"The Lord's Supper" Fritz Eichenberger
Pastors-to-be go to seminary and talk about the radical nature of Jesus' call - how he gathered the sinners and tax collectors. We decide that that is exactly the kind of community we are going to gather when we pastor.
It turns out, however, that Jesus has already gathered that community in the church. Misfits and miscreants and juvenile delinquents and alchoholics and gossips and holier-than-thou tax evaders are all there waiting for us in the pews.
The trouble for us in ministry is that we read a story like Jesus having dinner at Levi's house and pretty much put ourselves in Jesus' place. But the fact is we are a lot more like the sinners and tax collectors and are in constant jeopardy of being like the Pharisees - awfully surprised by who has shown up for dinner. At some point we have to come to the realization that we are not so much the gatherers, but rather the gathered.
I have been reading Eugene Peterson's book Leap Over A Wall. I love what Peterson says about the church in all of its rag-tag messiness. "For myself...I refuse to either apologize for the church as it is or attempt to improve its image. Apologize for David's crew-the distressed, the debtors, and the malcontents at the cave of Adullam? Improve the image of Jesus eating with crooks and whores?"
Like Peterson, I am not going to apologize anymore; and I am going to try and quit demanding apologies also.
