Eugene Peterson and My Sabbatical
Ben Jolliffe, October 19, 2022.
My session graciously gave me a sabbatical earlier this year. Three months off. Nothing demanded of me. No book to write, no courses to take. Just time for rest, family and a private spirituality.
It sounds lovely and I was very grateful for it. But I found myself experiencing more angst than I had anticipated. The time away from work showed me cracks that had developed in my parenting, marriage and pastoral life that I had brushed off as insignificant. I spent considerable time during my sabbatical questioning my general calling into ministry and my particular calling to Resurrection Church Ottawa, where I currently pastor.
My best companion on this journey was my wife, who patiently listened, asked questions and gave me plenty of room to figure out what was going on inside me. But another very helpful companion was Eugene Peterson. He is deceased, but before he died, he wrote a number of books about the pastoral life that I read and reflected on during my sabbatical.
The most helpful one was a book called “Under the Unpredictable Plant.” It is a reflection on the life and ministry of Jonah. In this book, Peterson is insightful, funny and brutally honest about pastoral life. The book gave me a lot of hope and I wanted to share my seven favourite quotes from the book plus a short reflection on each.
The crevasse was not before but within me. (1)
On the first page, this line busted me open. I had long thought that I had a number of external problems to solve and then I would be ok.
If I can just get ministry to settle down…
If my kids will be a little easier…
If I can get this pastoral situation sorted out…
But the main problem was not before but within me. Just like Jonah, the impossible task was not speaking to Nineveh as a prophet of God, but coming to terms with what God wanted from him.
An interior adequate to the exterior. (3)
As you can see, I didn’t make it much further until another quote stopped me. Here Peterson talks about the all-too-common situation of a pastor who has a relatively successful exterior that is unaccompanied by a robust interior life. Such a situation tends to end in disaster.
This felt like where I was at. I’d been pulled away from work and discovered that I had far more to work on than I feared. Ultimately, I wanted (and needed!) an internal life adequate to the exterior life of ministry.
We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. (20)
I like thinking about the future. I like talking about possibilities. And just like Jonah, I had a decent amount of longing for a place that I was not called to. I daydreamed about Tarshish when God had called me to Nineveh. Don’t get me wrong. I really love Ottawa and Resurrection Church but I sensed more longing for other places and other opportunities than is spiritually healthy.
This is the place. Accepted, not chosen. 117 (Czeslaw Milosz)
This is the other side of the previous quote. What we ultimately come to in pastoral ministry is not “choosing” a place but accepting the place that God sends us. As a happy believer in secondary causes, I trust that God is using all kinds of normal means to either keep me where I am or send me somewhere new.
But there is a deep acceptance that must accompany any change. I’m still working on it.
Jonah is not an ideal anything - but he is a pastor. - 123
One of my favourite parts of the book is how Peterson speaks of Jonah. Despite outward success, we never really see Jonah succeeding. Or he fails even as he succeeds. Think about it - Jonah has one of the most outwardly spectacular ministries of any prophet in history, and is grumpy and angry at God about it.
Peterson writes that Jonah’s example should give pastors hope. Hope that God can use us. Hope that God can work despite our sins and shortcomings. Hope that we are always a work in progress.
I am a pastor not because God needed my skills, but simply because he wanted to use me in this way.
True love is always concerned with the particular and not with the general, with something, or rather somebody, not with anything or anybody. - 133
In my wrestling with my particular calling, this quote resonated. To love means dwelling with the particular, with somebody. This is of course true in marriage, parenting, friendship, but it is true when it comes to churches. To give yourself to a pastoral calling means investing in a place, in a people, in a church, as humble or grand as it may be.
Jonah seems such a small, forlorn figure... how can he be reduced to such puny emotions, such piddling obsessions, such small comfort, such trite discomfort. - 162
I’ll be frank. I had some really bad days on sabbatical. I felt so frustrated, angry, unspiritual, and that led to intense feelings of guilt and shame. This quote from near the end of the book as Peterson reflects on Jonah 4 was so helpful because I felt like Jonah, reduced to puny emotions, piddling obsessions, angry at God and the world. I didn’t have room here to show how Peterson offers the balm of grace to pastors who identify with Jonah, but he does.
What I needed was to feel the depths of my own sinful self, to understand how very Jonah-like I was and to know the God who loved and called me anyways.
With all these thoughts in mind, it’s safe to say my sabbatical was not what I thought it was going to be, but it was what I needed. I’m grateful for the companions I had along the way.
