Like both college and high school, after four years, seminary grants a diploma. With all the talk about sheep in the Bible, I still suspect the diploma was written on good old paper, not sheepskin. The diploma was signed by both the seminary president and chair of the seminary board. Wearing the same silly mortarboard hat, a master’s hood was placed over our shoulders, diploma firmly handed off as deftly as any NFL quarterback to his running back, and away we went back to our pews in the Chapel of the Abiding Presence.
At last! Now we could take all those wonderful theological truths and concepts to the pulpit, the classroom, and to counseling sessions in an office! Oh, they teach things we had never heard about prior to seminary classes and assigned books. Things like justification by faith, sola scriptura, Sjmul justus et piccatar, sola fide, sola gratia, and law and gospel. Now we could look brilliant by tossing in a little Latin or seasoning the sermon with some Greek to let everyone know we learned something during our four seminary years.
Filled with all this knowledge, I, for one, was ready for the Church! Yet life soon taught me that even if the church was ready for me, life was even more ready. Initially I thought ministry would be great were it not for all the interruptions. Then I learned the interruptions were the ministry. Church members became suddenly ill and rushed off to hospitals. Many died without warning. It might be Holy Week, but confirmation classes still must be taught, the sick visited, and phone calls returned.
Seminary taught me well to think theologically and infused into my very being the concepts of theology, the Lutheran understanding of Jesus, God, the Church, God’s people, and faith. Actually most was infused outside the classroom by discussions in the dorm, on a bench, or in the dining hall, pub or coffee shop. These things had to be processed somehow ….why not with peers struggling with the same questions and teachings?
Quickly in my first parish I learned all of this was passed on to me and my classmates not for our intellectual pleasure or torment, but for a purpose. The purpose was to apply this learning in life with actual and very human people. For whom was all this learning to be directed? To all I encountered within and without the church. To all who were Christian and all who were not among the faithful. Both the congregation and the world outside of it served as the laboratory in which theological formulations were to be tested. Funny how sometimes those outside the church and any faith often were the best teachers of the truth of much of which I was taught. Not in a negative way as doomed, negative people, but in a positive way teaching me
God’s words, grace, and truth is not held back by one’s disbelief or incorrect understanding. God can and does use all types of people and all have the possibility of being someone who reveals a new and surprising part of God.
This is good news for us. It means learning never ends when classrooms, teachers, and books are in our past. As long as there are people, as long as there is life, we can continue to learn. God prevents no one from being able to be a teacher to us. Belief, biblical and theological truths are not simply for intellectual assent. Faith is much more than a head trip. What God has taught us from scripture, worship, Sunday School, confirmation, and community is to be applied. It is to be lived out. And we don’t have to wear one of those silly hats!