Talk With the Preacher

I don’t know when the shift happened. It seems like just yesterday that I was the intern.

Now I HAVE interns.

How very strange.

In my two summers of supervising pastoral interns for field study experience in ministry I have had the incredible good fortune (blessing of the divine, that is) to work with young ministers who are not just good but truly wonderful–in both cases women who are certainly called to pastoral ministry, have met rigorous academic challenges, have been courageous enough to take on a calling most folks thought ridiculous if not highly unpractical and who were willing to work.

Hard.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Leah Grundset, who worked doggedly all summer to meet the requirements set out by Truett Seminary, to meet and surpass my expectations and to work to know and bless this congregation with her ministry.

That’s a lot to accomplish in 12 weeks but, as Elizabeth Evans did last summer, Leah rose to the occasion with grace and competence.

I hate to say goodbye, but it seemed the appropriate time to just sit back and marvel at the gifts that these young and talented folk share so freely with us.

Requirements for Leah’s experience this summer included participating in almost every conceivable pastoral experience: preaching, teaching Bible Study, making pastoral calls, planning worship, organizing ministry events, helping perform a funeral, dealing with sticky interpersonal situations, setting boundaries, attending committee meetings, making sure there’s enough food for potlucks . . . .

Without exception Leah sailed through every challenge and endeared herself to this community of faith.

The really awful part about sharing ministry with such gifted young ministers is that they inevitably have to head back to finish up seminary and on to wherever God calls them.

Here’s the good news as I reflect today, though. There’s no doubt I’m sending this one off with a bright future ahead . . . for her, certainly, but most encouraging of all, for the Church of Jesus Christ . . . poised to receive such amazing gifts and graces of leadership in this young minister.

For this I can only say again and again: thanks be to God.

If holiness is directly relational to how many pictures of Jesus one owns, I have to say this congregation is far holier than I’ve given them credit for. In our recent move we’ve unpacked an astounding array of pictures of Jesus, which are now propped up on the floor of the church library.

I’ve toured museums in Europe and never seen the vast collection of different renderings of Jesus that I recently came upon lined up along the walls in the newly renovated library. I’ve spent several days of speechless perusing (which, if you know me, is really very unusual).

There are at least 7 framed copies of this one . . .

Along with all of these . . .

These, I was assured, are not technically Jesus, but rather former pastors of Calvary:

I am currently debating which is my favorite: this Jesus in iridescent paint on black velvet or Jesus knocking on one of the windows of the UN.

I came home a few nights ago to fireflies everywhere.

It was just dusk, halfway between the heat of the day and the dark of the night . . . you know, that time of day when everything looks a little softer around the edges.

Those few moments on the porch watching fireflies gave me pause. See, I love the way they fly, kind of heavy in the air, like they are nonchalantly happening by; and I love the way they light up almost gradually, like an afterthought.

As I stood there watching the fireflies I had a sudden and deep longing for my grandmother. I can still smell the Chicago summers at Grandma’s house, freshly cut grass and the smell of Grandpa’s tractor. We’d play hard all day and spend the early evening hours catching fireflies and eating corn on the cob with those little plastic end thingies people use to hold their hot corn on the cob.

Those summers were times when the whole world seemed full of possibilities, when all the new things like acorns and squirrels, corn fields and fireflies (remember, I grew up in Hawaii) were just new curiosities, symbols of frontiers yet to explore, a world full of possibilities and the endless optimism that even though bedtime is coming the jar on the nightstand would light up long after I fell asleep. (Let’s just ignore the cruelty to animals issue for a moment, shall we?)

And when I stood on the porch the other night and watched those fireflies resolutely lighting up the landscape even though the creeping darkness was just around the corner, I thought of summer memories at Grandma’s house and the lessons I learned there, all summed up in a phrase I read recently in a novel: “Never forget in the darkness what you knew to be true in the light.”

In the course of conversation the other day a friend declared, “Every dog has his day!”

Truthfully, I’ve never given much thought to the deeper meaning of this colloquialism, and neither have I stopped to consider how very strange it must sound to someone listening in. All I know is that, though I don’t like them very much, we happen to own a dog, and if “having his day” means an experience of reckoning, I suppose that’s exactly what happened at our house this week.

Our dog is what we like to affectionately call, “intellectually challenged”.

I guess we should have suspected something was up when we threw him a tennis ball in the courtyard of the pound and he toddled over to look at it with vague interest then turned away. Let’s just say he hasn’t been exactly what we’d envisioned when we had the grand idea of adding a canine member to our family (smart, loyal, fun, etc.).

