THE PARABLE OF THE SEMINARY ROOMMATES

It was a sleepy afternoon in May when John Paul made his way across the green at Sunbury Seminary to his class in Homiletics. It was a great day. The future was bright. Soon he would be graduating. He felt reasonably well prepared for the challenges before him. He had studied everything from church history to pastoral counseling, and from the psychology of mysticism to phenomenological theology. He was near the top of his class, and his professors were reassuring that he would be successful as a clergyman. He seemed to have no doubts about his calling as he contemplated his ordination and induction into the ministry.

Homiletics was one of those required courses that held no particular interest to him. True, he was learning about sermon structure, and he was getting good experience in delivering sermons and hearing his classmates do so, but it all appeared a bit artificial. He longed for the time when he would have his own church with real audiences. But today’s class might not be as boring, for along with the dry lecture from the lethargic professor, there was to be a practice sermon by his own roommate, Greg Allison.

Prof. Huffines was to talk about Fosdick, which meant that he was moving into the contemporaries in his lectures on preaching. He had given them everybody from Savonarola and Luther to Knox and Calvin and from Talmadge and Spurgeon to Moody and Jowett. John, along with roommate Greg, had been waiting all semester for the twentieth century. Fosdick was modern. At least he didn’t preach on stale subjects like “The Methods and Fruits of Justification” and “Eternal Atonement.” His topics savor with modernity: “On Catching the Wrong Bus”, “Science Demands Religion”, and “On Being Only a Drop in the Bucket”. Even old Prof Huffines ought to look good lecturing on Fosdick.

John was impressed with Prof. Huffines’ comments about Fosdick’s theory of preaching. “Harry Emerson Fosdick believed that a sermon is direct personal address, individual consultation on a group scale, intended to achieve results,” said Huffines. “A sermon should creatively get things done, then and there, in the minds and lives of the audience; it should be a convincing appeal to a listening jury for decision.”

John’s mind began to drift, he wondered what kind of a preacher he would make, whether his sermons would be anything like what Fosdick says they should be. He had delivered only four sermons: one in his Homiletics class, two as a supply pastor at rural churches, and one to his home congregation on youth Sunday. He doubted if he had been “creative” like Fosdick says, or if he ever could be. True, he had shared his faith in Christ with many others, and since high school days he had witnessed for his Lord on the athletic field and in the classroom. But these sermons . . . And becoming a clergyman . . . It was all rather’ confusing. It seemed that he might always be just a layman.

A layman? Fosdick was saying something about laymen. The professor had his attention once more, for he was telling of Fosdick’s view of how Christ was preached by the early church.

“In recovering Christianity as a layman’s religion we are getting back to the place where Christianity started,” Huffines said, reading from Fosdick.

“Neither Jesus nor any of His disciples were members of the priesthood or the clergy. They were laymen, all of them. The Master, a layman Himself, talked nothing but layman’s language.”

Jesus was really a layman, John repeated to himself. Here we sit, studying to be clergymen, something Jesus never was. And Jesus talked in layman’s language, but here we are learning another language. It all seems so strange . . .

Prof. Huffines continued to read from Fosdick:

“Moreover, early Christianity was spread across the Roman Empire, not by clergymen, but by laymen who translated the gospel into terms of daily life.”

Fosdick’s words reminded John of the doubts he had earlier in life about being “called of God” to be a minister. Back in high school he had shown such dedication to things spiritual that his parents and friends at church kept insisting that he should enter the ministry. He really wanted to be a lawyer, a gentleman of the bar. Since reading about Clarence Darrow in Attorney for the Damned, he had had his heart set on helping people in trouble. He was especially touched by the case of a school chum’s mother who was left a widow when her husband, a policeman, was killed in an effort to prevent a burglary while off duty, but was denied his insurance because of a technicality buried amidst the fine print in the policy. John burned with indignation as he saw her children struggle to get through school. He had visions of himself in a courtroom correcting this grave injustice. Surely this was his calling, if indeed God calls men to particular fields of endeavor.

