Procedure

I'm due at the local med center at 9:30 tomorrow morning [later today], to check in for outpatient surgery for the health problem I noticed in June.

I feel fine. I'm not even worrying. That will resume when I'm waiting for the results of the biopsy thereafter.

Routine procedure dictates that I must ingest nothing by mouth after this past midnight. Not a lozenge, not a stick of gum, not a swig of toothpaste water (ick). The rule is so strict, I'm surprised they don't tell you you can't swallow your own spit.

I know what it's for. They don't want to run the slightest risk that you'll have a bad reaction with the anesthesia while you're under and throw up and choke. So I'm observing the strictures-- meaning that as soon as midnight struck, I was immediately sensible of a raging thirst, even though I'd had a couple glasses of water within the half hour!

Funny, what your mind will do to you.

I've finished the draft of my sermon for Sunday, so I can lie around Friday and Saturday, if need be. It's about two-thirds the length of my usual productions, and if anything, it needs cut down even more. The church I'm supplying this Sunday has Sunday School scheduled exactly an hour after the beginning of worship, and this is a Communion Sunday. With all three Lectionary readings. And a children's sermon, and a choir anthem. And they'll probably want at least ten minutes to get from the sanctuary to the classrooms. That leaves me fifty minutes if I'm lucky to get through everything.

Dickens of a way to do things, but it's the way it is.

Besides, the official Sunday School beginning time may be one of those merely monitory things, to keep people from showing up to class at half-past the hour.

On the other hand, the lady who called me from the Med Center said I was to be at the Outpatient Surgery door at 9:30 AM. Period, the end.

I Haven't Fallen Off the Edge of the Earth

Just deep into some work I have to take care of before Monday night.

But I've finally posted my sermon from last Sunday. It's here.

And I've got several other pulpit supply assignments lined up for the summer, always assuming . . .

Well, we'll see. God is faithful; may I be, too.

Thanks for the Warning

I got a call the other day from an elder at the Daniel's Run* Church, where I preached a few times last winter. They need me to supply their pulpit for their next Communion Sunday, since IrmaLou*, their graduate minister, still hasn't been cleared by the Presbytery South of Here* to do the sacraments. We settled that I'd fill in, and then the elder said, "We're having our Strawberry Festival next Wednesday evening. You ought to come."

It assuredly is Strawberry Festival season in southwestern Pennsylvania. I don't know where the strawberries come from, California or Uncle Charley's back patch, but the ruby fruit is going to be fêted. One should go to at least one Strawberry Festival in a year, so I decided to drive down to the one at Daniel's Run.

I'd say they did well out of it . . . profuse attendance, loads of willing helpers, and enough pie and cake (strawberry and otherwise) to replace Hoover Dam.

I made myself narrow down my choices, and took my food to a table in the deeps of the fellowship hall. Where, in the fullness of time, I noticed that the people across the table (who were all unknown to me) were talking about the process of calling a new minister.

One woman said, "I feel so sorry for the poor pastor when he does his sermon before the congregation so they can vote on him! He must be so nervous!"

The man in the group disagreed. "Oh, no, by that time he's gotten through the interviews with the pulpit nominating committee [PNC] and he's preached a neutral pulpit sermon at some other church and no, he shouldn't be nervous by that time. Maybe if he's fresh out of school . . . but no, he wouldn't be nervous!"

I gained permission to enter the conversation and said I agreed. Besides, you should be over your nervousness about preaching by the time you get out of seminary. However, I said, "It isn't fair on the candidate when you preach a certain way before the congregation and they vote you in, then start complaining afterwards about the way you preach. After all, they saw what you were like when you preached your candidating sermon!"

I asked him if he were a member of a PNC. No, he said, he was with the Presbytery South of Here and his job was to work with nominating committees and pastor-candidates to make sure the process was going right.

He said, "We're making a list of questions the PNCs should ask pastors to prevent that."

"Actually, I was thinking more of questions pastors should ask PNCs to make sure they understand what's really going on in a church."

We discussed that a little, then he reverted to the matter of candidating sermons. "We advise PNCs to tell the candidate what the congregation is used to. Expositional, topical, theological, social, whatever. He [the candidate] should preach his candidating sermon like that."

"But shouldn’t he preach the way he’s used to? I mean, isn’t it cheating to do something just because it’s what the congregation wants to hear so they'll vote him in, and then revert to his usual style afterwards?"

