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Isaiah 40 (TNIV)
1 Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice of one calling:
"In the wilderness prepare
the way for the LORD ;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
6 A voice says, "Cry out."
And I said, "What shall I cry?"
"All people are like grass,
and all human faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the LORD blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever."
9 You who bring good news to Zion,
go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem,
lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the towns of Judah,
"Here is your God!"
10 See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power,
and his arm rules for him.
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.
11 He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.
Eugene Peterson's Reflections
on Ordination to the Ministry
We need help in keeping our beliefs sharp and accurate and intact. We don't trust ourselves; our emotions seduce us into infidelities. We know we are [on] a difficult and dangerous [journey] of faith, and there are strong influences intent on diluting or destroying it. We want you to give us help. Be our pastor, a minister of Word and worship in the middle of . . . our work and play, with our children and our parents, at birth and death, in our celebrations and sorrows, on those days when morning breaks over us in a wash of sunshine, and those other days that are all drizzle.
One more thing: We are going to ordain you to this ministry, and we want you . . . to stick to it. This is not a temporary job assignment but a way of life that we need lived out in our community. We know you are launched on the same difficult belief venture as we are. We know your emotions are as fickle as ours, and your mind is as tricky as ours. That's why we are going to ordain you . . . we know there will be days and months, maybe even years when we won't feel like believing or want to hear it . . . and times when you may not feel like saying it. It doesn't matter. Do it. [We need this and so do you].
There may be times when we come to you as a committee or delegation and demand that you tell us something else than what we are telling you now. Promise right now that you won't give into what we demand. You are not the minister of our changing desires . . . or our secularized hopes . . . today we are lashing you to the mast because we don't want you to respond to distracting voices - even if they are ours . . . Your task is to keep telling the basic story, representing the presence of the Spirit, insisting on the priority of God, speaking the biblical words of command and promise and invitation.
That, or something very much like that, is what I understand the church to say - even when the people cannot articulate it - to the individuals it ordains to be its pastors.
- adapted from The Contemplative Pastor, pages 138-139.
It seems appropriate, in the midst of our series on Heaven on Earth (focusing on the 23rd Psalm in which God is described as our Shepherd) to pause on reflect on the kind of shepherds God calls us to be as we respond to Him. This Sabbath we had the unique opportunity to do that as we celebrated together the ordination of Saul Barcelo to the gospel ministry.Early in the day, Ernie Furness invited us to reflect on the calling we all have (whether or not we are pastors) as it is expressed in Isaiah 40. He reminded us of the four movements in the first part of this chapter:
A message of comfort
Preparing the way
God's Word being spoken
A herald crying out
And in those four movements what we discover is not just a call to one person to enter pastoral ministry, but a call to a community to embrace and share the message of "Here is your God!" A God Who is worshiped not so much because He is so powerful (although He is that), but because He is like the shepherd, because He is so good. Despite how it looks at times, God's fierce compassion triumphs over the temporary power of other gods. Love trumps all.
Later in the morning, Bernard Taylor, speaking out of 2 Corinthians 3:1-3, reminded us that the biblical Saul actually became a pastor for the first time in the church at Corinth. Before this time, he was an evangelist, but at Corinth he settled in and became a pastor. A pastor without a congregation is not a pastor. Further, he reminded us that it is the members of the church community upon whose hearts God's Spirit is at work through the ministry of a pastor, that become the "letters" that confirm the pastor's ministry. This is true both in the impact the community has on the world, and in the way it affirms and supports the various gifts that each member of the church has received.
If you would like to listen to what was shared again, or perhaps for the first time, you can find parts of the service by accessing our sermon library by clicking here.
2 Corinthians 3 (TNIV)
1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
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