CHAPTER SIX

Unlearning the Habit of Doctrine

In so many ways, it was ironic that I should have been starting a career as a pastor. If I had been paying attention in seminary, it might have become clear that the ministry really wasn't going to fit me very well.

As incoming freshmen, we were required to begin working in a local church as student assistants. It was a way for us to get adjusted to the role and rhythms of clergy life. For a modest stipend, we did the things the regular pastors didn't want to do, and, in return, they provided us with informal mentoring.

My first Sunday as a student assistant was a shock. It was in an old church in Maplewood, New Jersey, with gothic stone architecture and leaded stained-glass windows. When the sanctuary was empty, the click of your heels would echo with each step, as if the walls were talking, telling the stories about all the stern faces that had lined the pews through the generations.

Since it was my first Sunday, and since I didn't know anything at that time, I figured I'd just be introduced to the congregation and then sit back down in the pew. But the senior pastor had other plans. Just before we went into the worship service, he threw a black robe in my direction and said, “Here. Put this on.”

There was no time to protest. The organ was already launching into the prelude. The stern faces were seated and waiting.

It was an identity crisis of the first order, with no time to process. One minute, I'm a contractor with calloused hands and dried-out fingernails, reeking of form oil. Then, in the blink of an eye, I'm a holy man!

I'd assumed it would take me three years of seminary and a master's degree to get scrubbed up enough for a clerical robe. But it had only been three weeks since I'd started school and, already, I was in a black robe, headed for the podium.

Nothing could have prepared me for this. I felt like a fraud, but I had no time to explain to the congregation that this was a serious mistake.

As I walked down the aisle for the processional, Jacquie glanced in my direction. Her jaw dropped. If there hadn't been people on either side, she might have fallen out of the pew. That robe had implications for her too. It meant that she had suddenly slipped into the restrictive role of the minister's wife. Neither one of us was ready.

Originally, the black robe was adopted during the Protestant Reformation. It had been a deliberate reaction against the ostentatious clerical garb of the Roman Catholic priesthood. In the eyes of the reformers, Catholic clergy had been corrupted by the enormous wealth that poured into the church coffers, often via highly questionable fund-raising tactics.

The black robe became a symbol that distinguished the wearer from such extortion in the name of God. But it also did something that was subtly corrosive. In an era when priests carried enormous influence and were the celebrities of their day, pastors of the Reformed Tradition donned the black robe as a way of hiding the person. In the act of preaching, the human element was meant to disappear, so that the voice of God could become the sole focus. Though the intent was admirable, it was one small step toward a message that became progressively disembodied.

Pastors became talking heads, separated from anything below the neck. The dividing line was punctuated by the clerical collar. It was a black band that choked out any life, save for the little white square over the throat, the voice of God shining in the darkness. The robe and the collar emphasized that the church was no place for passions of the flesh. It was not the heart that mattered, but the brain.

As the voice of God, the pastor was only partly human. The head and the hands were the only parts visible.

The divine message could not be entrusted to a mere mortal. Mortals have feet of clay, knees that tremble, spleens that need to be vented, spines that are weak. But, most of all, they have—God help us—genitalia.

Not so for pastors.

When I donned that robe for the first time, the weight of those expectations bore down on me. The split between who I knew myself to be and the role I was to play was enormous. If I had been paying attention, it might have been clear that something was terribly wrong.

SKIPPING CHAPEL

The robe was only one challenge. Preaching was another one. When my fall off the roof convinced me to go to seminary, it never occurred to me that I might actually have to speak in public.

I was the kid who always sat in the back of the room. When I did verbalize, it was smothered in self-consciousness. I never asked any questions in class and mostly mumbled when spoken to.

Now, to my utter dismay, I was being asked to come out of my protective shell and verbalize in public…out loud…so that others could hear…so that strangers could critique me!

The first time I preached from the pulpit, it was an exercise in sheer terror. I didn't sleep a wink the night before, spending the whole time in the bathroom vomiting and with diarrhea. I literally prayed to die.

Jerry Seinfeld once remarked, “According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”³² To me, it was no joke.

Though I made it through that first sermon, preaching would continue to be exhausting and traumatic for years to come. I hated it, especially when God saw fit to send this talking head into the pulpit Sunday after Sunday with nothing to say. Nothing! Nada! Zilch!

