In the robes of Christ

Ready for sabbatical?

Do not answer the question too quickly. Being away for a weekend is a nice break and, if you have the discipline to turn off your phone and email for a few days, good for you. A short break is nice. A sabbatical is something else entirely, however. It is not a long vacation, although the experience may be restful. It is not a break, although not having all the regular ministry responsibilities can seem like bliss for a while.

The truth is that a lengthy sabbatical is at once wonderful and harrowing, renewing and clarifying. If you are a conscientious worker, you are stepping away from work that is most likely at the core of your sense of self-worth. If you are a control-freak or just a responsible leader, you are turning over control to others. If you have insecurities about how others perceive you as a minister (You know: “preachers only work 1 day a week. Ha ha”), you are inviting their criticisms by being absent from your pulpit for many weeks.

You know full well your people are not taking 3 months off: your doctors, teachers, and business managers are hard at work every day. They are fortunate to have a 2-week vacation in the summer. Your baristas, mechanics, and plumbers are not taking a sabbatical. If they do not work, their children do not eat. You have spent most of your ministry encouraging them to do a little more for the church after they have already worked hard in their jobs all week. Now you are leaving your own work to do significantly less (read: nothing) for the church while they carry their own load and pick up the slack in your absence. Someone has to pick up the extra duties while you are out.

What is more, it is not just work. You are not just making widgets, punching a clock, ringing up sales, or drafting contracts. Those efforts may be noble pursuits, but what you do is not just work. It is a calling. Hands were laid on your head, calling you to ministry. Thus, your vocation has something to do with serving the poor, sharing the gospel with the lost, preaching the good news, ministering to the sick, and working for justice and righteousness in the church and in the world. How can you do that when you have punched out for a while?

That is the real question, is it not? What sense does a lengthy sabbatical make for a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, serving the local church in ministry to God’s world? It makes a lot of sense, in spite of the realities you will face as you embark on this venture. A lengthy sabbatical is harrowing in all the ways you might predict, but it is also wonderful in ways you and your congregation may not even yet imagine.

I was given a sabbatical in the summer of 2014. A Clergy Renewal Grant from the Lilly Foundation enabled me to do more, see more, and encounter more than I could have expected prior to the experience. I spent a week at Taizé, France, 7 weeks in Italy, shared a long weekend with old friends at a lake house, lived a week at a monastery, and walked under the towering sequoias in California. My family, in various ways, participated with me throughout the summer. From start to finish the sabbatical lasted 13 Sundays. My email out-of-office responder was set on for 91 days. (I did look at the emails in the last couple of weeks of the sabbatical and responded to a couple of emergency situations.)

When we first started preparing for this, I did not yet understand how the sabbatical experience lasts much longer than the out-of-office email responder. It took more than a year to plan and a summer to live out. The experience is still in my thoughts on a regular basis. The spiritual footprint of the experience in my life is now over 2 years long and wide and deep—thanks be to God.

In my office at the church now I have a collage of four photos from the summer: the loping bridge over a pond in the quiet area at Taizé, a view overlooking the Mediterranean Sea from our rental apartment in Positano, a photo off the deck of a lake house in Arkansas, and one of the blue Pacific below my cell at the California monastery. These four photos remind me every day of the gift the sabbatical was and continues to be in my life. Each photo shows a cup of coffee and a book or my journal. I had not noticed the similarities through these experiences until I was looking back through the photos and found these four. Together they tell a story of immersion in beauty and leisure time to read and study and write.

Many days I pass by the framed photos without noting them. Life moves quickly, and there is a lot on my mind. Yet for me, this collage is a picture of prayer in four scenes and is what sabbatical is about at its very best. Here is a secret: it is not a vacation; we do not stop being pastors. We do not stop loving our church or worrying about our people. We do not stop caring for the world or praying for it. During the time of my sabbatical, thousands of migrants were coming to the Texas border from Central America and twenty-one Coptic Christians were beheaded in Libya. Although we may feel quite helpless in the face of these crises, we feel it most keenly when in the privileged position of being far away from our posts. All we can do is pray. It is then we realize that we actually have time and space to pray more deeply, more carefully, and with more genuine compassion than we had before when our days were filled with all the quotidian minister’s tasks.

When the collar feels tight

In that time and space, made possible by sabbatical grace, we realize that the vocational call to ministry is not just to the collection of tasks that comprise the ministerial life, but that those hands laid upon us at ordination change us and claim us. It seems as though we are doing nothing for our congregations during a sabbatical, and in the most practical respects that is undeniably true. Someone else is preaching and teaching and saying the pastoral prayer, not to mention replacing the light bulbs and greeting guests. Yet work is being done within us as we step away, released from the daily responsibilities of pastoral tasks, as we are renewed in the call that animates all of those responsibilities and relationships.

