On precious treasures

I worshipped in Clermont on Sunday.

There are several notable differences between Hillcrest and Clermont. Clermont is in a traditionally black area, which made me the only white person in about a ten kilometre radius. It is a popular Methodist church – you could term it one of our flagships, I suppose – so the service was well attended. Also, the services in black Methodism tend to go on for a lot longer than white churches; this is the most telling difference in our churches, at least for me. This particular service was also a communion service and as such was setting itself up to be a three hour extravaganza of singing, liturgy, notices, choir offerings, actual offerings among other things.

For a person used to a one hour and ten minute service, three hours is tough to endure. Even when you see it coming, it is tough to endure.

So you set about psyching yourself up. You slap your face while looking in the mirror and yell, ‘You can do this!’ before collaring up and heading out. It isn’t that there are too many boring bits in the service, it is just that there are too many bits full-stop. Also, in a three-hour service you can’t actually ask the question, how did you find it? You have to be more specific than that because, in three hours, you tend to ebb and flow - three hours can be broken into stages: well one hour in, halfway through the Siyakudumisa, with the last English word having disappeared off the horizon, morale began to dip, by 10.30 I nipped out to the toilet and felt markedly better, probably because of hymn 11 – my favourite – the sermon was okay but I had to serve communion to all three hundred people by myself and chronic back pain set in, I began to limp, lost the will to live - 11am to 11.30am; the benediction rocked.

 

Any event whose duration can legitimately be tracked on a sun-dial deserves more specific recollection.

So it goes.

Through the fence. Midlands.

I always stand incredulous at the reading of the notices. I have a window period at Hillcrest of about three minutes; there is this kind of unwritten rule that notices should be done quickly – more than three minutes and the chickens get restless, more than five minutes and open rebellion is fomented normally starting in the back row, more than five minutes with needless repetition and they’re building scaffolding while hanging a noose on the Plane tree outside. So watching this steward meander joyfully through the notices for more than twenty minutes without a care in the world, was actually quite spell-binding. As communication breakdown is routinely mentioned as an area HMC ‘growth area’ (meaning, in translation, we’re really rubbish at it) the thought did cross my mind to hire this guy to do it for us.

One and a half hours in and I was yet to preach. Now I love preaching. I’d prepared for it which really translates, come hell or high water, a word is going to be spoken, and probably more than one word. But even I – after an hour and half – begin to review my sermon notes to decide what is absolutely imperative to speak and what is padding, with the padding ruthlessly chopped.  You begin to wonder how short a sermon can be and still legitimately be called a sermon – can a strong opening illustration sprinkled liberally with select adjectives, spoken slowly, pronounced carefully, accentuating each and every syllable count as an illustration and two points? 

So it goes.

It was while I was editing my sermon notes in this fashion, about twelve minutes into the notices – so about half way through - when the most interesting thing happened.

One of the ‘great unwashed masses’ walked through the door, and not the back door, reserved for the great unwashed masses but the door next to me, up front, in front of the church, there where the holy people are seated, a stone’s throw from the sacraments, and within touching distance of the magnificent Aids-Remembrance Candle.

This gaffe I could see dawned on the interloper as he entered sacred space. Even in his mind, which was clearly compromised by drink or some recreational drug, the faux pas occurred to him; he stood there, alternately scratching his belly and head. The stewards performed one of their less celebrated functions, ushering the confused gentleman out of church.

He had on a moth eaten t-shirt with the message ‘Precious Treasure’.

Clouds and hills. Midlands.

In ministry (and I suppose, life) you get used to misnomers. At Hillcrest we have two people who periodically walk off the street and harass our caretaker and her family. Their names? Innocent and Blessing. Two people less innocent and more devoid of blessing I have yet to meet.

When we were selling our car in Pinetown we were very nearly ripped off by a local car dealership. Its name? ‘Shalom Motors’. This is in fact a workable rule of thumb: if a secular enterprise advertises itself as overtly Christian, put on your rubber gloves and prod it carefully with a stick. Whatever you do, don’t throw money at it.

