Thanksgiving with my mom

There was no Thanksgiving like a Thanksgiving at my mom’s house. We were planning to return to her place back in 1981 -- my husband Rich, daughter Gretchen, new baby Ben and me. It’s a long way from North Dakota to Ohio, so it wasn’t something we did every year. But it was our destination for that year. When November began, I was anxious for the days to pass quickly so that I would soon be home again. As it turned out, I ended up there much too soon.  

On November 7 I heard a voice on the other end of the telephone telling me that Mom had been taken to the hospital in the night and wasn’t doing well. So I hopped on the first plane with my two children. When both my brother and sister met me at the airport, I knew I was too late. So much for Thanksgiving.

That’s been a lot of Thanksgivings ago. And now, I have to say that every year on the fourth Thursday of November, no matter where I am, who I’m with, or what I’m doing, a big part of me is still back at 435 Edwards Avenue in Hamilton, Ohio.

I never realized how small the house was until I went away to college and came home again for the first time at Thanksgiving. As I stood in the foyer looking into the living room, I laughed aloud. What a teeny tiny little house! Just four rooms and a bath, with a converted attic upstairs. There was no dining room, although that never prevented us from having a huge Thanksgiving feast.

My mom had what was once a beautiful mahogany table with a stack of leafs we inserted for special occasions so that it stretched the entire length of the living room. It had endured a lot through the years; part of our holiday ritual was bringing the leafs out, which were in mint condition, and comparing them to the rest of the table, which looked like it had been used as a shield during the Revolutionary War.  Mom would always point this out to us. As I recall, she wasn’t complaining about it, just making an observation. In recent years, my sister Wendy has made that table her own and refinished it so that it is beautiful once again. I have had the honor of pulling my chair up under it again during Thanksgiving dinner at her home in Massachusetts, not far from the site of the original Thanksgiving feast.

My sister got the table. I got the platter. It’s a plain white platter that was only used at Thanksgiving to serve the turkey. Every time my mom pulled it out, she would say, “Be careful with this. It has been in my family for generations.” I’ve moved it from place to place for the past thirty years, and I’ve always been very careful with it. I have no idea how old it is, or if it’s worth more than a few dollars. But it is the one priceless item I own.

I know, in some families there is a kiddy table where all the little ones eat at Thanksgiving. Not so for us. We ALL sat at the table. There was usually a highchair or two, but we were all there. So, of course, a Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t complete without someone spilling a glass of something all over the table. And it was a table laden with food. My mom wouldn’t think of a serving buffet-style. The biggest challenge was passing the food from person to person. To this day, I can’t remember, is it left to right or right to left? Every year Mom had to give us directions.

There were always the usual Thanksgiving dishes: turkey, stuffing, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, succotash, cranberry jelly, sweet potatoes, brown-and-serve rolls, and  pickles and olives that we pulled out of jars and carefully placed on a fancy plate only to return most of them to their jars after the meal. Then there was one other odd item that my mom insisted upon: mashed rutabaga. To my knowledge she was the only one in the family who ate it. Apparently it was something she grew up with and Thanksgiving wouldn’t have been Thanksgiving to her without it. Dessert had to be pumpkin pie with whipped topping in a spray can, of course. And all of this was served on her best dishes. 

Many of the serving dishes were silver and came from a time when my dad gave my mom a new one every year for their anniversary. I was the one who got to spread them with silver polish and clean them up. There was a silver pitcher, and a platter, and a gravy boat, and a bowl, and a big dish with a fancy lid. One year for Christmas Mom divvied them all up and gave them to us kids for Christmas as a memory of our father, who had died back in the 50s. I got the one with the fancy lid. Rarely do I use it; whenever I do, I have to get out the polish.

My family wasn’t much for drinking and I don’t ever recall having hard liquor in the house. But I do remember that on Thanksgiving we had wine with our meal. The kids had grape juice and the adults had near-grape juice from a guy named Mogen David. Somewhere in my mid teens I was allowed into the wine-drinking group on this once-a-year occasion. I remember thinking the stuff was god-awful and could hardly get it down. I still do, but for different reasons.

Throughout my sixty years of Thanksgivings, I have celebrated in a variety of settings: as a newlywed in Toronto, Canada, in my own home with husband and kids, with my in-laws eating from a T.V. table, at Denny’s because it was the only place we could find open after a football game in Detroit, in North Dakota at a church with other pastors from Ohio in exile, at my sister’s house, in a London pub with Gretchen and Ben, with my dear friends Donna and Jerry.  It’s all been good.  This year, I was completely alone on Thanksgiving. And I found myself going to the Thanksgivings I loved the most. There was no Thanksgiving like a Thanksgiving with my mom. I’m thankful for those memories.