Towards the end of my sabbatical summer, I met someone who was still early in the process of being changed and claimed by his vocational call. My brief encounter with him has shaped my whole appreciation of my pastoral vocation, ministry in the church, and how sabbatical renews us in our identity as pastors. I wrote a poem about him. It was not a particularly good poem, but I still like the title. It helps me remember him and the lessons I learned about myself. The title is, “On the eye-roll of a monastic novice when he had to ask permission to go surfing.” It sounds a little ridiculous, and it is, but stay with me. We have more in common with him than you might think. Here’s a hint: keep your eyes on the robes.

Picture if you will a monk surfing—not a silly porcelain Christmas tree ornament but a real live full-size man on a real live surfboard, catching a wave, hanging ten or whatever it is surfers do. When I imagine a monk surfing, which I confess I had never done until late that summer, I see his long robes splashing and soaking in the waves. I am sure monks who surf wear wetsuits like anyone else who surfs in the chilly Pacific, but that is what I imagine: a monk in his robes looking hopelessly out of place out there among the sundrenched wave-catchers. I cannot get the robes out of my mind.

Outside of the occasional formal wedding or funeral, I do not typically wear robes or vestments for worship. But I have known enough monks and enough ministers from more formal ecclesial communities to appreciate how robes hold a kind of metaphorical force for the ministerial life. We are “robed up.”

This is, of course, a biblical image for spiritual presence and authority. We see the presence of robes throughout Scripture. Esther was dressed up in fine robes to see the king and appeal for her people’s safety. Her uncle Mordecai was later dressed in Haman’s regal robes. Robes can be a symbol of royalty, beauty, honor, and spiritual power. The Gospels also speak of robes. Jesus was walking along the road when a woman touched the hem of his garment. She was healed immediately. The fringe tassel of an ordinary garment was the conduit of healing power. “If I can just touch the hem of his robe,” she convinced herself, “I will be healed” (Matt 9:21).

Most prominent in the biblical imagination are Aaron’s garments. As high priest, his very robes are a symbol of God’s authority held in trust by the Levites. Exodus 28:31 (ESV) describes their stunning beauty in some detail:

You shall make the robe of the ephod all of blue. It shall have an opening for the head in the middle of it, with a woven binding around the opening, so that it may not tear. On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet yarns, around its hem … And it shall be on Aaron when he ministers, and its sound shall be heard when he goes in to the Holy Place before the Lord, and when he comes out, so that he does not die.

Ensuring that the robe was constructed so that it did not cause death was a serious matter.

Most preachers in free church traditions do not wear robes like these anymore, and it is possible that we have lost something along the way. The robe symbolizes a truth about our lives that we did not choose. In Gal 3:27, Paul writes that “we have been clothed with Christ.” We wear Christ’s garments, not our own. We have put on Christ as we were baptized into Him.

This brings us back to the surfing monk. While I was at the monastery, I became acquainted with one of the novices, a monk in training for a trial period that lasts several years. During this time, the novice may quit the community at any time or the monastic leadership may decide he is not up to the calling. It is a season of discernment. This particular novice, a former techie from the Silicon Valley, had been ensconced in the monastic community for a few years and was still waiting for full inclusion. He was still being “robed” in this new vocational calling. He was a young man, very pleasant and kind, but also a bit anxious.

One day in the bookstore we were chatting and he told me, “After morning worship on Sunday, I and some of the grounds crew are going surfing down the coast a few miles.” (It is still such an odd image—a monk surfing.) “Anyway,” he said, standing there in long, white monastic garb, “I haven’t been in a long, long time, but I finally got the abbot’s permission to go for a few hours.”

Then it happened; he rolled his eyes. He rolled his eyes. It was a subtle, subconscious flash of resentment toward authority. But I knew it when I saw it. I have three kids. In that eye-roll I understood instinctively that standing before me was a grown man bristling at having to ask permission simply to enjoy recreation with friends on a sunny weekend afternoon—just one of many aspects of life under another’s authority. I perceived in an instant that those monastic robes were starting to itch. The folds were feeling a little course, and the collar was a bit too tight.

