was called, “first-footing,” which consisted of being the first to visit friends and neighbors in their homes in the early hours of New Year’s Day, that is, any time after 12 midnight. I don’t think I could do “first-footing” now but I was younger then and could stay up later. I enjoyed the tradition of being welcomed into a home as one of the first visitors of the “year.”
The new year (and the new term!) ought to be welcomed with such generosity, even when the future seems at best uncertain. And the reason for this really has nothing to do with hospitality per se, but everything to do with hope.
There are plenty of reasons not to welcome the new year: wars, terrorism, economic dislocations, racial and ethnic conflict, failing health and the ravages of disease, just to name a few. In addition, for a student beginning yet another school term, the mountain to be climbed can look especially daunting. It is tempting to view the beginning of the term as a kind of chore to be completed, a task that can be done, but hardly a gift from God’s own hand. Some may even call this kind of resignation “a mature outlook” or even “wisdom.”
I have a friend who is dying of ALS, who recently sent me an email. He will not likely see the beginning of 2009. In his note to me he quoted some poetry and asked me some questions dealing with the doctrine of the Trinity and worship, a theme that has occupied his D.Min. studies. Now, I wonder about all of that. What right does he have to be so focused? He did not whine or complain, nor did he seek to appear noble or long-suffering. Rather, he was never more himself, and in the face of his own daily weakening and dying, he was passionately engaged in the praise and service of God. What gives one such blessed “un-self-consciousness,” such robust hope? After all, what does my friend have to hope for? He will be dead within the year. Yet he wants to know what faithful worship of the triune God looks like.
The gift of the new year and the new term is that the “first-footing” belongs not to us, but to the God who enters our lives and takes up residence there even in the darkest times. That is why we can welcome the future so gladly, because it too belongs to the God who comes to meet us in our time and who is drawing us into his life “each newborn day.” Simply to praise, to offer doxology, strikes me more and more as what both theology and ministry are about. I do not mean that having faith is to lose judgment or to ignore the pain and suffering that are so near. My friend can see all of that quite clearly. But it takes hope and even joy to embrace such judgment and pain and suffering, and not despair of such things or write the world off as a bad job, or worse, become “wise” in our resignation. My friend with his questions was not seeking the wisdom of resignation. Rather, he reminded me of nothing more than a lily. Jesus said something about lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin, and which, like grass, are quite vulnerable to the vicissitudes of time. Yet they simply praise and are beautiful in their praising. We could do worse as we begin this term and new year together.
September 3, 2008
As I write this note a group of entering students is being oriented by our faculty and staff, with the help of some “veteran” students. Getting oriented to seminary is the first of many steps these new students will take together. But in truth, getting oriented is a daily struggle and much larger than any seminary. Augustine described the plight of fallen human beings as one of being “disoriented,” that is, of living disordered lives. Our tendency, he maintained, was to love things and use God, when in fact, we are called to love God and use things. To be oriented, or rather, to become re-oriented, is to find our loves rightly ordered in their true orientation toward God. As the Shaker song asserts: “When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed, to turn, turn, will be our delight, till by turning, turning we come round right.” That is the aim, the hope of all our orientations, that we will be oriented toward our true center so that in all our various turnings, we come round right.
January 7, 2009
In late December, 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a note to his mother in which he thanked her for being “there for me and the whole family” during such a difficult time. At the end of the letter, he expressed the hope that in the coming year, “we may have the joy of being together.”2 It would be beyond presumptuous to compare the troubles of 2008–09 with Bonhoeffer’s situation, but as we begin this new year, I believe his words and his life continue to give strength to our own witness in our own day and time.
As we enter 2009, a year full of expectation and hope, but also a year not without its clouds and fears, we do well to hear again Bonhoeffer’s words of gratitude, not as words of optimism about the future—after all, scarcely four months after he wrote these words, he was executed—but as words of hope.
Hope is not a carefully calculated assessment of our future prospects but an anchor rooted in the reality of Christ’s resurrection. That anchor holds amidst the storms that assail us, even the scary ones that seem dark and frightening. And it is that anchor that makes each new day, even the ones we fear as we begin a new term, a gift.
September 8, 2009
In one of his poems, John Donne writes these words about the nature of ministry:
What function is so noble, as to be
Ambassador to God and destiny?
To open life, to give kingdoms to more
Than kings give dignities; to keep heaven’s door?
Mary’s prerogative was to bear Christ, so
’Tis preachers to convey him, for they do
As angels out of clouds, from pulpits speak . . .
How brave are those, who with their engines, can
Bring man to heaven, and heaven again to man.3
Well, you say, that is just so much metaphysical poetry, and perhaps not all that theologically perceptive. After all, in the Reformed tradition, ministers are hardly thought of as “angels,” nor do they, of themselves, lift up anyone to heaven or bring heaven down to anyone. True. But, like Mary and all faithful disciples, they do “convey” Christ in bearing their own witness, and to that extent, their function is not to be despised. Donne is right that ministry is a noble task, and one whose work should be praised and celebrated, not for the angelic virtues of the minister, but for the beauty and importance of the task.
Karl Barth, in talking about students of theology, writes: “[No] one should study merely in order to pass an examination, to become a pastor, or in order to gain an academic degree. When properly understood, an examination is a friendly conversation of older students of theology with younger ones, concerning certain themes in which they share a common interest . . . . Only by his qualification as a learner can [a person] show himself to become a teacher. Whoever studies theology does so because to study it is (quite apart from any personal aims of the student) necessary, good, and beautiful in relationship to the service to which he has been called.”4
So we begin, not just with the study of various disciplines, but with the journey of a lifetime, bravely, perhaps also foolishly, entering into a conversation that has been going on long before we dare to enter it. This conversation, I think you will find, can be both daunting and delightful, and will, in any case, stretch us and strengthen us to “convey” a gift more precious than gold. I look forward to beginning with you.
September 7, 2011
In those same lectures which he delivered in America, Barth noted that theological study is not a passing phase of life. The “theologian, if he