It didn't help when people told me I was a wonderful preacher. I never could see myself in that role. A storyteller? Maybe. But not a preacher. Despite my best efforts, the heart's passion kept peeking out from under the robe. I should have known it would never work.

Then there was the issue of chapel. Every day I would watch as my classmates trudged dutifully into the sanctuary to hear another sermon and sing a few hymns. I went the first few times, but soon I discovered that the chapel service was a profoundly empty time for me. The preaching was eloquent but devoid of meaning for me. The singing was beautiful but failed to touch my soul. I began to wonder what was wrong with me.

Each day, watching that parade into Miller Chapel, I would vow, “Tomorrow I'll go.” Tomorrow would come and the guilt would rush over me. After all, good pastors go to church. But I couldn't do it. Something was missing. Terribly so.

A NEW REFORMATION?

Occasionally, I would talk with some of my closest friends about the need for a new reformation. When I read the Bible, there was, at its very core, the transcendent experience.

From Abraham to Moses, from Elijah and Elisha to Jesus, from the Apostles to Paul—every one of them found the beginning of their relationship with God in the unexplainable event. It was the shattering encounter with the divine that had not only shaped who they were and what their mission was, but had also radically altered the community in which they lived.

Yet, the generations that followed had become progressively more removed from the firsthand encounter with God. Lacking the experience of the personal vision, those who followed sought to capture its power and essence in ritual, law, custom, and language.

These elements eventually displaced the divine encounter as the hallmarks of the faith. What ensued became a matter of faith, to be taught and enforced.

Gradually, persistently, that mystical dimension was obliterated from common thinking. Because it was feared and misunderstood, it became an object of ridicule. All that remained were its echoes. Gone were the power and majesty of the first encounter.

For me, it was this personal encounter that held the key for everything. Yet, when I would speak of a new reformation that could emphasize the mystical journey, even my friends would look at me blankly.

Perhaps they hadn't had an encounter that could open such sweeping vistas. Or, perhaps, their encounter had been crushed by our society and had withered in the face of unceasing skepticism.

They couldn't make the connection that, to me, was so obvious: if it weren't for the mystical encounter, we would have no tradition to study at all! There would be no pastors, no churches, no governance, no Bible.

That mystical encounter was the very thing that had sent me to seminary. It began to seem like a cruel joke that seminary was the last place I could find it.

For the most part, I had understood my encounter with the mystical world as little more than a sign, an answer to my question, “Should I or should I not become a pastor?”

But the experience of falling into that other dimension had left a legacy that stayed with me long after my question had been answered. Even though I adjusted to wearing the robe, and even to preaching, I never adjusted to the loss of the kingdom of heaven.

SEEING Is BELIEVING

In the Gospel according to John, the disciples, too, were forced to deal with the loss of the kingdom of heaven when Jesus died. For them, it was Jesus who carried all the hopes and dreams for a new world. When his lifeless body was laid in the tomb, everything came crashing down.

But then, miraculously, some of the disciples began reporting that they had seen Jesus alive, even after his crucifixion.

For Thomas, this was shattering news. He hadn't been present during the first reappearances of Jesus. Locked in the ravages of grief, he had gone off on his own to deal with it the best way he knew.

It wasn't comforting when tales of Jesus’ survival of death came to him on the excited lips of his fellow disciples. He wasn't about to be swept up in misguided exuberance again, only to be crushed by disillusionment. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” as the old saying goes.

There is seldom any way to describe the devastation that comes with the loss of a loved one. The stages can be described academically, but such words have no power to capture the rage and anguish that can come over us.

The most honest portrayal of grief I have seen came from the hand of C. S. Lewis, while he attempted to deal with the loss of his beloved wife, Joy:

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.³³

Thomas knew the bitter sound of that silence. He had believed too much in something that turned out to be a mirage. His was not only the grief of losing a loved one; it was the unbearable rupture of hope for the future. Swearing that he would never allow himself to be crushed that way again, he retreated into an efficient pragmatism. It was the only solace he could find.

From then on, Thomas would trust only the evidence of his five senses. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”³⁴ Who can blame him? To come close to the kingdom, and then to lose it, is to mistrust all that has gone before. “Perhaps it wasn't so after all. Maybe it was just my imagination,” we tell ourselves. We make vows to protect ourselves in the aftermath of disappointment:

“I'll never let my heart be broken like that again!”

“It'll be a cold day in hell before I do business with them!”

“I'll never be poor again!”