This week Champ disappeared.

We’d been gone on vacation, and though we’re not sure we think he might have been smart enough to notice someone else was taking care of him. We saw him long enough to pet him when we got back but then he disappeared.

This has happened before, as our yard is connected to several neighbors’ yards to allow the kids easy access to and from neighbors’ houses. We’re not sure but we think someone left a gate open by mistake and Champ wandered out.

He’s really not smart enough to trot around the block . . . and come back home. Why, I do not know, but such is the case.

Champ was missing for several days before we found out a neighbor had called the Montgomery County Animal Shelter, where Champ “had his day”—a four-day vacation at the pound, to be exact, complete with mandatory computer chip identification implantation. Don’t know how his ID tag came off, why he didn’t come back or why we weren’t called through our Vet’s ID on his collar, but we were getting rather worried after a few days of missing Champ and several teary “I miss Champ!” conversations at bedtime.

(The kids were fine; it was Mark I was concerned about.)

Last Saturday we finally found Champ and Mark and the kids went to pick him up. As they did they ran into a family looking at Champ and telling each other what a nice dog he seemed to be. Looks like we got there just in time to get him back.

Was this experience “his day”? Did Champ learn his lesson? We’ll see . . . .

“To consider your preaching of more importance than the opening of a flower is to leave the narrow path. To value certain appointments on your daily calendar and resent others as intrusions is to misunderstand the Word. To esteem and enjoy some people in your parish and to discount and dismiss others is to wobble blindly. To meet the needs of others and ignore the whispers of your own soul is to succumb to the illusion that there is a time more precious than now and a place more heavenly than here.”

-from The Art of Pastoring by William C. Martin

“You should really ride the bus,” my friend Jess told me the other day.

Usually I take Jessica’s advice—she always recommends great books. But in this case I was not too sure.

Of course in this city public transportation is pretty chic, you know. We ride the Metro, and you can definitely be cool and ride the Metro at the same time. In fact, a lot of people think you are not cool if you don’t ride the Metro.

But riding the bus is a whole different story.

I can’t be absolutely sure, but I am fairly certain that riding the bus is generally not that cool. At least in downtown DC.

I looked at her strangely and she continued: “Jesus rides the bus, you know.”

You would have to know Jess to know that when she said that to me she was not definitively proclaiming the presence of a 2000+ year old Middle Eastern rabbi on the DC public bus system. She always has some deep spiritual truth floating around in her brain.

Jess said she knew Jesus rode the bus just the other day when she was trying to get home and the bus driver had to delay moving on to lower the handicapped lift.

For a homeless woman’s shopping cart.

Desperately annoyed passengers were further miffed when she got on smelling downright horrible. (It’s hot in DC these days, you know.)

Jess said it delighted her that they all had to wait and it delighted her that the woman who got on smelled so bad. What a great reminder for all of us sweet-smelling, Metro-riding . . . Christians.

“Jesus rides the bus, you know,” she said.

The whole point of having children while we were young, Mark and I told ourselves, was so that we’d still be able to walk when they headed out the door to college, leaving us free to join the Peace Corps, take up sky diving or sail around the world. You know, whatever might strike our fancy.

That plan seemed to be working rather well. When the care of three energetic children and one intellectually impaired dog started to get us down, we’d glance at each other as if to say, “Not too much longer now!”

This premise, around which I have built my shaky sanity for the last 12 years, has been called into question rather dramatically since about 10:15 a.m. last Monday.

It was that fateful hour during which I walked down the jet way at Baltimore Washington International Airport and kissed my embarrassed 12-year-old goodbye for almost 4 whole weeks. He got on that plane and jetted off to a vacation in paradise with his grandparents, four weeks of gallivanting around the Hawaiian Islands, recipient of undivided attention from grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins.

It’s already objectively observable that he does not miss us in the least.

I, on the other hand, am not feeling so carefree. I of the, “Once we unload these pesky kids we can really start living!” school of thought am really, really missing my child.

I miss his conversation, I miss his hugs, I even miss his piles of junk all over the house. And worse, I’m starting to wonder about my grand idea to get rid of the kids. I’m afraid, if this past week is any indication, I might miss them.

I might miss them so much that I will be paralyzed by sorrow, unable to move from the telephone in case they call, waiting by the door for their next visit home.

