Book notes, The Pastor, ch. 4

(Book: The Pastor; a Spirituality)

There are many thoughts in ch. 4, "The Pastor in Remembering the Poor: Diakonia." I'll relate nine passages that I have underlined:

"Pastors are called to care about food: good food, shared food, honest food, beautiful food, the sources of food, the limits of food, those hungry for food, the earth that makes food possible. And pastors are called to care about water: local water, clean water, the sources of water, shared water. ...[The pastor helps] lead the community to care about the just connections of these ecologies to the global systems of food sharing and water health" (ch. 3, p. 71).

"'Remember Jesus Christ' (2 Tim. 2:8) is never far away from 'remember the poor'" (pp. 78-79).

"[Martin Luther wrote,] When you have partaken of this sacrament, therefore, or desire to partake of it, you must in turn share the misfortune of the fellowship. ...As love and support are given to you, you in turn must render love and support to Christ in his needy ones. ...You must fight, work, pray... ('The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ, and the Brotherhoods,' 9)" (p. 80).

"Church councils and treasurers, by vocation, rightly care about responsibility paying the local bills, responsibility protecting the health of the congregation's property, programs, and fiscal reputation, responsibility paying salaries and benefits. It is to be hoped that such leaders also catch the vision of wider need and wider responsibility. But since pastors...are themselves signs of the wider linkage of the congregations that call them, and since they have something like the apostolic commission to preach the gospel, it is also true that they, by vocation, call the congregation to 'fight, work, pray' beyond the local concerns" (p. 81).

"'Remember the poor' does not only mean the collection. ...It is not only the collection that is sent at the end of the liturgy. It is the assembly itself" (ibid.).

"The needy of the world include the most wretched and the most poor, but they also include the rich and the powerful" (p. 83).

Re: the Seasons of the Church--

"The point [of Advent] is not a pretended waiting. ...The darkness may be a symbol of waiting for the light, just as hungry people wait for food in all seasons, war-devastated countries wait for peace, prisoners wait for release, the poor wait for the possibility of hope. ...Pastors are right to defend Advent" (p. 84).

"The deepest biblical conception of fasting [i.e. during Lent] is that it demonstrates our own need in concert with our neighbors, with others who are wretched and hungry, with a whole world in need, as if the fast were an enacted prayer to God. ...Such a discipline may come to expression best by fasting from pretense, from self-righteousness, from our misuse of the earth, and from acts of injustice as well as from self-indulgence" (p. 86).

Re: the Poor in Spirit--

"[In listening] the pastor realizes that the other person is speaking, achingly, of the emptiness in life--or the fear of loneliness or the sorrow. Or the sin. ...Especially [in] the Sunday assembly this pastor serves...the room is filled with such stories. ...To be genuinely trustworthy in the assembly will rightly lead to people trusting you with their agony, with their stories, with what they need to say. And, dear pastor, just as at the liturgy, you need to continue to be trustworthy also personally, also in that private conversation. Such trustworthiness will include your own willingness to be available but also your own knowledge of your limits [knowing when to refer him or her to someone else, and]....by not always being available. You are not God. You do need to rest. It is not a mature gift to the other to seem as if you are always available" (pp. 88-89).