"Oh, no," replied the official of the Presbytery South of Here. "After that, he should only give the congregation what they want. If he can’t or won’t do that, he shouldn’t take the job."

In a perverse way, I have to agree with that. If a congregation is that narrowminded or set in their ways, a pastor-candidate should know it ahead of time and run as fast as he or she can back where they came from. But when it comes to the Christly duties and responsibilities of the man or woman of God-- good grief! Mr. Presbytery Guy, are you telling me that if a congregation only wants fluff and ear-tickling, the preacher has to give them fluff and ear-tickling till the Trump of Doom? Or if all they want is mind-games with academic theology and no action or application of it, the obedient preacher has to keep on spinning out the theories? Or if the congregation's appetite is voracious for the latest sentimentalized self-centered Gnostic heresy or if their cup of tea is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the pastor is obliged to let them have it?? And what's more, your presbytery will require the pastor to let them have it, or leave?

I didn't put the question to him quite so boldly. What I said was more like, "Well, like, my habit in preaching is to give them law and gospel, in that order. Are you saying that if the congregation wants nice little stories that'll make them feel good, I should give them the nice little stories?"

"Yes," the Presbytery Guy responded. "That's what you should do."

What could I say after that? But I could think: Ye gods, sir, whatever happened to the Book of Order article that says it’s up to the pastor to decide what to preach on and how? More than that, whatever happened to the Biblical injunction to preach the Word in season and out of season, to warn the flock day and night, to rightly discharge the duties of a minister of the Word of God, as one who will have to give an account before Jesus Christ Himself?

Whoa! it's good to be warned. I'll keep this in mind if a church in that jurisdiction is ever interested in me. I guess when it comes to the ministry of the Gospel in the Presbytery South of Here, them as has, gets.

Or in the case of some pastors, gets out.

And if the PNC has told the incoming pastor that the congregation only eats coconut cream pie, he'd jolly well better not offer them strawberry shortcake!

Sidetracked?

Last July, when I was back in Kansas City, I bought a few yards of some beautiful off-white wool fabric from Kaplan's Fabrics on the Country Club Plaza.

My intention was to make myself a new preaching outfit from it, for those weeks from Easter on when it's too cold and early to wear white linen, but just wrong--liturgically, in particular--to wear black.

Not that I don't already own a winter white suit; it's just that I bought it back in 1997 and I've, well, kind of outgrown the skirt since then.

Yes.

Anyway, this weekend it hit me how close it's getting to Easter. So Sunday I found the fabric and the pattern, and preshrunk the material in the washer because there's no way I'm paying for dry cleaning every time a speck of dirt falls on it. Monday, I cleared and extended my dining room table, and started cutting the skirt pieces out.

This morning I attached the three front and the three back sections (it's a six-gore skirt), using French seams.

I'm debating whether I'll put a pocket in it; the pattern doesn't have one, but it's handy in case a church wants me to use a radio mike. Trouble is, when I made this skirt before, the seam over the pocket didn't sit straight. That skirt is black, so there I can kind of get away with it.

In white, not so much. But a pocket is so useful. I'm still trying to decide.

One thing that's not up for debate: The skirt needs to be lined. The wool fabric is too fine and lightweight not to. Last evening, I drove over to JoAnn Fabrics and got some matching lining material. Preshrunk it last night, and this afternoon I cut it out and started attaching the pieces.

But what on earth--? My sewing machine will not let me sew a straight seam on that lining! The feeddog catches it (or maybe, doesn't catch it) and the needle inexorably veers in a mindless diagonal off to the edge. I tried completing one seam, then another. Hopeless. They both look like a work of a crazy drunken fool: meandering all over the place, starting and stopping and restarting again, the stitch length long to tiny to back again, the tension too loose or too puckering tight.

I just can't make that machine sew my lining evenly and straight!

Why now, Lord, why now?

And why, at all?

. . . Well, yes, I did notice this morning that the sewing machine presser foot isn't dropping smartly into place. Rather, it sort of moseys its way down onto the fabric, like it hasn't quite made up its mind whether it wants to get to work or not . . . And this afternoon it was so slow and lacksidaisical about it, I thought it would never descend at all.

My theory is that it's just not holding the fabric down to the feeddog the way it should. The wool was just thick enough to make do with the pressure it gave, but the lining acrylic, no.

