Between Ministries
Ministry is a word that is almost guaranteed to scare people, or at least give them cause to look at you suspiciously.
What comes to mind when you hear the word?
Do you envision a Christian preacher shouting before a large crowd, or do you see a missionary feeding poor children in a dry riverbed?
For the young church in Corinth in the first century of the common era, ministry was a way of life, a link to the past and the future, a means of receiving messages of hope of overcoming the oppressive rule of Rome and becoming free.
So, leave it to Paul to draw a line in the sand and make a distinction between the ministry of the past and the new ministry of hope, calling one a ministry of death and the other of Spirit.
Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses' face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! - 2 Corinthians 3:7-9
What does he mean?
If it sounds like he is trying to scare people, then I think that is our own perspective on ministry filtering our view. We tend to be overly suspicious of people who go about calling us to a purpose in life.
No, Paul is sharing a vision of hope and freedom to a people who have been beaten down. No longer, he says, will we focus on death, for death has been overcome. We are free to live, fully justified to God.
In other words, thanks to Jesus, or more clearly, thanks to God, coming to be one of us and to share this existence with us, we can look beyond the negative tone of the commandments and see a new guiding force in our lives, the Holy Spirit.
It is as if the parent says to the child, "Go and let your heart, head and spirit guide you. I no longer need to tell you what to do and what not to do."
Can we trust in God's trust in us? Are we ready to live on our own, without fearing retribution for our misdoings and failings?
I think we are almost there. We are living somewhere between these two ministries.
Why do I say this?
No matter how hard we try, we make mistakes. We slip and fall. But that isn't the main reason we are between death and spirit. It is a matter of trust.
To follow the Spirit, we need to trust in God and trust in ourselves as well. We need to believe that we are who God says we are, his children, worthy of the grace he bestows upon us, worthy of the trust he has in us.
This is a difficult thing to deal with, not because we don't want to hear it, but because it carries a huge responsibility with it. We need to take ownership of our decisions and the outcomes of them.
How much easier it is to blame God when things go wrong.
So, which view do you prefer? Where are you?
You see, it is far simpler to avoid talk of ministry altogether, than to have to put ourselves in the picture.
So, in these last days of Lent, what I can is to acknowledge my role in this ministry of the Spirit and seek to live recognizing the Spirit as my guide, focusing on love of God, love of self and love of neighbor.
Sounds easy, doesn't it?
More to come...
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