Undercover Pastor

My son Johnny is only two, but I can see how much he’s changed in those two years. Johnny isn’t a baby anymore. While he used to live for being held, now he often prefers to sit by himself. “I do it!” he protests when I try to lift him up onto the couch to sit with me. He looks so small in pictures, but he seems so big compared to the baby he used to be.

I can already imagine him as a teenager distancing himself from Dad… and that’s what made the moment this afternoon special. Monday is my day off from my work at the church, and we were all sitting together since a plumber was trying to fix our gas leak under the house and there wasn’t any heat. (Good thing it wasn’t too cold today.) Anyway, Johnny was sitting with me watching what I was doing on the computer when he started to get sleepy. It’s been a long time since he fell asleep in my arms.

I don’t know how many more moments we’ll have like this. Sure, there will be other great adventures that we’ll have together, but this is special. It was nice to realize it in the moment this time. I had a chance to enjoy it, and it felt important.

It’s interesting how things come together.

Last night, I was feeling a bit disturbed by stuff in my life that’s not going well. While the church I pastor is growing and has great potential, it’s really hard to get people to help with the church’s work. Even little things are hard to find people for. For example, we want to make coffee for people who attend a public showing of The Passion of the Christ, but nobody seems willing to do that… Then there’s the room that we started prepping for painting and can’t seem to get finished. (Of course it has to be a room that people walk through every Sunday!) That stuff starts to frustrate me.

I was also frustrated because we had a heating and air conditioning unit installed in our 60-year-old house last summer. That’s not the frustrating part. The frustrating part is that we still haven’t passed the building permit inspection. The most recent hitch is that there’s a tiny leak somewhere in the gas system. They cap off all of the gas appliances and run the system up to 10 times normal pressure pressure. Then it’s supposed to hold pressure for 15 minutes. Well it doesn’t. The heating and air contractor says it’s not his responsibility. We’re supposed to get a plumber to find and fix the leak, then the heat/air guy will come for the inspection. But it’s hard to find someone to pressurize the system and go hunting for leaks. So the last time the heat/air guy came out, he capped everything off and left. I had to get a crash course in reconnecting gas appliances. I still haven’t reconnected the heater because it’s on the roof. But it’s starting to get cold…

Anyway, church stuff, and various house problems were bugging me.

But today was different. Today I did a funeral for the mother of one of our church members. The woman had died after two days in the hospital. She had a very aggressive infection that may have come from some dental work when had done. She felt sick so she went to the hospital on Friday. Then on Sunday, she was gone.

This morning and afternoon, I got a chance to walk with that family as they dealt with the loss and their own grief and some feelings of regret.

Then tonight, I was complaining to one of our church board members that we can’t get people to volunteer for the stuff that needs to be done… I think it may have made her feel a little down too.

But that was right before the children arrived for our new children’s choir. We had a great group of kids, and they sounded great. Richard March, our music director, is hoping to have one of our middle schoolers play a saxophone solo in one of the Easter songs, and the kids clapped and moved to the beat like real pros. (They even clapped on the off-beat!) And two of the kids were kids who are fairly new to the church too.

Where am I going with all this? The daughters of the woman who died were talking about how losing a family member really puts life into perspective. And I felt the same way when I saw the looks on the faces of the family this morning and when heard those kids singing. That really means something. Seeing the impact that the church is having on people’s lives helps me put problems with coffee into perspective…

The only problem is that it’s really hard to hang onto that perspective. It’s so easy to slip back into old patterns of thought. For me, prayer helps a lot too – when I take enough time to pray! Both perspective-giving events and prayer give me a glimpse of what it would be like to live with a larger perspective, and every time I see it, I want more of it. I’ll keep you posted!

I thought I’d take a shot at sharing what I preach on Sunday mornings… If I can’t condense it to fit in the blog, I must have said too much anyway.

General I preach what the academics call “textual sermons.” That means that the message is primarily an interpretation of one part of the Bible. I think that’s a good way to preach, since it make it less likely that I’ll just put my own agenda out there and back it up with one-liners from the Bible.

Anyway, on February 27, 2005, I preached on John 4:4-42. Now you can’t preach in detail on something this long – at least not within the attention span of 21st century Americans sitting on pews! But this is a story that has to be read as a whole. So we read the passage as “readers’ theater” – with different people reading each part.

Anyway, the scene opens with Jesus entering Samaria. Now Samaria is what used to be the Northern Kingdom of Israel. I’ll tell you about this some time, but for now, know this: In Jesus’ time, the Samaritans were not well-loved by the Jews. So Jesus is entering a region where – according to Jewish customs of the time – he really wasn’t supposed to have much to do with the people.

So what does Jesus do? He strikes up a conversation with a woman who is getting water from a well. “Will you give me a drink?” he asks.

She’s shocked! From his dress and his accent, he’s obviously a Jewish man. But he’s talking to a Samaritan woman. She responds to him, asking him how he can possibly be talking to her.

Then Jesus tells her that if she really knew who he was, she would ask him for a drink and he’d give her “living water.”

Living water usually means water that came from a flowing spring rather than a well. She still doesn’t understand who he is.

The conversation continues as Jesus reveals more and more about who he is and she asks more and more important questions until she is convinced that he may be the Messiah (the coming anointed one who was supposed to set the world aright.)

In church, we went through the exchanges between the two of them, but here, let’s cut to the chase. Jesus offered this woman “living water,” saying “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” When she eventually figures out that he’s not trying to offer her indoor plumbing or a new water delivery service, she’s overcome and leaves her water jar there to go tell her friends.

What we didn’t talk about is who this woman was. I told you she was a Samaritan woman. That’s one strike against her. Then she had been married five times. Generally, three times was the limit of the number of times a woman could be married except under very unusual conditions. Strike two. Then told Jesus that she wasn’t married to the man she now lives with – at all! Strike three. By the standards of his culture, Jesus shouldn’t have been relating to this woman at all.

Why did he go to her? Of all the people in Samaria, surely there was someone who would be a better ambassador for Jesus than this woman! But no. Jesus comes to us as we are. He doesn’t see us as the world sees us. John’s gospel tells us that everything in all creation was made through Jesus. So have to fugue he sees us as we really are. But he’s not afraid to offer living water to an outcasts or someone who feels like a fraud, or someone who has a dark secret, or someone who’s angry at God… The list goes on and on.

There are as many problems as there are people. But Jesus comes to each of us, offering his living water. Will we take a drink?

Joshua, our six-week-old son, has “smiled” before. You know what I’m talking about? The day after he was born, we caught him in what looked like a smile. Sure, he had his eyes closed and was probably asleep, but the corners of his mouth were turned up so we counted it as a smile. Here’s a picture:

But today, Eleanor saw a real smile. Joshua was sitting in his rocker, which has little toys that hang down in front of him. He looked at them and smiled.

I didn’t see this one, but I remember the first time Johnny smiled at me. Until that point, he would tell us when something was wrong or when he was hungry, but that was the first time he responded to me as a person. My heart practically exploded with joy!

(I’m resisting the urge to sermonize here… I’m sure there’s an analogy to how God responds to worship, but I’ll fight it off for now. )

Anyway, I can’t wait to see Joshua smile at me. It’s just wonderful to see our little babies become people with their own personalities!