Let me begin by saying, I had no idea I'd love to preach or that I'd have a gift for it. Now, I've always loved reading and writing. I did public speaking in high school and I love Jesus, so you might say it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it...I was aware of a call to ministry in college but I just never really thought about preaching as part of it. Laity Sunday, 1999, I got called upon to preach the sermon. Because it was Laity Sunday and the Lay Leader "didn't feel called" to preach that day. She called me and said, "I think maybe you should preach." I said, "OK, I'll give it a try." I preached on Matthew's Question about Paying Taxes, an easy assignment for a Legal Aid lawyer, I thought. I got about two sentences in on Sunday morning and thought, "So much for running from my call to the ministry. I will not be fully happy if I don't do this preaching business on a regular basis." I was utterly surprised--as if I had some hidden innate ability to make cabinets and had managed to go my whole life without even seeing wood in its cut form and then one day, someone put a hammer in my hand. I felt completely absorbed in it and completely used by God in it. It was as if I were on the Giant Swing or the Mother of All Roller Coasters. On the outside, I was looking OK, but on the inside, I was wide-eyed surprised by grace, the way it often is when we get a glimpse of even a bit of God's mercy and love.
I've preached hundreds of sermons since then, even though this is my first appointment, thanks to generous pastors who gave me the chance to stand behind the sacred desk. Every week I preach is like the first time I ever did it, however. Monday is excitement and reading and engaging the scripture. Tuesday is marinate and meditate and tell myself it's a long way to Sunday. Wednesday, I try to make a free form list, convinced I will never in fact get the sermon written. Thursday I try and fail to write, Friday I try and might succeed. I write front to back with little revision. Not sure what that says about me--perhaps that I am into narrative and that I like to write. Or I'm too lazy to revise anything I don't get a grade on?
On Sunday, I feel nervous in a "game day" sort of way. And when the time comes to stand up, to go to the pulpit or the lectern or the music stand or whatever it is that marks the preaching "spot," I send the signal from brain to legs, and I feel the muscles contract. I call on the Holy Spirit to have her way, and I summon every saint I know or have ever heard of. I summon the woman who pressed through the crowd, I summon Peter and Paul, I summon Will Willimon and Andy Lunt and Sondra Wheeler. I summon Oli Jenkins (campus minister and saint for me), I summon Mama and Daddy, I summon grandparents. I summon every brother and sister in Christ I ever was in ministry with. I summon my lawyer self, who had to find a way to stand under the dry stare of judges and galleries of tie-wearing litigators. Standing up reminds me that I am baptized, that I am one called out from the community, and that I'm accountable to that community to preach the Gospel. Standing up reminds me that so much about the culture wants me to sit down. Standing up reminds me of Christ's resurrection and of the gates that lift up their heads that the King of Glory may come in. Standing up feels brave and wild and counter cultural. It feels frightening and dizzying and makes me feel full and empty both at once.
This Sunday, I'm subbing for a preacher friend of mine who has a last-minute need for pulpit coverage. The text is Matthew--The Question about Paying Taxes. It will be a lovely thing to preach a new sermon on that text from Back in the Day. When the time comes, I will get my pages together and lean forward a little. I will send my legs the "Good News" first, and rise to my feet. Here I stand, I can do no less.
And on this Laity Sunday, I can't help but be reminded how we are all gifted and called to "stand up for Jesus," not just in the pulpit giving our testimony, but on our jobs, giving Christian witness, and in our families and our neighborhoods, giving Christian love. What is the thing you are most passionate about? How does God want you to use YOUR gifts and talents to bless somebody?
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Grateful
Today, from the place I'm writing this, I can see blue skies--and the air is balmy for October. The breeze is noticeable but unarmed, a sort of shadow of its future winter self. This is one of those days when it seems one could live forever. Yet, Facebook is jammed with tributes to Steve Jobs, who died today from pancreatic cancer, and tributes to Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, civil rights pioneer, who also went home to glory today.
It's days like this that we are reminded how babies can be born in the midst of war and disaster and how billows of smoke and missiles of death can mar a clear blue September morning. Life springs up where you least expect it and, at the same time, death can take us in the twinkling of an eye, while we were most assuredly making other plans. Very, very few people have their date of death on their appointment calendar as it turns out.
As a pastor, I am often present at the moments of transition--I have seen the grace-soaked shining face of a new mother as she holds a new baby, fresh from God's factory, birthed into this world from some other place. I have held the hands of those who were laboring to be birthed from this world into the next...both occasions for tears and sweat and blood and grace.