It is certainly possible that I am interpreting this encounter incorrectly, but it did hold a sense of familiarity for me. I have no idea what it means to live as a monk day after day, and to have one’s whole life ordered by the rhythms of a community and the instructions of an abbot. I do not know what it means to walk in his sandals or wear his robe. But the experience inspired me to think about the “robes” I wear as a pastor. I know what it means for a collar to start feeling a little tight, and for the preacher-clothes to rub roughly on the skin. I know what it means to resent the robes. I identify with the inclination to throw them off and live another life besides that of pastor, or at least to pull up stakes and begin anew with a different congregation. But so much of ministry is learning to accept the discipline of ministering in a church at a particular time and place—to wear the robes with which we have been clothed.

Beginning to understand

Cecil Sherman, the towering Baptist pastor and denominational leader in the late twentieth century, set his jaw and took on his opponents when it was necessary, leading from strength and conviction. Slow talking, but quick thinking, he was no pushover to anyone. When I was a young minister, Sherman told me that “eighty percent of what I do is what they want me to do so they’ll let me do the twenty percent I want to do.” Is this a weakness of leadership? Is this a failure to be bold? If you think so, you never met Cecil Sherman. His approach involved willing submission to the polity of the community, and it included a fair amount of common sense (something he was known for). Years later, I sat with him while he tended to his wife Dot, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This strong, independent pastor wore robes of calling in his pastorate and in his marriage with the beauty of submission to others and a humble acceptance of what life brings through them.

We are robed in something that can be quite difficult. Wearing the mantle of ministerial calling means we belong to a way of life and a community whose authority we accept as it is laid upon our shoulders. Whether that yoke is easy or that burden is heavy, we accept it as our calling.

During our sabbatical summer, my wife and I had lunch with a couple from our town who were travelling in the same area. We were genuinely glad to see them. We had a leisurely conversation about life in ministry, and I mentioned that I was happy in my pastorate, not looking to go anywhere else.

I believe it is okay to go to another congregation and that it is certainly more than okay to follow God’s guidance if we believe we are following this guidance to another place of ministry. Most pastors do move from time to time, though some do not move easily. They stay put for years—decades, even. Longevity in a pastorate opens doors into the congregation’s life that otherwise remain shut to most of us who leave after 3-, 5-, or 7-year terms. Longevity bears fruit, but most pastors leave either out of choice or necessity before the fruit sets.

I have left two pastorates, and I cried both times. My parishioners did, too—at least, most of them. The first church I served was in rural North Carolina. I was a pastor there while I was in seminary and then a couple of years afterwards. The second church was in Virginia, where I served for 6 years. I had been a pastor in Texas for 7 years when I took my sabbatical.

In the middle of our lunch conversation with the couple from our town, I was asked a simple question that I found difficult to answer: “What do you like about pastoring your church?” If I had been describing the congregation to a prospective member, I would have known what to say. But this was not a prospect. It was someone who knows the church pretty well and was asking a personal question. And I, being on sabbatical and 5,000 miles from home, was not on my game. Strangely, I felt on the spot with the question hanging in the air, as if someone was poking around in my private journal.

Feeling a little naked and vulnerable for a moment, I thought about Adam grasping around for the nearest fig leaf and of Peter avoiding the inquisitive probe: Aren’t you one of them? I blurted out an answer. My response was not about programs or worship style or good staff relationships or history or future or the rocking chair on the back porch or the ancient live oak tree on the edge of the church property. I stammered out this answer: “What I like so much is that I can be me. I am not robed in an expectation to be something I am not. I can be me.”

It was a foolish answer, and I knew it the moment it came out with a thud. It took most of the summer, reading poetry and writing, to figure out why it seemed like such a hapless answer. Maybe I was the only one who noticed the odd sound of it. Everyone else at the table was smiling and nodding affirmation; such is the acceptable idea that we have to “be ourselves,” that this is best—to be me, uniquely me, if possible. Maybe those friends knew the warm feeling of being appreciated by others for who they are and what they have to contribute to the world, and so they were silently joyful for another person who had the same experience. Knowing me and knowing the church, they could understand how I would feel this way. We have what we mean in church work when we say things like: it is a good match; it is a good fit. Perhaps they longed for it in their own work, and they were silently musing about how nice it must be to be yourself.

Or maybe they all felt the thud too and were too polite to flinch. I certainly felt it. At first I could not understand why. After all, I had just echoed Maslow’s highest state in the hierarchy of needs: self-actualization. I had expressed every hipster’s dream for meaningful work. I had reheard the post-modern apologetic for the specialness of the individual:

Why the thud, then? Was it really such a bad answer, especially for a pastor on sabbatical, far from his church, to talk about why he actually likes those people back there? Would we not all like to say, “I am loved for who I am, appreciated for what I do, glorified for my own uniqueness, and free to be myself”? Oh yes, uniqueness is a powerful pull. And what is so bad about it?