Wanna be happy?

Last night I watched the movie Happy. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Everyone who longs to live life in all its fullness needs to see this movie. It takes a look at people around the world who are happy, from a man who pulls a rickshaw in India to a former debutante in Texas, and identifies what it is about their lives that contributes to their happiness.

This is one of those movies that doesn’t really teach me anything I didn’t know before, but the fact that it reinforces what I already know simply underscores the truth it speaks. Of course, its message stands in stark contrast to the values of the culture around us. We’re immersed in a world that tries to convince us happiness can be achieved by amassing a bunch of stuff and proving our worth by leaving our competitors in the dust. But there is no evidence to prove that this is true. Instead, once people have enough to meet their basic needs, having more has no link to happiness. The path to happiness is found through relationships with other people, through community and cooperation. It’s by living authentically and freely, without conforming to what everyone else expects of you. And, most notably, happiness comes to those who cultivate compassion, giving their lives for the sake of others.

This is not a “Christian” movie. But, as a Christian, I couldn’t help noticing how compatible its message is with the message of Jesus. Maybe it’s not the message many Christians have pinned on Jesus in an effort to defend their own life choices, but it is the message Jesus clearly lived and taught. And that’s what makes Jesus “the way, the truth, and the life.” Not because no one else has the truth, but because his message is, at its core, a truth that transcends all truths. It's the Jesus Way. That’s not to say that it is a way of life only found among Jesus' followers. Although this movie was full of stories about people who live the Jesus Way, many of them probably don't know a thing about Jesus. Jesus was all about leading people to life, real life in all its fullness, what this movie calls happiness. You don't have to be a follower of Jesus to find that happiness, although it is the certainly where the Jesus Way leads.

I think about the rich guy who comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to eternal life. This is not just about how to get to heaven someday after he dies. This is a present-tense conversation; it’s about how to experience the abundant life here and now. And Jesus has an answer. He tells the rich guy to sell what he has and give the money to the poor. That is, stop living for yourself and discover the happiness the compassionate life can bring you. In so many ways, Jesus taught this truth to his followers. “Blessed are the poor…” “Anyone who wants to save their life must first lose it…” “If anyone asks for your coat, give them you cloak as well…” It’s the truth of a man who allowed others to put him to death for the sake of compassion.

The great lie of capitalism is that you will be able to buy happiness. If we all suddenly decided that we were quite content with what we had and didn’t need any more stuff to be happy, would the economy collapse? I don’t know. But that's why our American self-identification as a Christian nation seems so ironic to me. If following the Jesus Way is what it means to be a Christian, we are most assuredly not a Christian nation.

Happy left me wondering why this is so hard for us. We all want to be happy. And yet, we continue to resist what makes us truly happy. Why?

Ambition

Ambition. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to have ambition? Ambition is a desire for personal achievement. What can be bad about that?

According to the dictionary, ambition is an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power. It could be a desire to achieve a goal for yourself. Like you want to become a college graduate, or a homeowner, or the President of the United States. What could be bad about that?

Ambition can also be defined as a desire for activity. When we say that someone has no ambition, it’s not a good thing. It’s the sort of thing we say when our grown kid moves back in with us and they spend all day lying around on the couch watching T.V. No, a lack of ambition is not good. Every parent wants an ambitious child: the kind of kid who has a fire lit underneath them, a go-getter, someone with dreams and aspirations. I mean, really, what could be bad about that?

Through the years, great thinkers have had a lot to say about ambition. Sigmund Freud once said that “the psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition.” I guess Freud would conclude that ambition is a bad thing.

The tennis star Venus Williams quipped, “My ambition is to enjoy my life and to do exactly what I want to do. And I'll do that. I will be free.” That sounds like a good thing and it seems to have worked for her.

According to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.” Um. That doesn’t sound so good.

And the spiritual giant, Thomas Merton, stated his opinion on ambition quite succinctly: “When ambition ends, happiness begins.” Like Longfellow, he equates ambition with a state of never being content, always longing for more. And when you put it that way, if nothing is ever enough, maybe ambition isn’t all that helpful to us in our quest for an abundant life. Of course, if there is a quest for the abundant life, you’d have to say that ambition is somehow involved.

