Not without prior exposure to the mega/MAGA church, it once again hit me: just how empty of content all of this is, yet bulging with sentimental cute stories of gramma's attic, and then veiled threats of hell - with a lot of huffing and puffing, and chugging across the platform like a runaway train, untucked expensive shirt flapping in the breeze, brightly pressed jeans proclaiming hipness.
Yeah, I tried that for awhile, and I'm not proud of it. I'd rather forget it ever happened. And after awhile, I returned to clerical shirt and robe - because it's not about me, but about Christ, and the church's story (both glorious and shameful).
Yes, to lift up the fallen and reclaim the lost, but to do so with a keen and unyielding sense of letting our light shine in such a way that the world will give glory to God - not in 11 words repeated 7 times in mindless and feel-good praise songs, but in deeds, and life well-lived for the sake of others, paying attention to God's good earth and its moaning, moaning under the weight of extractive industry and the detritus of our throw-away world.
A life lived in and through and by the love of Christ is always and forever a life of deep and transformative politics - i.e. how we live together east of Eden - each of us possessing something of Abel, something of Cain, and something of Seth ... faithfulness, vengefulness, and recovery.
The stage-prancers entice the eye, beguile the ear with nostrums, confirm privilege and place, and fill their pockets with the indulgences of the rich and poor alike.
Give me a preacher who takes the task of study and reflection seriously ... the preacher who reads widely ... the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other (or, these days, the digital platforms) ... the preacher who appreciates the power and challenge of language, who understands something of rhetoric, oral speech, and how to tell a story, who honors the disciplines of careful writing, who seeks the glory of God, and the wellbeing of those who worship, a wellbeing not of self-satisfaction, but the authentic wellbeing of a life devoted to justice, kindness, and humility before the giant mysteries of creation.
A preacher who clings to the pulpit, because the pulpit represents the presence of Christ, and never to
Faithful preachers ... who labor to craft one true sentence on any given Sunday ... and upon that one sentence, to craft a sermon worthy of the name, knowing full well the some sermons will be surpassing, others less so, and some not at all - but each of them flowing from the deepest kinds of desire, the desire to love God, and the twin desire to practice the ways of loving our neighbor.
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