An open agenda
Even though chaplains are taught not to impose their own agenda, do they legitimately have one? If so, by what authority, and how are they to express it?
Christ has an open agenda for creation, the church, and the individual. There is both an openness and a hiddenness. “The secret things belong to the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of the law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29). The once hidden Gospel for all nations has now been revealed in the Gospel so that God’s manifold wisdom may, through the church be declared in the face of the demonic powers of evil (Ephesians 3: 1-13). There is nothing manipulative about God’s agenda or his methods.
Hiddenness within God’s agenda can be pastorally challenging, but is never manipulative, unlike “Fabianism”. – the strategy of the inevitability of gradualism, which aims to achieve undisclosed ultimate ends by the gradual and incremental achievement of a long succession of disclosed short term goals. The effect would be that people would inevitably be guided in the direction of targets that they would never accept if they knew the whole plan in advance. Contrary to this, Jesus Christ has revealed his plan ever since his resurrection from the dead. When his servants seek to persuade people to follow him, they are able to do so with full integrity, for Christ has revealed his hand.
God placed all things under Christ’s feet and appointed him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body and which is being filled by him who is in the process of filling all things in every way. (Ephesians 1: 22-23)
Now here is a summary of the plan of Jesus outlined in Ephesians 1, that finds its completedness in the last verse of that chapter.
1 God the Father has given all authority and power to Christ.
2 Christ is head over all things in the universe, including nature, people, earthly power structures, angels and demons.
3 Although this work is often invisible, Christ is inexorably and continuously pursuing his own agenda with regard to the universe (including the church).
4 Christ’s agenda is to bring the whole universe to its full destiny in line with God’s purposes. Insofar as this was interrupted by the Fall, Christ will restore and then take it further.
5 Within this process Christ has a special agent, with whom he has a type of marital union, which is the paradigm for marriage – of a man and a woman. That agent is his bride the Church, his own special body whom he nourishes and cherishes. Collectively and individually we are precious to him – and chosen from eternity!
6 This church is at the centre of his plan and purposes. It is made of people eternally chosen, in love set free by the substitutionary death of Christ, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. He gives foretastes of heaven, wisdom and empowerment to achieve his goals.
7 What Christ is doing cosmically he is doing also in the church and what he is doing in the church he is also, in principle, doing cosmically – completing his eternal plan.
8 The sphere for Christ’s agenda and activity is the totality of all that exists in the created order.
9 The methods that Christ is using are described as “in every way”. There is nothing that he does not use for his ultimate glory and will.
10 As Christ is Lord of All, then he is Lord over marriage, family, politics, nations, the economy, sport, recreation, technology, and nature. He is Lord over all hospitals, correctional centres. He is Lord over medicine, surgery and unexplainable miracles.
God’s Agenda at Work – Through, Beyond - and even Despite us
Every type of person is in hospital, and many wrestle with multiple losses. As people who suffer we may be sharing in and identifying with these crises for ourselves, but we are there for them and not for ourselves. We need also to find separate and deliberate opportunities when we are not ministering – to receive prayer and healing, forgiveness and forgivingness regarding our own pain.
Our agenda as chaplains operates within the segment that intersects the circle of Scripture with the circle of the patient’s situation and life. Without a confidence in Scripture, we have nothing ultimate to speak into the patient’s situation – hence the cry of the ER patient, “Send me a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real hell!” Without a deep compassion and understanding of people for whom we care, we can bring nothing from the faith to these folk. “Truthing in love, we are to grow up into Christ” (Eph 4: 15). In that verse the Greek word has to imply action within the truth. Truth is not there merely sound cognition, even of the content itself of God’s revelation. Truth is ontologically dynamic. Our living out of truth is inseparable from a continual dying and rising with whom who is the Way, the Truth and the Life – and it is all of grace.
Our experience may lead us, at times, to feel despondent about how far God is actually fulfilling an agenda in the world. We may well ask, ‘How inclusive is “all things” and “in every way” in Ephesians 1: 23?’ “All things” are everything in the cosmos. The celebration of our gratitude to God should not stop short of the continuing practice of thanking God concerning every type of thing within his creation (Ephesians 5: 18ff). We are to reinterpret our context within hospitals or other public institutions in line with the fact that God has an invisible plan that looks quite different to the visibility that we perceive. This is meant to inspire hope and also a sense of quiet and confident authority. Our intercession and our visits are all within God’s sovereign plan and will. This is so encouraging and empowering.
In St. Paul
God… works all in all, even in the ungodly; while He alone moves, acts, and carries along by the motion of His omnipotence, all those things which He alone has created, which motion those things can neither avoid nor change, but of necessity follow and obey, each one according to the measure of power given by God: - thus all things, even the ungodly, co-operate with God!…
The source is - Luther, Bondage of the Will. (Translated by Henry Cole, Baker Baker Bookhouse, Michigan, 1981, Section CXXX1, page 317)
Serving, though Hidden, within the Biggest Plan
The Church is the body that belongs to Christ. It is being filled by Christ who is filling all things. He is doing this in every way. He works through love in action and he even hijacks evil to serve his own good purposes (though he never does evil, nor sanctions it by others). We have an ongoing responsibility to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us with Christ and his word (Eph 5: 18 and Colossians 3: 16), so that we may respond to and participate in God’s cosmic plan, in any of the all things that he calls on us to do. Then we may be confident that even the smallest and briefest interactions with have with patients, inmates, clients and residents, even where our own agendas are on the back-burner, whatever we are dong serves the ultimate agenda of God in Christ.
Rev Lindsay Johnstone
Chaplain, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
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