But due to his love for the Bible and his leadership in youth work at the First Church, it seemed to be taken for granted by everyone that he would become a minister. His pastor spoke to him often of good old Sunbury Seminary, and the good sisters would judge the girls he dared to date in terms of what kind of a minister’s wife they would make. Even when he spoke to the congregation on Youth Sunday, pointing to the evils in society that can be corrected only by responsible Christian service in the courts of justice, the people praised him lavishly and spoke fondly of the time when he would enter the ministry and have a pulpit of his own.

Robert Paul, a business man of moderate success and a pillar in the family’s church, seemed never to realize his son’s desire to be a lawyer. He would sometimes caution John about the financial sacrifices involved in being a minister, but he was pleased with the direction his son’s life was taking, and he revealed a subdued pride when telling people he had a son in seminary. To be sure, it enhanced his prestige with the First Church.

Mrs. Paul would surely have been a minister had she been a man, for she was deeply religious and had a sense of mission in all that she did. She was either the president or secretary of a half dozen clubs around town, and almost every organization at First Church depended on her for its existence. And everyone knew that while Mr. Paul was a able business man his church leadership found its strength in his wife. But she was a kind and gentle woman, solicitous to her husband and attentive to her children. She was well aware of John’s interest in becoming a lawyer, and talked with him about it as a good mother should, but she never made any effort to conceal her suspicions about the character of men who succeed at the bar. Besides, her son was a natural for the ministry, and it was evident that he was called of God to be a clergyman.

The professor was through talking about Fosdick and it was about time for Greg Allison to give his sermon to the class. But John was more pensive than usual. Fosdick’s point about it being laymen rather than clergymen who carried the gospel to the lost world gripped his mind like a vice. Of course he wanted to be a minister, even though his dreams of a legal profession had not grown dim during his years in college and seminary. He would soon have a church of his own, and someday perhaps a large and influential one. That would please his mother. He was sure now that this is what he wanted, for how can one serve God better than being a minister.

Still Fosdick’s words set off a round of questions. If I were now in law school instead of seminary would I not be preparing for the ministry? Is not the Christian lawyer a minister too? Is the distinction between clergy and laity a valid one? If it was the laity that first carried the message of Christ to the world, as Fosdick says, then what is role of the clergy?

But the point that disturbed John most of all was that the primitive church had no professional clergy, and yet it made an effective witness for Christ throughout the empire. The modern church not only has a sumptuous clerical system, but a highly structured parochial school system to support it, and yet its influence in the world is nil and its witness for Christ is weak.

Fosdick had spoken of “recovering Christianity as a layman’s religion,” and John supposed that something like this must be the answer. It is a renewal of the laity that is needed, John was thinking. If the laity would assume its responsibility, then the work of the clergy would be effective. The clergy must arouse the laymen and thus restore the church’s spiritual vitality, he was saying to himself, as if to assign himself such a task.

But what was it really that motivated the laity of the primitive church?, he went on to question himself, somewhat uncomfortably. Was it the clergy that aroused them? But they had no clergy, and yet they witnessed for Christ everywhere.

John Paul was momentarily confused by the array of questions he was heaping upon himself. It all seemed strange just then—seminaries, sermons, pulpits, theology, homiletics, church edifices— all this in the name of the penniless carpenter who simply talked to people about the kingdom of God. But this is the twentieth century. We can’t live in the past. Things have to be different today. Besides, Greg has begun his sermon and I must listen to him and stop this foolish thinking, he said to himself, as if to chide.

Greg was the only Pennsylvanian among the students at Sunbury, but he was more recently from New York’s eastside where his family had moved following his father’s death. His mother had moved the children to New York from a Pennsylvania farm so that she might accept an offer from a doctor friend to work in a hospital. They were from a long line of Friends, so Greg was the only Quaker at the seminary as well as the only Pennsylvanian. He was indeed the only Quaker that John Paul knew anywhere.

