On Advent 3

“Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.” In today’s Epistle, we read part of Paul’s first letter to the congregation in Corinth, evidently divided among allegiance to various teachers. In this letter, Paul serves not only the Corinthians but us as well, providing an incredibly helpful precis of Christian ministry.

It’s something of a trope in writing about the ministry that there is a danger in one of two directions — either overinflating or underselling its power and authority. Thus, for example, Heinrich Bullinger complains in the third sermon of his fifth Decade that “some, wresting these places of the holy scripture against the natural sense, do give the ministers an equal power in a manner with Christ; and that which pertaineth unto him, they communicate also unto them...Other some again so speak of the inward drawing of the Spirit, that they seem as it were to make superfluous, or to take clean away, the outward ministry, and to attribute nothing at all unto it.”

But it seems to me that Paul’s words here can help us understand things rightly. to chasten those keen to build up ministerial power and encroach on what belongs to God alone, Paul reminds us that the clergy are ministers of Christ, stewards of the mysteries of God. Ministers and stewards, not princes or masters. Small surprise that Luther’s sermon on this Epistle in his Church Postil is an attack on overweening papal claims of authority. But on the other hand, against those who would set the ministry at nothing, Paul reminds us that clergy are ministers of Christ, stewards of the mysteries of God. That is, our ministry and stewardship are of no small thing but of God and his mysteries. We are those appointed by God to steward his mysteries, minister his Gospel! Thus John Boys, the Jacobean postiller, uses his Exposition of this text to argue against those who disdain the ministry, and particularly the ministry of the Church of England.

Paul’s language not only helps navigate between over- or under-estimating the ministerial role, but it also reminds us of what the ministry is fundamentally about. Particularly in a context in which Christian ministers can be tempted to render their claims to authority in terms of atheological, non-sectarian expertise in ‘spiritual care,’ Paul is clear: we are concerned with Christ, with the mysteries of God, not with any nebulous spiritual power or authority we possess on our own. It is our job to be sending people away from ourselves and to Christ.

And this, of course, is exactly what the imprisoned John the Baptist does in our Gospel reading today, when he sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is indeed the promised Messiah. While many modern commentators on this text tend to ascribe to John the Baptist a certain loss of nerve or confidence, premodern interpreters will have none of it. Rather, although alert to the possibility of such a reading, they are at pains to dismiss it. Surely, Chrysostom, Gregory, Jerome, and Hilary all argue (as, for that matter, do Calvin and Luther), the one who leapt in the womb at Christ, who saw the Spirit descend on him as a dove, who proclaimed that Jesus was the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, would not now be genuinely questioning Jesus’ messiahship! It is interesting that for us many of us moderns, it is much more attractive to read John as doubting, faced with second thoughts as he looks towards his death, in need of consolation and reassurance. Whether this is in fact a more convincing reading of the text or instead says more about our own preoccupations and struggles with belief is, I think, an open question.

But regardless: whether motivated by genuine doubt or out of a desire to convince his disciples that Jesus is the real deal, John sends his disciples to Jesus. They are not, at the end, to follow John but to follow Christ. And what do they see? Thus the words of the Lord:

The blind receive their sight and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

This is the work that Jesus does — and the work that he often chooses to do through the all-too-human hands and mouths of his ministers! In Jesus’ day as in ours, the physical healing that Jesus talks about sometimes means just that, physical healing. But we can also read this as about the spiritual healing that Christ works within our souls. Thus, as I noted a few months ago in my piece on the Bern Synod of 1532, Wolfgang Capito argues that the miracle stories in Scripture are there to be images of “the inward progress of grace and the spiritual operations of Christ in the heart”:

For Christ makes blind and deaf sinners to see, and to hear the living voice of the Father. Of the lame He makes champions, who run unimpaired in the path of God. He takes away the leprosy of sin by His saving grace, and the dead He makes alive again through the Spirit of the resurrection. Faith hears of outward miracles of Christ, but marvels much more over the inward and spiritual operations which He carries out daily through the Holy Spirit and which surpass all understanding.

And above all, the work of ministry is preaching the Gospel to the poor. Here I agree with Luther and his Church Postil sermon on this Gospel.

From what has just been said it is easily understood that among the works of Christ none is greater than preaching the Gospel to the poor. This means nothing else than that to the poor the divine promise of grace and consolation in and through Christ is preached, offered and presented, so that to him who believes all his sins are forgiven, the law is fulfilled, conscience is appeased and at last life eternal is bestowed upon him. What more joyful tidings could a poor sorrowful heart and a troubled conscience hear than this? How could the heart become more bold and courageous than by such consoling, blissful words of promise? Sin, death, hell, the world and the devil and every evil are scorned, when a poor heart receives and believes this consolation of the divine promise. To give sight to the blind and to raise up the dead are but insignificant deeds, compared with preaching the Gospel to the poor. Therefore Christ mentions it as the greatest and best among these works.

So, as we approach Christmas, I think it is a good time for those of us in ordained ministry especially to reflect on whose minister, whose steward we are. For we have a special opportunity in this season, when fading cultural expectations of churchgoing will still bring more people than usual into our pews. I hope and pray that we do not provide a counterfeit Gospel of childhood nostalgia mixed with feel-good but contentless spirituality. May we be like John, sending people away from ourselves to Christ; may we imitate Christ in preaching the Gospel to the poor!

And it is a good time for all of us, in whatever station or role we play in the Church of Christ, to both pray for the grace to really listen and receive to the good news preached to us poor sinners via the ministry of the church, and be alert for opportunities to share that good news with others.