Patrick D. Miller is Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He preached this baccalaureate sermon at Nassau Presbyterian Church on May 15, 2004.
Iexpect that the mental state of most of you within twenty-four hours of receiving your diploma is pretty much, “Let's get out of here.” That is understandable. You have been at it hard, in most cases for three or more years. The time may have gone quickly, but it is by definition preparatory for something else, and now it is time to move on to the something else. (I realize that for some of you that may be more study!) Before you do move on, however, we set this time apart to close off your years here as they began, in the worship of God, an enacted, public, visible reminder of who we are and what we are about. We also set it apart as a time for some reflection in the moment of transition, thinking together about where you have been and where you are going.While there are many ways to go about that, it has seemed to me appropriate to turn our attention to one of those moments of self-reflection on his ministry that Paul occasionally lets seep out of his message to the churches who were his ministerial field. In this case, it is a few verses of chapter 4 of his first letter to the church at Corinth, a pretty ragged congregation that seems to have been giving him a hard time. They were apparently rating him negatively against better preachers, and in general scrutinizing his ministry and griping about it while holding themselves in very high esteem.
That may not sound like a very promising place to go to inspire persons on the verge of going into the ministry. But that, my friends, is where you may find yourself at some point. And like Paul, you may realize that it is in just such spotlighted moments of outside scrutiny that you will want to check yourself on what you are about and so discover whose judgment really matters.
Paul begins where he must begin and where he always begins, setting forth a definition of himself and those like him—“think of us”—as “servants of Christ.” I am passing that on from Paul with the suggestion that you make it your primary self-understanding as you take up the calling of the Christian ministry. You leave here and go out, whatever the particular call may be, as servants of Christ. You do not go primarily to be a pastor or to teach or to build up the church or to mend broken souls. One's understanding of the ministry may involve all sorts of things that are tied to particular ministries or tasks, to certain competencies or affinities—I am a teaching minister; you may be a minister to the poor or to young people. But these are not the heart of the matter, not the orienting center. You go as servants of Christ, those whose competence and ineptness, whose pastoral counseling and preaching, are features of an existence primarily defined by the fact that we are servants of a Lord. All we do is shaped by that point of reference.
We should note that Paul's term for “servants” here is not quite what we might expect. It is not the familiar doulos or diakonos, the standard New Testament terms for slave or servant. It is hyperetes, a word that indeed means the service of another but puts the focus less on the activity of service than it does on the free choice to follow direction. It could refer to various kinds of assistants, helpers, persons who worked under the direction and control of another: a physician's assistant, a synagogue attendant, a priest's helper, as one person has defined the term, “one who assists another as the instrument of his will.”1 Paul never uses the term again, but he had heard it at a crucial point in his life. When on the Damascus road, on his way under the authority of the chief priests to persecute the Christians, he was stopped by a blinding light from heaven and a voice that spoke to him and forever changed his life. The words that voice spoke were, “Stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you a servant”—a hypereten (Acts 26:16).
As with Paul, what shapes our ministry is the awareness and conviction that we are under orders, that like the pointing finger of John the Baptist in Matthias Grünewald's great painting of the crucifixion, all our gestures in preaching, all our offered hands in ministry, all our arms lifted in prayer, point in one direction, to the one who has called us into his service and under whose orders we go forth into the world. Like the hyperetes in the synagogue at Nazareth in Luke 4, when Christ reads the Scriptures, you hold the book— and hold it well—that's what all this exegetical and theological and homiletical work has been about. Like the hyperetes of the word who delivered the tradition about Jesus Christ to Luke, so you are under the direction of that word to pass on the tradition about the Lord. Think of us as servants of Christ, those who are under orders from their Lord and directed by his word.
But that is not all Paul offers us by way of self-definition. He thinks of himself and bids us think of ourselves as “stewards of God's mysteries.” And each of those words is an important part of his claim and your calling. It is God's mysteries that are entrusted to us, says Paul. Never forget that. We sometimes speak of the pastor as the theologian of the community. That sounds very much like how an academic community would regard the work of the ministry. If so, then mea culpa. I think that is exactly what Paul is talking about, the conviction that his whole life was set to speak about God and what God was doing in Jesus Christ and what that had to do with everything, from the way masters and slaves related to each other to how you ate food, to your attitude to the state, and how you spoke to your elders and officers.
There are many things you will do in your ministry, but all of them are tied to your commitment to the things of God, to the speaking and preaching and acting that point to the one who has made us, in whose hands our lives are cared for, and who calls us to the life that does not end. In those moments that mark human life in regular fashion—birth, baptism, marriage, children—and all the daily provision of life that each of us receives, you will help your people, your students, your families, your rich and your poor, find and discern the work of God. In those moments that sting and cripple and sadden and destroy our lives, you will bring the strong comfort of God. You will point to a source of strength that is there when all human strength has finally fallen into nothingness.