In the same way, Thomas swore that he would never again be swept up in the hysteria of others. But when Jesus appeared to him, all of his vows were undone. Despite Jesus’ invitation to touch the hands and to explore the wound in his side, Thomas refused. There was no need.

Jesus replied with words that have become famous, yet tragically misunderstood: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”³⁵

THE BEGINNING OF DOCTRINE

After the first generation of followers died away, the power of primary experience became muted. Lacking the impact of direct encounter, these later adherents were faced with carrying on a tradition through the memorized stories of their predecessors.

Eventually, these oral tales were elevated to the role of holy scripture. Once cast in the stone of sacred writing, a gulf was placed between the recorded experiences of those first disciples and the possibilities for ordinary people.

Gradually, the church looked to the scriptures as the vehicle by which God spoke. The hope that one could personally touch transcendent realms faded. Because the kingdom of heaven no longer was possible in the present, it became an afterlife reward for good behavior.

In the silence of that loss, the church seized on Jesus’ reply to Thomas to explain that, even though we can't see the kingdom, we can still find blessing in our belief. Eventually belief came to mean belie, a set of doctrines and creeds that helped to distinguish the true church from imposters.

There was right belief and wrong belief Priestly authorities made that determination. They did all the thinking. They paved the way. They alone maintained the elusive connection to the voice of God. The laity only needed to obey.

After a while, no one even wondered if seeing beyond the ordinary world was possible. The five senses would suffice. Seeing was disconnected from believing.

It was dogma that prevented error. If questions arose, it was the priest who held all the answers. But, it was best not to question in the first place. After all, “Blessed are those who do not see, and yet believe.”

A PORTABLE PRESENCE

But it was not belief in doctrine that Jesus was speaking of. There was no Christian dogma in his day. There was only Jesus pointing to—and embodying—the kingdom of heaven.

That was the challenge. If Jesus were to embody the kingdom in the present, could it be seen apart from him? Once he was dead and gone, could there be any divine connection still available to workaday, bill-paying, car-pooling, muddling-through-life slackers like you and me? Jesus’ words to Thomas were aimed at precisely that issue: “Blessed are those who do not see, and yet believe.”

Not seeing seems to be shared by the vast majority of people. The evidence of our senses testifies constantly to the absence of anything beyond physical reality. Even if we do catch a glimpse of the kingdom, it most often remains maddeningly elusive thereafter.

Eventually, it fades from sight, leaving us with a deadening silence. That silence can last for years, even decades.

In the meantime, we're left on our own to search desperately for it. In retrospect, we sometimes can see the blessing of the search. But while we're in the midst of the silence, we know only the bitterness and grief of an inconsolable loss.

This is as it must be. If the vision didn't fade, we would be tempted to identify the kingdom with the package in which it came.

Moses, for instance, could have mistaken the burning bush itself for the divine presence. Rather than returning to Egypt to free his people, he could have built a shrine around the bush and charged an entry fee for others to come and see. Or, he might have uprooted it, put it in a glass case, and taken it on tour.

The kingdom would then become a commodity, rather than a way of life. Moses's vision would have depended on the bush. If the bush had died, the vision would have disappeared with it.

THE CLOUD OF UNSEEING

To make room for the unpredictable nature of the mystical realm, we must inevitably move through a period of losing contact with the world that lies beyond the five senses. It is a time of unseeing, when the interaction we once took for granted fades from our perception. This loss eventually breaks the encrusted mold of our expectations. It disrupts our naming, our use of nouns, and the judgments that inevitably accompany them.

Historically, this experience of losing touch with the life-giving mystical realm has been known as the dark night of the soul. It seems to be a rite of passage.

Knowing this doesn't make it any easier. To behold the priceless pearl, and then become blind to it, creates such desperation that one is tempted to give up the search entirely. Getting lost in the cares of mundane life can become all the more attractive to us. At least, then, we can be distracted from the pain of a lost glory.

In mentioning those who believe without seeing, Jesus was not lobbying for allegiance to future church doctrine. His words were meant to inspire faith in the kingdom of heaven itself, even in those inevitable times when it was invisible. “Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there,” he seemed to be implying.

There is blessing, even in the search, no matter how hopeless and desperate that search may seem to be, no matter how it can be smothered under clerical garb. The pearl can still be found in the most unlikely places.

But, in order to find it again, we must first understand how it was lost. For that, we might return once again to the biblical narrative and look at it with fresh eyes.