What happens when our hapless world interjects itself so forcibly into the corporate act of worship? Numerous ministers in the MCSA have experimented with this. One guy, new to his church, dressed himself as a street urchin and sat in the front row; needless to say he was given a wide berth, his smell forcing the congregation to occupy the side the benches – he the centre,  they the circumference. Well, they were berated warmly for not embracing the ethos of Jesus – to love the unlovable and hug the un-huggable. I appreciate the lesson, though the act itself whiffs rather of self-righteousness.

Another colleague staged a robbery in his church. This is no joke. He recruited balaclava-clad youngsters to storm the church and demand money, watches, wallets. I presume to offer some lessen on violence and trauma. I say presume because, as I recall, he never got around to teaching the lesson, with the congregation being actually traumatised and all. I think he was beaten to an inch of his life with hymnbooks and Bibles; they used language on him that not even the most liberal parameters of ‘speaking in tongues’ would be willing to accept. Rightly so. What an idiot. He may have been used as an object lesson on what not to do as young ministers – okay, before we teach you oversight of sacraments, hermeneutics and church polity we are going to ask you, right up front, please never stage a robbery. It won’t go well for you.

God forgive us the stupid things we attempt in God’s name.

Black bird on a table. Midlands.

Well, back to the story. You would have to be some advanced sort of smarty-pants to grab for the nearest drum with the intention of banging on about how the church is self-absorbed and how this guy wasn’t allowed in to worship. Why? Well, there probably should be guidelines in worship – not pitching up smashed out of your bracket being one of them. Entering with due reverence for the gathering with the intention of actually worshipping being another.

All the same, his presence does serve to rattle the conscience of any follower of Jesus. That unless we are in some way attending to his needs, helping him, starting with the ability to see him as a human with needs, we really aren’t, in any meaningful way, fulfilling our calling. If all we did was strong-arm him off the premises and drop-kick him to the curb without offering some hope, some help – well, shame be upon us. If what starts in the pew does not end at this man’s doorstep then it must be back to the drawing board for us.

Steve Earle has this glorious lyric in I am a Wanderer – a song full of glorious lyrics:

I am a labourer, sign round my neck:
"Will work for dignity, trust and respect".
I stand on this corner so you don't forget
I haven't had mine yet.

I may not have been the most switched on of members at yesterday’s service; not understanding a word of what is going on will do that to a worshipper. And I may have been slightly distracted taking a red pen to my sermon notes and all. But when you read the gospels and you try (and fail very often) to follow Jesus, you learn to see the signs; when you follow Jesus, the first thing this Holy Thief will take from you is the ability to see through people simply to assuage your conscience.   I don’t really have a problem with the thief who will come in the night, it’s this thief who robs me during the day that truly unsettles me. It is a terrible yet necessary thing to lose.  This man wasn’t some guy who just lost his way, he was a cry to the church, a call to hold before us what is happening in the world as we could be tempted to bury our heads in the sand.

You see, contradicting popular sentiment, in the eyes of God he is indeed a Precious Treasure. When you follow Jesus a T-shirt like that is never ever a misnomer.

On not being wildly popular

There is a church in the States that is wildly popular. They are revered for the record number of baptisms they do. But I heard a disturbing report this past week concerning their practice of calling people to baptism. They do a few things that a skeptic might suggest brings into disrepute the moving of God's Spirit.

Here are the few things:

They plant leaders in the congregation as 'first responders' to the baptismal call. This gets the ball rolling as it were. They choose these people and place them so that they walk down the longest most visible aisles.

Then people are called forward to the stage, they only choose younger, good-looking people, as Jesus would.

A part of me - the bad, unChristian, unredeemed part - is quite gleeful about this type of revelation; I greet it like we sometimes greet news of the demise of a Hollywood relationship: all that money and they couldn't make it work! They're human after all with the same sense of existential ennui! See if your blockbuster can save you now!

Oh. Okay. So they're also concerned about that time between call and response. And for those who don't know, there is nothing in this world quite like it. You haven't quite lived - or better, died a thousand deaths - until you call for a response and no one comes forward, not even your mother. It is the pregnant pause to beat all pregnant pauses. This I believe is even worse than a comedian being heckled - at least a heckler is engaging.

A picture Mary took. Railway line. Midlands.