But what does Paul mean when he says that it is the mysteries of God that are entrusted to our care? For Paul and for us, the mystery of God is most clearly revealed in the gospel, in that good news that overcomes all the bad news that can ever come down our path. It is a mystery that the wise cannot discern, only a fool for Christ. To be a steward of the mysteries of God is to be entrusted with the gospel, to be now and forever the bearer of a piece of good news to those you serve: You don't have to be afraid. I am with you. I will deliver you. That is the good news underlying everything else, the word from the Lord that can transform the lives of your people. Do not hold it back, you who are becoming stewards of the mysteries of God.
Paul is quite clear what it means to be stewards of the divine mysteries: “Moreover,” he writes, “it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.” And I am going to risk the claim that that is what you have been about over these past years here at Princeton Seminary, to prepare yourselves to be stewards of the mysteries of God, but more specifically so that you may be found trustworthy in that enterprise. You are going to be responsible for some pretty powerful stuff. Every time you walk into a pulpit, your stewardship of those mysteries is on the line. Every time you stand by a sick bed of any sort, you are responsible for the secrets of God. When you lay your hands on the head of a child in baptism and say “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” you are a steward of God's mysteries. When you stand over the grave of a parishioner and say “I am the resurrection and the life” and speak to the ones whose loss is beyond bearing, you are at that moment entrusted with the mysteries of God. When you say to the congregation those amazing words, “I declare unto you in the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven,” you are a steward of the mysteries of God.
This is not something confined to ministerial acts as pastor and preacher or to ordination as such. So those of you whose vocation in service to Christ carries you into teaching and healing ministries, do not think you can avoid the power that is in your hands and the mystery that is given to you. As you learn to teach, learn that what you are doing is a holy act. When you take up the things of God, whether they are biblical texts, theological doctrines, or acts of ministry—when you take them up in order to teach others, know that you are dealing always with what is holy and with the mysteries of God.
What is required in all this, Paul tells us, is that we be trustworthy. The issue of the ministry is not finally success. It is faithfulness. It is the refusal to forsake the gospel in a world that does not believe there really is good news or to tell lies in a world that seeks easy answers to the deepest questions. I really do believe the ministry is a very precious calling. How precious it is you will come to know as you experience the power of the ministry to heal souls, to change lives, to make the wounded whole, through God's power at work within you to shape and mold minds and hearts to the faithful service of God.
Three weeks after I arrived to begin my ministry in a small South Carolina church, straight out of school and not even ordained yet, our Sunday lunch in the manse next door to the church was interrupted by a woman running down the driveway shouting, “The McDowells have been in a terrible car accident on the way home from church.” I hardly knew who the McDowells were. I did know Lester was chair of the board of deacons and Jane a member of the choir. Even worse, I did not know what to do. The only thing I could think of was to go to the one hospital in town. So I did, and shortly after I arrived the family was brought in on stretchers in various kinds of terrible condition. Lester's father John McDowell, a former clerk of session who had dropped out of church with alcohol problems and whom I had not even met, showed up about the same time. I introduced myself to him and in his shock and grief he looked at me with astonishment and said, “When did you get here?” He could not believe that I was there before any of the victims arrived. I, of course, was there because I did not know anywhere else to go. But that one act was a transforming moment and opened the doors to a caring ministry with that family that has not ended yet, though Lester died that afternoon and his wife Jane has been in a wheelchair able to speak only with difficulty for over forty years. My friends, there is nothing else you can ever do that can give so much with so little and receive so much for so little.
The faithful preaching of the gospel in the world in which we live, however, does not always heal the wounds. Sometimes it uncovers festering sores; sometimes it identifies with terrible clarity the sin that the Lord alone can overcome. You are playing with fire when you seek to speak and interpret the word of God. That is a dangerous occupation. One can get burned. And the greatest risk to your health and well-being may be the God whose mysteries have been entrusted to you. The one who is not seen or comprehended, who comes to us in the fire that illuminates but cannot be touched or grasped. This is no game we are playing. It is the responsibility to think and speak and act about what matters most in this world, to seek to interpret to human beings their whence and whither, to dare to help people encounter the one who made them and this universe, to offer the word of life that we have no power to give except as we are under orders.
So what's the bottom line? Paul knew, and we probably should pay attention. He says, “It really matters very little to me if I should be judged or scrutinized by you or by any human court.” I doubt that means Paul was invulnerable to the criticisms of his peers and colleagues in the ministry or those of his congregations at Corinth and elsewhere. He was quite human and spoke of those things that did him in or moved him to tears. And yet he says, “it matters very little.” I believe you can say the same thing—but only because of what Paul goes on to say: “It is the Lord who judges me.”
It is not my colleagues or your teachers, who have given you lots of grades, not your future elders or bishops, who will scrutinize your work very carefully. It is not finally whether a congregation thinks you have blown it or are the best minister they have ever had. “It is the Lord who judges me,” says Paul—and you also. I hope you find that word both encouraging and scary—because it really is.
The calling is worth the risk, my friends and fellow servants of Christ. To be under orders to this Lord means to be free from all other powers. To be entrusted with the mysteries of this God is to have in your hands that which is more precious than anything else there is. So go, and be faithful with what is being entrusted to you. And may the one who has called you bless you in all that you do.
1…Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich, trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, vol. 8, 1972), 539.
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