The Ministry of Unfinished People
Focusing on Lamentations 3:17-25, Carl Garrison talks about the irrational nature of ministry, and faith. The writer in Lamentations speaks about the pain of reality, but in the midst of that pain there is a hope and longing for God’s mercy. There remains a desire for God even in the face of every reason to not believe and desire God, the irrational belief before evidence. The life of Jesus is exactly that: facing incredible pain and betrayal as a man, following the will of a God that He cannot see. The ministry comes in when others see the acceptance of the reality of pain and failure, but still not giving into despair and keeping their hope in God.
Carl speaks about the difficulty of this in practice, and how preconceived bias about unhoused people, LGBTQ+, those who who not look or act like stereotypical churchgoers. Ministry is about compassion and mercy, doing for others what God has done for humanity, which begins with yourself. To become a minister to others means you have to be able to hear a person’s trauma and not need to fix it, and to see a person as more than their pain. And as Jesus focused his ministry on those whose whose dignity has been overlooked and abused, ministry now is about the expansion of human dignity.