IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S… [F, 6-9-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S… [F, 6-9-23]

 

The pastor of our church, St. Mark’s UMC in Bloomington, IN, is on clergy-renewal leave. When our associate pastor, his wife, asked if I could relieve her of preaching duties on an occasional Sunday in his absence, I realized tht I am no longer able to preach. To preach, you need to be able to stand for 20 minutes in a row and think for 20 minutes in a row, and I am now too old to do either of those. I told about this in the column for May 28.

However, I told her that there was one exception—if she got sick on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Apparently, she thought that period started on Thursday afternoon. 

I sort of hoped the bulletin was already done.  One of the things that keeps me from preaching these days is having to make choices. With a completed bulletin, I would have no choices to make. I would just use the scripture and sermon title already there. No problem. There is no scripture I haven’t used in 60 years of preaching. I have no notes or manuscripts or old bulletins anymore, but I have so many stories in my brain that I can preach for 20 minutes on anything. Or at least “preach until I hit upon a subject,” as Garrison Keillor said the fill-in pastor at Lake Wobegon did.

No such luck. I even had to pick a theme so the music director would know how to finish his work. I thought about “The Past, Present, And Future Of God, Man, And The Universe.” That’s the title Gerald Kennedy used for a lecture series when I was a seminary student. He said that he had no idea what to say when they asked for a title, and he thought that would cover anything he came up with. But that was too wide even for me. I figured I could not go wrong with “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” Romans 8: 31-39.

So you’re welcome, if you have nothing else to do Sunday morning, at 10:30 Eastern Daylight Time, to join us, by going to smumc.church and clicking on the Livestream rectangle. Or any time thereafter by clicking on the Video Archive rectangle.

When I was a young pastor, I was intrigued by the stories old people told me when I called on them. They were almost all stories of their childhood, as though it had just ended. I did not understand that then. I do now.

Since I think that this really will be my last sermon, I decided to go back to the beginning…

John Robert McFarland