Yet there was some question as to whether Greg should be considered a Quaker any longer for when he enrolled in the seminary he wrote “Undecided” in the space that asked for denominational preference. He shared this distinctive classification with only one other student, a lad from Tennessee who had rebelled against his parochial background and was in search of a more liberal church in which to minister.

But Greg’s indecision was not in rebellion to his family’s church, but due to the fact that there was hardly a place for clergymen among the Quakers. His father had died after a long. painful illness, during which he showed such a quiet courage that Greg was inspired to give his life to God and to build the hope and faith into people’s lives that he saw in his father. It was while he was away in college that he had his first contact with ministerial students, and this association persuaded him that the professional ministry was the most effective way for him to serve God, despite the non-clerical influences of his Quaker background.

Greg had told John about the reaction of his mother to his decision to enter the ministry. “Your father was one of God’s ministers,” she said to Greg, “even while he was a farmer. At our meetings he read the Word and gave testimonials, and he shared his faith in Christ with others. He visited the sick, ministered to the poor, and buried the dead.” Then she added: “That is what we all did, as you know, at our little meeting. We were all ministers. Is this not what all Christians are? If all God’s children would but serve each other and minister to the needs of others, there would be no need for…

Greg recalled how she caught herself lest she discourage him in what he had his heart set upon. But he remembered a letter she wrote him while he was still in college, contemplating seminary: “My dear son, if you become a clergyman will you not be working for a church instead of for yourself and God? Your father was always a free man, a man of the soil and a man of the Spirit. So with your Uncle Frank, who was a minister of Christ by being a carpenter. Never was there a man who served God more faithfully than he, but always he made his own living. Greg, you mustn’t get mixed up with all these church institutions. You’ll be serving them, and for money, rather than God. Now with a college education you could be a teacher or a lawyer or something.”

But she had said no more about her misgivings, not even the first word since Greg had entered seminary three years ago. Greg had returned to New York in the summers to serve as supply minister for a church on Long Island, and his mother came frequently to hear him preach, and it gave him opportunity to visit her often in New York’s eastside.

It was on these trips into the inner-city that Greg was introduced to a Christian ministry that he hardly knew existed. His mother told him of a Quaker group that was working within the worst section of a Negro ghetto. He found them exterminating rats, babysitting for working mothers forsaken by their husbands, counseling with prostitutes, treating dope addicts, sobering up the drunks, and feeding hungry kids deserted by their parents.

Greg became acquainted with other groups working in New York’s slums, some of whom were highly talented professional people. Teachers, dentists, physicians, engineers, business people, and college students were giving of their time and money to save humanity from hunger, poverty, ignorance, disease, and crime. He was especially impressed by the work of a young lawyer, who, upon leaving law school, had gone to Harlem to begin his practice, dedicated to the task of defending poor, ignorant Negroes against the many injustices they were forced to endure, especially from unscrupulous landlords and city officials. His church was helping him so that he could do this without charge.

It disturbed Greg that all these people were only on the fringe of the church. Not only was the church giving but little of its financial resources to such efforts, but it was, as he himself, barely aware of what was going on, being so involved with its own housekeeping. These people were the down and outs that Jesus came to save, the “common people” that heard him gladly. They were a stormy sea of suffering humanity ready to be calmed by the balm of Christian love. Yet the church yea, even the clergy had ignored them.

It made Greg all too conscious of the easy pulpit and the comfortable pew at his church in suburbia. The summers were easy for him, standing behind his sacred desk in an air-conditioned sanctuary, uttering his theological platitudes to a people who understood little and cared less. In his ministry there were no jails, or blood, or vomit, or whores, or hoodlums, or police raids, or street fights. There were sermons, and tea, and office hours, and routine pastoral calls, and such tripe as “That was a lovely sermon; you’re going to make such a wonderful minister!” It was a world untouched by human agony and misery.

