Revelations from the Sanctuary Floor

by Casey Thompson
 

An Imperfect Faith

I have a secret conceit as a pastor: I want to be relevant. In desperate moments, I'll settle for effective.

The strange lot of pastors, though, is that we are called to create things that fall apart. It's hard to consider yourself effective, much less relevant, when your best work is ephemeral. We don't build solid goods. We don't piece together quilts that our grandchildren will nestle under when they go to sleep. We don't establish schools or lay bricks or paint canvases. It is true that some of us create beautiful buildings, but often a new building is just the death knell of a congregation, the locus where our work is supposed to take place.

Instead, we lavish hours on words that, at worst, dissipate into air and that, at best, reside briefly in the heart before fading, leaving there a residue of grace. We spend our time visiting people, an activity that would get us fired in any right-thinking company. And, of course, we spend time in prayer. What would happen at your job if you spent an hour every Tuesday talking to God about it? Is that a billable hour? At the end of the week, I sometimes look back and wonder what I've done. It's a dangerous question because it leads me to those hidden desires of mine: relevance, effectiveness. It leads me to answer the purpose of my life with the question of production. I've been faithful, you see, if I've produced enough or if enough people found some relevance in my sermon. You can see how this is bad news if God has called you to a different purpose: the right word said at the right time, the sermon delivered for a solitary person while three hundred others fiddle their thumbs, the class about tithing which is forgotten by Wednesday, the lunch with a widower on the anniversary of his wife's death.

I have to continually remind myself that the task of any Christian is not to be effective or relevant but simply to be faithful. I have to remind myself that God might ask me to do something thoroughly irrational and unproductive simply to break the stranglehold that the idea of production has on my mind. Try selling that to your session: "The reason I preached that sermon completely in Pig Latin is that I thought it would be remarkably ineffective and that's what God wanted me to be."

When I find myself reflecting upon this, I invariably remember my encounter with Miss Fraser. A year before my ordination, I was following an experienced pastor around as he visited some of the saints of our church out at the Presbyterian Nursing Home in Austell, Georgia. Door after door, we sat and listened and prayed.

"We have one more to see," he said, stepping into the elevator, "Miss Fraser. She's normally unresponsive but we'll check in on her."

When we exit the elevator, we are welcomed by a convention of wheelchairs, arranged haphazardly in a semi-circle, a welcoming committee of sorts for any sons or daughters that step onto the floor. No one pays us any attention though. A few knit, a few whisper about lunch, one spry gentleman is playing the field, and a few with a mischievous gleam in their eye seem to conspire in the corner.

"Miss Fraser, it's Jim. Miss Fraser, I brought someone to meet you."

He's clutching at her hands but she keeps looking down at her feet.

"Miss Fraser, it's Jim from the church. I want you to meet Casey."

After some time of this, a nurse calls over, "She's been like that all day. We'll tell her you came."

Then Miss Fraser tilts her head up and she fixates on me, undeniable fire in her eyes. "You're a preacher, aren't you?"

"Yes, he is," Jim answers. "He's working with us for the summer."

"Yes, you're a preacher, all right. I can tell. I can see it on you." I assume she means like you can smell stink on a skunk.

"What's your name, young man?"

"Casey."

She smiles and takes my hand. "You're a preacher, I can tell."

And she keeps repeating it until she droops into a fog again, "yes, you're a preacher, I can tell."

Then, when I think we've lost her once again, she clutches at my arm and pulls me down toward her, "But not yet. You're not a preacher yet. Something's holding you back. Not a preacher yet — but you will be."

She doesn't say another word to us. Like a Delphic sibyl, she slips back into her daze, a weak grip lingering on my hand.

Jim frowns a bit then looks at me and deadpans. "She's not normally like that."

I wonder if my secret conceit of relevance, of mattering, of being effective, is the thing that holds me back from fully being God's servant. I wonder if I let go of those notions if I would find that my secret conceit would be replaced with my open one: I want to be faithful. I trust that the Oracle of Austell was correct, however, and that one day I will be.

Casey Thompson is an Associate Pastor at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis, TN.