My Retrospective Letter 2011
Middle
The year of 2011 was my middle year. It stood between the past and the future. In the midst of it, it seemed long. Once it passed, it was like a passing shadow. That is how the Psalmist looks at human life (Ps. 144:4). It is uneasy to be in the middle. You are not certain about a lot of things. All you can do is to recall the past and hope for the best in the future. In the middle, you wander on and off in a lot of ways. You doubt; you trust; you are downcast one day; you are excited the other. On one hand, you say to yourself, “Wandering is part of life. The promised land follows after exile.” On the other, an echo resounds in your head, “You are just lost. You are wasting your life.”
Lauren F. Winner writes:
Middle rarely denotes something good. Middle school—when girls turn mean, and all kids turn miserable—is that “wasteland of our primary and secondary landscape,” the “crack” between grammar school and high school. And middles are often defined by what they are not: the space, the years in between that which is no longer what came before and that which is not yet what will come later. In the middle of nowhere, there is only despair. In the middle of somewhere, there is hope. Christians sojourn in between: the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His death indicates the hiddenness and absence of God; His resurrection, the power and presence of God. Christ Himself experienced His darkest moment on Friday; however, He was exalted on high on Sunday. In between, He was buried in the ground. Life in the middle is not aimless and pointless. If there are no death and burial, there is no resurrection. Life in the middle is the process. It is part of life. If middle is in between the beginning and the end, middle has to be there. No middle; no end.
On 01/02/2011, I wrote on my journal:
A pastor preached on Jeremiah 31:7-14 today. The sermon topic is Watered Garden. Her style of preaching was very poetic. And she put on a smile on her face most of the time. As a preacher, she gave you comfort. She brought peace. I was surprised that her sermon was only twenty minutes in length in such a traditional church. I thought the sermon was going to be at least forty minutes. After reading the text, she started off with a lot of questions and she caught my attention. I said to myself, “This is a good start. I should have done it.” She then lost me here and there. She spoke eloquently like a poet; however, she did not appeal to me. When I listened to a sermon, I expected to be challenged and confronted by the Word of God through the speaker. But after the service, I felt “comfortable.” I remember a British preacher once said, “If the congregation is too comfortable, make them uncomfortable. If they are too uncomfortable, comfort them.” Perhaps, in this transitional period of mine, I don’t need to be challenged too much. She did say one thing that encouraged me in the middle of the sermon, “Out of exile, a new home.”
Out of exile, there is a new home, which is somewhere only faith and hope can lead me to. Sunday follows after Saturday. It is common sense. But it requires a leap of faith.
Pastoral Distance
The middle period invited me to think about my role as a pastor. I remember I read Henri J. M. Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son last year. Based on Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, he discussed the themes of homecoming, exile, anger, loneliness, affirmation, and reconciliation. What Nouwen struck me the most is that when the Father embraces the son, in the open space, with intimacy, compassion, and acceptance, the four other figures stand and stare from a distance, of course, including the elder brother. None of them are participants and they are not emotionally involved. They can only analyze what intimacy, forgiveness, or acceptance is like; however, they cannot experience it. They are not participants, but mere observers. Nouwen writes:
Their way of looking leaves you wondering how they think or feel about what they are watching. These bystanders, or observers, allow for all sorts of interpretations. As I reflect on my own journey, I become more and more aware of how long I have played the role of observer. For years I had instructed students on the different aspects of the spiritual life, trying to help them see the importance of living it. But had I, myself, really ever dared to step into the center, kneel down, and let myself be held by a forgiving God? How often we, as pastors, merely observe people getting saved, but we are unwilling to be saved. How often we tell people to forget and forgive, but we don’t even bother wresting with our grudges. How often we exhort people to grow toward maturity in Christ, but we don’t grow at all. As a pastor, sharing from an insider’s perspective, I can say that there is a high possibility that pastors might be usually the ones who are the most furthest away from the kingdom of God, just like the elder brother who represents the Pharisees in Luke 15. The elder son has been in the house of the Father, but he has failed to honor his own sonship and missed the presence of the Father.
The name “Pharisee” meant “separated.” The Pharisees considered themselves as “the separated ones.” They separated themselves from the evil age and for God. They had a privilege to be called the people of God. However, from time to time, they never came to the center but stood on the side to observe with a sense of self-righteousness. When you are often on the side, you are separated from God. I think that it is easy for pastors to create such a pastoral distance from God. We pastors watch brothers and sisters to get involved in the open space. We just stand on the sideline most of the time. It is one thing that we are afraid of being embraced in the middle; it is totally another thing that we don’t sense that we are desperate in need of God’s presence ourselves. Many pastors live out their pastoral vocation like that: mere observers, not participants. This middle year gave me a space to turn away and learn to become an active participant.
Playfulness
Last year, I played basketball on a regular basis. It became my routine. I went to play ball almost every day. The older I am, the harder it is for me to enjoy playing. In the adult world, it seems that there is no place for play. For adults, playing carries a sense of wastefulness. We have too many responsibilities to handle and we are too preoccupied by so many things in life. We have no time to play; only those who have nothing to do or are immature want to play. Playing does not belong to the adult world, only to children.
Christian maturity involves a sense of playfulness. When Evelyn E. Whitehead and James D. Whitehead discuss adult Christian maturing, they focus on the importance of turning and becoming children throughout the entire life. They call it—the survival of the child.
In adult play we salute the child in us, giving spontaneity and delight a place in our lives again. The responsibilities and duties of adult life can easily banish the child in us, and we feel the effects of this loss. In experiences of play and in new modes of adult dependence, we allow the child to survive and to contribute to our adult lives. Children delight in playing; they discover new things in playing; they explore different possibilities in playing. Most importantly, they enjoy themselves in playing; they enjoy in playing itself.
For me, it is a blessing to regain a sense of playfulness in life. “There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest…” (Eccl. 3:1-8) There is a time to play in the adult life. A sign of Christian maturity is to be able to enjoy playing, which allows us to taste the goodness of God in life. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8). One of the ways to taste and see His goodness is through playing. It is an adult’s task to constantly awake the child within.
Miss
Someone asked Eugene Peterson a question after he resigned from a church where he was a pastor for almost thirty years, “What will you miss most about not being a pastor?” He answered:
The intimacy, being a part of everyone’s story and having them be part of ours. That daily blending of ordinary and salvation life, the conversations that so often develop into prayers. This incredible company of friends following Jesus. Creating forms of worship and hospitality that unobtrusively subvert the secularity and individualism of the culture.
