Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Christ is in the details

So why is it so important that I visit people?

Pastoral visitation is a funny thing. Like, say salt, or advice from one’s in-laws, the right amount of pastoral visitation varies widely from person to person, from family to family.

On the frontier, farms and homesteads were often separated by miles, so that any sort of visitation was a time-consuming process. Pastors spent so much of their time travelling from pulpit to pulpit, or tending to their own land, they weren’t really expected to do a lot of visitation; their time was spent on preparing at least one (lengthy) sermon each week. The preacher might ‘visit’ for an overnight stay between preaching points; come to comfort the gravely ill; preside over funerals and weddings; and occasionally stop by to chastise an erring parishioner. Even into the twentieth century, it was just assumed a pastor spent hours in the study, researching and drafting the week’s sermon. But times change. The automobile has closed distances between us, so that, even in a country church like Mossy Creek, no one is truly isolated. And while Presbyterians still consider the Proclamation of the Word the central event of worship, few are willing to sit through a two-hour sermon – at least I don’t think they are. But beyond those very important changes, there is another insight with which I have been engaging, that brings a theological dimension to pastoral visitation.

It has become almost a cliché to describe the Christian faith as a relationship. For years, our more charismatic brothers and sisters have been advocating a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ,’ something which for years was hard to for me to envision. It wasn’t a question of God’s existence, or the truth of the Gospel, but a practical, logistical problem: How does one go about establishing a relationship with someone who isn’t here? For all the talk about God’s omnipresence, the Father and the Son are not HERE here -a not here like everyone else with whom I have a relationship. This, as they say, was the rub.

But God is good. I have come to understand the answer to this logistical problem by, of all things, looking hard at one of my own ‘growing edges’ (the new, non-judgmental term to describe what used to be called ‘weaknesses’ or ‘shortcomings.’) It may be hard to believe, but I am rather shy; because of that, visitation has always been one of my growing edges in ministry. It’s not as if I freeze up, or find myself unable to engage with others – I have just found it hard to get to the door, so to speak. Why would anyone want me to come over? What an imposition – entertaining me! Thoughts like this could easily paralyze me, and sabotage even my best intentions. But then one of my favorite passages spoke to me in a new way:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.


God gives us the power to love, to actively pursue what is best for the object of our love; but in order for us to know what is best for someone, we must know them. This is what Jesus did in his ministry, walking and talking with disciples, eating with strangers, asking those who came to him, what is it you want me to do for you? This is what we are called to do: to know each other, to listen to the stories of life, the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears; to work together, discovering talents, pushing one another to be the best we can be; to celebrate, and mourn, together. And God’s promise is to be there in us, all the while.

Our relationship with God grows in direct proportion to our relationships with each other in His name. In a real sense, Christ is in the details; the more we know, the deeper the relationship - the more we love. It is in that process of knowing and loving that we will come to see the face of Christ in them; the more we love one another, the deeper and firmer and more personal will be our relationship with Jesus. And that’s why I visit.