The other day one of my friends who teaches in a Baptist College asked a question something like this, "If the three Magi could each bring you a gift for your ministry, what would you want?" There are some obvious, standard and boringly spiritual answers to that kind of question, and I wasn't in the mood to be any of those. So I replied, "Gold, mirth and thanks intense." Which when the phonetic puns are duly appreciated translates as money, laughter and gratitude. Now all joking aside at least two of those are pretty near what I would want, and once I;m allowed to explain, all three would do just fine.
Take gratitude, thanks intense. For 40 years I have been a Baptist minister. That's high mileage pastoral ministry, representing a long personal journey, and most of those miles in the company of other sojourners. On such a journey the full spectrum of human emotion is explored and the glorious diversity of human experiences enjoyed, endured and engaged. The word privilege is an honoured cliche that should not be devalued because of its overuse. The privilege is this; being invited to share in people's lives, and to accompany them in their walk with God through the valley of the shadow, across the wilderness, up the mountian, into the hospital, as guest at their weddings and dedications of families, in living rooms and coffee shops, each place made ordinary because we are ordinary folk, and each place made holy by the extraordinary faith that God walks with us. For a life spent doing this I am intensely thankful.
Or take laughter, that shoulder shaking mirth because life itself shows itself to be a joke. No not the cynical trick that disillusions and disappoints and laughs at hopes unfulfilled. But the loveability of people who know how and when to laugh; the odd coincidences that are either accidents of time and space or the Holy Spirit nudging us awake to see that life is surprise and gift. Not all of life is a big laugh; often enough there are tears, inner brokenness, loss that seems inconsolable, part of the journey we would rather not have had to make. But laughter, mirth, is a generous and gentle defiance of all that urges us towards despair, resignation and cyncism. Laughter is to see the joke, to trust the dawn, to pull back the curtains, to think new thoughts about life seen in a new way. There are few gifts which enrich ministry more than laughter shared at the incongruity and wonder of how life turns out, or in, or outside in.
Take money. We all need it, and we'd prefer if we had enough of it. Christian ministry is not for entrepreneurs however much that word is (mis)used about ministries which are innovative, blessed with fruitfulness and scintillating with imagination. You don't go into ministry for the money; but it;s hard to stay there unless there is money enough to live and move and have your being in a community. I remember a stunning line in a good book about excellence in ministry: "The pastor is not the designated self-denier of the congreagtion." That seems to say most of what needs to be said. Enough to live, and to be free therefore to give energy and time to sharing the journey of the community through the journeys of its members. Such thoughts are quite urgent just now as I correspond about pension arrangements, being 65 in February.
So there they are - three gifts for ministry. I don't need to be given them. They are already enjoyed. And maybe when Epiphany comes, and we celebrate those ancient travellers following their star, it will be time to thank the One whom they looked for and found, that these same Magi have brought to me those same gifts, gold, mirth and thanks intense.
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