Pastors, preachers, prophets: Why you might be some of those and what it means for your life

Mark 6:1-29

Every so often there will be a survey of people across various professions where they are asked about how happy they are in their work. Without fail, you’ll find that when these surveys are taken people in service industries declare themselves to be happier and more fulfilled in their work. At the top of the top you’ll usually find pastors. We are the happiest and most fulfilled in our jobs, but, as our health insurers will tell you, we’re also some of the least healthy professionals out there. Something about Jesus telling us to die to ourselves just doesn’t work well for the insurance industry.

            But there’s something else at work here. Anybody who does the work of following Jesus in a capacity where they feel unable to walk away will inevitably find themselves in a tricky place, because preaching Jesus means preaching against the comfort of people you love. Preaching Jesus means telling people you really like that they are dirty sinners. Preaching Jesus means creating distance between your words and your relationships. This is partly why over 70% of pastors report they have no close friends.

            I don’t say any of this to focus this message on me. I’m saying this because, in spite of some of your best efforts, the same work I do you are called to, as well, in different ways. You visit the sick, you teach, you even preach!—every one of you.

When I was interning in Oregon in 2009-10 in one of my first newsletter articles I talked about my faith upbringing and, as can happen when you’re in the echo chamber that is theological education, I slipped into language some people did not understand. I wrote that my parents were my first preachers, bringing me to church when I was just a baby. That week I had a member of the church, a grandfather of a classmate of mine at Luther no less, come up to me and say, “I didn’t know that your parents were pastors!”

I realized my mistake. I say preacher and the first image that comes to mind is “pastor.” We have to expand the meaning of that word again, because—let me tell you—pastors cannot be the only preachers. There are too many people preaching things. They’re preaching politics, they’re preaching sex, they’re preaching hedonism—they’re telling you that life is about pleasure and anybody who tells you differently is selling something. You all need to be preachers in your own ways, because nobody discovers God’s love for them and nobody hears about Jesus’ death or resurrection apart from your telling them about it.

Ugh, you’re thinking, but these things are just too personal and I’m too shy it. I don’t really know anything. I’m not educated like the pastor about this stuff. What if I say something wrong? This is where we make a mistake. Walking the path that Jesus walks does not mean we have to be perfect like Jesus. If you try to do that you’re going to end up disappointed. It also doesn’t mean that you have to preach by telling other people that they’re wrong. It’s not like a political debate where you’re ever going to win people over. People don’t like being told they’re wrong anyway. To preach Jesus is just to live authentically and not be shamed of who you are.

More to the point, to preach Jesus is to preach in spite of ourselves. It is, on some level, to be a hypocrite, because you cannot be the person you want to be and, because you’re a hypocrite, there will be plenty of people to tear you down for it. This is where it gets hard, because Jesus says, “So what?” So what that people despise you on his account? So what that you aren’t perfect? So what?

In today’s reading Jesus returns to his hometown and finds icy coolness. And why? Because the heart of the Gospel is that God shows no partiality, which sounds great in theory, but when it comes down to people who feel entitled to Jesus’ favoritism the good news of the Gospel is offensive. Jesus, what do you mean you won’t cheer for our high school sports team? What do you mean you’re a Storm fan?

I got ya with that one, huh?

We all participate in a certain amount of tribalism. We all expect a certain amount of favoritism in our own homes. But Jesus has no room for that. No prophet is welcomed in his or her hometown, because, frankly, prophets don’t give a crap about being polite and deferential. They’re going to tell you how it is, and it’s one thing when somebody from the outside does that because you can smile politely and think about all the ways they can’t force you to change, but when it’s somebody from the inside it makes you squirm. It’s not so easy to run away from it. Their convictions, even if they are misguided, still sting.

This is part of the reason pastors don’t have close friends. It’s natural to have emotional distance from those who need to hear plainly. And yet I wonder if there isn’t a better way. After all, we aren’t Jesus, but neither are pastors so set apart from the rest of us any longer. Martin Luther believed in the priesthood of all believers; that all of us are priests, ordained to spread the good news of Jesus to the world. Ordination is not a sacrament in the Lutheran tradition because ordination is just for the sake of good order, marking the community’s approval of ministry. It’s not anything to do with any innate holiness on my part. Each of you are ordained to do God’s work in your own families and with your own friends.

This is tough work. It’s no coincidence that pastors are as generally unhealthy as they are. It wears you down to care about people enough to tell them they are wrong and to do so not to lift yourself up but because following Jesus compels us no to sugarcoat anything. It’s much easier to say nothing; it’s much easier to do nothing new, nothing exceptional. And yet all of you know how important it is that people in our community, even in our families, step out on a limb to make the world a better place. It’s how communities thrive, it’s how we feed the hungry, it’s how we decide to get married or have a family, it’s how we take something old and inject it with new life. Every great thing requires taking a chance. So take a chance on preaching. More importantly, do it creatively, because I know better than to expect most of you say much about Jesus. You probably could stand to do that a little more, too, but honestly for some of you just lifting a person’s spirits would go a long way to preaching Jesus.

We make this mistake where we think we need to be something we’re not to be followers of Jesus. You don’t need to be anything but you. So stop it. There’s no greater sign of brokenness than trying to be something you’re not. It’s a great excuse to do nothing at all. Instead, stop demeaning yourselves, and start imagining how it is that you preach already and then imagine how you might preach just a little more… differently, subtly. I don’t care.

Then, maybe, you’ll also discover why it is that pastors claim to be the happiest and most fulfilled people as well. Like most things, the very fact that it’s difficult also makes it meaningful. At the end of the day, there’s a reason that preachers are happy people. Hard, meaningful, deep work is the most rewarding; the kind of thing that takes you to the cross, exhausted, and then raises you again.