Picture Albums and Home Videos: Anecdotes of a Forgotten Past

I'm in a paradox about that oft-used/oft-abused instrument of preachers, the anecdote. I confess publicly now my own over-trained cynicism that comes second nature as I sit on the other side of someone else's pulpit some Sunday I'm out of my own. And I cannot help but start taking notes about how they do things, their method and technique (i.e., manuscript or free form, narrative or 3 point style, etc). And one thing I always seem sure to note is if they fall prey to the great cover-up: telling some story or anecdote or joke at the beginning in an effort to "break the ice" or "warm up the crowd". In other words, to entertain.

Sadly I fail to remember where I heard this (which is appropriate to where this blog seems to be taking me) but I've heard it said that often preachers look for a quip or clever yarn to open up sermons as a way to hide their own insecurity; to please the crowd before prophesying; to win them to your side before you bend them over and tell them what they don't want to hear. So in my over-educated, well-oiled superiority complex, I give the preacher a demerit and am then on the lookout for other indications of their short-comings (which, any good psychologist would probably tell you has far more to do with my own insecurities and short-comings than anything else). Nevertheless, the anecdote in this context becomes the sugar coating on a bad-tasting Gospel. It seems to me the Gospel deserves to be taken more seriously than a punchline or bad medicine; and is certain bigger than the kind of joke that is only laughed at to make the teller feel okay with themselves.

But this is a paradox because Jesus himself is an amazing Storyteller. He weaves images with words to give us a tapestry of the Kingdom. The most memorable, engaging sermons I've heard are often full of stories and personal testimony that reveal the Kingdom in the syntax of real-life. This accounts (sometimes humorous, sometimes grave) offer a tangible memory of the Gospel for a parishioner to take home and play with for a while.

I am rather humbled by all I've experienced by God's grace in my short life; travel, relationships, musical performances, unique experiences, etc. I love living this life God has so carefully set-up around us. And yet whenever I rummage through my memories for an illustration that I hope will not entertain or cover-up but give hand-holds to the Gospel, I have trouble making the connections. I've driven long miles, hiked through mountains and deserts and highlands, flown over oceans and timezones, but I cannot find an illustration to illuminate the journey of the friends to Emmaus (Luke 24).

My wife will grow frustrated with me from time to time (hehe, look at this, an anecdote) when she asks, "Don't you remember when ..." followed by a memory of something she or I said and despite my conscientious effort to [i]not[/i] be like those insensitive, dull-witted cavemen portrayed in TV sitcoms, I'll give her the stereotypical, "Um..." and wince. Recently, after repeating this scene, I realized that I don't remember conversations much, but impressions. In other words, I think I remember in photographs, not in video.

Perhaps a psychologist could better explain what that's about. Or maybe it is simply a sign that I'm not a very practiced observer of life but instead, I spend my energy thinking about how I feel about life (i.e., spend more time thinking about how [i]I[i/] look at life instead of just looking at life!). It's as if Monet paints my memories: as if the images are cast behind a sheet of water; a still picture that shimmers with movement. If my life were a book, it would probably be one of those coffee table books, and have more pictures than words. While I appreciate how God is created me, it would be nice to have eyes to view the world and not orbit around my own perspective; to start with the world and see where I fit, instead of starting with self and moving out.

Maybe to actually be less self-aware and just more aware is the faithful task for preachers.

Casting Magic

"For the sake, as he sees it, of the ones he preaches to, the preacher is apt to preach the Gospel with the high magic taken out, the deep mystery reduced to a manageable size...The wild and joyful promise of the Gospel is reduced to promises more easily kept. The peace that passeth all understanding is reduced to peace that anybody can understand. The faith that can move mountains and raise the dead becomes faith that can help make life bearable until death ends it. Eternal life becomes a metaphor for the way the good a man does lives after him. "Blessed is he who takes no offense at me" (Matt. 11:6), Jesus says, and the preacher is apt to seek to remove the offense by removing from the Gospel all that he believes we find offensive. You cannot blame him because up to a point, of course, he is right. With part of ourselves we are offended as he thinks by what is too much for us to believe. We weren't born yesterday. We are from Missouri.

"But we are also from somewhere else. We are from Oz, from Looking-Glass Land, from Narnia, and from Middle Earth. If with part of ourselves we are men and women of the world and share the sad unbeliefs of the world, with a deeper part still, the part where our best dreams come from, it is as if we were indeed born yesterday, or almost yesterday, because we are also all of us children still. No matter how forgotten and neglected, there is a child in all of us who is not just willing to believe in the possibility that maybe fairy tales are true after all but who is to some degree in touch with that truth."

~ from Frederick Buechner, "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale"


Over lunch one day, a professor-pastor-friend in college told me that for him, whenever he would visit someone in the hospital, that he felt he should remove his shoes at the door because he was about to tread on holy ground.

Another professor, this one in seminary, once told my class that the most dangerous thing that any pastor can do is forget that they handle holy things.

And by holy, I mean magical. Call it an over-active imagination or a divorce from reality, I believe in magic. Not the cantrips we hear about in Harry Potter, that unlocks doors and makes things float. Not modern Wiccan rituals or decapatated chickens or devil worship. Real magic. What Aslan calls, after his miraculous resurrection, "The deeper magic."
What the church calls Easter.

