly, I think employment is a problem which churches have to address in terms of pastoral care. I was interested in reading Washington Gladden's book last week, writing at the end of the 19th century, devoted considerable attention to the responsibility of the church in the area of employment.

Church I know very well appointed a committee after the Second World War and not after the Vietnam War to help Vietnam veterans who were returning find work. And when there were no longer Vietnam veterans or at least no immediate veterans from the war, it continued the committee of older retired people to give help to young people in getting summer jobs and work. This is seen to me as pastoral care. And there are many other illustrations which I cannot go into here. Young people today have special need for the health pastoral care of the church and for incorporation in communities which give them support over against the other groups to which they belong, which tear down the Christian way of life, a Christian way of using one's time and energies.

The Funeral And The Gathered Community

The illustrations of the way in which the church must give real help to people cannot be exhausted, requires a creativity and imagination, and I've simply indicated a few very quickly here. Pastoral care is a concern of the entire church, not simply of the minister. And let me, I was gonna say I was gonna skip that, but I will not. I will say that one place, I think the funeral, we can say it also about the wedding, some measure about birth, but the funeral is a place where pastoral care, the congregation ought to be explicit. It seems to me that the early Protestants were very ambiguous about funerals because they were the occasion for so much magic, so much corruption of doctrine, but in our society, we're in a city, when you die, it's almost as though you never were.

It is very important, it seems to me, for the funeral to be an occasion for the pastoral care of the congregation. The congregation, it seems to me, and the pastor of the church, on occasion of the funeral, the community gathers, and it gathers to do three things. It gathers to give support to those who are bereaved. It gathers to reaffirm a community in the face of death. One of the great experiences of my life in 1938, I believe it was, and the person whom he visited in my hometown died a week or two after he was there. And Mrs. Robinson allowed me to see the letter that Emil Brunner wrote her after her husband's death. And I never have forgotten one sentence in that letter in which she said, thank God for the blessed truth that the church is a body composed of the living and the dead.

And then Jesus Christ, we still have communion in the church, in the church one with another. The church on earth gathers to affirm the reality of the church that cannot be the community and cannot be broken by death. And thirdly, the community gathers to reaffirm its conviction that by God's grace, human life has meaning which is not annihilated by death. Therefore, it seems to me it's not adequate for a handful of people to gather when a member of a congregation dies. This is an occasion when the community gathers. That's simply to give, to bring food and sustenance, so that's very important, but to reaffirm the faith. Well, other instances could be given. Let me conclude by saying, God calls us into existence, the God who calls us into existence and who calls us to be His chosen people has placed us in a community, the community of His people. Pastoral care is finally the church being what it says it is, the people of God, the communion of saints, Members sharing in a common life that is a common faith, a common hope, a common commitment. Thank you.