I understand the deep desire to make sure everything 'glows and flows and steps on no one's toes'. I took it upon myself to lead worship at our Ash Wednesday service. I like leading worship which is not quite the same as saying I'm good at it. I don't have a terrific singing voice and I'm about the fourth best guitarist in a church full of talented pianists. I've had some disheartening experiences. Once I played the saxophone and missed the first note quite, well, noticeably. Afterwards I quietly enquired of my mate, the guitarist, what he thought of the saxophone in worship and he responded in a matter-of-fact manner, 'Well at the start, it sounded like somebody slapped a pig'. I've been nervous since then so when I do lead I make sure I always have a quality singer or two on hand, to plaster over the cracks in my voice and strumming.

This Ash Wednesday I was deserted by all, a strange living-embodiment of the Lenten spirit. In church, during particular feast days, you want your people emotionally raw, but for the right reasons - for the significance of the sacrifice rather than the excruciating pain of a guitarist who willfully strums in D while singing in B flat.

But we did okay. We got through.

We did better on Wednesday than I did on Saturday I led one song on my guitar by our Wall of Remembrance. We were placing in the ground a dear old lady - ninety nine years of age. She was Welsh - died in Wales - but loved Africa and so had her remains interred here. Being Welsh they requested Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah. A note to other musicians: this song covers a number of octaves so if you start it wrong - read, too high - you're not going to hit the notes in the chorus. And so I did. You realise this too late as a musician. Trying to remain calm on the outside, you realise far, far too late that you're ascending to notes and scales no one, least of all you, can reach. I needed a castrato to finish this song off. There comes a moment when people stop singing and simply watch you, as they would watch a contortionist folding their body into a cereal box - that is, they stop to watch how on earth you're going to finish this song off with that voice.

But this is the thing.

Perfection is over-rated.
Even, dare I say it, excellence.

Coffee. Piggly Wiggly.

Or at least, they all pale next to the one quality that is absolutely necessary: sincerity born of honesty.

That very successful church would do well to let it be, to make a call and leave it open and to deal with it if no one comes forward. And if only fat, wrinkly people who sweat too much and have bad skin present themselves to the church, so be it; there is no Biblical evidence to suggest that Jesus didn't have to fight a bad case of acne, like most teenagers the world over. Hey, Jesus may not have been the hottest guy on the planet. In fact, scripture more than suggests it; just read Isaiah 53: 3. (Yes, sit with that thought a moment. Jesus might not have ushered in the hot hipster look most depictions of him seem to suggest - less Jared Leto and more Middle Eastern mediocrity, perhaps? Seriously, sit with it a moment).

Can I suggest that not only can you fail in ministry, not only can you come across as broken and sometimes hapless, I think it might be a pre-requisite.

My dear wife once put the order of service together and instead of writing 'We shall overcome' as part of the call to worship she typed 'We shat overcome' - although a mistake, this changes the sentiment dramatically. When it popped up on the screen she was mortified; we consoled her by saying simply, sometimes we confuse our 'shats' with our 'shalls'. we say 'shat' when we should say 'shall'. She sells sea shells on the sea shore...

Thinking back on this and this issue of perfection, one band member suggested that we should simply own the mistakes. It happens. Deal with it. We try our best but sometimes we will get it wrong and if someone gets heated over that, so be it. But this comes from the same guy who said, not only does he celebrate Jesus being the 'defender of the weak' (as one of our song lyrics goes) but he won't stop until Jesus makes it to 'Defender of the Month'. Take it from whence it comes, I suppose.

You're not really being church until you are making mistakes but sincerely gunning forward all the same, Quixote-like in your quest to express God's love. Or, as one of our great Methodist preachers, Rev. Viv Harris once said: If it is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Personally I'm a little jaded by Bright Lights Big City conferences where people are always getting it right because they have the resources (read, money) to make it as near as dammit to perfect. Its time to celebrate the failures a little more; after all, Jesus seemed to favour them so if we're looking for Jesus this might be the place to start.

You see, if we're not willing to fail, if we make success our God, what won't we compromise? Will we tell the truth if the pews empty? Will we be prophetic if it means we look like failures? In a rather superficial world, where image counts for much and perfection in all its forms is highly prized, this question is worth some consideration.

Now you might argue that I'm over-analysing this whole thing. I don't think so. At the end of The Wizard of Oz there is that marvellous exchange, once Toto has tugged back the curtain to find an old man operating the machine:

Dorothy berates, 'Oh - you're a bad man!'