Oy! Are you as confused as I am? Maybe the best we can say is that ambition is neither good nor bad. And it can sometimes be good, like when it gets you up off the couch. Or it can sometimes be bad, like when you’ll do anything (lie, cheat or steal) to get what you want.

When we’re raised in a culture like ours, one that’s very achievement-oriented, other people admire us when we’re ambitious. So when someone challenges us about it, it can be quite a slap in the face. We’re supposed to be praised for our ambition, not criticized for it, right? Well, despite that, I think we all know that there are some ambitions that we would be better off keeping to ourselves. Our ambitions can’t be too grand or other people will figure we must think too highly of ourselves. We don’t dare voice them out loud.

And that’s where James and John got into trouble. They had a grandiose ambition that they dared to voice out loud. Actually, it went further than that. They not only wanted something that was grande, but they also had the cojones to ask Jesus to do it for them. They come to Jesus and they ask, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Can you imagine? Well, instead of saying, “Are you crazy?!” Jesus plays along, and he comes back with, “Okay, so what is you want?” And here’s what they say: “We want to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Seriously? Is that all!?

Jesus must be ready to pull his hair out here. Not because James and John think they’re so special. And not because their ambition is so over-the-top. But because he just finished telling his disciples that “the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” Jesus lays it all out for them. For the third time! And this is how James and John respond?

(Of course the other disciples are outraged as well. Probably because they wanted the choice spots when Jesus came into power for themselves and here James and John are calling first dibs.)

Were they really that dense? Was it selective hearing? How could Jesus tell them what was waiting for him, repeatedly, and have his disciples so completely miss what he was saying? Did they have no clue about what was happening around them? Did they not understand Jesus at all?

But they were just being ambitious, weren’t they? Is there something wrong with that? Well, in this case, it meant that they didn’t get who Jesus was. It meant they were missing out because they were stuck in a world where people aspire to be among the rich and powerful and Jesus was inviting them to something more. Jesus was inviting them to be a part of the Kingdom of God.

Their ambition was misplaced. Before they could really understand what Jesus had been trying to teach them, they had to see it. His greatest lesson of all would come to them when he hung on a cross, flanked on his right hand and his left hand -- by two thieves. Then they would get it. Finally, their ambition would become to live and die like the one who came not to be served, but to serve.

Michael W. Smith wrote a song about this called, “Secret Ambition.”

Young man up on the hillside
Teaching new ways
Each word winning them over
Each heart a kindled flame
Old men watch from the outside
Guarding their prey
Threatened by the voice of the paragon
Leading their lambs away
Leading them far away

Nobody knew His secret ambition
Nobody knew His claim to fame
He broke the old rules steeped in tradition
He tore the Holy Veil away
Questioning those in powerful position
Running to those who called His name
(But) Nobody knew His secret ambition
Was to give His life away

Performance anxiety: when your greatest goal is to avoid screwing up

Back when I was a younger, I was a serious musician. My whole life revolved around being the best flutist I could be. I would practice for hours on end every day. As I remember that time of my life, I don’t know if I was driven so much by my desire to make beautiful music as I was by my desire to achieve perfection.

Performance anxiety was a big problem for me. Once when I was in college and had an end of semester jury, it got the best of me. This was when you played for a panel of faculty people who critiqued you. I had gotten myself so worked up over it that I hadn’t slept for days. Finally, I decided that the only way I was going to get through it without falling apart was to drug myself.

There was an over-the-counter medication called “Nervine” that sounded like it was exactly what I needed. Just a little something to relax my nerves. I took it about an hour before I had to play and it relaxed me, all right. It was all I could do to keep myself awake while I played my piece. Not my best performance. I don’t remember if I made any mistakes or not. But I do remember that I just wanted to lay down on the floor right there and go to sleep. I made my way through it and went back to my dorm and crashed.

One of the last things I did as a musician when I was in college was play this beautiful flute solo in the Bach B minor Mass. There I was, standing in front of the orchestra and the choir, in a huge auditorium filled with people. I don’t know how I got through it. But I remember that the whole time I was playing, I was praying that I wouldn’t mess up. Well, I didn’t. But I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience. It was like torture for me; I was scared to death of making a mistake.

If you’ve ever played for a piano recital, you may understand the idea of performance anxiety. It’s what happens when you become so worried about messing up that the joy of making music becomes lost. Your goal has little to do with the music at all. It’s all about avoiding making any mistakes.

But, you know what? Performance anxiety isn’t just a problem for musicians. It’s a problem for non-musicians as well. Whenever we become so pre-occupied with our mistakes that we miss out on the joy of living, we’re suffering from performance anxiety. It enslaves us.