But Greg was a quiet, unassuming young man, and those closest to him at the seminary knew little about what he believed. Even John was unaware of what he planned to say in his sermon, but he was sure that Greg would speak from his heart, as all the seminarians were encouraged to do.

As Greg stood before the homiletics class he left no impression that he was merely practicing or fulfilling an assignment for the sake of a grade. His eyes revealed a quiet anxiety and there was urgency in his voice as he announced the subject of his sermon. It was already apparent that he was really going to say something and not just deliver a properly-structured sermon.

The Prostitution of the Ministry was his subject, and his text was the words of Jesus: “The Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister.” He observed that all sacred things can be and are prostituted: art, literature, medicine, civil authority, sex, or one’s talents. But the most vicious form of prostitution of all was in religion, and it was this grievous sin that Jesus could not tolerate, for he showed forbearance to those who were tragically involved in prostituting their sex while condemning those who trafficked with men’s souls.

Greg noted that Prof. Huffines shifted uneasily in his chair. Jesus came to minister, to serve— not to be ministered to, while His church and its clergy are content to use His gospel for its own comforts. The church is not a haven of mercy, giving itself to the alleviation of human misery; it is a conglomerate institution calculated to perpetuate themselves and to safeguard its own interests. While Jesus came to save the world and thus make men whole, the clergy has been content to leave mankind fragmented while preserving the wholeness of its own system.

Greg was careful to recognize that many clergyman are innocently trapped in the system that prostitutes the ministry. In seminary he is trained to follow a party line, and he is soon to learn that he must preserve the system that is committed to preserving him. He dare not disturb the status quo even if the deepest longings of his soul dictate it. He must drink the bitter cup that places expediency before service. He must resign himself to minister to those who pay him rather than to those who need him. He must forger what it means to be a free man. He must leave the delinquents, the deprived, and the poor (and the blood, and guts and tears) for those to serve who have not entered the ministry!

John could hardly believe his eyes and ears. Greg was giving expression to John’s own doubts in words that he never expected to hear at Sunbury Seminary. But John moved to the edge of his chair and was completely absorbed as Greg told of the work of the Christian lawyer in the ghettoes of Harlem.

It is not a matter of eliminating the clergy, Greg said, “but of doing away with the laity, for all of us are God’s clergy.” He insisted that Christians from all walks of life, like that Harlem lawyer, must realize that their mission in life is to minister to the needs of humanity. Whatever our vocation be we must use it to make men whole as Jesus made men whole. It is not a renewal of the laity that is needed, but a renewal of the church itself by a recovery of its mission of ministry, he urged. And he concluded with the unfinished words of his godly mother: “If all God’s children would but serve each other and minister to the needs of others, there would be no need for a professional clergy,”

Greg Allison graduated from Sunbury that summer, but he was not soon forgotten by the seminary, especially by Prof. Huffines. After graduation he cast his lot with “the fringe of the church” working with the culturally deprived in the slums of New York. He was soon lost in that sea of suffering humanity, and lost to the institutional church; but he found the life that is life indeed. And the words of His Lord were sweeter and more meaningful than ever: “He that loses his life for my sake shall find it.”

John Paul also graduated from the seminary and accepted a call to a church in suburban Chicago. Trusting in the Lord and in the guidance of the Spirit, he laid before the congregation his views of what the Christian ministry should be. “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace,” he exhorted them from the scriptures. The congregation responded in a way similar to the simple Quaker meetings that Greg had told him of, with the members ministering to one another. It was like “the church in thy house” that the scriptures mention. They were soon aware of the work to which God had called John Paul, and with their assistance he took a law degree from the University of Chicago.

Now he has a law office at the edge of Chicago’s Skid Row. On his office door there is a shingle that reads “John Paul, Attorney at Law,” Below that there is a black plaque embossed with gold letters that read: “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly,”—the Editor

How immense appear to us the sins that we have not committed.—Madame Necker