Someone as clear-eyed as Thomas Merton said the beginning of our vocation is our ontological uniqueness:

I have my own special peculiar destiny which no one else has or ever will have. My own individual destiny is a meeting, an encounter with God that He has destined for me alone. His glory in me will be to receive from me something which he can never receive from anyone else. ¹

Is this not what we are hunting for when we go into ministry, when we leave churches to go to other churches—places “where this reality, me, my words, my perception, meet what is fundamental, God?” ²

We go into ministry to fulfill our individual destinies in an encounter with God that the divine plan has destined for us uniquely. If I find a place where I can be me, then why ever leave for a sabbatical or a new pastorate? There is a me-ness that is free, a true self that is given space to play, pray, preach, make mistakes, and strive for unrobed self-actualization. How fine it is to be in a place where I can be me.

This is all true. But the best I can figure now is that this is something even more true: being a pastor is always an expectation to be something you are not by nature but that you are by grace. As the grace extended to you calls you to your best self, the robes just hang a little lighter.

I wish I had answered the question that way, but I did not know how at the time. I wish I had replied:

What do I love about my church? Through them I am continually being called out of myself to my best self. Sometimes that calling out is painful and sometimes it is affirming. In every case it seems like I am learning more about what it means to be a pastor. As long as God is at work in me and at work in the church in this way, why would I walk away? I am clothed with Christ, and I submit myself to these robes until God is done with me here.

There is a long way to go with me, even after almost two decades in ministry. During my time on sabbatical I had the opportunity to reflect back on the arc of my pastorate.

First: The unfulfilled journey

Years ago I thought going into and coming out of seminary that there was a basic core competency to pastoral ministry. If I could just, more or less, do well in those core competencies, I would be pretty good at this. In fact, here is a moment of confession: I thought I would be really good at this. I look back now and think of this as the first stage in my vocational identity. I call it the “Unfulfilled journey to greatness.” I was a good student and a pretty good leader. I had wrestled with a sense of call to ministry and discerned that call deliberately. I thought I would be pretty good at pastoring such that within a few years someone would want to build a statue to me (of course, aw shucks, I would not let them, but the offer would be nice), or buy my books (I would let them do that), or sign me up for a national speaking tour, or study how my church grew so quickly and did such amazing ministry. I thought these were the benchmarks of being a good pastor.

But, alas, no one clamored to ask me to write a book. No one called for the speaking tour, and my church was always in the neighborhood with bigger, slicker churches whose programs “borrowed” my youth and young adults (and did not return them). No one built a statue in my likeness—not even one of those little mini-desktop statues.

It turns out I am not alone in the gap between what we thought we would be and what we turned out to be. It sounds completely ridiculous to say now, but back then this situation effected something of a vocational crisis. I thought I would be great. I thought I would change the world. But after a few years I was not even sure I was any good and, as life tends to go, I was spending more time changing diapers at home than changing the world out there. There was a tense conversation with someone in my church to whom I blurted out in a moment of weakness, “I do not even know how to do this anymore.” “Sure you do,” he assured me. But I was not sure at all.

I think many pastors feel this same dislocation from their personal expectations to the reality of their ministries within a few years of beginning in the pastorate. Most of the models held up before us are of “successful” pastors. They are the ones whose books we read and whose sermons we mimic (and sometimes come too close to copying). No one told us to read Wendell Berry and substitute “church” every time you read “farm” and to know and love a place like Jayber Crow. No one told us how Henri Nouwen was racked with insecurities or how Eugene Peterson almost burned out of the pastorate (until he took a year sabbatical).

Instead, most of us at some point in our lives are hanging out there, strung up between who we thought we were to be and who we turn out to be. It does not take the deconstruction of an overcharged ego to bring a young man or young woman to the darkness of grave disappointment in themselves. From there it is only a short step out of the pastorate.

While reflecting on the surfing monk and my own vocational journey during my sabbatical, the poetry of George Herbert became a trusted friend. Herbert became an Anglican priest in 1629, assigned to the small rural parish of Fugglestone St. Peter near Salisbury, England. He only served as priest for 4 years, dying at the age of 39 in 1633. Shortly before his death, he sent a manuscript of a collection of poems called The Temple to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, reportedly telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might be beneficial or otherwise to burn them. Thankfully they were published shortly after Herbert’s death. Among Herbert’s poems is “Aaron,” a meditation on the audacity of a “poor priest” who feels unworthy of the office entrusted to him.

