When We Say Jesus Is Lord
Eugene Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor, is a treasure chest of wisdom. Like with every book, there are things worthy of commendation and critique, but the enduring value for me is the clarity Peterson brings to the calling of pastoral ministry — and especially in the middle of tumultuous times.
Eugene Peterson is most known for his writing, but long before his titles lined the shelves of Christian bookstores, Peterson was a pastor, and even a church planter. Peterson planted Christ Our King Presbyterian Church back in 1962, just outside of Baltimore. Back then church planting wasn’t really a thing, except that his denomination considered the growing population of greater Baltimore in need of a new church. So Peterson took the call and launched into gathering a new congregation in his home basement, during the most intense sand-shifting decade of American history.
The 1960s were labeled during its own time as the Age of Anxiety, which makes sense considering the Vietnam war, racial tensions, three major assassinations, the sexual revolution, and the new drug culture, just to name some. Not surprisingly, hospitals saw a dramatic increase in the number of people needing services for emotional and mental health. During this time the pastoral counseling movement began to pick up steam and the work of pastoring was subtly reinvented to focus on immediate, practical needs.
And there are immediate, practical needs that require focus. Far from burying his head in the sand, Peterson gave time and energy into learning more about the work of psychology and the way it could inform his pastoral care. Every Tuesday for a full two years Peterson and a band of other clergy met with a local psychologist to receive masters-level training. But Peterson understand this was not his primary work.
Truest to Who We Are
His primary work, Peterson explains, was to “lead people in the worship of God and to lead them in living a holy life” (136–137). The danger of overusing his training in psychology, as he puts it, was to treat his parishioners as problems to be fixed, and to thereby omit “the biggest thing of all in their lives, God and their souls” (140).
Peterson later remarks that maybe the most important thing he did as a pastor was stand before his congregation each week and say, “Let us worship God!”
That, Peterson says, is truest to the pastoral vocation — and I add, it’s also truest to what it means to be a Christian. As the apostle Paul summarizes,
For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. (Philippians 3:3)
There is no more counter-cultural, world-changing, empire-toppling act than for Christians to worship God in Spirit and truth (see John 4:23–24). It is in that worship, bound together as brothers and sisters won by blood, that we swear our allegiance to Jesus and forsake all else (see Revelation 5:9–10). As Psalm 24:4 shows us, to be ascended with Christ means we do not lift up our souls to what is false. This means we can’t bring our hearts before the throne of our King clasping the broken cisterns of this world, but we abandon all empty pleasures, all fleshly identities, and all Babylonian compromises. Because Jesus is the universal, eternal King, we insult him by pretending his seat can be shared.
The First Essential
If we really understood what’s being said when we say “Jesus is Lord,” it would be as head-turning now as it was in the First Century. Back then, all subjects of the Roman Empire called Caesar lord. It was Caesar in charge, not Jesus, to the average Roman Joe. But then those Christians, that strange bunch who hoped their entire lives on a crucified and resurrected Messiah, they said Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. Not one of Caesar’s policies. Not one of his ideas. Not the shared values of the Greco-Roman world with all its prestige and pomp. No. It’s Jesus, period. Jesus is King. Worship him!
That, most fundamentally, is what we do as Christians. It’s why the first essential of our church is that we worship Jesus. It’s why our foremost understanding of being a disciple of Jesus is that we are his worshipers. We are servants, yes. We are missionaries, indeed — and our cities need us to live into that discipleship calling. But first, and the foundation upon which all else is built, we worship Jesus as Lord.
Because he is. And he is real.