All very nice to have an idea of what's wrong. But I could have gotten so much more done on this skirt tonight! And now I've been sidetracked. There's no point in doing anything more until I can borrow or rent another sewing machine until mine can be fixed. Or until I can figure out how to clean up my old machine, a 1951 Singer, so it won't get oil and crud all over my nice cream-colored fabric.

How am I ever going to get my new suit done for Easter Sunday!? I'm as sidetracked as my crookedy lining seams!

Unless-- Unless this is God's way of telling me to work on my sermon for Easter Sunday before I work on my clothes? Like, maybe, this is His way of getting me-- maintracked?

I Can't See It

This morning, I supplied the pulpit at a church up in a goodish-sized town to the north of me.

Let's call it Redeemer* Presbyterian Church.

I preached on the faith of Abraham and the faithfulness of God, as shown in the patriarch's reaction to the Lord's call when he was your basic idol-worshipper in Haran. And I took the children's sermon as well. Now, I believe in giving the children a sample of the food off the grown-ups' table, so to speak, cutting the theme of the main sermon up into manageable pieces so they can swallow it down.

So I gathered the little group of five-to-eight-year-olds and asked them if they'd ever seen a blind person with a Seeing Eye dog.

"Yes . . . "

"What does a Seeing Eye dog do?"

"It helps the blind person."

"How does the dog help the blind person?"

"It keeps it from hurting itself."

It? Itself? Had I heard that right?

I asked, "What else does a Seeing Eye dog do for someone who can't see?"

"It puts the leash on and it takes it where it needs to go."

This was the oldest child speaking. And consistently speaking of blind people-- or am I supposed to say, "visually challenged"?-- as it.

And she kept on doing it. And so did the others.

But this was not my church and I had just then met these children. It would be getting off on an awkward and hurtful tangent for me to correct them in front of their friends and the entire congregation.

Instead, I told the children about my friend John from theological college, and his Yellow Lab guide dog Farina. I made a point of letting them know that my friend John is a minister who now pastors Two Big Churches. I.e., my friend John is not an "it," and neither are the other blind people these kids are likely to meet during their lives.

I summed up the talk for the children: God is like a Seeing Eye dog because we can't see the future and He can, and He leads us safely through it; God is not like a Seeing Eye dog because He is our Master, we are not His.

They seemed to get it.

But did they get the point that blind people are not its?

And where did these children pick up this attitude, of being blind to the humanity of physically sightless men and women? I just can't see it!

Soldiering On

I preached this morning at the little church in the Presbytery South of Here. Since I'm booked in for the next four weeks, I'll call it Daniels Run* Presbyterian.

Thrills and adventure arriving. As the crow flies, the church is close to two major divided highways. But by the lay of the land, it's in the back of beyond and the windy twisty roads can take you anywhere.

Especially when what you think is the church address is actually the number of the church secretary's house! So much fun driving up and down Daniels Run Church Road, attention split between trying to spot something, anything! that looked like a church and coming up with excuses and apologies for being late, when I knew it was my own fault, I shouldn't have hit the snooze alarm the second time this morning and why, oh, why did my dog have to lift his leg on the bookcase and the rug in the Kitten Room just as I was about to put my coat on and take him out to do his business anyway and put me even farther behind, but of course you can't tell a congregation you've just met that, it'll make them think you can't control your dog, for Pete's sake, let alone that you have no discipline about getting up in the morning, and-- oh! where was I?

Oh, yes, trying to find the church. Ended up going back down to the bottom of the road, to the feeder highway, to actually look at the Presbyterian Church Up Thataway sign and see how many miles it said I had to go. Vs. Google Maps' opinion, that is.

In the end, my being late didn't seem to matter. Most of the members got there after I did, and between coordinating the hymns with the organist (the same church secretary), getting the Christmas tree and the Communion Table candles lit (well, one of them), and so on, we got started around fifteen minutes past the time, which seemed to bother no one.

Singing the hymns was a further adventure. Good thing they were familiar carols. The organist is largely self-taught and does the best she can, but that doesn’t necessarily mean playing the notes when and for as long as written. I kept soldiering on, trying to give a lead, figuring that if she and I and the congregation came out together at the end of each line, we were doing pretty well.

So that was all right.