To which the old man responds, 'Oh, no my dear. I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard.'

In my book, there can be redemption in that. You can work with a good man who is a bad wizard; what we can't really afford as Christians are bad men masquerading as good wizards. The pain of the Christian faith could be described thus: conjuring power, creating fear and manipulating holiness driven by carefully crafted human ingenuity, 'magic' as it were. With sometimes an increasingly corrupt heart beating behind it all.

So try and be willing to fail and, more than that, be able to live hopefully with your failure because its not about you, it's about Jesus. I'm guessing that people who come into our communities generally don't stay because we got everything absolutely right. I'm guessing they stay because somebody bothered to learn their name, to invite them out to coffee, to introduce them to others, to share their lives, and, in the long run, to involve them in the ongoing celebrations and mistakes of a breathing Christian community.

So fall into the arms of grace for the King of kings is vulnerable and the Lord of lords beautifully human. And he is the Saviour - not you, not me - him.

He also happens to be the Defender of the week.



 

On the window and the tree

I might be stationed in the most beautiful church in South Africa, at least on the Methodist side of things.

Like most great worship spaces I have seen, it has gracious space on the interior - it is large and roomy, it speaks to the spaciousness of God. Its high ceiling is a visible representation of the space God gives us to explore the full extent of his grace and mercy; that freedom to explore, one of the great gifts of Methodist theology.

It also has these two glorious windows - one front, one back - standing like sentinels and, in different seasons, serving as conduits for shards of light to penetrate the worship area, for good or ill. Sometimes in deep winter, that warm light zeroes in on the organ area. When I first arrived, I noticed the organist wearing a sponge-like peak, not dissimilar to a Las Vegas cards dealer, or a cricket supporter in the Eighties. It gave the impression the organist was running a tight schedule, cutting corners between playing the organ in church and hitting the Craps table after (no time to change!); not unlike bowls players who attend church in their whites and shuffle out quietly during the introduction of the last hymn or, if it's a big game, the first hymn. 

That cap was bright yellow and had NBS building society etched across it. It was quite surreal; it gave the impression our organist was sponsored, had signed an endorsement deal; just another indicator that free market capitalism was over-egging its pudding. She would also wear it at an angle to buffer directly the slant of the sunlight. This made her look even more, how can I say, urban? I half-expected her to stand before the sermon with her jeans precariously low, held up only by a chain, and to shuffle/limp to her seat not due to old-age but because that's how cool organists move.

Setting all that aside, the cap's sole purpose was indeed to keep out the softer, more mischievous winter rays. Those two windows aren't just windows in but windows out into the world. We are plagued by bird-life around here. Or, if you love birds, blessed. Hadedas interject in almost every intercessory prayer: fighting, slipping, playing who knows what on the roof of our sanctuary eliciting timid glances upwards when eyes should be closed. When it gets particularly bad, we send out a steward to throw things at them. His aim is quite bad and he hasn't hit one yet. Being a church, we have ordered him to use only the smallest and softest of pebbles. I do fear that one day he will miss the birds badly and plant a pebble in a dear old lady shuffling into the Anglican Church adjacent to us - as if ecumenical relations weren't frosty enough already. Well, if she was looking for a sign, she may well get one.

Every now and then an Egyptian Goose perches on the window up front above the preacher and looks down quizzically upon us, like a confused anthropologist trying to figure out why we all stand and sing into a wall. In my worst moments I imagine this to be God embodied in bird coming to me, that look of bewilderment being God's own as the Cosmic Ruler of all Things struggles to make sense of what I'm saying. 'Yes, yes God, I'm trying! Wait for my second point...'

Of course, in these moments it is useless even speaking as the entire gathered community's gaze is drawn to the bird above my head. Such wonder! As if at last the Apocalypse has arrived, or Batman. As the saying goes: don't act with puppies or children. Add to that Egyptian Geese. It does remind me that the Iona symbol for the Spirit is in fact not the dove, but the goose, being less polite and serene, and more noisy and out-of-control. I think God likes that. The giggles and stifled laughs when the goose visits reminds us not to be infatuated by decorum.

From the front I don't get to see this first hand, the bird and audience communicating while I stare on mostly unawares until things are completely out-of-hand; it has a pantomime-like feel to it: Look behind you! The bird! The bird!

