In a previous column I offered some observations on approaching formal theological study. Here is an accompanying piece on finishing formal theological study, which is based on a homily I gave recently at our seminary’s graduation evening.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10–11)

‘This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.’ Churchill’s famous war-time words are apposite for those of you who have just graduated this evening. Please hear me: I am in no way wanting to diminish your achievements or devalue that piece of paper you are proudly holding. Tonight is a milestone to be rightly marked and celebrated in the presence of friends and family and with thanksgiving to God for your hard-work, perseverance, and growth over these past few years. However, any decent seminary should shudder if it thought that it had inculcated the idea that tonight was the termination of your theological education: been there, done that, ticked the box, received the bag of free books from the publishers, got the t-shirt (other branded merch is available)—‘never again, and now on with the rest of my life.’

It’s been our intention from the first days of your studies here to pass on, even drill into you, that as disciples of Christ, at whatever ‘academic’ level, we are always students and life-long learners as we go deeper and deeper into the unfathomable mysteries of God. We pray that your time with us in formal study has been a good push-start, establishing habits and rhythms to aid this growth, together with a Spirit-given humility that recognises you know less and less but which creates a thirst to know Jesus and his Word more and more. In the context of these opening remarks, I want to spend a few moments in these verses from Peter’s first letter, applying them to you graduates in your responsibilities in pastoral leadership, whatever shape that may take, formally and informally, both now and into the future.

1. Not On-Lookers and Passengers, but Lookerafterers and Passeroners

In Christ’s church there are to be no on-lookers or passengers. Each and everyone has a gift and they are in two categories here, speaking and serving. There are no ‘ungifted’ who look up to the ‘gifted’ in admiration or envy. Conversely (and this might be especially applicable to you this evening as seminary graduates with letters now after your name), there are no ‘gifted’ who look down on ‘ungifted’ pew-fodder in superiority or condescension. There are no on-lookers but—and here’s a new word for your theological lexicon—all disciples are lookerafterers. The gifts you have received are not yours. You are simply stewards of them.

But that ‘simply’ is not at all simple. Have you ever had the responsibility of looking after someone else’s pet? On several occasions we looked after my boss’s dog when they went away. We gave that dog more treats, more walks, and more attention than our own dog. We felt doubly responsible. And so, it is with the gifts of grace you have been given by God. In your theological training, you have been developing in your character, convictions, and competencies in line with those criteria for pastoral ministry as outlined in the New Testament. It’s appropriate that you do feel the weight of responsibility as those who are looking after these precious gifts of grace. If you have a speaking gift, you don’t want to be graffitiing over God’s words; your ideas will sustain neither you or your people, but God’s will. To this end as a life-long learner, you will want to continue to study, becoming a more and more competent and conscientious steward of the gifts you’ve been given. You’re a lookerafterer.

Moreover, while there are no passengers in Christ’s church—and here’s another new term for you—all God’s people are passeroners. Have you ever received a gift you thought was for you but was actually for someone else? Awkward and embarrassing, isn’t it? The final destination of these gifts of grace you have received is not with you. You are a link in the chain with a final destination of ‘others’.

Having a large family means that over the years I have been able to conduct field research on the phenomenology of children’s parties and particularly the game of pass-the-parcel. Observations are as follows: playing pass-the-parcel with two- to three-year olds is an overwhelmingly soul-sapping experience. First you spend an inordinate amount of time getting the kids to form a circle. The music starts and the little munchkins jump up thinking it’s still musical bumps. So, you apply some physical pressure (just a little bit!) in getting them to sit in that circle. The music starts and the said parcel is produced and put in a child’s lap. Child is invariably clueless, looking around, perhaps picking their nose. Now slightly frustrated but trying to smile through gritted teeth, you end up picking up the parcel yourself, putting it into the next child’s lap, who is equally distracted as they want a drink or want to go to the bathroom. Your back is now killing you as you end up going around the circle playing the game by yourself with half the kids having got up and wandered off.