This is a very sobering consideration . . . I just didn’t know how very much these children (even the dog? I hope not!) have become part of who I am . . . how much their little lives bring excitement and meaning to mine. I have to say, life has been a little lonely without Hayden here.

Too late now to change the plan, of course. I guess my best bet is to get the child back and enjoy him while I can.

Then, when he eventually goes off for good I’ll mourn his absence . . . while strolling down the Champs-Elysées, or something like that . . . .

One of the greatest gifts of my first few years here at Calvary has been the opportunity to be part of a group of young clergy coming together from all different denominations and various geographical locations around the country to learn together about leadership. We meet several times a year for two years, and we’re currently in Boston for our second-to-last meeting.

At every meeting we discuss a specific topic and hear from excellent practitioners; each session includes conversations with a “Theologian In Residence” to help us explore the theology of the concepts we’re discussing.

This time it’s urban ministry, a very small interest of mine . . . .

We met Dr. Jeff Brown, pastor of Union Baptist Church in Cambridge, and one of the founders of Boston’s ground-breaking Ten Point Coalition.

It was all very inspiring, but the thing that really caught my attention was in the lecture we heard from our Theologian in Residence, Dr. Fred Smith, Jr., Associate Professor of Urban Ministry at Wesley Theological Seminary, coined a new word: Shalomalization.

This, as you might be able to tell, amused me no end, but Dr. Smith was serious. He said his new word is the word for ministry in the inner city, based on Jeremiah 29:7:
“And seek the peace of the city into which I have caused you to be carried away to exile, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace of the city, you shall have peace.”

Peace for the city, what a dream. After listening today, though, it occurs to me that Shalomalization wouldn’t be bad for the whole entire world.

Friends make the world go ’round and all that . . . being as I once was a middle school girl myself it has taken some years, some pain and some investment to find out that it’s true—life is really much richer with a few good friends.

Which is all well and good when you are single and have complete control over the people with whom you spend your time.

The task of finding and maintaining life-enriching relationships, you see, gets a little more complicated when other people get into the mix. That is, when you acquire a significant other in your life. See, the thing is that the likelihood of your significant other liking both your friend and your friend’s choice of a significant other becomes less and less likely. Add a few kids to the mix, throw in varying parenting styles and some different cultural perspectives and, frankly, the possibility of having any friends at all seems more and more distant.

That’s why I consider it nothing less than a miracle that my friend, Kim—dear, wonderful friend of over10 years—has a French husband, Alexis, whom my husband (who is not French) enjoys spending time with. And further, each of our three children, conveniently matched in ages and interests, all like each other.

Further, our grand experiment last year of renting a house together and spending the whole entire week living in the same place, sharing shopping and food preparation tasks, spending evenings together, melding differing parenting styles and different languages (for Pete’s sake) turned out to be the most absolutely fun, totally refreshing and supremely memory-making summer activity I could remember having.

In fact, it was such an unlikely success that we planned another week just like it, a week we’ve just finished. The week was spent browsing local antique shops (me and Kim), playing golf (Alexis and Mark) and comparing notes on school adventures, scouting out “valuable” rocks, exploring the woods and building elaborate sand castles (kids and occasionally the men).

This year it was even more fun (if possible).

It has not escaped my notice that we are—all of us—deeply and wonderfully blessed by the gift of true friendship that spans time, culture, language, geography and changing life circumstances.

Even more reason to be disappointed that vacation is over!

Alas, I am aware that I am not Marcus Borg, but in my small way I try to be like him.

A little.

Marcus (as I like to call him) recently wrote a book with John Dominic Crossan called The Last Week, a detailed account of Jesus’ last week before the crucifixion. (It’s very good, by the way.)

In Marcus’ honor this blog entry is entitled The Last Day, and it is not about Jesus at all . . . but rather about my vacation.

(I said I tried to be like Marcus Borg in a small way. Today it seems that that miniscule way is that we both have recently written something with the words “the” and “last” in the title.)

It’s just that I hate the last day of vacation; it’s sort of like that feeling you get after the very last Christmas present has been opened and your Mom is making you take out the garbage.

Such a let-down.

Time for sad and wistful music, reflections of a wonderful week at the lake and a deep sigh gearing up to go back to work.

Tomorrow.

So, in this Borgianesque composition and in honor of the last day (of vacation), I’d like to announce that I am going to crank up my Jazz and Cocktails CD . . . and get to work on tomorrow’s sermon.

And while I am not absolutely positive, I think this is something Marcus Borg would definitely do.