On Not Being Prepared

John Shaffer retired as late as possible, at the mandatory retirement age for UM pastors. In the words of a famous Alaskan, the state in which John spent most of his ministry, he “refudiated” retirement. He has found that it’s not so bad. He does, however, still write about a dozen sermons a year, even though he preaches only twice or thrice per year. It’s good to be prepared.

[I suspect John does it more just because he gets ideas and needs to express them. That’s a major problem for the years of winter, getting ideas and having no outlet for them. If you write them down, at least you’ve gotten them out there, even if no one else sees them.]

Preparation isn’t always a good thing, though. It’s becoming increasingly clear that if you have something, you want to use it, and sometimes even manufacture a reason to use it, whether it’s a hammer or a gun or a bomb or a joke or a ginned-up video clip, whether or not it is appropriate.

Fifty years ago, birth control was a hot topic in the same way that abortion or gay marriage is now. Gene Simon wrote a sermon on birth control. He didn’t get to use it, though. He was an associate pastor in a large church, and especially back then, young associates got to preach only once or twice a year. But the senior pastor got sick at Christmas, and Gene was called upon to preach the Christmas Eve service. Naturally, he pulled out his birth control sermon. After all, it was ready, and he was just itching to use it. But Christmas Eve is not the best time to preach on birth control!

I don’t prepare anymore, sermons or anything else. It’s my father’s fault. When Mother died, he was 89 and moved to a senior citizens’ apartment building. When it was learned that he was single, he became very popular. Soon he was “keeping company,” all the time, with Betty, who lived next door. One day, he called and said, “When you come to visit, get here early. I’ve got something to discuss with you before Betty comes over today.” We thought, “Oh, no, he’s going to marry Betty.” So we got on the phone and spent all day working out what happens when two old people on Social Security, etc. get married. When we got there, he said, “When your brother and I sell that house we own together, I want to pay you that money your little sister owes you.” We were astounded. “You want to pay what she owes us?“ “Yes, she’ll never be able to, so I’ll do it.” “You don’t want to marry Betty?” “Hell, no. Why would I want to marry Betty? What part of ‘I want to give you money’ don’t you understand?” A whole day wasted getting prepared for something that wasn’t going to happen.

So Helen made plans to put a porch on the back of the house, and I started looking at red pickup trucks. Naturally the house deal fell through, and we didn’t get the money, so another whole bunch of time wasted getting prepared for something that wouldn’t happen. [Somehow the porch got built anyway, but that’s a different story. I’m still waiting for the red pickup.]

I have found out that the things I prepare for don’t happen. It’s the stuff for which I’m not prepared, that’s what happens. I wasn’t prepared when the doctor told me I had cancer and only one to two years to live. I wasn’t prepared when I learned that our daughter or my wife or my grandson had cancer. I wasn’t prepared when my older sister’s youngest sons were killed together in an auto crash. I wasn’t prepared when our para-son’s little boy, in some ways our first grandchild, was murdered when he was ten. The list goes on…

I think of Jesus and his disciples in the boat, crossing the lake, when that sudden storm came up and caught them unprepared. UP here on Lake Superior, we call those “white squalls.” They are strong enough to capsize an ore boat. On Galilee, the storm probably wasn’t that strong, but the boat was smaller, and despite the best bailing efforts of the disciples, it was about to be swamped. They looked to Jesus. He was asleep! Of course. He wasn’t worried. If the boat went down, he could walk on the water. But they couldn’t. They woke him up. “Don’t you care if we perish?” He raised his hand and told the wind to blow off and told the waves to calm down. He said to the disciples, “What part of ‘have faith’ don’t you understand?”

You can’t really be prepared for the white squalls of life, but you can be sure you have the right guy in the boat with you.