Book notes: The Pastor, ch. 7 (final)

In the final chapter of The Pastor; a Spirituality, Dr. Gordon Lathrop reflects on the connections of Baptism, Communion, the Office of Keys and death, especially how the pastor reflects on death. Why is this such an important part of a pastor’s spirituality?

First, pastors—like anyone else—die, and they die in all the same ways that others do. And we have all the same “little” deaths: sickness, the deaths of spouses, family and friends, leaving or losing jobs, failures, empty-nests, getting old, etc.

“But…pastors do have a particular kind of experience in the facing of death…frequent responsibility in the community for presiding at funerals, …committal of the dead,” and all the counseling that comes when people are “facing their own deaths or the deaths of their beloved ones. More: pastors must teach clearly about the Christian approach to death. They must speak of death over and over again in preaching and in baptisms. They visit the sick, including the grievously sick. They include the remembrance of the dead in prayers and festivals” (p. 125).

It may seem a morbid note to end on, but I can relate. MLC has an average of 2 funerals or memorials a month, with service planning and grief counseling, many folks in the hospital or care facilities, illness—expected or not, cancer or other devastating news, awareness of national or global crises, broken relationships between couples, parents and children. Then, the inability to adequately attend to all of these, the tasks of administration, regular worship and responsibilities to family, the wider Church and communities… (Thank you MLC, thank you God, for this unearned and helpful time of sabbatical! I am grateful for this time to rest, read, ponder and remember!)

These words were helpful and important:

“Pastors, who are people who long to do good for other people, may especially face the little death in their own limits and inabilities. They cannot take away the sickness and death that they encounter. They cannot solve a deep problem for another. They are welcomed to hear another’s agony, to know another’s painful situation, to hear a confession of sin, to enter into a long-hidden communal sorrow. But then they….must simply keep silence and be there…except they can announce the forgiveness of sins. That is astonishing. It seems like such a little thing, but it can become the seed of life itself….[It can] become the locus of a little resurrection” (pp.131-132).

In the frequent liturgical singing of Simeon’s nunc dimmitis, we let God and others know that, now that we have seen the salvation, now that God’s word has been fulfilled in Christ, we can be “let go,” we can die in peace. “Such liturgical practice should include neither morbidity nor fear. Christian faith trusts God has overcome death, turning death into a place of life through Christ and giving us a Spirit of hope” (pp. 127-128).

Lathrop finishes his book on the pastor’s spirituality with this parable and explanation:

“In Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, one of the Magi—seemingly near mad—carries around a portable box of personal treasures and candies. With Amahl himself as audience, he sings, ‘This is my box. This is my box. I never travel without my box!’ ….I think that pastors never travel without this box: Word and Sacraments full of the gospel of Jesus Christ for a needy assembly, for needy world. Bread. In fact I think there are no real pastors without this box. Maybe slightly mad, beggars all, carrying this box and bringing out its astonishing contents constitutes their spirituality” (pp. 133-134).