HOW ABSENT ARE THE FEET… [Sun, 6-7-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings About Irrelevancy by an Irrelevant Old Preacher--HOW ABSENT ARE THE FEET… [Sun, 6-7-26]

 

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” [Isaiah 52:7]

So far, I have said that no one wants to be a preacher because they are irrelevant, primarily because the church is irrelevant. But there is a specific irrelevancy of preachers…

THE IRRELEVANCE OF PREACHERS

The church is no longer relevant or necessary in American society, so preachers are irrelevant and unnecessary. Who needs a preacher in a church that is irrelevant?

Preachers aren’t even needed for funerals and weddings. Officiating at those events was the main reason the larger society beyond the church put up with preachers and their annoying talk about God.  Now anyone can officiate, even at weddings. “Anyone” is often preferable, because there is no religious language to negotiate. Couples can write their own self-centered, temporary vows for weddings [‘til love do us part], and no one has to speculate about heaven or hell as we “celebrate” the life of some secular reprobate.

On TV shows, preachers are rarely even shown. If they are, they are usually bumbling buffoons. On a recent Grey’s Anatomy, all the doctors were complaining that there were no chaplains in the building to do an emergency wedding. One of them said, “How can that be?  Chaplains are supposed to be here all the time” But this was the 10^th season of Grey’s Anatomy, and in the 225 shows before this episode, not only had they not mentioned or shown a chaplain, no one had even acknowledged their existence. Of course, it provided a good excuse for some bed pan operator to get ordained online to do the wedding. That’s how important and relevant preachers are, with their seven years of higher education.

{The episode aired originally in 2014, but we have only recently started watching Grey’s Anatomy, via Netflix. We’ve still got 12 seasons to go.}

When we graduated university, my roommate, Tom Cone, went to law school. The guy in the room next door, Tom Lucas, went to medical school. I went to theological school. All our peers, all of society, considered that we would be three equal professionals. Everyone knew that the Toms would earn a lot more money than I did, but we would have the same level of education and respect.

When we got our professional doctorates, that was true. All the newly married and doctorated couples socialized together. Our main friends were young doctors and lawyers and their wives. [There were some women lawyers and doctors then, but they didn’t live in the towns where I was pastoring.]

The main virtues then, the ones that society valued, were education, patriotism, civic involvement, moral living, and respectability. It was the church’s responsibility to encourage [enforce?] those virtues. The primary encourager/enforcer, of course, was the preacher.

Then came the upheaval of social values.

The Viet Nam war was fought, we were told by “the establishment,” to protect those values and virtues. But, no, that war was really fought to protect interests antithetical to traditional values. The values being protected were greed and power. Young people developed a counter culture, a drop-out culture, of drugs and non-involvement, a culture that saw traditional values as corrupt or irrelevant or hypocritical.

When people give up on traditional values, and replace them with greed and drugs, who can be more irrelevant than a preacher of traditional values?

Yes, there are people who still believe in the traditional values, but to exist in a nontraditional culture, they have to “double down,” become strict and inflexible in upholding those values. Mainline denominational churches are seen as wish-washy, cooperators with a lax culture, accepting non-acceptable people. The code word is “obey.” Mainline churches and their preachers don’t use it. They are accepted by neither the traditional religion nor the libertine culture.

Oh, I so wish I could start as a preacher, again, right now. This is just about the best time ever to be a preacher. What a wonderful opportunity, to preach the Gospel in a culture that is so ready for it, and doesn’t even know it!

John Robert McFarland

“When old men become irrelevant, young men become irresponsible.”