The poem opens with a description of the robes and regalia of Aaron, the first high priest as we encounter him in Exodus 28. Notably, around the hem of Aaron’s robe were sewn bells and the images of pomegranates. The bells would sound as Aaron passed into the Holy of Holies “that he may not die.” The ringing of these bells in Christian times became representative of the lovely sounds of preaching “raising the dead” and “the preacher’s duty to lead his people to life and rest through the sounding of his bells.” ³

In dramatic contrast, the poor priest (Herbert himself?) contemplates how he dares participate in the august mysteries. How can he have the audacity to wear the priestly robes of those called of God?

Holiness on the head,

Light and perfections on the breast,

Harmonious bells below, raising the dead

To lead them unto life and rest:

Thus are true Aaron’s drest.

Profaneness in my head,

Defects and darkness in my breast,

A noise of passions ringing me for dead

Unto a place where is no rest:

Poor priest, thus am I drest.

Taken together, the first two stanzas sing of the ideal and the reality. With the melodic metric of a bell tolling, Herbert precisely describes the gap familiar to most pastors between who we thought we would be and who we are—the distance between true Aaron’s glorious robes and the poor pastor’s dirty rags.

Then: The search for personal identity

Out of what was a confusing, though clarifying and purifying time, I grew into the second stage of my vocational identity: From the “Unfulfilled journey to greatness” to the “Incomplete search for personal identity.” This search was far better than falling into the gaping maw that had opened between dreams and reality. If I am not destined to be great, now what? How about I focus on what is most true about me and do that well. We are not all destined to be great. And greatness can be pretty hollow. So now what?

Be yourself? That seemed like it might be right. Pursue your own path. Live into and from your strengths. And then, if the stars are aligned, and you hold on long enough, maybe you will serve a church whose identity closely aligns with yours and you get to be yourself. When you find yourself in that place, someone might ask, “Why do you like your church?” And you might respond, “I get to be me. I am not robed in someone else’s clothing.”

When you do, and you have come to the place where your ministry identity hangs on the tenuous congruence of your personality and the congregation’s character, you will answer the question that way. And you will hear the thud. For me, I think the moment may have passed without note if it had not been for one word that fell from my mouth. It was that one word in my answer as it echoed in my head that pulled the thread and began to unravel it all; the word was “robed.”

“I am not robed,” I said with satisfaction. In practical reality that is true. I do not actually wear a robe except for the occasional wedding or funeral. I do not even wear a robe to baptize. I started pastoring in the rural South where it was said that if you wear a robe you might be a communist! The way I was using the term “robe” was a metaphor—an image of something both unwelcome and heavy being put on your shoulders that covers up who you are and makes you look like someone else. Had I used another image from another similar cliché, I might not have been caught up short into deeper reflection. Other images would have passed right by my lips without pause—not wearing someone else’s shoes, not dressed in someone else’s clothes, not carrying someone else’s baggage, not living someone else’s life or another’s mantle or another’s burden or someone else’s identity. I think I was saved, ironically, by my poor choice of imagery.

“Robed” with all of its biblical folds and textures? Well, of course I am robed! Of course we are robed. Our unique personalities are not standing to break bread, pour wine, preach the Word, or pray at the graveside. Our individual personalities are somewhat overrated. Who am I in my individual uniqueness to gain admittance to the ICU in the moment of crisis?

In George Herbert’s next two stanzas the poor priest awakens to the same epiphany. He does not stand at the altar naked, stripped to his paltry virtues and vices. Rather he, as all pastors, is robed in the grace and call of Christ. Only dressed in these garments can the pastor hope to minister fittingly. Dying to the old self and living anew in Christ, the second and last Adam, is a central Pauline theme: “For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:3), “stripping yourself of the old person with his deeds and putting on the new” (Col 3:9–10). Another poet, Tennyson, cries out, “And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be.” ⁴

Herbert awakens to the same divine source of identity and offers it as a measure of hope for all of us poor priests and pastors who know well our “defects and darkness:”

Only another head

I have, another heart and breast,

Another music, making live, not dead,

Without whom I could have no rest:

In him I am well drest.

Christ is my only head,

My alone-only heart and breast,

My only music, striking me ev’n dead,

That to the old man I may rest,

And be in him new-drest.

Let us admit: none of us is all that interesting on our own. We are not that helpful for what we alone bring to the Table or the hospital room or the graveside. We are not that courageous from our own strength. It is not just my unique personality that sustains my ministry.

