Now that I am semi-retired, a status and role as difficult to play as semi dead, or semi-working, it is true I have a lot more "discretionary time". Now there's a phrase coated in the seasoning of arrogance - as if time was a possession to be used at my discretion. I am a Christian, which means I try to live in that place of paradox, under the cross and beside an empty tomb. As a disciple I am crucified with Christ and risen with Christ; by my baptism I have died, risen and am called to walk in newness of life. That means every moment of time is both gift I receive and service I offer to Christ, and there's nothing discretionary about that.
It's a commonplace, and quite a tired one, to be told that Christians never retire. But that word retire, and it's capacity to enthuse or depress us is going to depend on how any one of us thinks of work, leisure, Christian life and existence, and how we understand our own place and purpose in the life God gives us, and what we make of it. Seeking God's place and purpose, and living faithfully there, remains an imperative shaped by the cross and energised by the Resurrection.
As a semi-retired Christian minister, and a semi-retired theologian, I'm working out how to use my discretionary time, and finding I need quite a lot of, well, discretion. Much of the inner discussions taking place in my mind and in my heart just now are about a number of polarities and priorities, which can be reduced to saying yes, or no. Once you have discretionary time you find yourself choosing between alternatives, considering options, exploring opportunities, resisting temptations, accepting invitations, to do stuff, become involved, lend support or give time and effort to other people's projects, purposes and commitments. This is good, so long as I have some sense of purpose and commitment myself to guide the wisdom of that yes or the disappointments of that no.
In other words "semi-retirement" and "discretionary time" don't reduce the need for purpose and commitment as a Christian, if anything they intensify it. You don't serve God well by retiring from a responsible stewardship of gifts, experience and skills; nor do you live an obedient life by saying yes to everything you can do, dissipating life and energy in an orgy of self- affirming activity. So saying yes and no becomes a spiritual discipline of generosity tempered by obedience to God's call as we understand it now. Indeed choosing wisely where and why to invest time and energy has the potential to teach us to number our days, to not consider ourselves more highly than we ought, and still, in the third third of life, "to press on towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus my Lord".
Those words of Paul from Philippians in the Authorised Version, were learned by heart 47 years ago; they are my defining argument for resisting the idea of retirement. Yes a reduced level of remunerative employment; yes a relinquishing of high responsibility in ministry formation at a denominational level; yes a change of role and purpose appropriate to where life is now, and the person I now am. But each of these is not a disjunction of service nor a discontinuity in vocation, but rather a renewed obedience to where and who God calls me to be now.
Now if you've stayed with this soliloquy till now, here I hope is the point. No matter what stage of life we've reached, the life defining questions for a Christian will always return to the radical centre of our faith and obedience, Jesus Christ. How to love and serve our Lord in ways more adequate to our gratitude, but always and inevitably inadequate to God's grace and love? Where to offer ourselves in Christ's name to others in community, whether in church, in neighbourhood, or in those ways of service that reach beyond and into the broken God-loved world and wounded lives? And why - why go on doing what we do in the third third of life? Because in one sense all our time is discretionary - obedience is to live towards Christ the centre. In another sense, "the love of Christ consrains us", and we gladly live as creatively as we can within that constraint.
For now I have three overlapping circles of family and friends, pastoral ministry in a local church, and ministry formation in the academy. That's enough to be going on with, and somewhere in the variable and unpredictable intersections of love that each produces, I hear the call of Christ and find a more perfect freedom.
(Three photos chosen at random, from places around where I now live, and move and have my being!)
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