Now, same kids two years later. ‘Kids, it’s time for pass-the-parcel’. Immediately a perfect geometric circle is formed. There is complete silence, the kids looking straight ahead in total focus. These are pass-the-parcel assassins. A child raises their hand,

‘Please sir, what version are we playing?’

‘What version?!’

You gulp slightly as the music starts. These adorable ones have learnt every trick in the book in holding onto that parcel. You have now become the target of all the mysterious arts of subterfuge, deception, and distraction. But you remain strong, and it’s only as you sweep in to forcibly move on that parcel that the child’s white knuckles are relaxed and they suddenly fling it onto the next person smiling at you all the time.

Now we have been given these amazing gifts of God’s grace to pass on, and without wanting to be flippant, I would like to suggest that every Christian community is the equivalent of a huge game of pass the parcel. Some of our people are like those little kids. They don’t know what’s going on, they are distracted, they don’t get the point. They are mere passengers. And your task as a leader, speaking and serving, is to alert them to the fact that they are in this circle of brothers and sisters and they have in their lap a gift of God’s grace, unique to them, that they are to pass on to someone else. In doing this the body will self-grow. And you tell them they are not to be introspective but to get stuck in, speaking and serving—there are lots of things we should be doing for one another as Christians, and as they begin to do these things they will discover that they have been gifted in some areas and not in others. You give them opportunities to serve.

Some of our people are like the older kids. They know the game very well but want to keep that gift in their lap, bringing it with them to church every week and taking it home again. And your job in loving firmness is to tell them that, actually, their gift is not for them, and get them to relax their grip, and to pass it on to its proper destination. Your temptation as a leader with ‘qualifications’ in convictions, competencies, and character is always going to be, in your frustration, to try and play the game yourself—move the parcel yourself around, forget about the others. But you see, here is where the illustration breaks down, because there is not just one parcel we are passing on but many, many parcels. Together these gifts administer God’s grace in its various forms. I like to think there is an intentional symmetry here as the various (ποικίλος) forms of God’s grace match the various (ποικίλος) trials mentioned at the beginning of the letter (1:6). Think of all the challenges that face us as Christians today: God’s grace can counter all these challenges. But we need to stand together with everyone passing on their gifts. We can stand through everything if we stand together with all the gifts God has given. But if one person does not pass on their gift, the body is inevitably weakened here. We all need each other, and you play a crucial role in stewarding this stewardship. You’re a passeroner.

2. Not Distracting from God’s Glory, but Distracted by God’s Glory

Graduates, as lookerafterers and passeroners, you are servants. Of course, at this institution, as at many others, we all talk a good game about servant leadership. But modelling it in reality, both in an institution like a seminary and in Christ’s church, is another thing. I wonder whether this is why, when it comes to the serving gifts, Paul reminds us that in our serving we are to do so in God’s strength so that Christ is glorified. Could it be that serving gifts may give the wrong impression that they can be done off our own back, in our own strength? God gives the ‘supernatural’ stuff to those who speak, but when it comes to serving, well, we just get on with it, don’t we? But we forget that serving is a gift of grace that is not ‘natural’ at all. We can all offer hospitality, but to offer ‘hospitality without grumbling’ (v. 9) is a gift.

Moreover, when we serve in our own strength and not God’s, then we easily become a distraction from God being glorified. Armed with your new theological qualification, I hope you are feeling a renewed sense of excitement and energy for where the Lord has put you. You’re ready to get going. But you know, because it’s in the water of our tribe, that our ‘glorifying God through serving indicator’ is not on how joyful, gracious, and light our serving is, as Jesus promises, but rather on how tired, stressed, and busy we are. This is a distraction away from God and onto us, but I think it is something we often welcome because as leaders we know that we often want to get in on the act and get the attention to be on us. When the camera is focused on the news reporter in an outside broadcast, we’re like one of those idiots in the background shouting ‘hello mum’.