What we have to offer is something real, made possible by the ordination vows we take to the Lord to whom our lives are dedicated by the mysterious call to ministry and by the hands laid on our heads. Being robed, it turns out, is not a denial of who we are; it is the best of who we are, or at least the best we have to offer, that in him we may be “new drest.” The pastor always, and in an unchangeable way, finds the source of pastoral identity in Christ the priest. ⁵

Gaining or regaining clarity about this core identity of the pastoral ministry is the central gift of sabbatical and, at the end of the day, the primary reason for taking a sabbatical. Although I do not believe that these lessons are dependent on a particular location or reception of a generous funding gift, these lessons were given to me through the people and places I visited during my amazing sabbatical experience.

At Taizé, I had the opportunity to meet Brother Alois, the abbot of the community. Taizé is a unique and special place and, in my opinion, is the heart of the hope of Christianity’s witness of unity and peace. Brother Alois inherited the mantle of the community’s leadership from its founder Brother Roger in 2005. Since then he has carefully and heart-fully carried on the ministry of Brother Roger in the spirit that has made Taizé the “parable of community” they aspire to be for the world. I knew meeting Alois would be a treasured opportunity to tell him personally all that Taizé represents for me and to encourage him in his ministry with the popes, patriarchs, and presidents who seek his counsel and prayers.

We only had a brief few moments in a crowded room after evening prayers. Others were waiting to see him and so I did not want to tarry in his presence. But when I stepped up to greet him, I almost physically took a step backwards. It was like I was in the presence of a holy man. I think I was. Regaining my composure and courage, I gave him the kind of greeting I hoped to give to him. And then I hoped he would say a blessing on me. Through one of the brothers, I had sent word to Brother Alois that I hoped he would say a blessing on my ministry and my church.

In that moment Brother Alois surprised us all when he asked, “Would you say a blessing on me?”

Would I … say a blessing … on you?

I did of course, one hand one his head; the other raised toward the heavens. How could I do otherwise? I laid a hand on his bent head and said a prayer of blessing on him. It was not particularly long, nor particularly eloquent, but I said it, all the while aware that I was not worthy to untie his sandal, not to mention lay hands on his head.

Not robed!? Of course we are robed and thanks be to God for it. And what I really feel is not that I am free from the robes, but that I am free to wear them and allow myself to be cloaked by the fabric of the church’s holy call. And you are, too. We are under those robes somewhere, in all of our unique personality and giftedness, and in all our defects and darkness. I can say, with Herbert, it was not my hand on Brother Alois’s head. It was the hand of Christ. I was not a local small-town Texas Baptist pastor standing before him that night. I was the vicar of Jesus Christ saying a blessing of peace and hope for one of Christ’s beloved children.

I had hoped Alois would voice a prayer for me. He did not, but it is evident to me that nothing he could have said would have blessed my ministry more than entrusting himself to my prayer and blessing that night. For a moment, he let me be his pastor.

We are enfolded in Christ’s holy robes, with all of our uniqueness and giftedness. The church does not rise and fall on what we can bring out from ourselves as much as our simple embrace of what the church entrusts to us.

Later: A renewed peace

At the heart of my sabbatical time in Italy was a pilgrimage to the Assisi of St. Francis. In Assisi, pilgrims visit the square where Francis withstood the onslaught of his father’s accusations and finally broke from him for good in a dramatic de-robing gesture. Francis had, in fact, audaciously sold his father’s wares and had to answer for his indiscretions. The local bishop, trying to work a compromise, attempted to convince Francis that though he intended his actions for good, the church could not be blessed by ill-gotten riches:

The bishop’s words put fresh heart into Francis, for he believed they came from God himself. They gave him courage to do what he believed he had to do and had planned to do when he dressed himself in the old bright clothes [of his father’s]. For a long time now he had been gradually stripping himself of one thing after the other, of his dreams, friends, comforts, and pleasures, his revulsions and fears, self-love and self-will, and now he did the last thing needful, the last thing that cut him off forever from his old life. In fervor of spirit he stripped off his colorful garments and tossed them on the floor at his father’s feet. ⁶

Francis stood in front of the crowd in nothing but a hairshirt. Bishop Guido rose and put his own cloak around Francis, who perhaps now was shivering and exhausted, chilled by the cold wind that swept in through the unglazed windows and drained by the tremendous effort he had made. To the onlookers it seemed an act as symbolic as Francis’s own. The homeless for Christ’s sake are never left without the protection of his church about them. ⁷

Some clothes were brought for Francis, most notably a tunic belonging to one of the bishop’s farm laborers. Francis took a piece of chalk and marked a cross on the tunic. This simple cast-off tunic became the worldwide recognizable robe of Francis and the model for all the friars minor who joined him.

The robes of Christ are the glory of the High Priest Aaron of Israel, the holiness of Brother Alois of Taizé and the simplicity of St. Francis of Assisi. I am a true pastor only when cloaked in the threads of Christ’s robes, buried alive under all these folds.

