Over the years I have struggled
with understanding the relationship between the pastor and the congregation. What
exactly does it mean? Why does the Lord want it to function in this strange way,
if indeed he does? I can get my head around the idea that it creates an inescapable
relationship (inescapable unless either the minister is driven out or the
laypeople leave) and that training in relationship is at the heart of
the spiritual life, but why have one person set aside to take this role? You
can drag in the traditional Catholic explanation, that ordained people exist to
provide the sacraments, but that’s an unsatisfactorily circular argument.
As I was contemplating finishing the sermon with that brutal statement about fire and hammers and blood I imagined myself saying to Giselle the lay reader, ‘Of course you can’t say that’. My feeling would be that it wouldn’t be right for Il Rettore or Marion, when she was with us, or Ted the public school teacher who preaches occasionally, to say it either. I think this is because it is risky. Not only is the expression slightly extreme, but it’s also very directive in a way I rarely am. This is partly what an ordained person sent to a Christian community to speak with the authority of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is for in a way a layperson (even an authorised one), a retired priest or a curate is not. That status both protects the minister in that they are commissioned to say such things, and also raises the stakes when they do: they’re still going to be there next week (probably), and the congregation’s relationship with them is ongoing and not easy to escape, as we’ve said. The possibility of a strong and directive statement grating like grit in an oyster is part of the point, it seems to me.
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