Priest as waiter. Priest as father.

As I was writing my sermon this week, I was thinking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. I started writing and I got a little bit carried away so I ended up writing a bit more about Bonhoeffer than I did about the Gospel; but I thought maybe I would share what I was ruminating on anyway. 

One of the most powerful little books about Christian community was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It's called "Life Together." I was reminded of his words when I was thinking about the Gospel passage today, which has to do with conflict in the church . In Life Together he says:

“He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.”

We have to be careful with how we use these words because, of course, we have a vision for the church. We have an idea about what the Church should be like regarding its faithfulness to the Scriptures, and regarding its work among the community and in society. When we read through Paul's letters, we encounter teachings about the way we should be together. So, we don't want to go too far in the other direction here. It's okay to have an idea about what the church should look like.

The warning he's giving has to do with abusing the real community that is in front of you. I once met someone with a PhD in theology who no longer attended church because he couldn't find one that was ‘doing it right’. He had allowed his ideal of the church to become more important than the actual community in front of him. His ideal had transformed him into a judge of churches, or a connoisseur of churches. And he found none worthy of his attendance.

But the other direction this could have gone is that he could have attended with the intention of imposing his idealism on a church community rather than loving that community. And he could have used that ideal like a stick to beat that community into what he thought it should be.

I think what Bonhoeffer is trying to get at here is that life in a Christian community is messy. We have to expect the mess. And we have to be careful not to let the imagined community in our head get in the way of loving the real people in front of us. Every Christian carries an inner picture of what a “good Christian community” should look like. We all have preferences about liturgy or music, or programs, or community engagement, but when we insist on an ideal to the point that it becomes judgment on people, then it's probably becoming unhealthy. The person with the ideal can become filled with resentment when the community doesn’t live up to their dream. It's possible for that ideal to become an idol. … We have to be careful that our dream for the church doesn't get in the way of our love for the actual people of the church.

Last week I spoke about making sure that our vision of Jesus lines up with the Jesus we find within Scripture and within the witness of the early church, rather than following an imagined and constructed, Jesus built from my preferences. This week I'm talking about our image of the church.

And this isn't to say that there aren't healthy expectations that we should have for our community. Bonhoeffer is asking us to align those expectations with what Jesus has actually commanded us. So, our vision for our community should be rooted in Scripture, and our expectations should arise from Christ's teaching. That includes treating one another with grace, and loving the people who are actually in front of us, and being patient with one another's weakness, and confronting sin gently, and forgiving quickly. We engage in practices like the study of Scripture, engaging in confession, forgiveness, service, and bearing one another's burdens.

But what he's warning us about is imposing personal desires and preferences on our communities. Especially in a way that is demanding, or manipulative, or that builds resentment in us if things don't go our way. These personal preferences and ideals that we impose on the community is what Bonhoeffer calls a “wish-dream”. The wish-dream becomes a demand on the community and a means to judge their brothers and sisters. When the wish-dream doesn't become a reality, the person becomes disillusioned and then they are flooded with accusation towards the community. …

The pastor isn't spiritual enough. The pastor isn't conservative enough. The pastor isn't liberal enough. The pastor isn't charismatic enough. … The church should speak out on this political or social issue more. The people aren't committed enough. The worship isn't reverent enough. The worship isn't joyous and energetic enough. The fellowship isn't deep enough. The music is too energetic. The music is too somber. The church should be like it used to be. The church should get with the times and modernize, be more progressive. A healthy church is one where no one confronts anyone, no one is hurt, and no one needs reconciliation. The church should be comfortable, predictable, and free of challenges.

And so, the person with the wish-dream, who is trying to impose their dream on the community does damage to the fellowship that they are hoping to build up.

Bonhoeffer insists that we receive the community that God has given to us, and then together we move towards Christ with the gifts and practices that Christ has given us. But he insists that there's a sense in which this wish-dream has to die before we can truly be in community. When we stop insisting on having things our way, we can receive what God gives us. When we stop imagining what people should be, we can love the people who are in front of us.

Thinking about Life Together made me think about conflict in the church in general and the role of leadership in the midst of that conflict. As an Anglican priest it isn't always clear how I'm supposed to lead. Sometimes I actually feel like I'm supposed to be a waiter, that I bring out a meal to people hoping that they will enjoy it, and if it isn't to their liking then I try to make it right. I bring it back to the chef and we try to make people happy. 

I've encountered a number of Eastern Orthodox priests in the last few years. And I noticed some of them could be almost blunt. 

I've reflected on this and I think the way they act towards their parishioners is sometimes the way that I act towards my children. If my 7-year-old daughter wants to only eat ice cream all the time, I'm going to say no to her because I know that that's not healthy for her.  I feel like maybe the Anglican Church, and maybe leadership in the church in the West in general, has lost the ability to use authority this way. 

This may be our own fault. Perhaps that authority was misused and so clergy weren't trusted with that authority anymore. I know a priest who was serving down on an island in the Caribbean. He told me that he met a clergy person there who would skip to the head of the line at the bank, explaining that it was perfectly okay because of his position.  And no doubt when positions are very respected they can be horribly abused. And we know from history that this has happened and does happen. Positions of authority can be horrifyingly misused and unfortunately this can happen in the church as well. 

Where this has left us is that leaders in the church can be under a certain air of suspicion merely for having authority. The historic authority of clergy needed to be tempered with a servant mindset. Leadership in the church that is tinged with arrogance is poison for the church. Leadership in the church that is tinged with ambition for position is poison for the church. And so I'm sure correction was needed historically in the church to correct misuse of authority. 

But I also think that the priest as waiter is very limiting. The questions that a waiter-priest asks have to do with the contentment of those being waited upon. When I think about the Eastern Orthodox priests I've met, it seems that their authority was more father-like. They acted towards the parishioners the way that I would act towards my children. The way I act towards my children is to use my authority in their life for their own good, for their own maturity, to keep them safe from the harms of the world, the flesh, and the devil. 

Returning to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he is warning about our ideal of the church and how that needs to be aligned with Christ's ideal. A waiter priest is overly concerned with preferences, with making people happy and content. But a spiritual father is concerned with the growth and maturity of their children. They can say no to the ice cream in favor of vegetables, as necessary. 

But I think the church is in such a state now that I'm not sure we can agree on what is actually good for us anymore. What is the good that we should be aiming at for our parishes? If we don't know what the good is that we're aiming at, then church authority can't actually be used properly to direct her children. I can even hear some assuming that such an image of leadership is arrogant. How dare I think that I know what's good for someone else? 

So where do we go from here?  

Bonhoeffer has suggested a number of practices given to us by Christ for shaping the church that don't have to do with preferences. They have to do with the embodiment of the Gospel. What is the appropriate place for a parish priest to direct the people? Even that language is something that is resisted. How dare you direct me? 

I very much appreciate comments and suggestions on where we go here. What is the proper place of church authority? How should that authority be used in the lives of the church's people?