Christ the Pastor

Reading for reflection, insight, and affirmation…
That’s how I am feeling about my browsing through and settling in with ‘Gilead’, a novel written by Marilynne Robinson.

This is a story and not a story. From my perspective, it is a range of thought about life put into the context of a father and son dialogue. It is almost as a series of essays that are illumined by the historical narrative of a particular family.

As a minister and preacher, the storyteller frequently drifts into his pattern of explaining how a particular sermon came into being.

Of interest to me, as an ordained minister (permanent deacon in the Roman Catholic Church) is the following.

“ …I noted that Abraham himself had been sent into the wilderness, told to leave his father’s house also, that this was the narrative of all generations, and that it is only by the grace of God that we are made instruments of His providence and participants in a fatherhood that is always ultimately His.

At this point I departed from my text to say that an old pastor’s anxiety for his church is likewise a forgetfulness of the fact that Christ is Himself the pastor of His people and a faithful presence among them through all generations…” p. 129.