In Martin Luther’s day, people experienced the ultimate performance anxiety, living under the heavy weight of eternal damnation if they didn’t get it right. Luther knew how oppressive this could be. When he became a priest, before he said his first mass, he was so terrified of making a mistake that he threw up. That moment was but a microcosm of his larger tormented life. He tried to take matters into his own hands by punishing himself, whipping himself, torturing himself, all in an effort to avert God’s wrath and avoid the fires of eternal damnation.

But then, by dwelling in Jesus, Luther came to see the truth and he knew freedom for the first time in his life. That truth said we’re not saved by anything we do or don’t do, but simply by the grace of God. It was a truth Luther couldn’t keep to himself. He went public with it so other people would stop living in fear, too. He wanted them to know that God isn’t an angry tyrant in the sky who’s out to zap us whenever we mess up. From Jesus, Luther learned that God is all about unconditional love. This was a message of freedom 500+ years ago. And it’s a message of freedom for us today, as well. Because performance anxiety still enslaves us.

Do you live as if your worth is all wrapped up in how well you perform in this life? The Good News from Jesus is that God is about mercy and forgiveness. This is a message of freedom from performance anxiety. You don’t have to focus your energy on avoiding mistakes in life. You can be free to be fully alive, as the person God created you to be.

The author, minister and peace activist, Marianne Williamson understands this so well when she writes:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

We can spend our lives freely, daring to risk for the sake of loving ourselves and others. It’s the sort of thing Luther was talking about when he spoke about the bondage we’re in by living in constant fear of making a mistake. Christ frees us from that kind of bondage. “God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners,” Luther said. “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”

How different that is from living a careful little life that’s like an endless piano recital where our greatest goal is not to mess up. Freedom in Jesus comes when we realize that we don’t have to go through life playing a boring little piece like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” very carefully with one finger over and over again so we don’t risk making a mistake. Freedom in Jesus is more like playing Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” on the organ with all the stops out and all our fingers and toes moving at once. Yeah, we’re sure to make a lot of mistakes along the way --- but who cares? Certainly not Jesus. The more time you spend with Jesus, the more you realize that truth. God is love. He’s not looking for an opportunity to condemn us for our mistakes. God revels in the joy of our music.

Are atheists gonna fry?

She came into my office visibly shaken. Something terrible had happened and I braced myself for the worst. A parade of possible scenarios raced through my head: a divorce, a death, financial ruin… But it was none of the above.

She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer as she blurted out, “Oh, Pastor, I don’t know what to do. Scott told me he’s an atheist.”

Yes, this was a crisis for her. It may or may not have been a crisis for Scott, her seventeen-year-old son, but it certainly was for his mother. I had encountered this before. Often, in fact. Sometimes it came on the eve of Confirmation Sunday when an adolescent realized they couldn’t in good conscience stand before a congregation of people and claim to believe something they’re not sure they believe. (That’s one of the things I hate most about Confirmation, or Affirmation of Baptism, or whatever it is we’re calling that rite of passage where a young person makes a public declaration of faith. It forces a lot of kids to be dishonest just to please the adults who love them. It’s not fair to those we put in that position, nor does it truly honor their spiritual journey. But that may be the topic for another blog. Back to the spiritual standing of atheists.)

I suspect that the concern many Christians have for atheists is that, by not believing, they are asking for trouble. It reminds me of the way I used to think about Santa Claus when I was a kid. I had plenty of doubts about the veracity of the Jolly Old Elf, but I wasn’t about to let anyone know because I lived with this fear that if I didn’t believe, I wouldn’t get any gifts. Is that the way we think about God? Do we live with the fear that if we don’t believe, God won’t reward us? Well then, I have to wonder… Could the God of “love divine, all loves excelling” be that petty?

Why is it so upsetting for Christians when they learn that someone they love considers himself or herself an atheist? The short answer, for many people, would be: because if you don’t believe in God, and in Jesus specifically, you’re going to hell. After all, doesn’t the Bible say that if you want to go to heaven, you have to believe in Jesus as your Savior? Uh, actually, no.

We glean a lot of this theology from John’s gospel. John was big on believing. But he never says that if you don’t believe in Jesus as your Savior you will go to hell. That’s something we would have to imply from our own distorted perspective on what it means to be saved and what we’re being saved from. In fact, the Jesus that John reveals to us isn’t all that concerned about teaching people how to avoid hell; his focus is on leading them to experience life. Not just survival, but real life, life in all its fullness -- what Jesus calls abundant life, or eternal life, which is something that begins now, not just someday after we stop breathing.