I grew up losing myself in stories about fierce, awe-inspiring dragons, powerful and dangerous wizards and valiant, iron-clad knights. And I cannot help but believe that these journeys into another world were a vital part of the formation of my faith, perhaps as much as any other event that led me to Christ: the freedom to believe in magic; the ability to envision a world where extraordinary things can happen that make a lasting, life-giving difference for everyone. More importantly, the ability to see (on my good days) that world in this one.

I think Buechner is quite right to see the Gospel as a fairy tale. Not an entertaining story that's mostly for children and earns millions for movie-makers. The tales that actually talk back to our reality, peeling back the mundane to reveal the magic that's been there all along; the magic we're often too busy to notice.

The magic of the Gospel and its Easter-Christ, that proves He can bring resurrection to the most unlikely places and people.

But we're scientists and enlightened minds. We want hard proof before we give up our precious time and energy following leprechauns and Holy Grails. We'll take cold hard facts over warm bread and ruddy wine any day.

Because that's what we can control: our facts. Magic is beyond our control; of another world that we haven't spent enough time in to feel comfortable there. But that's just the point: faith in Christ is all about living into another world; or rather, the true world; where the grass is so real, it can cut your feet (as it does in C.S. Lewis' heaven in his account 'The Great Divorce.') .

"My kingdom is not of this world..." Jesus tells Pilate. The crowd chants for their agenda (the assassination of a God-Son they cannot contain). Weary Pilate just wants a little peace and quiet for a change, and a little truth. But even in Jesus' beaten body, magic is already at work that is going to mystically sweep away all of sin (the sin of the crowd that wants him dead, of the betrayer, of the denier, of the bystander-friend who wants to do something but is paralyzed by fear) and open the wardrobe to a magic kingdom, where peace is had, where companions and neighbors find endless joy in serving one another, where evil is easy to spot and where the King is trustworthy, compassionate and just and brings order.

And every Sunday, the preacher dances between lunacy and comfort; between the fairy tale that men and women (who "share the sad beliefs of this world") have forgotten but come every Sunday to hear and at the same time, speaking encouragement to those same tired souls. And all the while, this preacher himself fights to remember that he too is a child and that the bread and wine and Storybook and hospital rooms right there in his hands are magical; visible signs of the holy fairy tale that have punched through the veil; that has more to with the real way of things than reality itself.

The Climb

"When the preacher climbs up into his pulpit, switches on the lectern light and spreads out his note cards like a poker hand, maybe even the vacationing sophomore who is there only because somebody dragged him there pricks up his ears for a second or two along with the rest of them because they believe that the man who is standing up there in a black gown with the smear of styptic pencil on his chin has something they do not have or at least not in the same way he has it because he is a professional. He professes and stands for in public what they with varying degrees of conviction or the lack of it subscribe to mainly in private. He has been to a seminary and studied all that one studies in a seminary. He has a degree to show for it, and beyond the degree he has his ordination and the extraordinary title of reverend, which no matter how well they know him on the golf course or the cocktail-party circuit sets him apart as one to be revered not because of anything he knows or anything he is in himself but because, as an ambassador is revered for the government he represents, he is to be revered for representing Christ."
~ Frederick Buechner "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale"

I will be traveling on an airplane twice in the next month. That means I will be faced with the unavoidable dilemma that accompanies any such travel: the question about what I do for a living.

It's a mystifying experience. It seems my very countenance has this transformative effect on my fellow travelers, for the moment I share my profession, their demeanor, their posture, their very vocabulary becomes much tidier.

Of course, this isn't reserved to the airplane but also to family dinners, where all those loving eyes turn to "the professional" to give us a "real" prayer.

While my ego sits-up and wags its tail when such attention is lavished on me, honestly it can be a bit bewildering. Of course I'm happy to pray. I love talking to God. But I feel far more compelled, both in seat 13A and my place at the dinner table to say, "No, you don't understand, I'm really just like you. I am a believer on the same quest after God, some days headed in the right direction, some days too tired to move."

But being the medicine man does not afford such liberties. Your headdress and garb set you apart. Not your skin and bones. Not your searching mind or longing heart or little faith. The black fabric and slips of paper behind glass on the wall. They set you aside as "different."

Don't get me wrong: it is a tremendous and deeply humbling honor to be called to this occupation. It is the hardest job one could ever love. But it seems that such an "ambassadorship" can afford the minister certain privileges that he is certain is more due to the quiet yet faithful members who wait anxiously for a Word from God. But the greater worry is that the occupation, the black cloth and the slips of paper, afford freely available permission to "leave it to the professional" (because in our over-worked society, we do not have time but to leave it them).

"A professional Christian." Paul says, "Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me... " (Eph. 3:7-8). He too was seminary trained and yet gives all credit, not to his grade-point average but to the gift of God's grace. A gift that is made available to all.

My itchiness about being asked "what do you do for a living?" or to pray at family meals is never about having to say the right words on the spot but that others would miss the opportunity to meet with God too; to practice what is more often "subscribed to in private" and left to the ones society calls "professionals." A title most ministers I know would never ascribe to themselves.

And yet, Sunday after Sunday, I take the three steps that places me within view of everyone, I open a Book with trembling fingers that everyone there owns, and attempt to speak the truth of a God who is bigger than any human language nor can be contained by a slip of paper behind glass. The pulpit at the Columbia Seminary chapel holds a placard which quotes the gospel of John, "Sir, we would see Jesus", an injunction to the preacher of the sheer magnitude of what most congregations want in no longer than 15 minutes.

The only thing left is to do what every other baptized believer can do: trust in the grace of God to use the gifts placed inside to open a window to true reality, not because of being a professional, but because God's grace is sufficient.