PREACHER CALLING [Sa, 10-9-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

 

A vaccinated, retired preacher couple came to our house last week. It took a number of emails and telephone calls to arrange the time together. In the olden days, they would have just showed up. We would have let them in and made some coffee and looked around for cookies.

Even preachers just don’t do “drop in” visiting anymore, and the pandemic has made it even less acceptable. We have busy lives. Some of us are working from home. Some have kids doing on-line schooling. Some of us are binge-watching “Call the Midwife.” Some of us are unvaccinated, and I’ll gladly turn you away at the door if you are unvaccinated.

There was a time—before TV and working wives--when preachers were expected to just drop in on their parishioners. Making an “appointment” was okay, but not expected. It was a system that provided some great stories.

I think my favorite was about the family that had a front door in a shift-shape frame. The door stuck so hard that the only way they could get it open was by sticking the thin blade of a hatchet in between the door and the frame and they prying. So everyone knew you didn’t use their front door. Except the new preacher, who had just come to town and was making his rounds unannounced. He rang the front doorbell. One of the children peeked out a window to see who it was. As the pastor stood on the front steps, he heard someone shout, “It’s the preacher. Get the hatchet.”

I once ran out the back door to escape a drop-in call by the preacher, and I was a preacher myself at the time. And I wasn’t alone. My wife, and my brother and his wife, and our two teen daughters went with me.

It was at the house of my parents. As most of these stories go, the preacher was new. He was a distinguished looking man, with an impressive prow, and a long flowing white mane in a time, about 40 years ago, when men didn’t wear their hair long. And his wife was with him.

My brother and I were roofing our parents’ house. In southern Indiana in July. It was 95 degrees and 80 % humidity. We had started as soon as there was enough light to see, to try to beat the heat. Now it was afternoon, of the third day, and we were taking a break in front of their one little room air-conditioner, sweating like Turks [if that’s racist, say that we were sweating like Hoosiers], with our shirts off. Our women folk had been doing kitchen stuff for Mother and were similarly sweaty and disheveled, although with shirts. When the front bell rang, we peeked, and saw this distinguished looking couple. We weren’t ready for polite company. Somebody, and I swear I don’t know who, said, “It’s the preacher! Run!” So, lemming-like, we ran out the back door while Mother was letting The Rev. & Mrs. Dewitt Coates in through the front door.

Once outside, we realized that this surely was not the correct way to react. By then, though, we were too embarrassed to go back in, and not fit to sit on overstuffed chairs with overstuffed guests, anyway, So we snuck around the side of the house and walked the five blocks or so to Uncle Johnny’s hardware store [my mother’s youngest brother] and got wonderfully cold cokes out of the vending machine and waited until we figured my parents had hosted the preacher long enough that he had continued on his get-acquainted rounds, like Garrison Keillor’s “fishing dog,” Bruno, waited to return—the time he stole the whole salmon off the table-- until he was sure that people thought he had forgotten about his misdeed so that there was no point punishing him.

Times change. When I started preaching, everyone expected me to drop in at any time, and I did. By the time I retired, 40 years later, I would not have thought of going to someone’s house without making an appointment. Life is vastly different now from when I started preaching, and visiting, 65 years ago.

This is probably a better system now, making appointments. But there aren’t nearly as many good stories that come from when the preacher shows up announced.

John Robert McFarland

When Maltbie Babcock was a famous preacher in the fancy section of Boston, he was out calling and saw a little boy straining to reach the doorbell on a house. So, he went up and lifted the little boy up so he could ring the bell. When he put him down, the kid said, “Now, mister, run like hell!”