What does it mean when a person says they’re an atheist? Does it mean they aren’t so sure about God? Or that they don’t believe in the God they learned about in Sunday school? Maybe they don't buy into a God who can’t be explained by science? It seems to me that there is a spectrum of belief, and die-hard, Bible burnin’ atheists are at the opposite end of the spectrum from dyed-in-the-wool, Bible-totin’ Christians. (It’s the ones on both extreme ends of the spectrum who scare me, the ones who are so darn certain that they are right and everyone else is wrong. They’re dangerous!) But, at what point does a person move from being a believer to being an atheist? I’m not sure where I would place myself on the spectrum of belief. On any given day, I’m shifting from one place to another. It isn’t easy to differentiate believers from non-believers. And I have to wonder how much it really matters. Certainly, God loves us all, no matter where we fall on the spectrum of belief.

Well, maybe it doesn’t matter as much for God as it does for us. For me, living with an awareness of God’s love is part of what it means to live life in all its fullness, the life Jesus invites us all to participate in. God’s love is a source of joy in my life. For atheists, this must be like receiving an invitation to a party they have no desire to attend. So the love of God is not a source of joy. From my perspective, the atheist is missing out on the best that life has to offer. But I imagine that from the perspective of an atheist, I may be perceived as the one who is missing out.

Those of us who believe in an afterlife might opt to leave all of this up to God and take comfort in the fact that someday we’ll find out who was right and who was wrong. But I suspect that when that time comes, it isn’t going to matter who was right and who was wrong. God’s grace is sufficient. It is now, and it always will be. For everyone. Whether they believe it or not.

The curse of a compassionate heart mixed with OCD tendencies

I was about a minute away from the church on Sunday morning when a police car  blocked my way. Up ahead, a tragedy was unfolding. A gaggle of neighborhood gawkers looked on as vehicles with flashing lights, including several big red fire trucks, converged on the street. T.V. crews were on the scene, as well.

All of this was taking place a couple blocks away from me, so I couldn’t tell exactly what had happened, but I knew it wasn’t good. I also couldn’t tell exactly where it was happening, and I got a sinking feeling in my gut. Was it Holy Trinity? It seemed to be right about where the church was located.

I took a quick right turn and made my way toward the church by back streets. Would I even get through or would I have to park my car at the curb and walk to the church? If it came to that, I wouldn't be walking, I'd be running. Breathe deep, Nancy, breathe deep. One, two, three blocks I traveled, until I came to the street that runs alongside the church. It was clear. I turned the corner in front of the church and saw that all was the way it had been when I left it the day before. “Thank you, God!” I shouted.

The fire was just three doors down, at some low rent apartments. Later, I learned from those who had been watching T.V. that no one was hurt, but nine families had been displaced by this quickly moving blaze. And I was relieved when I knew that it had nothing to do with me. Nine families lost everything, and I thanked God that it hadn’t happened at the church building where our faith community meets on Sunday mornings. All those people lost their homes, and I moved on to getting my own house in order: checking to see that the A/C was at a comfortable temperature, unlocking doors, turning on lights.

I had thanked God. All of a sudden, my gut wasn’t feeling so good again. But this time it wasn’t fear and dread that was doing it; this time it was pure unadulterated guilt. I had thanked God that the tragedy had nothing to do with me and mine. Someone else’s world had all but ended, and I was relieved that this hadn’t happened to us.

It’s normal to be relieved when we’re spared of what could have been the death of us. But, when someone else isn’t, it’s hard for me to be truly happy about it. It’s the feeling I always get when I’m sitting around a table piled with food on Thanksgiving afternoon. My first thought is to be grateful for all that I have been given in this life, but then before I’ve even finished thinking those thankful thoughts, I start to ponder the lives of those whose families could live for a year on the leftovers my family will store in plastic containers for another day after the meal is over. I’m thankful, yes, but as I’m scooping the feast from my plate up to my mouth, my throat tightens and it’s hard to swallow.

Okay. I know that at any given moment there are horrible things happening in the world around me. Thanks to television, I can see a sampling of life’s atrocities at any hour of the day. But it’s more than I can absorb and, for the most part, I put it all out of my mind. I have to. And yet, I know it’s always there; it’s always happening. So, it’s hard for me to celebrate completely. No matter how good things are for me, I can’t stop thinking about those who don’t have it so good. I suppose that’s the curse of compassionate heart mixed with OCD tendencies.

