THE UNCERTAIN PREACHER [Sun, 7-28-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings and Memories of an Old Man—THE UNCERTAIN PREACHER [Sun, 7-28-24]

 

It is Sunday morning, and I have finally broken myself of the Sunday morning habit of saying, “If the preacher gets sick this morning and I have to fill in, what will I preach?” I preached for 40 years. When I retired, I could not get out of the habit of needing to be prepared—Sunday morning going up.

I was well suited, by “gifts and graces,” for a career as a preacher. I was also vexed by it. For 68 years.

I was 18 when I started preaching, although I didn’t really think of it as such. It was “preaching” only forty years later, when Bob Robling came up to me at our class reunion and said, “Do you remember that summer after we graduated, and you and Dave Lamb and Bob Wallace and I would pile into one of our old Chevies each Sunday morning and go to wherever the District Superintendent sent us, where the preacher was on vacation or something, and we’d sing as a quartet, and you’d preach? I always said the best preacher I ever heard was an 18-year-old kid.”

Whenever I tell that story, I say, “This teaches us two things. The first is that Bob did not go to church for 40 years…” I had to update the story, every five years, when we’d have another class reunion, for Bob would forget, and ask me the same thing. So my consequent line would be, “Bob didn’t go to church for forty-five years…” “Bob didn’t go to church for fifty years…”

When Bob heard me say that, when I was the speaker at our fifty-year reunion, he protested. “I go to church a lot.” That was true. He went because he was in the church choir. He was an industrial arts teacher by profession, but his passion was singing. I didn’t want to hurt Bob’s chance at adding to his chain of perfect attendance pins at Sunday School, but it was too good a line to leave out.

That summer, though, I didn’t think I was preaching. I just wanted to run around with my friends. I just thought I was in a quartet. I had a bass voice, but I didn’t really know how to sing the bass line. The other guys were good singers, though, so they carried me. Usually “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.” That wasn’t hard.

As being the least-able singer, they decided that I should be the talker. So when it came time to for the sermon, I’d tell any jokes I knew that were fit for church, plus any cliches about religion that I had picked up, and I’d say that you should go to church because the people were nice and you learned stuff about God there. If you’re 18 and earnest and have a decent voice, people think you’ll amount to something.

I was all of 19 when I really began to preach regularly, when I received my first appointment from the bishop: Chrisney-Crossroads-Bloomfeld. I was 78 when I received my last appointment from the bishop, Oolitic. I was 86 when I preached my last sermon, filling in for a sick preacher, at St. Mark’s in Bloomington, IN. In between Chrisney and Oolitic, I had ten regular appointments, plus six interims. 68 years from start to finish.

Was I really called by God to be a preacher? 68 years of uncertainty. Except once in a while…

…when I had to go into homes where tragedy had struck, where children died from cancer or were run over by cars, where girls had been murdered, where boys had committed suicide. Where no words were adequate, but they had to be said. It was in those moments that I never had any doubt about my calling. “I know the Lord has laid his hand on me.”

 

I sometimes sing that on Sunday mornings now, with Bob and Dave and Bob. They are so young and eager, and have such good harmony. I even sound good on the bass.

John Robert McFarland