A humbling experience

Quite often, I need humbling. Sometimes, things just seem to be rolling along, and then suddenly my butt is sore and I wonder why… and I realize it’s because I’ve just fallen off my own little pedestal. I speak for myself here as a pastor and minister, though I suspect that others of us out there experience the same thing.

I wrote in an earlier blog about how easily church folks put us up on that pedestal, and in a small town it’s more than just our own congregation… just walking down the street, other people in town recognize and greet me. It’s a much-needed reminder that I’m not just a pastor in the walls of my own church, but it also gives a little ego boost to know so many people recognize and respect me. “Hey preacher!” or “Good to see you, pastor,” or, “Reverend Parks, would you offer the blessing for us?”

But the fact about these pedestals is painfully clear today – no one else built this pedestal for me. I built it myself. And all too often, I find that I’ve worked to make it a right comfortable place to sit.

After all, they may think of me as an “uber-Christian,” someone who walks just a little higher than the rest of the common folk – we march to a different drummer that only spiritual people can hear. We play the game of life by different rules. But I know the truth: I have just as hard a time praying as they do. I struggle living out the Gospel just like the next guy. I feel doubt, fear, anxiety just like everyone else.

But sometimes I let those nice titles get to my head. I get holed up in my study sometimes and feel like I’m the only one in the world (or at least, the only one in town) that’s listening to God’s voice on this matter. I listen with pride on Sunday morning when someone says, “You really had a nice sermon today” (even though I know that’s about as neutral a comment as you can get in place where EVERYONE has to say SOMETHING to you as they walk out the door). And I start allowing myself to think, “Yeah, I DO march to a different drummer. I DO walk a little higher.”

That’s when I usually feel that sudden jolt to the rear end.

Today, I stopped at a local quickie-mart to get a soft drink. I agonized for a few seconds over my choice, then walked to the front and checked out. I was lost in my own thoughts at the time, but I still spoke and smiled at the lady beside me in line (you always have to do this in a small town). She promptly ignored me. I grunted to myself and thought, “Gosh, at least I said hello. The least she could do is acknowledge I exist.” I paid for my drink and sauntered back to the car, feeling I had done my “Christian duty.”

Then as I cranked up the engine, I looked up and caught a glimpse of that woman through the plate-glass windows that lined the front of the store. There, seated at a little window table, she was bowed in prayer over the small meal she’d just purchased. There was no one with her, no one to impress with her ornate speaking abilities. Just a furrowed brow, a look of earnest peace on her face.

From her clothes, it was obvious she didn’t have much money. And looking back to my glimpse of her in line, I could tell in retrospect that something was on her mind. Perhaps she was wondering how she’d pay for her next meal, or struggling with the loss of someone she loved?

My mind flashed to my own breakfast… I hadn’t even thought to offer a prayer or ask God’s blessing on that meal I’d eaten by myself this morning. I’d even been by the office, checked on a few things before I headed to the store to get a drink, never once stopping to pray. But here was this woman I had quickly judged who, like so many others I have met in this place, surprised me with her simple devotion and faith.

I thought I had done my “Christian duty,” but in fact I’d utterly flunked it. Where I stopped at a smile and “hello,” I could have offered warmth and an encouraging word.

My butt is still sore.

After 9/11 and Katrina

As we approach this, the 5^th anniversary of 9/11, I know I will be one of approximately 15 million who decide to blog on this subject. But hey, why not?

My, how our world has changed in the last five years! We live in a completely different kind of place than we used to – a new world, characterized even more by fear, finger pointing, and terror than it was back at the turn of the century.

A few weeks ago, I watched the last half of the movie Independence Day while I was in a hotel room for a conference. I remember the first time I saw it, years ago, and the little tingly feelings I got when I saw the end and how the whole world came together to fight this one common enemy. Borders became meaningless, and the “human spirit” triumphed over all!

This time around, post 9/11, was different. As I watched, I thought to myself, “If that isn’t Hollywood for you? Or maybe some kind of pie-in-the-sky idealism? As if the world could come together like that?”