I have been to hospital rooms to celebrate miracles and to sit with innocent sufferers, and I have had the surreal experience of going from those serious matters of life and death to coming back to the church to a parishioner that's upset about the color of carpet or the typeface on the bulletin. I'm not bitter and I don't blame them--it's just enough to make a pastor laugh out loud, so much of it. I have had a front row seat on some marriages that have made me grateful for my own beyond measure, and ones that have inspired me to be more loving and forgiving. It is the perfect mix of joy and sorrow and it keeps me in touch with my LORD as no other "day job" could do.
Today, in fact, was not all pondering our mortality. This morning I played with soap bubbles and 4 year old children, and this afternoon, I was treated to a spread of amazing food by our child care center teachers and administration. Eating chicken wings and meatballs and salad and cake, it occurs to me that their appreciation is hard to receive, because I am the one that is grateful. I'm grateful, like Rev. Shuttlesworth, to be called to be a drum major for Christ, and I'm grateful, like Steve Jobs, to have found my passion in life.
In fact, in this, my second "Clergy Appreciation Month" ever, I feel what I felt last year too. I feel grateful. I feel overwhelmingly appreciat-IVE.
Life is shorter than it appears and how we spend this time matters. Are you grateful? Are you doing what you love? Are you fully present for the people who have your heart? If this was in fact your last day of living, would you be glad to be doing what you are doing today? Do the people you love know you love them?
When my time comes, I hope it is far enough down the road for my grandchildren to have laughed at my jokes. I hope it's far enough off to make it woefully impractical for Eric to remarry. I hope I have a GREAT preacher for the service who has the good sense to make me proud from the Great Beyond. I hope my children will know how much I loved them and that love is stronger than death. And I hope the whole world knows how very grateful I am, for every sermon I got to preach, for every hug and kiss, for every beloved friend, for every tear and heartache and the whole lovely, beautiful, complicated thing. And, child care center, I'm grateful for the chicken, and the meatballs and the cake, too. But you didn't have to. Really. I'm appreciative enough for all of us.
It's days like this that we are reminded how babies can be born in the midst of war and disaster and how billows of smoke and missiles of death can mar a clear blue September morning. Life springs up where you least expect it and, at the same time, death can take us in the twinkling of an eye, while we were most assuredly making other plans. Very, very few people have their date of death on their appointment calendar as it turns out.
As a pastor, I am often present at the moments of transition--I have seen the grace-soaked shining face of a new mother as she holds a new baby, fresh from God's factory, birthed into this world from some other place. I have held the hands of those who were laboring to be birthed from this world into the next...both occasions for tears and sweat and blood and grace.
I have been to hospital rooms to celebrate miracles and to sit with innocent sufferers, and I have had the surreal experience of going from those serious matters of life and death to coming back to the church to a parishioner that's upset about the color of carpet or the typeface on the bulletin. I'm not bitter and I don't blame them--it's just enough to make a pastor laugh out loud, so much of it. I have had a front row seat on some marriages that have made me grateful for my own beyond measure, and ones that have inspired me to be more loving and forgiving. It is the perfect mix of joy and sorrow and it keeps me in touch with my LORD as no other "day job" could do.
Today, in fact, was not all pondering our mortality. This morning I played with soap bubbles and 4 year old children, and this afternoon, I was treated to a spread of amazing food by our child care center teachers and administration. Eating chicken wings and meatballs and salad and cake, it occurs to me that their appreciation is hard to receive, because I am the one that is grateful. I'm grateful, like Rev. Shuttlesworth, to be called to be a drum major for Christ, and I'm grateful, like Steve Jobs, to have found my passion in life.
In fact, in this, my second "Clergy Appreciation Month" ever, I feel what I felt last year too. I feel grateful. I feel overwhelmingly appreciat-IVE.
Life is shorter than it appears and how we spend this time matters. Are you grateful? Are you doing what you love? Are you fully present for the people who have your heart? If this was in fact your last day of living, would you be glad to be doing what you are doing today? Do the people you love know you love them?
When my time comes, I hope it is far enough down the road for my grandchildren to have laughed at my jokes. I hope it's far enough off to make it woefully impractical for Eric to remarry. I hope I have a GREAT preacher for the service who has the good sense to make me proud from the Great Beyond. I hope my children will know how much I loved them and that love is stronger than death. And I hope the whole world knows how very grateful I am, for every sermon I got to preach, for every hug and kiss, for every beloved friend, for every tear and heartache and the whole lovely, beautiful, complicated thing. And, child care center, I'm grateful for the chicken, and the meatballs and the cake, too. But you didn't have to. Really. I'm appreciative enough for all of us.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)