Wrangler God: On What Good is a Pastor?

For most people the argument for why there should be Pastors in our world would seem, I would think, to be some esoteric and out-of-touch apologetic for a quaintly religious time gone by. Or, if not that, a call for a strong if not strident moral voice to dash to pieces (or, more kindly, simply call back to the fold) a world gone awry, with such a call being also so out of touch with how the real world works with all its glamorous intelligence (artificial and human) where progress and prosperity are inevitable (when we tuck away neatly what we learned about all that advancement in the Holocaust and the Atom Bomb and other 20th century devastations). Or, if not those reasons for a Pastor, then a lifting up of the need for career Religious Organization Executives.

But our need for Pastors is not any of that. Not religious nostalgia, moral clarity or organizational management.

So then, what good is a Pastor? Let me take a step into some thinking on the relationship between the human and the divine to get at the answer.

God’s absolute freedom allows God to bind Godself to the finitude of humanity. Theodor Dieter writes, “God can determine himself [sic] to establish a connection between a human reality and a divine response, that is, to make a pact or promise that guarantees such a connection and which humans can absolutely rely on (potential Dei ordinata, ordained power of God). It is thus an expression of divine mercy when God commits himself [sic] to such a promise” (Promissio as Oswald Bayer’s Key to Luther’s Reformational Theology, Theodor Dieter, Lutheran Quarterly, Volume 39, Number 3, Autumn 2025, p. 273.)

I was ordained a Pastor of the American Lutheran Church (now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) on October 11, 1981. What is this ordination but the expressed empowerment and responsibility and privilege to speak the word of absolution to as many people as possible for as long as possible? My ordination is to say “I absolve you” to whomever and wherever I can. Martin Luther’s theological breakthrough in his 1518 Disputation entitled (for short) Pro Veritate [a key and first full document of Luther, according to Oswald Bayer (see his Promissio, 2025), where Luther makes his “reformational turn”] is to take the Law and put it to death by the word of the Gospel. This death to life is done by the very humanly spoken word that is authorized by God (Matthew 16:19) without condition.

 These days the church is mistaken in trying to argue for a Pastor’s relevance because of giving life wisdom (a spiritual guidance) or because of leadership in community organizing (a justice direction). Rather, the ordination has one purpose: to say “I absolve you” to everybody possible. Could not and cannot others say these exact words and so execute (do/kill!) death by the life(giving) word? Yes, of course. Every single person baptized in Jesus Christ is “ordained” for such a thing.  Baptism does this death/life and authorizes the Baptized to do so to others.

Then, of course the question: why Pastors? It is the wisdom (of God and of Persons) that knows that we are all inveterate sinners (a person not who does bad things, but a person who will not believe they are right with God only because of God alone) who will not give or receive the forgiveness of God unless it is forced upon them. It is the Pastor’s job to set the Baptized loose to do the Baptized’s job of forgiving sin in the name of Jesus Christ. The Pastor does the loosing (Matthew 16:19) of God (and, as per Luther, does not just declare it, but rather effects it). Would this loosing happen without this “ministry of the word” (Article V, The Augsburg Confession)? The startling answer is “no.” In just the same way the death to life action and presence of God does not happen without Jesus Christ (incarnation, in the flesh). Again, why? Not because the Pastor is special or hierarchically important or significant. But because every person, including the Pastor, rejects the election/decision of God and runs instead to their own salvation agency (again, the very definition of being a sinner).

The only way to overcome that rejection is to rope a person into speaking this absolution incessantly and necessarily (I say “the only way” because like it or not, and actually we don’t like it, we never get the Supernatural in any form or format but the Natural. It’s “Supernatural” alright, but it is Natural and Mortal). Ordination is God’s wrangling of the herd, dragging an individual down and branding them. Be kind to Pastors. They don’t want to do this Pastor work. But they have been had. And it’s all God, done for you (pro me!).