Faith Works 10-20-18
Jeff Gill
A long obedience in the same direction
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Eugene Peterson is in hospice care; as "Christianity Today" aptly headlined, this beloved pastor and author is nearing the end of his "long obedience in the same direction."
His family shared this news on social media last Saturday; it has been quietly but well known in Christian circles that a combination of heart failure and dementia have led to his withdrawal from public speaking for the last few years.
Peterson was never a Billy Graham, had not filled arenas or spoken to mass meetings. His was a more pastoral ministry, rooted in spending the majority of his professional life at a single congregation in Maryland, all the while writing and sharing his insights in book after book. He began teaching and speaking at workshops in the last twenty years of his life, at a seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia following his retirement from the parish, but his preference was always to the personal interaction, the closeness of one on one, or at least author to reader.
"The Pastor" is his memoir that cemented his reputation as a minister's minister, but it was the 1980 "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction" based on the Songs of Ascents recorded in Psalms 120-134 where I first "met" Peterson. It was not, as were many of his later works, aimed directly at clergy, but it spoke to me in seminary, and after my ordination in 1989, it became a touchstone for my own teaching of the Bible to congregational groups.
You may know him best as the translator of "The Message," a contemporary language rendition of the entire Bible from the Hebrew and Greek. Here, too, Peterson was less concerned with academic respectability and acceptance as he was application and effectiveness in the congregational setting. In interviews, he was quick to point out that his translation was not a paraphrase, it was laboriously worked out from the original languages of scripture into everyday language, but that as such it was limited to our time. It was the sort of project he would argue is called for by the church in every era.
At 85, it was never realistic to hope we'd have Eugene Peterson with us for decades to come, but like any mentor in ministry, he is a hard example to let go of. I've grown accustomed, as have many of us in church leadership roles who never met him in person, to regularly being recharged, refilled, renewed by his latest writings.
Truly, I can commend to anyone seeking a sense of his work almost any book he's written: I looked around online, and it appears he's written over 30 books, but I couldn't find a hard number. Since finding that first copy of "A Long Obedience" in the seminary bookstore back in 1985 or so, I've always been able to count on a new Peterson work every year or so, to inspire me, motivate me, and open me up to how the Holy Spirit is at work in the everyday acts of pastoral ministry. Re-reading will be a blessing still in the future, but it won't quite be the same as re-reading in between the expectancy of new reflections and insight.
And the truth is, if you're just now discovering Eugene Peterson, the Christian author, as his earthly life is coming to an end, I would probably point anyone, lay or clergy, to "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." It speaks from early in his career to the path he was already on, and the calling to which he calls us all, of faithfulness, and persistence.
Godspeed, brother Eugene.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he hopes you'll read some Peterson as well as the Bible this week. Tell him what your favorite Peterson work is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