The window I as the preacher get to look through - and only I - draws few birds but opens to the preacher a view of the topmost branches of the glorious Plane tree that lies in the centre of our property.

This tree speaks to me, and it speaks to me through this window.

My very first function in this church was a wedding. It was a strange affair, with huge lights and cameras flanking the front area of the church, making it look less like a wedding and more like a photo shoot for a Paris-based fashion house. The bride was sombre, the groom nervous and red-nosed; something was rotten in the state of Denmark.  The guy in charge of sound and music tumbled down the stairs at the back of the church and walked with a limp for nearly a year after. Sometimes these things happen and sometimes they mean something - the money is in figuring out which is which. A close friend of mine got married on the rocks of a beach drawing the rumination from another friend: do you think this is symbolic? They were divorced a year later. Sometimes, you really should see it coming. Heaven knows, Mother Nature taps us enough times on the shoulder. This first wedding in this church under those spotlights lasted tragically less than two years. But, as it was unfolding, I looked up through that window and that tree was being beaten back and forth by a hysterical wind. Leaves, branches, not a calm twig on its large boughs. Ever since then, I've listened to that tree.

I listen to it when it loses its branches. It does this at the same time as we journey into Lent, an austere season, a season of surrender. It has a stark beauty all of its own, does Lent, just as that tree does, the bare-bone structure revealed for this season to the world; the only time the blue sky beyond is visible to me, and the knots in the branches get to flex their muscle nakedly, that others might appreciate.

Sometimes it is calm as I am calm. It doesn't happen often but sometimes  I am so at peace leading this community - my soul is rested, the prayers flow through me like a live-charge, and I am at peace and I see that tree swaying gently, as if winking at me, as if we are in this thing together, me and that tree.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not prophetic - it’s more a reflection, an outer impression of an inner feel; a mirror allowing me for even just a moment to consider the state of things, in a pertinent moment, when I take up the mantle of leading others. As if it is saying to me: how are you doing Andrew? Few acts of God are as merciful as those that show us the true motive, graciously setting alight a question mark and sometimes leading us away, and back.

In balmy weather it flutters in a light breeze, green - it aches with life; children playing in and around it, on it, life dripping from its branches. One of the wonderful members of this church said to me the other day that instead of saying to God, 'I love you God' say, 'I love you too.' That is good. Actually, that is great and it is great theology: that is life, all of it, a response to the Lover's first advance - I love you! I love you too!

Sometimes the tree is saying that: I love you.

The clock for worship hides beneath the window, set into a recess, both cyclical, but the clock a quarter of the size of the window; I suspect my stewards have had clandestine meetings wondering if they can't surreptitiously change the sizes, making the window smaller and the clock bigger; and then maybe adding an alarm that gongs on the quarter-hour or orchestral music that strikes up once the preacher has exceeded twenty minutes, like the Oscars. What can I say, I'm getting old and I'm prone to wondering through.

The window and tree. 

You know, ministry is plagued by people trying to change the world. That's not a bad thing but you can get lost: our agendas, our programs and sometimes it is all a horrifically thin veil trying desperately to stretch itself out over ego. That is why, I sense, so many rants have far more to do with subject than object. I know, I've been there, sometimes I am there. And so we promote ourselves away from the first love; the calling professions harbour this danger: a head teacher stares longingly across from the admin block as a class is being run, now by another teacher. The life-blood is cut off. In ministry, if you have a modicum of talent for this gig (and I say modicum for congregations are ludicrously forgiving of their clergy) you might begin to think you're 'all that'.

The tree reminds me of my roots. Of its relative permanence alongside my transience; it will be there long after I've stopped attending to my work in Hillcrest, and by God's good grace it will strike up with the next person who deigns to stand in this place.

It is large. It is beautiful. It reminds me that I am a small part of a really big thing and when you are a small part just start by doing the small things well, and then never stop.

My absolute, most favourite-ist preacher in all the wide world, Fred Craddock, once remarked,

"When I was in my late teens, I wanted to be a preacher. When I was in my late twenties, I wanted to be a good preacher. Now that I am older, I want more than anything else to be a Christian. To live simply, to love generously, to speak truthfully, to serve faithfully, and to leave everything else to God."

I am learning to love that. The tree loves that. It waves its branches in high praise.