I once thought that service in the church would lead to greatness. I once said that the reason I liked my church was that I was not robed in someone else’s robes. But this is just not true. I am fully robed and now come to embrace it. The echoes of my sabbatical season sound through my transition to the next phase of pastoral identity. From an unfulfilled journey to greatness to an incomplete quest for personal destiny to now, a third leg: drawing breath under the robes of ministry. It begins with an acceptance that being a pastor is always an expectation to be something you are not by nature but are by grace. Now I know what that is. You are a saint.

You cannot “be yourself” and be a pastor except that when you are a pastor you become yourself in ways you never imagined before. To be yourself is not to throw off all the robes. It is to wear the robes with increasing ease. You might roll your eyes occasionally. The collar may be a little tight around the neck some days. But after a while, if you are gracious enough with yourself and with the church, the robes begin to feel like your own. Or, better, you begin to feel you belong to them.

How can this possibly work? A poem by Carol Bieleck points us in the direction of submission. The poem is about letting go and letting the waves wash over you:

I built my house by the sea.

Not on the sands, mind you, not on the shifting sand.

I built my house by the sea. Not on the sands, mind you, not on the shifting sand. And I built it out of rock.

A strong house by a strong sea. And we got well acquainted, the sea and I.

Good neighbors. Not that we spoke much. We met in silences.

Respectful, keeping our distance, but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.

Always, the fence of sand our barrier, always, the sand between.

And then one day—and I still do not know how it happened—the sea came.

Without warning.

Without welcome,

Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine, less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.

Slow, but coming. Slow, but flowing like an open wound.

And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death.

And while I thought, the sea crept higher, till it reached my door. And I knew, then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning.

That when the sea comes calling, you stop being neighbors,

Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance neighbors,

And you give your house for a coral castle,

And you learn to breathe underwater. ⁸

Do not worry. Down in there you can still breathe until only in there can you still breathe. Somewhere cloaked under all that weight, your being is sustained by the spirit, the call, the gift, and the freedom of learning to breath. When we accept the “robes” of pastoral ministry as a Christ-cloaked vocation, we find our pastoral ministry begins to embody an eschatological dimension. Our ministry is not just the flowering of our calling, but is wrapped up in the telos to which all creation flows by the sovereignty of God. Your congregation will see the difference in you, or at least they will sense a new spiritual identity in you even if they cannot find words for the change that has come over you, and even if you cannot find the words either. ⁹

In the vision of the heavenly scene of Revelation 7, the saints have come through a great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. And there they are before the throne of God serving day and night in God’s temple, sheltered in the divine presence. Revelation gives us a preview of the way things are to be and the way they truly are. Walter Taylor notes: “The people wear white robes and carry palm branches. The robe signals not only outward clothing, but reveals who the person is, what her or his status is. The prodigal son is given a new robe, not just so that he would have something clean to wear but as an indication of his restored place in the family.” ¹⁰

The saints wear the white robes of purity and victory. And there, enfolded in the cloth of the one whose train fills the entire Temple, the saints sing in glory the good news pastors carry with us every day of this life: salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb … who has become our shepherd and will lead us to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from your eyes.

Both purity and victory are gifts from above to those who participate in Christ’s purity and victory. Graham Greene’s masterpiece The Power and the Glory follows the priest who is, by all accounts and especially his own, a wayward, imprudent, and in many ways, immoral vicar of the Lord. But as far as he knows he is the only priest left in a time of relentless persecution in a place where Christianity has been outlawed and priests are hunted and killed if they do not recant their priestly vows. Although he knows he has been bad, he also knows his vows have a claim on him with a power transcending his personal piety (or lack thereof).

He is ultimately apprehended. On the morning of his execution, the priest woke at dawn:

He woke with a huge feeling of hope which suddenly and completely left him at the first sight of the prison yard. It was the morning of his death. He crouched on the floor with the empty brandy-flask in his hand trying to remember the Act of Contrition, “O God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins … crucified … worthy of thy dreadful punishments.” He was confused, his mind was on other things; it was not the good death for which one always prayed. He caught sight of his own shadow on the cell wall; it had a look of surprise and grotesque unimportance.