One of the phrases I hear often from other Christians is, “There but by the grace of God go I.” It’s the idea that God in his grace has spared me of something horrible that has happened to someone else. “I was late getting to work at the World Trade Center on September 11.” “ I had a high draft number during the Vietnam War.” “I ate the chicken ala king at the wedding reception and didn’t get sick-as-a-dog like everyone else who did." God spared me. It was God’s grace, no doubt about it. But what about that person who wasn’t spared? Apparently God was all out of grace.

I have trouble pinning my good fortune on God. Because if God has been good to me, I have to ask, why hasn’t God been good to the woman who scrambles every day to feed her hungry children? Why would God choose me and not her? That makes no sense to me. It’s certainly not because I’m more deserving. In fact, Jesus says, even if I were, “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.” I do acknowledge that sometimes my good fortune may be the result of good choices I’ve made in my life. But they are good choices that were made against the backdrop of opportunities and privileges that others can only dream of. I have to conclude that a lot of what happens to me is random luck. No other explanation makes sense to me.

I know that many Christians will bristle at the idea of luck determining how our lives will go. They may insist that they have been blessed by God for a reason. I’m not so sure about that any more. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, really, and I wonder if we choose to believe it because it somehow justifies for us why we have so much while others have so little.

I wish I could offer a choice bit of theological wisdom on this matter but I can’t. I don’t get it, I really don’t. I try my best to put it out of my mind whenever I can. But when I drive past a fire on a Sunday morning and thank God that it didn’t happened at my church, my twisted understanding of God’s ways smacks me in the face. And I don’t know what to do with it. I can only trust that God does know what to do with it and somehow, God is working toward a loving resolution of all that is messed up in our world. I don’t know if that’s true. I could be wrong. But it’s what I have to believe because if I didn’t, I don’t know what would become of me.

How a preacher is different than a cockroach

Last Sunday, as I sat in the chancel, mentally preparing myself to preach, I looked down at the floor and saw a giant cockroach wedged up against the left side of the pulpit. It was lying on its back with its desperate little legs twitching in the air. That lovely image was still in my brain as I climbed into the pulpit and looked out at my congregation. There they were, waiting for a word from the Lord, and I was thinking about a near-dead cockroach.

I had an important message that day. It was all about denying ourselves, taking up a cross and following Jesus. Mind you, this is not something peripheral to the life of faith. For those of us who aspire to live Jesus lives, this is at the center. So why was I feeling like it was totally irrelevant to the lives of the people I was addressing? Most of them weren’t making eye-contact with me, and those who were didn’t seem to be blinking. Hello? Is anybody out there?

The more I talked, the more disconnected I felt. Was it that nobody likes to be reminded about how following Jesus isn’t always fun? Was it that I had preached on this so many times before that they must be tired of hearing it? Was my sermon too academic? Too humorless? Too devoid of honest-to-goodness, real- life examples? Should I have started working on it earlier on the week ? Seriously, while I was talking, all of those thoughts were racing through my mind. I was second-guessing myself and a part of me was wondering if maybe it was time for me to think of taking up another line of work.

Certainly, I don’t preach for the praise. That would be just crazy. But it helps if I can sense some kind of connection with my listeners while I’m putting myself out there. It’s not easy for me to stand before a congregation and presume to know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I feel like such a fake and I wonder if they can all see right through me. Really, why should they listen to me? What do I know? Preaching feeds on all my insecurities. And every once in a while I have a Sunday like this, where I am praying for the proverbial trap door that will both make me disappear from view and put me out of my misery. With each word I spoke, I felt more and more like that cockroach, struggling to survive

I love preaching when I have a fire in my belly. On those Sundays, I can’t wait to step into the pulpit and watch the words fly from my mouth. I’m talking about something that burns within me, something I believe will transform the lives of my listeners. This is like an out-of –the body experience for me. Although I am a terribly self-conscious person, in that holy moment, all I care about is getting the message across as effectively as I can and there is not a self-conscious bone in my body. I have no doubt that there is a God-thing going on. There have been lots of Sundays like that for me. But this was not one of those Sundays.

Finally, I come to the end of the sermon. I leave the congregation with a question, say “Amen” and sit-the-hell down, thinking that’s something I should have done about ten minutes ago. Thank God it’s over.

I looked down and saw no more movement from the cockroach. He died while I was preaching. Just like me. I died while I was preaching, too. Of course, the big difference between us is that I will live to preach again. Maybe that’s why Christian preachers get so worked up over the resurrection. We experience it on a regular basis.