It seems like, barring aliens descending from the skies and systematically blowing up our world, we’ve experienced the kinds of things that should bring this “human spirit” on. But here we are, on the other side of 9/11 and the tsunami and Katrina, and we’re still in the same boat. The “human spirit” was conquered by the hunger for book and movie deals; sappy sentimental uber-patriotism; the greed of insurance agents and “carpetbaggers;” the mistrust and hatred between the races.

Will we ever learn? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying anyway.

Happiness is…

Just what is happiness, anyway?

That’s the question I ask myself all the time, usually in those times when I realize, “Things are good; I should be calm and content and happy right now.” But then when I realize that I should be happy, I begin to realize that I’m not really happy for some reason. And usually, it’s one of two reasons. Most often, I start thinking of other times when I’ve been happy, and comparing them to this moment – and finding that this moment falls far short of the happiness I thought I experienced another time. I say “I thought” because somehow, happiness always seems better in hindsight than it does in the moment, so that those moments I cherish as my happiest are the ones that really didn’t feel all that happy at the time.

The other thing that ruins what should normally be a good and happy moment, is my realization that this happiness will soon end and I’ll go back to the normal non-happiness in just a little while… like it’s a sudden wave of nausea that will be gone if I sit still long enough. That seems to dull the happiness of any moment.

But why do I do this, and am I the only one? Why do we spend so much of our time and energy chasing after things that we think will make us happy, only to get to our goal and have the joy sucked out of it by our own inner thoughts? Don’t I, deep in my subconscious as well as my conscious, want to be happy?

Sometimes, I wonder.

Handling the Holy

Why is it that even though I preach the Gospel every week, I still have a hard time letting it sink in? You’d think those of us who handle this stuff all the time would be a little more affected by it than others. If only.

I preached a sermon last week on making wise use of our time, among other things. And here I come to the end of a week and realize just how many opportunities I’ve missed.

Two weeks ago, I had a sermon about how we worry about meeting our basic needs when God has promised to provide for us, and how much more free could we be to do God’s work if we prayed for our daily bread and let God answer that prayer? But here we come to that budget time of the month, and as I pore over numbers and wonder where all that paycheck is going, I hear a familiar ring somewhere in that part of my brain that’s always going – hey, didn’t you preach about this recently?

This is, in fact, what I think God is working hardest to correct in his people, both in the Old Testament and in the gospels. No matter who we are, and how wonderful an experience we may have had with God at some point, the Gospel becomes a static thing. We stop letting it amaze us, challenge us, change us. We’re back to handling the matters of a Holy God like we handle the cereal box in the morning – take it down when we need it, then roll it up and put it away until we need it again. It’s a tendency the Israelites dealt with, what the priests and kings had to fight, and the kind of thing Jesus was so hard on the Pharisees about.

How can we make the Gospel so fresh in our lives that it’s a new encounter every time we see it? How can we keep Christianity from becoming such a stale thing that we’re ready to spit it out after we’ve finished our Sunday morning “chores?” That’s one of the main things I preach about these days, and I’m still looking for an answer – much to the annoyance of those who come to church looking for the pastor to give them all the answers.

Three Blind Mice

What is it about the helping profession that draws us? Why is it that most people who enter helping professions are the ones who need “helping” the most?

I have to admit, I have met some people who want to enter professions like counseling and I ask myself (but usually not them), “Now why in the world do they think someone would want to come to THEM for counseling?!” Really, I know you’re not supposed to have dual relationships in these kinds of professions, but no worry… I won’t go to most of these folks for any kind of counseling!

But then I sit down behind the desk to counsel a parishioner, and I think, “Well here’s the broken guy trying to fix someone else’s problems again!” No one is perfect, no one is whole.

I got to thinking today about the pedestal that pastors and ministers get put up on sometimes – how we’re viewed as super-beings from another spiritual universe. People think we’re perfect, when the fact is most of us are here because we are broken, too, and we have a deep longing for… something. We feel a longing to be closer to God, and somehow hope that telling other people about this God we don’t understand will somehow fill that void.

It’s not so. But the farther we get into it, the more we realize that everyone else is searching with us… at least might if we don’t start seeing ourselves on the pedestal where others have put us.