Saturday, April 05, 2008

A Joke

Q. Why did Jesus wait until he was 30 years old before starting his ministry?

[Answer in the first comment]

5 comments:

John said...

He would have started sooner, but he kept on getting contingencies from his Board of Ordained Ministry.

Anonymous said...

You would think that the BOM, knowing the shortage of younger clergy, would have helped Jesus move through the process...or was that what the whole cleansing of the temple was really about?

Now I feel irreverent and need to go do penance.

John said...

Not to bring seriousness into a perfectly fine humor thread, but this joke and it's punchline reveals on of the major flaws I see in our denomination and in many others.

For 30 years, Jesus worked hard, studied the Torah, supported His local synagogue, and generally served God in His private life.

And yet we don't consider any of His contributions to society as "ministry" until He left carpentry behind and began to be called by the title Rabbi.

Personally, I think much of the disconnect between clergy and the laity and many of the failures of the institutionalized church can be connected to the very assumptions which makes this joke work.

I now see that I had a ministry long before I received an appointment- though I often misunderstood and neglected that ministry. I also see that I will always have a ministry even if (please Lord forbid) I never make it through the Board of Ordained Ministry.

The Christian movement is a priesthood of all believers and as such, THE ministry belongs to us all- clergy and lay alike. The pastorate is merely one of many expressions of the ministry- albeit the most visible and influential one in the life of any congregation.

Again- sorry to interrupt a humorous thread. Just had to get that off my chest.

Oloryn said...

JW -

I'll agree with you. I'm getting to the point where I think it's a mistake to refer to the clergy as 'ministers', because it too easily lends credence to the idea that only clergy are supposed to be doing ministry. All Christians are called to ministry, and my reading of Eph 4:11,12 is that the clergy's special calling isn't to ministry, but to equipping other Christians to do ministry. Missing this leads to 2 things: 1: an overly passive congregation; and 2: burnt out clergy because the entire burden of ministry is improperly being placed on their backs.

Allen's Brain said...

I would've thought it was because he was going to med school like all the other good Jewish boys.