Faith Works 11-4-22

[Note to editors down the line: his name is spelled THEODOR, and if you add the final E you will be incorrect! For Herzl or Gaster…]

Faith Works 11-4-22
Jeff Gill

Debts and appreciations and an anniversary
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When it comes to the question of why we did something, even something in retrospect looking like a major decision made on the merits, it's hard to give too much emphasis to any one person or factor, let alone to ourselves.

How many of us have had occasion to look back at a choice we've made and ask ourselves "why did I do that?"

Grown-ups take responsibility for their decisions, I'd say, but that's not quite the same as how we then can learn from, and even teach others, about how we came to make them.

Forty years ago last week, I made the decision to go to seminary and become a parish minister. I was already a student assistant minister at a campus ministry, had been called to serve as a deacon in my home church, and preached a few times for the congregation and Fellowship of Christian Athletes services. Someone (another long story) had very specifically asked me years earlier about whether or not I'd considered a call to ministry, but I had at most thought about it as one option among others, and still not really the primary decision I was likely to make, or so my thinking had meandered over the previous two years.

What I was interested in at the time was anthropology and specifically folklore. Professors in my major had encouraged me to think about grad school. Ministry was still running a distant second.

Knowing my interest in comparative mythology and folklore, one of our campus ministers, Don Nead, a Presbyterian minister himself, talked to a scholar in residence over at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic campus ministry, Art Zannoni, who was part of bringing a noted scholar to the Purdue Hillel Foundation. (We were a pretty ecumenical outfit all around, as you can tell.) Don and Art arranged that I would get a chance to speak to this distinguished and somewhat intimidating speaker.

Theodor Gaster was best known in this country for a popular book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in England he was a scholar respected on many fronts. His father was Chief Rabbi of England, who named him for Herzl, and their household had people like Winston Churchill, Vladimir Lenin, and Sigmund Freud dropping by; it was said Arthur Balfour wrote the first draft of his declaration that gave shape to Theodor Herzl's dream for Zionism in their living room. He had degrees from the University of London and Columbia, and taught basically everywhere: but he considered himself a folklorist.

The meeting, I should note, wasn't my idea: it terrified me, and I was afraid I'd come off the proper idiot in two shakes of a Hebrew manuscript. But the arrangement had been made, the day came (November 2), I walked into the Hillel Foundation at the appointed hour, and suddenly I was seated facing him, both of us with cups of coffee. He asked my interests, I shared them stammeringly, and he replied kindly. He asked how I came to be familiar with Hillel, and I explained my role with the ecumenical campus ministry.

"Oh, so have you considered going into the ministry?" said Gaster. I said yes, but I was attracted to folklore studies.

"Any fool can become a scholar of folklore, my boy, but if you have any sort of call to pastoral ministry, that you should do. I implore you, give that serious thought. The world needs more of you, not more of me. You can always do folklore on the side." And we continued as if the matter was settled.

I guess it was.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; any foolishness he's gotten himself into is his responsibility and not that of Gaster, Nead, or Zannoni. Tell him about unexpected influences you've had at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.