What wasn't all right was the feeling I had while I was preaching my sermon. It felt like nothing at all was happening. Nothing was coming back to me from the congregation. Or worse than nothing. It was almost the feeling I’d get if I’d been preaching a half hour and everyone wanted to get home and watch the football game. But I didn’t have a long sermon for them today. What was the problem? Didn’t know. I felt like I was just flapping my jaws. Couple of times, I found myself thinking, Is there any point in my going on with this? What if I should just stop?

But I told myself, No, I've got solid Scriptural meat and milk for them here, both pastoral and theological, and I have to lay it out for them whether they react to it or not.

Afterwards, there was one man, at least, who seemed very affected by what I'd preached. And everyone seemed very friendly and eager to see me next week.

So I guess you never know.

I just hope things loosen up during sermon time the next four weeks. It could be grim otherwise.

Physician, Heal Thyself

I'm printing out my sermon for tomorrow. I've chosen more or less the Revised Common Lectionary passages from Luke and Colossians, the former covering Jesus' parable of the Rich Fool and the latter, where we are to consider ourselves dead with our true lives hidden in heaven with Christ.

I'd intended to focus on the theme of True Riches, but the bridge collapse in Minneapolis last Wednesday made it right to deal also with the motif of death.

A very sound sermon the Holy Spirit has given me, I think: All about the wrongheartedness of confusing making a living with having a life, and of confusing the temporary life of this earth with the eternal life in God. With a descant on how our attitudes on that have to be right all the time, since at any moment our lives might be required of us, just as in the parable of the Rich Fool, just as with those poor victims of the bridge disaster the other day.

The Holy Spirit is also reminding me what a wry sense of humor my God has. Why does He always insist I preach my sermons to myself first? Why does He so cleverly arrange it so, no matter what the texts are, they and my sermons always are applicable to me?

It struck me in the Luke passage that, by human estimation, the man in the crowd who asks Jesus to make his brother divide the inheritance with him isn't greedy at all. He only wants what's his according to the law. He only wants his means of livelihood.

But my sinless Lord Jesus implies that he's greedy! He's greedy because he's focussing all effort and hope in life on material sustenance and how he can get it. He's not concentrating on God and His will for His life; no, he's willing to drag his brother's name publicly through the mud and ignore God in the process. The poor can be greedy just as much as the rich. They can be just as impoverished in their relationship with God.

And here I am, without a fulltime job since early April, drawing unemployment compensation that will run out before I know it. And I'm worried. I know I'm good at what I do, whether it's in pastoral work or in architecture. And I'm willing to get additional credentials where I'm lacking.

But I'm afraid. I'm afraid a suitable pastorate will never open up for me. I'm afraid that potential architectural employers will only see my age and the fact that I'm a novice in AutoCAD (I'm an ace at drawing by hand) and refuse to speak with me any further. I worry about losing my house and my possessions and coming on the charity of family or the State or ending up a bum.

Or worse, maybe, I'll starve to death and die!

I'm afraid, I worry, I focus on making a living or my inability to make a living and turn my eyes totally from the power and provision of God! I let that fear and worry depress me so much I'm unable to concentrate on finding the labor and livelihood that God has out there for me!

I don't say writing this sermon has screwed my head back on straight. But preaching it tomorrow should help the process a little. And may grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit move it forward a lot.

New Sermon Blog

I've always wanted to post my sermons, since I started this blog in 2005. But I couldn't figure out how to attach another page to it, and I didn't want to overwhelm my day to day musings (blatherings?) with a lot of text. So I've started a new blog just for the sermons.

I'm calling it "Not Exactly as Preached." In plain English this means, "When I took my manuscript into the pulpit on Sunday, the Holy Spirit told me I'd better clarify this, expand on that, cut that other, display more of Christ's compassion here, be more forceful against sin and bad doctrine there. And to the best of my fallen human ability, I did it. But just now I don't have time/am not ambitious enough to reconstruct what actually came out of my mouth. So here you have the working drafts. May the Lord bless them to your edification and use."

Amen.

Oh! By the way, it was not a sung Eucharist at the Lutheran church last evening. I was told I might chant it, if I wanted . . . but I was also told the congregation can't carry a tune in a bucket. Sadly, my informant was correct.

So I said the liturgy in the usual way.

For the sung version: Another time, another place, Lord willing!

Oh, Joy!

Thank you, Jesus!