What a fool he had been to think he was strong enough to stay when others had fled. What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead—soon he wouldn’t even be a memory—perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation—even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to be a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint. ¹¹

As the days of my sabbatical began to draw down and it was time again to check emails and check on the homebound, and fix leaky faucets, all of this was on my mind and heart. All that matters in the end is to be a saint. To be a saint is not to live an embellished, false projection of a hagiography, but to breathe under water with the prayer of St. Francis before the cross at San Damiano. From that cross, Francis heard the voice of God speak to him: “Rebuild my church.” And at that same cross, later, he prayed for himself and on behalf of all pastors who would seek the Lord with humility, not in pursuit of their greatness, in submission, not in quest for their own identity, enfolding themselves in the love of God:

All highest, glorious God,

cast your light into the darkness

of my heart.

Give me right faith,

firm hope,

perfect charity

and profound humility

with wisdom and perception

O Lord, so that I may do

what is truly your holy will. Amen.

Turning home

Turning toward my congregation again, for the first time in several months, I felt the shy gratitude that comes from being with people by whose sacrifices you have been blessed. They let me go. They sent me, and for that I will forever be grateful. In all sorts of ways, I was the same pastor when I returned as when I left, with the same strengths and weaknesses. I was more rested, had been able to read good books with leisure and seriousness, and had been able to write and pray. Although I doubt I glowed like Moses coming off the mountain, I might have. I felt like I could have.

As time has gone on, I have realized that something deeper shifted in me. I stand before my congregation with a sense that I am wearing the authority of Christ as a gift to us all. I do not confuse it as my own authority, but rather it seems like I am wearing a holy mantle that is not my own. I wear it with joy.

The last stanza of Herbert’s “Aaron” finally gives us hope in the infused spiritual identity of the minister who stands in the footsteps of Christ and of the pastors who have come before him or her:

So, holy in my head,

Perfect and light in my dear breast,

My doctrine tun’d by Christ (who is not dead,

But lives in me while I do rest),

Come people; Aaron’s drest.

And so the “poor priest” by the indwelling of the resurrected Christ, becomes an embodiment of the high priest, who himself is a figure of the True Priest, and so we all are. It is all we are. It is enough … most of the time. Every minister knows well the challenges and discouragements of ministry in and with the church. Since returning from my sabbatical summer, I have faced some significant pastoral challenges in and with my congregation. There have been some dark days when I have questioned my sense of call and my ability to continue on. Thankfully those days are few, and those nights are short, and soon I find myself restored to the good work of trying to lead and minister in the body of Christ. I certainly credit the spiritual and emotional renewal of my sabbatical summer for the inner strength necessary to keep hope through those days. Every pastor will need this at some point in his or her ministry. The only way to avoid this need, I suppose, is never to stay with a congregation long enough for the relationship to get messy. The cost of longevity in ministry is that you are in one place long enough for your limitations and weaknesses to become known.

“Clothe your ministers with righteousness; Let your people sing with joy.” Psalm 132 directly binds together the minister’s “robes” and the congregation’s worship. Stanley Hauerwas turned to this psalm in an ordination sermon, saying, “If our ministers get it wrong, we are unable to sing. If our priests are not clothed with righteousness, it seems our very salvation is in doubt.” ¹² This “clothing” that happens at ordination is an ontological shift in the one being ordained:

This is going to change your life. Put even more dramatically: From this moment till you die all that you are and all that you do will be determined by your being a priest. To be a priest does not mean you have a job that ends at the end of the day. Rather, to be a priest means that you will go to bed as a priest, you will wake up as a priest, you will buy groceries as a priest, you will make jokes as a priest, you will study as a priest. From this time on, there is no time when you are not a priest. ¹³

In his sermon Hauerwas charged the ordinand not to separate the “pastoral” from the “prophetic,” challenging both the division between the two and the notion that what the congregation needs most from its pastor is a caring person. He ended his sermon with this charge:

For what we most need from you, as you are made a priest, is to be with us. What we need most from you is constant faithfulness. We know we are a church in a mess. Do not abandon us. We know we are often unfaithful. Do not abandon us. We know our lives are dominated by our fear of death. Do not abandon us.

The hired hand runs away when the wolf snatches one of us from the flock. He runs away because he does not care for us. But you must love us. For you must be for us what we are called to be for the world, that is, a people formed into the image of Christ. In your priesthood we must see ourselves reflected and you must see who you are by looking on us. ¹⁴

I close with a blessing: May your sabbatical renew your love for God and renew your knowledge that you are loved fiercely by God. You are a beautiful creature of our magnificent God, who has called you and gifted you for your ministry. God has wrapped you up, clothed you in righteousness, and dressed you in the robes of holiness. After your sabbatical, may you look back and see that you never took the robes off; there was never a time when you were not pastor of your congregation. Now those robes—your call, your identity, and your hopes for your ministry—lay on your shoulders well for all the days that lie ahead. God bless you, pastor.