Poet’s Table, Chapter 9
Dolmen, Chapter 10
Introduction
Archbishop Donald Coggan used to say that there was no finer job on earth than that of a parish priest. If I remember rightly, he didn’t use the word ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’ in this context. He used a more down-to-earth word because what he was getting at was the incredible truth that those of us commissioned to full-time ordained ministry actually get paid and housed to do what we would give our right arm to do anyway.
No two days are ever the same; no one is breathing down your neck or looking over your shoulder. The presbyter is given immense freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. The responsibility never to betray those who turn to us, trust in us. The responsibility never to lose the sense of awe and wonder at who we are, and at the possibilities of each day as a priest of the Church of God.
For given into our hands is the wondrous ‘cure of souls’; the care and succour of human beings in the most significant area of their lives – their relationship with the Holy One, the Life Force, God.
To be a presbyter of the Church of God requires a sense of adventure grounded in the everyday. Although immersed in the structures of the Church, the priest operates like an agent in the field; it’s a job without boundaries. There is no way of telling where, or in whom, you will next meet Jesus in disguise.
This springs from a life of prayer in which daily we deepen our sense of union with God. None of the chapter headings (taken from the Authorized Text of the Ordination Services © The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, 2000–2006, www.cofe.anglican.org) deals with prayer as a separate issue, for it is assumed, taken as read, that prayer is the foundation of everything we are, and do, as priests.
One of the particular treasures of our Anglican tradition is the discipline of the Daily Office. Morning and Evening Prayer, said with a sprinkling of colleagues and fellow-workers or (if necessary) alone, ensures that we are rooted and grounded simultaneously in the psalms beloved of our Lord, the scriptures, and the ancient tradition of our Church. In reciting the Daily Office we grow into a sense of unity with all our sisters and brothers across the world who, as the planet spins, with us maintain an unceasing hymn of praise and devotion to God.
To remain faithful in the discipline of the Daily Office demands of us, not so much a dance of exaltation, as a steady plod of utter determination. Through this privilege of time set apart for God every day, we shall however be brought to a place where we ‘comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and . . . know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge’ (Eph. 3.17). For such a prize it is worth switching off the mobile and making the next appointment wait.
The prayer life of a priest is essential if he or she is going to be someone who ‘is’, who has won through to that state of being in which we rest in God, healed and forgiven. The priest holds within himself the tension of being and doing, eschewing both self-indulgent spirituality and frantic, pointless activity. She lives the advice of St Ignatius of Loyola: ‘Pray as if everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on you.’
As presbyters we are furthermore called to be ‘artists of community’, as a wise Jesuit once described the priestly call. We have the supreme privilege of shaping with our hands, our prayer, our proclamation of good news, communities of faith, caravans of pilgrims, who will together discover the love, healing, hope and transformation of life in God’s grace.
Pamela Hooks, an activist for the renewal of communities in drug-ridden north Philadelphia (the city that saw 380 murders in 2005) began by creating a space which kids without hope could call home. She took a large room in a broken-down old building, and with the active participation of the young people of the neighbourhood, decorated it in vibrant colours and mosaic tiles the kids made themselves. It was a place where they could hang out, do art, take part in drum classes, participate in theatre. Pamela called it ‘the healing room of discovery’.
That’s what priests do. We create places where ordinary people can experience the extraordinary, where they can hang out with God. We create ‘healing rooms of discovery’, or as Walter Brueggemann puts it, ‘the most dangerous, hope-filled places in town’.1
If we were using religious language, we would say that in such work we are witnessing nothing less than re-creation of humankind by the Spirit of God, ‘until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ’ (Eph. 4.13).
This work is not for the faint-hearted, the lazy, or for those constantly checking their allowance of time off. The priest is someone willing to work at the process of ‘growing into what I am’ and to do so without anxiety or self-absorption. It is for those who are learning to be at peace with God and at peace with themselves.
It is for those who remain absolutely fascinated by, and therefore tirelessly interested in, other people, knowing that this fragile and funny stuff called human nature is the raw material of God’s ceaseless re-creating.
May the chapters that follow help in some small way to remind us of the joy and privilege of the priestly calling, for as the good archbishop said, there is no job, or calling, or vocation, that can conceivably be any better than this.
Note
1 Walter Brueggemann, Clergy Conference, Hershey, Pennsylvania, 30 November 2005.
1. Servants and Shepherds
Priests are called to be servants and shepherds among the people to whom they are sent.
Authorized Text of the Ordination Services
The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.
John 10.13–14
Shepherding, when you think about it, does not give a positive or politically correct nuance to the work of caring for the people of God. Sheep are rather silly creatures, prone to run away at the slightest pretext, and not given to meaningful encounter with anyone who tries to approach them. By the same token shepherds can in many societies be a rough and ready lot, hard drinkers, and in need of a considerable makeover before they are ready to appear, tidied up and hair combed, in a crib scene in the parish church.
But no doubt we have been exposed to too many stained glass windows to see straight. Stained glass has exerted, ever since the Victorians rediscovered and revamped it, an unholy influence on generations of Christians gathered beneath its rose-coloured shadows. It has probably been responsible for more bad theology in the Church than all the lousy preachers in history laid end to end.
Certainly that young fresh-faced Northern European who poses in our parish church window with a cuddly and unusually co-operative sheep across his shoulders bears no resemblance to the kind of shepherds Jesus knew, or to the kind we are called to become. The genuine article is a tough and resourceful character, a loner who can live off the land if need be, someone best not meddled with, who keeps his own counsel, likely to respond to any frivolous enquiry with a hard, unyielding stare.
If we take seriously then our Lord’s use of the shepherd image, we shall be forced to make some readjustments. Note the vivid colour with which ‘shepherd’ is contrasted with ‘hireling’. This is bad news for the greedy or ambitious, or even for those who would use the word ‘career’ to speak of the unfolding of their ministry.
‘Hireling’ is someone on the make, just there for the money, who will make a run for it the moment there is any sign of trouble. Despite the frustrations of a system of stipends in which diligence