WHAT IS A
RESIDENT THEOLOGIAN?
Vanderbilt University
Master of Divinity 2015 
Ordination in Full Connection
2019 the Rev. Bishop William T. McAlilly |
What does it mean to have a religious leader in a community? And what does it mean for that person to have a specialized education? These questions are answered in the notion of a "resident theologian." Theology, as a field of study, asks the questions of God and of the human being in relationship to God. Hopefully, like any form of education, theological study leads a person out of his or her or their assumptions and preconceived notions into a deeper understanding of reality and the human condition. To have a person who has taken serious time to think through our biggest questions means that the community can count on that person to offer meaningful guidance as we respond to our experiences of life. We expect the same from other professionals: doctors help with our experiences of illness; advocates help us navigate the laws; mechanics help us respond to the experience of car trouble; etc. A theologian is no different. Trained to think about the ups and downs of human life in terms of the ultimate questions of our existence, theologians lead in community by framing our problems in light of the reality that God exists. And in terms of Christian theology, religious leaders point the community toward the redemptive and reconciling work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. This page is dedicated to the work of pointing the community to Christ and the Spirit through the written word. We hope you will feel free to engage with pastor Jonathan when you find ideas that are interesting or challenging, or if you need a conversation partner on your spiritual journey.
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He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
(Isaiah 40:11)
December 2021
“Rugs & Bugs & Honey”
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Matthew 3:1-6
Matthew 3:1-6
Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ,
I’ve always loved this passage of Matthew’s gospel. He fills in a few more details about John the Baptist. But isn’t it curious that Matthew feels the need to comment on his wardrobe and his diet at all, both of which seem provocatively outlandish? At first glance, these details appear inconsequential, and neither of the gospels according to Luke and John choose to make mention of these things at all. So what is Matthew up to here? Why does he have John the Baptist wearing a rug, and eating bugs and honey? As a boy I just loved this… all the grown-ups wanted to teach us moral lessons from John about how bad it was to act out… but all we could think about was a man in furry pajamas eating grasshoppers. As a group of Sunday School boys, we liked John cause he was smelly and weird, not because he had anything important to say. Now as an adult, and someone trained to think theologically about my life experience, I wonder why it helps Matthew’s story-telling to make John the Baptist out to be so grubby and outlandish.
The truth is, life is smelly and weird. If aliens from outer space only visited humans in a Christian Church on a Sunday morning, those poor souls would draw the erroneous conclusion that our species has it all together: “My, what interesting colors!” they’d say, “And the music….these humans all seem to move together… And look at the humans up front, polished up like those cardinals preening in the cedar tree!” And whether it was robes and stoles with hymns and organ, or skinny jeans, faded haircuts and rock and roll…. those poor aliens would be duped by our pretense into the wrong impression. Because human life from Monday through Saturday puts on quite a different face. On Monday through Saturday we get out of sync from one another, and even from ourselves. And as the polish of Sunday fades, things get smelly and weird… As the beauty of holiness recedes into memory, things get real.
Life is a struggle so much of the time, and it doesn’t matter what demographic any of us fall into. Everybody’s got trials and tribulations that come their way… everybody’s going through something. The question is, can we find in John the Baptist a prophet whose word to us is less important that the fact that he makes the strange smelly ugliness of human life something public, something that God wants to deal with… something that God will condescend to become part of, and touch, and taste and see for God’s own self?
Remember that John came from a very respectable house. His father and mother were of the house of Aaron, and Zechariah was one of the temple priests. By birthright, John should have been trained to take his father’s place. John could have reasonably taken up the wealth and privilege of the priesthood, lived in Jerusalem, and been protected from the Romans. Instead, he wanders through the wilderness until the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth drives him like the East Wind to the Jordan river with a message that the kingdom of heaven has come near. I think in the voice of the prophet, the LORD is trying to tell us that even though the polished, uplifting beauty of Sunday worship has a place in our lives, we’ll most often find God in the wilderness of life. God is out in the ditch with the wounded… God is with us as we cry in the quiet of our bedrooms… God appears in the intensive care room just when the exhausted nurse doesn’t think she can go on… I think the prophet wants us to know that God does not remain distant from the hardness of human life, but instead comes among us to offer truth in the midst of duplicity, love in the midst of rancor, affirmation in the midst of disappointment, forgiveness in the midst of shame, and renewal in the midst of loss. The Spirit sends a man dressed in a rug eating bugs to tell us the Good News: that there’s more to life than appearances, and that the Spirit will call the outcast to be the prophet of the Most High God. In fact, the Most High God will become the outcast and, in the end, redeem all that seems written off as a loss.
