Ministry, Kenotic Theology and the Interruption of Christ

My internship is a month underway and the tidal wave of ministry is washing over me already. I am not overwhelmed (at least not yet!), but I am reminded of the gravity and intensity of this vocation. It is truly a “calling.” Parish ministry is not just sermon preparation and community “high-fiving.” Rather, ministry is about challenging and comforting, encouraging and directing, paying attention to details and keeping the “big-picture” in mind. It comes with peculiar challenges, including both existential crises and mundane worries. And it comes with spectacular affirmation.

The complexities and ambiguities of ministry have the potential to overwhelm (thus, my metaphor “tidal wave,” above), but they can also be cleansing (in the fire-hose “blasting” kind of way—thus, my choice of “cleansing,” above). Ministry exists in this unique tension between threat and growth, dissolution and fulfillment.

To switch metaphors, the seriousness and weight of ministry is nothing short of an “interruption” (maybe, to combine metaphors, the “interruption” of a tidal wave?). But I mean this term in a more profound and less common sense; the sense without the negative connotation of “distracting me from what I need to get done.” Instead, I mean ministry-as-interruption to be an “eruption” that occurs “into” the normal course of life.

Eruptions are powerful and transformative. Think volcanoes here. They suddenly explode with tremendous internal pressure, sending voluminous ash and lava into the air. The horizon is altered, the landscape reformed. This is eruption.

But ministry-as-interruption is not simply a one-time cataclysmic rupture in the distance. Unlike most volcanic eruptions, ministry-as-interruption happens here, now, and everywhere (more like the volcano from the movie “Volcano”). It is the eruption into our normal course of life that forever changes the shape and meaning of that life, precisely because we didn't expect it. Unlike carefully protected observers, ministers are faced with interruption. And interruptions are dangerous.

When we are interrupted we are altered. Sometimes our pace is slowed (the more common sense of “interruption”), and sometimes our direction is shifted. Ministry-as-interruption may very well slow our pace, but often it is because our direction has (and needed to be!) shifted. Ministry-as-interruption is a place of unsettling re-direction.

Fortunately, I take comfort (and, thus, resist being overwhelmed) in the Kenotic Christ who interrupted our world. This is the self-emptying (Greek: kenosis) Christ who changed how we think of God, how we see ourselves, and how we live in our world. This is the direction-changing Christ who happened upon us, happens upon us, and will happen upon us. And this is true, I think, whether we see Christ-the-interruption historically or personally. Because I serve a Christ of interruption, I can only expect to be interrupted. But this, I maintain, is a good thing, even if it is a dangerous thing.

So may the tidal wave of ministry blast me with its force, so that I might be washed by its life-changing re-direction as I serve out Christ-the-interruption through his ministry-as-interruption. May interruptions lead me forward, even if forward is not always the same path.