A short close reading which examines our cultural perception of the ministerial role.
Sue Sorensen’s The Collar is named after the George Herbert poem by the same name, which encompasses her thesis on the depiction of Christian ministry in literary works. Literature boasts a wide range of ministerial figures, from shallow and scathingly comical to nuanced and faithful, claiming a certain calling or vocation from and to God and the community in which they minister.[1] These stories, Sorensen notes, “Tell important truths about what ministry is for and what it looks like: [...] a high calling and a frustrating, changeable job that is encased in complex notions of servanthood.”[2]
On page four, Sorensen argues that one of the reasons for this intense scrutiny of Christian ministry is the fact that it is “the most personal of professions.”[3] Unlike many others, this profession claims the posture of Truth as the vocation itself. And as such, the servant ought to embody that Truth in more than merely their words. On page nine, Sorensen quotes Justin Lewis Anthony, who lists out the impossible task -and expectations- of every pastor:
“We want a priest who is always available, who is always on the end of the telephone, who is always out visiting, who is good with old people, good with young people, brings new families into church, looks after the old families of the church community, makes the church grow, keeps the church the same, preaches well, is the first to arrive and the last to leave, keeps a happy family, attends every meeting, and so on, until the last syllable of recorded time.”[4]
There is a paradox written into the job description itself: having claimed to bear Truth, the ministry is thus expected to “sit in solitary splendour” and general perfection.[5] Yet this is simultaneously understood to be an impossibility. This vocation is already doomed to fail. Sorensen calls it “delightfully absurd.”[6] If failure is a guaranteed, then the marker of the “worthy” ministry shifts to perseverance and a reliance on continuous grace.
Thus, Sorensen starts chapter one with George Herbert’s, The Collar. we glimpse the other side of the scrutinized profession, individuals who it turns out are greater self-critics than literature could ever be. (I want to read parts of the poem before undertaking an analysis of the piece in context of a greater conversation on pastoral expectation.)
Until this point, The unmetered, single-stanza poem uses unfamiliar free-verse, reading as a stream-of-consciousness or barrage of doubts that “rush along heedlessly” at an unnamed accused.[7] Imagery of “ropes of sand”, “good cable”, and “garlands” that are “drawn”, “tied up”, or “caged”, is coupled with Enjambment- the poetic device of breaking a sentence into the next line- causing disorientation in the reader within arbitrary and seemingly random confines and rules of the poem. Herbert, historically the picture of a “good” cleric, has written a poem “fizzing and spitting with impatience, daring, and apparent irreverence,”[8] resisting the confines and expectations of his own vocation. Yet The Collar also displays Herbert’s conviction that Christ’s sacrificial love for the church “Can stand up to this battering and a whole lot more.”[9]
The intimately personal calling of ministry is doomed to fail because of the sheer magnitude of the expectations for it. The literary protest against the ministry should be taken with the utmost seriousness because the standard cannot be lowered from perfection. But what the literature depicts is that failure, and often with little grace offered alongside it. A pastor ought to have the answers we do not- yet is a fallible human who will also say the wrong things. They ought to be “better” and uphold a moral understanding above that of the average person, but they are merely human and therefore do fail. They ought to have a closer relationship to God, since their job is in part to study his word and deliver it to their congregation, but they are humans who -as evidenced in The Collar confront our same doubts.
Yet The Collar doesn’t end with a barrage of doubts. Herbert finally takes a breath in the last and only turn of the poem. Professor Paul Dyck notes this as the shift to a regular rhyming meter, typical of hymns, ending it in a single exchange of intimacy:
“Child.” “My lord.”[10]
Herbert provides no expression for how this word is to be read, so I have always interpreted it at a whisper- the quietest and most loving of rebukes. Equally, the Cleric’s -our- response illustrates similar familiarity with the “one” unnamed speaker. It is a redirection of vision. Until then, the pronoun “I” spoke against a “thou/thy” entity, argumentatively separating the accuser from the accused. In the end, the use of “my” is a return to proper relationship and communion.[11]
The Collar is a poem of this failure, but it is equally a poem about wrestling with faith and returning to proper relationship. That then becomes the true measure of faithfulness. This is why Herbert claims that he has purposely set down the mark of a true pastor as high as he can.[12] This is so that the individual undertaking the impossible vocation is forced to lean two ways- which incidentally are actually one: on the strength of Christ,[13] and on the grace of their church community.[14] It is a vocation thus grounded in the community of believers because they need the community of grace for when they fail, will fail, have failed when taking on a vocation of faithfulness. As Sorensen concludes in her introduction on page twelve, while the church is still relevant and breathing there remains a need for literary representations -buffoons and charlatans, because they are an act of grace extended to those in the ministry whose faithfulness desires critique.
Questions in the context of Sorensen’s argument for the purpose of literary representations of the ministry.
· Are literary works too harsh in their expectations for the ministry when it fails to meet so high a demand (described on page 9)? Do you agree that the measure should remain perfection, even if that implies failure from the beginning?
· What does it mean to be a faithful minister/pastor/priest? It is meeting certain expectations of your community or something more privately dynamic as evidenced in Herbert’s The Collar?
· The literary trope of the “comical priest” is not only pointing out the personal failings of the individual pastors but is also a commentary on the much larger social injustices committed by the church, such as colonial enterprise, forced conversion, church sex scandals, etc. Where are the limits to grace in such vocational failures?
· Finally, does our reaction to the shortcomings of this impossible vocation depicted in literature -be it to laugh, grow angry, or shake our heads at the church- tell us something about our own ability to receive grace/forgiveness.
[1] I say “from and to” because some traditions, such as my own Huttarian one, have ministers selected by the community and then by chance/divine intervention- whichever you prefer, and not at all based on an individual’s calling. In fact the Hutterisch expression in relation to this is “wohn she will’n nohr sull’n she nit,” “if they want it [the ministerial position], they shouldn’t be. [2]Sorensen, Sue. The Collar: Reading Christian Ministry in Fiction, Television, and Film (Oregon: Cascade Books, 2014), 2. [3]Sorensen, The Collar, 4. [4]Sorensen, The Collar, 9. [5]Sorensen, The Collar, 5. [6]Sorensen, The Collar, 8. [7]Sorensen, The Collar, 15. [8]Sorensen, The Collar, 14. [9]Sorensen, The Collar, 17. [10]Sorensen, The Collar, 16. [11]Sorensen, The Collar, 15. [12]Sorensen, The Collar, 19. [13]Sorensen, The Collar, 19. [14]Sorensen, The Collar, 20.
Comments