Portraits Of Passion: The Secure Administrator Versus The Suffering Neophyte.

[Today we take a short break from sermon summaries. The reflections on Pastor Sam's Palm Sunday sermon will begin posting tomorrow.]

From time to time, I watch foreign language films having to do with monastic or convent life. And I have noticed a recurrent theme. A young neophyte minister experiences a profound spiritual encounter with Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or a long-departed saint. The encounter energizes the neophyte and she acts on the vision, seeking to do more for the kingdom of God than she had previously done. She endeavors to feed the poor. She commissions an artist to attempt to capture the encounter with paint and canvas. She writes of spiritual intimacies in her journal. And, somehow, the details of her encounter and subsequent action are relayed to the district office, or the divisional secretary, or some other headquarters-ish agency. And an administrator is dispatched to investigate.

In these films, the administrator is depicted as a “believer” who has lost passion. The investigation invariably ends with the administrator coldly ordering the neophyte to cease and desist from acting on the vision. The warning is soon followed by a transfer to an undesirable assignment, often one involving hard labor in extreme conditions that open the door to some incurable illness. The neophyte joyfully recounts the vision with her fellow saints in the marginalized community, and she continues to thrive spiritually while her body rapidly deteriorates. The ending of these types of films often shows the neophyte experiencing a second, confirming vision in the moments before her death, while the administrator comes to the realization that a critically important spiritual test has just been failed: in the face of a call for childlike faith and trust, the administrator instead chose to cling to policy and procedure. The administrator's end? A very successful work life, Christlike compassion buried alive, and a heart slowly suffocating under a stack of manuals.

SO glad these were only movies and not real life.