Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2008, Page 40

authority of the gospel and the service of the sacraments in community.
The announcement of forgiveness of sins and new life in Jesus Christ:
this is the pastor’s only true authority. The gospel and the sacraments
according to the gospel: these communal actions are what the pastor’s min-
istry is for. These communal liturgical tasks, this bit of bread and cup of
wine, this pool of water, these words, this responsibility and presidency in
their use, this enabling of an assembly to practice them together — and
this extension of their practice into places of individual need that can be
connected to the community’s purpose — these are the matters that are
given to James and John and Peter and the rest of the ancient leaders and
to our current priests and pastors. There, in those tasks, they will fmd the
possibility of a lively exercise of the paradox that describes them: scribes
who are not scribes, rulers who are not rulers.
I think that such a fascinating profession or vocation is one that can be
gladly and honestly taken up by some people of late-modern times. I also
think that it will be in need of a “spirituality” to sustain it, a spirituality of
paradox, like that sketched by Archbishop Rowan Williams, in his Christian
Spirituality (or The Woundof Knowledge),n as the continual questioning and
reorienting of religious meaning in human life that occurs in the encounter
with Jesus Christ and the words and symbols that carry his presence. But
I also think such a spirituality was already quite present in the reflections
of the nineteenth century Danish pastor and theologian, Nicolai F. S.
Grundtvig, when in 1863 he tried to answer his own question, Skal den
Lutherske Reformation virkelig fortsœttes?Note how he writes of the tasks
of the leaders of the church as largely liturgical tasks. But note how he also
writes, embracing the paradoxical reorientation in ways of seeing leadership
and, for that matter, seeing the world:
When it happens that the priests stand at the baptismal bath as Zion’s
watchers in the power of the Spirit, and the bishop stands at the altar-table
truly representing the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep,
while the congregation gladly lets the light shine in good works, and the
learned keep watch over the book with their lamps lit from the flame on
8 Atlanta: John Knox, 1980, and London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979.
9 Copenhagen: Schauberg, 1863.
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