So you are thinking about ministry. I really don't know what to say, or rather, I know too much. I am wrestling with 50 years in ministry this summer.

This is a difficult time to be entering ministry. Actually, there were much more difficult times than this to be a minister, like when having to ride horseback among mosquitoes and wild beasts or when stoning preachers in the streets was a popular sport. But we like to think that these are difficult times. There is no money in it, and little prestige. It looks like a dying profession. It includes lots of pain. You share the suffering of God for the people and for the world and you share the sufferings of the people.

Ministry is and always was very difficult and strenuous work. Of course, you can make ministry easy. Lots do. You can spend all your time pleasing people. Lots do. Saul did. You can preoccupy yourself with the endless reorganization of the church courts, exhausting yourself in the illusions of left and right wing battles. Lots do. However, the church courts are like Paul's sense of the law: necessary for help and order, but limited so that the Spirit, who does not generally attend Presbytery, can find folks to respond to the breathing of God in the world.

We have let the churches bury themselves in banal, unimportant matters. Generally, the death of clergy and many churches is the result of boredom. We just have little joy, or for that matter not much hope for the world. We are bereft of hope. We bake pies and do beef suppers, which is good fellowship, and we argue about the hymns and music in church, but if you want to put your life to something that takes courage, look carefully at those clergy and congregations who have found alternatives to serving their buildings and place.

Maurice Boyd, a popular preacher in the United Church at one time, loved to tell a story about an old Scotsman who approached a newly appointed minister to his church and said, with a wry grin, "You are my servant, you know." "Yes," said the minister, "but you are not my Master". Maurice was not beloved by everyone. The language is out of date. Some folks abused it. But the message is worth keeping.

When you go into ministry, you serve the folks all right, but the One whose ministry you do, is not theirs or yours. There is only one ministry and that is the ministry of Jesus Christ. If you are called to share in that, it is the Living Christ from whom you will get your directions and for whom you will work. There is a price on that. Sometimes a personal price! Jesus Christ is living and vitally present in the world and some times in the church. It is in following Him that we find our ministry.

Like Jesus, we stand before God on behalf of the people. We pray for the people, plead for them, cajole God and sometimes try to make a deal like Abraham did, that the people will live mightily and faithfully and be relieved of their pain and suffering. Above all we plead for their forgiveness and our own. We may even, like Job, protest what appears sometimes to be abusiveness on God's part.

Your whole life is spent in learning more about Jesus Christ, about how He has worked and is working in the lives of people in the world church and in history. Lots of us modern folks think we are the most enlightened and reasonable people that ever lived and therefore should shun the hard thinking of past generations, their theological insights, sacrifices and what emerged as the dogma (gifts) of the church. We are too smart for all that. We want what we experience, feel, to rule and guide us. Usually, that is just the result of what we ate that we are feeling.

The truth is we have a lot to learn. I hope that whether you go into ministry or not you will seek to understand the many faces of Jesus Christ more deeply. We never hold his Spirit once and for all. You cannot possess the Spirit, or the Truth. God is free and is free from all of us as well as free for us. God holds freedom to be very precious and will not be contained by anyone or in any place.

That is the joy of ministry. It is being called to share in the freedom of God for the world. A love so full and worthy of trust that it calls us to set aside our own egos and agenda and to live in surprising ways in the world. No one contains God, no religion owns God. God is beyond religion, even ours. But God is also in the religious stuff of humanity, full tilt, fully present in the church and beyond it.

Jacques Ellul, the French prophet for these times, said that one of the reasons we drift into private spirituality and institutional reform, is that we "forget the constant new power of the Gospel, God being eternal is forever young!" God, forever young, God forever free! And God is forever loving this creation and its critters! Us too. So to share that Love, be a part of that youthful Spirit, and God's freedom is a grand calling. There is no greater privilege.

You don't do this only with private prayer and devotion, as important as that is. You have to study. You have the privilege of being free to study and think and that means being in conversation with scholars and thinkers of every culture to whom Jesus has come. Some preachers say they have no time to study. What nonsense. Imagine what their people get on Sunday. Whatever they read in People magazine in the doctor's office, I guess.

Study the Japanese theologians, the Koreans and Taiwanese. Study Latin Americans and the South Americans. Taste the Aboriginal experience of the Creator and listen to those in the native communities who bear the name of Christ thankfully as well as the traditions. What face of Jesus do they reflect? Keep an ear open to the feminists and to the Historical Jesus Seminar, but balance that with the faith of Ugandan refugees and the homeless who have no bread and only poisoned water. What have they to say about who Jesus

Christ has been for them? Don't try to fix everything. Listen to their faith.

You are essentially called to know Jesus Christ, to know Him with others, your neighbours and your kinsmen. I spent some years listening to people with disabilities talk about the intrusion of Jesus Christ in their lives. They revealed my blindness, deafness and the broken body of spiritual things. Listen to foreign people, read their books and reflect on their experience of Jesus Christ. Don't be afraid to study and to let Jesus Christ change in your heart and mind.

Listen to Christ in Scripture. Along with knowing Jesus Christ and being claimed over and over again by him during these years, the greatest gift of ministry is to be called to study the Scriptures of Israel and of the Church. The word of God is never fixed and is never the possession of any segment of the church. It is a living Word and is vital to life. Read the rabbis and the preachers who went before you.

Let the Word of God attack you, intrude, challenge and confront you. Study the parts that offend you the most. It will be a wonderful walk. Jesus said, "If you make my word your home, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free."

I will pray for you.