The USB-parallel port printer cable and extension I ordered on line the other day have come, they're connecting my old printer and my new computer, and they work!

And I have my sermon for this evening printed out in one go!

Yes, for this evening. Tonight and this Sunday I'm supplying the pulpit at a Lutheran church down the Ohio River, thanks to the interdemoninational agreement between the PCUSA and the ELCA.

It'll be my first time celebrating the Lord's Supper at a Lutheran Church. This congregation chants part of the liturgy, which I shall rather enjoy . . . except that I don't know the tunes yet. And I'm told that Thursdays are always a capella.

Meaning I'd better get ready and get on the road. Maybe if I arrive early enough, someone will be there to go over the music with me.

It Happens to Me

This afternoon I was in my study finishing my sermon for tomorrow. Since it's Pentecost, I was writing on the Holy Spirit and His role in our lives.

I wrote that to call the Holy Spirit the Comforter is not to make Him into a spiritual duvet that makes sure nothing bad or sad or awkward ever happens to us.

No. He's our Comforter in and through our troubles. He's the one who unites us to Christ in His sufferings and therefore to Christ in His resurrection.

So I finish my sermon early in the evening, about time for supper. But first, I decide to finish the job properly and print it out before I go downstairs.

Now, I use WordPerfect. WP61, to be precise. I use it because of the beautiful Reveal Codes, and I use it because it's so easy to format and print out my sermons in booklet form, which is nasty and hard to do in Word.

So my text is done and I go to Print, Options, Booklet Printing, Print Odd Pages. All very simple and straightforward. I've done it hundreds of times, on this computer and its predecessors.

But for some reason, this time, instead of printing four sheets worth of odd pages (that I will reinsert to put four pages worth of even page text on the flip sides), I get eight sheets of everything.

My blood sugar is low, but I take myself in hand and try to see if I can put those sheets back in and print on the other sides and get two good copies.

No.

I try turning off WP, then turning it back on and printing again. This time I'll try Even pages first.

No. Same eight pages. Blood sugar still crashing. Frustration level mounting.

Damn, she says theologically. If the new computer and the new printer are doing that, let's save the sermon to the thumbdrive and print it on the old computer and the old printer.

I boot up the old laptop. Defective patch cord comes loose and machine goes down. I try again, open WP, and bring up my sermon off the thumbdrive. Print, Options, Booklet Printing, Print Odd Pages. Message appears on the screen: "Printer cannot print on paper size chosen. Printer will choose paper size." Or something like that. No option to cancel print. Happily, I've only chosen "Print current page," in case the old cartridge needed priming.

Test page comes out vertical instead of horizontal, with the text cut off on both sides. With the low blood sugar, I can't remember how I worked around that in the past. And why am I getting a window telling me to reinsert the sheet to print on the back? That's only supposed to happen in Word, not WordPerfect!

I try the new computer again. Warning message: "Black ink cartridge is low!" What? I only bought it a month ago! It can't be low! I don't have a spare!

I don't believe the warning. I try printing again.

Damn again! The new cartridge is out of ink. Wouldn't have mattered anyway. It's the same useless eight sheets coming out in the tray.

By now I'm getting very annoyed and very frustrated, and it ain't just the low blood sugar. It's been a good two hours since I started trying to print this blinking thing, and blast it, it won't behave! Why do things like this happen to me!? Why do things seem deliberately to set out to sabotage me?!? It's not fair!!! It's JUST NOT FAIR!!!

Then it hits me: You idiot. Tomorrow you're going to preach that people should depend on the Holy Spirit to get them through death, dismemberment, and disaster. Don't you think He's capable of lending you patience enough to put up with technological glitches? Don't you think He can give you serenity and wisdom enough to figure out how to get your sermon printed out?

Yes. Rebuke taken, and applied.

So it was back to the old computer and its printer. Got the page orientation problem figured out. At the cost of a few more sheets of paper, worked out the implications of the Word double-sided printing issue that had somehow found its way into WordPerfect.

But at last I got my sermon printed out.

And I got my own sermon for the night.

Yes, it does happen to me, the temptation to think everything should always go well in my little world. The temptation to depend on myself and get fractious when I can't make things work instantly. The temptation to preach at others when I should be applying my sermons to myself, first.

But the Holy Spirit and His wisdom happens to me, too. And it's God's own gracious blessing to me that He does.