Let us then take deeply to heart the message of the Baptizer, who points us to the Christ whose love is born in us each day we open ourselves to the promise that the Lord knows our suffering and has come down to deliver us.
Thanks be to God.
Pastor Jonathan
I’ve always loved this passage of Matthew’s gospel. He fills in a few more details about John the Baptist. But isn’t it curious that Matthew feels the need to comment on his wardrobe and his diet at all, both of which seem provocatively outlandish? At first glance, these details appear inconsequential, and neither of the gospels according to Luke and John choose to make mention of these things at all. So what is Matthew up to here? Why does he have John the Baptist wearing a rug, and eating bugs and honey? As a boy I just loved this… all the grown-ups wanted to teach us moral lessons from John about how bad it was to act out… but all we could think about was a man in furry pajamas eating grasshoppers. As a group of Sunday School boys, we liked John cause he was smelly and weird, not because he had anything important to say. Now as an adult, and someone trained to think theologically about my life experience, I wonder why it helps Matthew’s story-telling to make John the Baptist out to be so grubby and outlandish.
The truth is, life is smelly and weird. If aliens from outer space only visited humans in a Christian Church on a Sunday morning, those poor souls would draw the erroneous conclusion that our species has it all together: “My, what interesting colors!” they’d say, “And the music….these humans all seem to move together… And look at the humans up front, polished up like those cardinals preening in the cedar tree!” And whether it was robes and stoles with hymns and organ, or skinny jeans, faded haircuts and rock and roll…. those poor aliens would be duped by our pretense into the wrong impression. Because human life from Monday through Saturday puts on quite a different face. On Monday through Saturday we get out of sync from one another, and even from ourselves. And as the polish of Sunday fades, things get smelly and weird… As the beauty of holiness recedes into memory, things get real.
Life is a struggle so much of the time, and it doesn’t matter what demographic any of us fall into. Everybody’s got trials and tribulations that come their way… everybody’s going through something. The question is, can we find in John the Baptist a prophet whose word to us is less important that the fact that he makes the strange smelly ugliness of human life something public, something that God wants to deal with… something that God will condescend to become part of, and touch, and taste and see for God’s own self?
Remember that John came from a very respectable house. His father and mother were of the house of Aaron, and Zechariah was one of the temple priests. By birthright, John should have been trained to take his father’s place. John could have reasonably taken up the wealth and privilege of the priesthood, lived in Jerusalem, and been protected from the Romans. Instead, he wanders through the wilderness until the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth drives him like the East Wind to the Jordan river with a message that the kingdom of heaven has come near. I think in the voice of the prophet, the LORD is trying to tell us that even though the polished, uplifting beauty of Sunday worship has a place in our lives, we’ll most often find God in the wilderness of life. God is out in the ditch with the wounded… God is with us as we cry in the quiet of our bedrooms… God appears in the intensive care room just when the exhausted nurse doesn’t think she can go on… I think the prophet wants us to know that God does not remain distant from the hardness of human life, but instead comes among us to offer truth in the midst of duplicity, love in the midst of rancor, affirmation in the midst of disappointment, forgiveness in the midst of shame, and renewal in the midst of loss. The Spirit sends a man dressed in a rug eating bugs to tell us the Good News: that there’s more to life than appearances, and that the Spirit will call the outcast to be the prophet of the Most High God. In fact, the Most High God will become the outcast and, in the end, redeem all that seems written off as a loss.
Let us then take deeply to heart the message of the Baptizer, who points us to the Christ whose love is born in us each day we open ourselves to the promise that the Lord knows our suffering and has come down to deliver us.
Thanks be to God.
Pastor Jonathan