The nature of the office. . .

In that old Otto Preminger movie The Cardinal, there is a great line in which the bishop says to the priest: "the priesthood is not something you can put on and take off like the cassock you wear..."  The line has hung over me for some time.  Although the movie line is about the turmoil within a priest who struggles to exercise the hard side side of the ministry, it has application for Lutheran pastors as well.  The priest insists it was different when it was theory and not practice, when people and their spiritual lives were not hanging in the balance.  A conflict between what he wanted to do and what he had to do as a priest ended up leaving him wounded and believing.  So, though he had been trained and ordained, the yoke of the priesthood was a burden that was leaving him empty inside.  He begs to be released from his ministry in order to find himself.

Every Lutheran pastor should find some sympathy for this situation.  The ministry is easy to fulfill in theory but in practice it is hard.  To stay in one place for decades, learning the stories of your people, walking with them through days of sorrow and pain and tragedy as well as moments of joy and happiness -- this is hard to do and it is hard to give up.  It is, as they say, a conundrum.  The weekly rhythm of Sunday with its preaching and teaching and Divine Service are not simply clothing you put on but who you are.  The gift of this ministry and its burdens become so deeply ingrained within you and your life that it is hard to contemplate life without them.  I am not speaking here of some kind of indelible character but of the office itself.  Pastors do not stop being pastors when they go home for supper or while they sleep.  How many meals and nights are interrupted by the calls from those within the parish who need and want and rightly expect God's man to be with them in the darkest moments and with them in their worst fears.  And there you go.  It is instinct after a while.  You just go.

To be honest, the pastor's family knows this but does not like it.  How can they?  The interrupted or cancelled vacations and days off and the family events which revolve not around wife and children but the Church Year and the parish schedule may be small gifts and great burdens which they bear because they love the man that the folks in the pews call "pastor."  They know that you cannot take off or put on this ministry like you do the clerical collar or vestments you wear.  They respect you for it but they also resent the part of the man they call husband and father who must be shared with those who call him pastor.  We all know this.  It is no secret.  No matter how long you live beyond the day you retire, you cannot make up for what they have sacrificed.  It is a debt which cannot be repaid and one which allows the pastor to fulfill his vocation -- indeed, without it he could not be who he is or do what he has been called to do.

While we all know that it is wrongheaded to presume that to serve the Lord in His Church must come with the additional sacrifice of giving up a wife and a family.  Even Rome calls this a discipline and not a doctrine.  At the same time, every pastor with a wife and children knows it might be easier if you could  fulfill your calling without your family having to bear its cost.  Thankfully, celibacy is not a Lutheran discipline.  I have know the love and support of my wife and my kids throughout my service.  My children know only sharing their father with the Church and my wife knows only sharing her husband with the Church.  From time to time that sharing has been less than happy yet they have made this possible for me and I am deeply grateful.  From time to time, it needs to be said.  Thank you.  Thank you to those who have born more than their share of the cost of this vocation and who did it graciously.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.