In our serving we are not to be a distraction. We want people to be seeing and glorifying Christ in our serving. We are to be transparent. We want people to see right through us and to be praising Jesus Christ for the gifts we are looking after and passing on. After we have spoken or served, we should want people saying of us not ‘he’s amazing isn’t he’, but rather ‘He’s amazing isn’t He.’ As the hymn line goes, ‘May his beauty rest upon me, as I seek the lost to win, And may they forget the channel, seeing only Him.’ Or, as Richard Baxter so beautifully put it, ‘I was but a pen in God’s hand, and what praise is due a pen?’ Graduates, many congratulations, but you’re just a pen.

I realise the counter-cultural nature of this. This is the exact opposite of the football striker who scores the goal, runs to the touchline, sticks out his chest, and sucks in the adulation of the crowd, loving the glory and honour. And we are saturated in this. I don’t like being anonymous. I want to be remembered. I want a legacy. I hate people looking right through me. And we are influenced by a world which screams out for glory and honour and attention, and this inevitably creeps into the church. The god of this age is one of self-focus, self-absorption, hyper-self-consciousness. The result is plain to see: both church and academy is full of personality cults, those who are lionised and put on a pedestal. And some end up believing their own publicity, losing connection with the head. When they speak and serve, they are like one of those badly dubbed films, because although they mouth a lot of words, all we hear is ‘me, me, me’. And don’t think we are not partly to blame because we put those people there: we massage egos, we lionise and idolise.

Yes, you are the focus of attention this evening, and rightly so. But how do we prevent ourselves from becoming a distraction in our ministry? Thankfully, I think Peter offers us some clues as to a way out. First, let’s go back to Peter’s exhortation that we are to serve in God’s strength. In reality, of course, everything we do relies on God’s strength, not just our serving but our very existence. We exist only by God’s word, and so serving in God’s strength is recognition of this greater metaphysical fact of our totally and utterly dependent creatureliness compared to a totally and utterly self-sufficient Almighty Creator. Second, there is Peter’s doxology, which I like to think is nothing other than a spontaneous outburst in wonderment and praise of his Lord and God, whom he loves and adores as he reflects on the nature of true service. As he talks about what many would think are mundane and even ordinary topics of Christians serving each other, he cannot help but end on focusing on God’s glory.

This is our way of escape from our self-absorption in our service. This is why your graduation this evening is only one stage in a life-long journey of theological exploration and discovery. As we continue to study, contemplate, meditate, and engage our affections, we will become more and more distracted by God’s glory. Only the overwhelming weightiness of God has the power to pull us out of ourselves, and we get that creature feeling when compared to the One who created us. When we are brushed by God’s glory, we want to speak God’s words because these are the only words worth speaking, we want to serve in God’s strength because we realise our total dependence on Him. And as we are distracted by God’s glory, so our petty self-interest and self-absorption fades into nothingness. We don’t care about it anymore because we are transfixed on the Lord of Glory. We realise more and more the futility and stupidity of thinking of wanting to take glory for ourselves. Beholding is becoming. Our own identity is bound up with Christ; we are in him and our identity is bound up in Him. The implications of this are that we will be glorified because Christ is glorified: ‘Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory’ (Rom 8:17). We will share in Christ’s glory, noting though the pattern of suffering before glory, something Peter notes in subsequent verses. But the glory that awaits us is incomparable to our puny human-given glory. Isn’t it futile then to want to take any glory ourselves in our speaking and serving? It’s crazy, it’s madness, it’s the nature of sin. In repentance we need to take it all to Christ, the One who is not only our supreme exemplar of service, but our Saviour, the suffering servant who gave his life as a ransom for many.

This evening, at the end of your beginning, our prayer for you is that in your speaking you would speak as one who speaks oracles of God, and that your serving would be in the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

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