AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Letter to Incoming Students

Dear Students,

I don’t know you yet, or I’d address you by name. I apologize for that, but I’ll work on it till I know each of you. I can’t promise that I’ll like everyone equally, but I can assure you that I love every one of my students. It’s an honor to work among you, and I can’t overemphasize that.

People come to seminary with varying expectations and aspirations. Some of those I can help you with, others I can’t. I wish I could help everyone with all their goals, but no one on earth can do that; I console myself with the confidence that I’m good at what I do, that I know deeply what I’m about, and I invite you to make the most of your investment of time (and money) at seminary by tuning in to what I’m about. It’s no big secret, but it may help if I make the roots of my practice as a teacher explicit. If you don’t like them, that’s okay – no penalty. We’ll find some way to work around that.

I start from the premise that everything about discipleship (and ordained ministry is in many respects simply an intensified mode of discipleship) grows out of the practice of truth. All the different theological disciplines, all the techniques and skills and habits you learn, derive their importance from the Truth you live; whatever facts you memorize, whatever devices for handling parish (diocesan, academic) organization, if they do not contribute to articulating a Truth that goes deeper than your personal preferences, your family’s habits, your community’s prejudices, those learnings amount to nothing more than gilding on a goose-egg. sooner or later, the egg will rot, and a pretty exterior won’t take away the stink.

The Truth will sustain your discipleship, even the intensified kind, with a nourishment, a light, a harmony, and a sense that do not depend for their validity on buzzwords, platitudes, fads, simple answers or correct answers (whether of the popular or academic sort). It’s not for nothing that Acts shows us the earliest followers of Jesus calling their fellowship as “the Way.” Ours is a Way entrusted to us from saints who knew it much better than any of us is likely to know it. That Way grows in us by the work of the Spirit, but we ought to make room for the Spirit to form us in the Way and cooperate with the Spirit in bodying forth the Way in our lives.

Sadly, the Way doesn’t come easily to us. We all, to varying degrees, have adopted ways that diverge from the Way, and we cling to those familiar, comfortable ways. We determinedly project our will before us to hide a more unwelcome Way, and insist that others accede to our projection. To paraphrase Cher, “If the Way came in a bottle, everyone would be a saint.”*1*

Our best clues for attuning ourselves to the Way come from Scripture and from the teaching of the saints in whose lives the church has recognized the Way. These guides stand apart not just because Authority Figures said so (though that’s not irrelevant). They stand apart because the catholic testimony of the church identifies them as privileged witnesses to the Truth. If we try to discover the Way apart from their testimony, or in conflict with their testimony, we amplify the likelihood that we’re just projecting, again, what we wish were the truth into the place of the Truth that lies beyond our manipulation.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that there?s nothing more to learn than Scripture and doctrine of the saints. We belong to a communion that affirms that “the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred: so also the Church of Rome hath erred,” and we may add that the Church of Canterbury and Episcopal Church Headquarters at 815 Second Avenue are likewise subject to error. It does imply, though, that such fine-tuning as we presume to propose for the understanding of the saints must be well-grounded in Scripture and in other holy teachings. The Way is not ours to be bent and reconfigured according to our whims and fancies; one large dollop of the doctrine of Judgment involves coming to terms with our non-ultimacy in the Big Story. I will die, you will die, and the church will soon forget the ways we we thought we were smarter than the saints; but we will be held accountable for the foolishness we impart to others. The closer we hew to a faith that Scripture and the catholic communion of saints uphold, the sounder our great ideas may be; the narrower the strand of the tradition that supports our great idea, the more humble we should be about the likelihood that we’ve caught onto something that every saint and prophet before us missed.

And we grow closer in spirit to Scripture and the saints by learning them, deeply, thoroughly, sympathetically. While I may seem cruelly hard-hearted by expecting you to know the difference between Matthew and Mark, or the differences among Gregory the Wonderworker, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa, a great deal lies at stake in your learning the differences and commonalities, the accents and grammar and surprises and reassurances of each and all. Ministry permits us simply to go through the motions without understanding what we do — but surely you aspire to more than that! (Don’t tell me if I’m wrong; it would break my heart. I’m serious.)

By growing toward the Way of Scripture and the saints, we equip ourselves for a ministry that relies not on reference libraries (whether they be physical libraries or online compendia), but on a more portable and limber wisdom. A spirit attuned to the Spirit equips us for adaptive ministry, for the discernment that recognizes Truth under unfamiliar circumstances and protects us from popular error. Such a spirit offers richer sermon preparation, sounder pastoral guidance, holier liturgical formation, wiser theological insight than one can obtain anywhere else.

A callow reader will leap to the conclusion that one therefore need not learn anything from historical critics, from family systems theorists, from systematicians. Far from it! These all stand to enrich our understanding of the faith, of the communities who gather in the name of Christ, of how we should offer our praise, of — in short — the Truth itself. Neither “all antiquity“ nor “all modernity”; it’s more complicated than just that. Lean deeply into the heart of the saints’ teaching, and you’ll see their own struggles to balance fresh insight with honored tradition (if your favorite saint doesn’t show this inclination, then surely you will see it in interaction of that hero with the saints who disagreed with her or him). We can’t avoid change; the question is, What do we need to change in order to honor and preserve that which must not be seen to perish? What do we change in order to perpetuate the unchanging?

I think that by saying what I have, I will sufficiently have irritated my sisters and brothers who explain that my job should be to impart without deviation the simple, clearly-articulated faith handed down from the apostles, and also to have alienated my sisters and brothers who can’t understand why anyone would feel constrained by the oppressive speculations of credulous authoritarians. That saddens me, since it’s hard to teach people who don’t trust you, and neither students who suspect I’m just an apologist for Griswoldian doctrinal evasiveness nor those who find me complicitous with the forces of reaction have sufficient ground to trust me to teach them well.

On the other hand, I’m the teacher to whom God has brought you, and Providence presumably has some obscure purpose in that circumstance. If you bear with me, you will at least learn how holier souls than mine have drawn near to God. Pray for me in my error, and I will always pray for you, and our faithfulness to the Truth may light such a candle by God's grace in all the world, as shall never be put out.

God’s grace and peace be with you always —

*1* Yeah, this refers to a commercial that probably none of you saw, since I stopped watching broadcast TV roughly fifteen years ago, and it was aired well before that. Chalk it up to my quaint antiquity. Which still isn’t as ancient as Cher is.

Posted by AKMA at July 2, 2004 08:17 AM | TrackBack