Somebody's Minister
On GPS routes, good news, and being somebody's minister.
My GPS took me yet another way I didn’t recognize this morning. You see, I live thirty miles from the church I work at. On office days I throw all my things in the car and pray to God that I’ll eat the leftovers I’ve brought with me (and remember to bring the containers home), and then check my GPS to see which way I will be going. Today’s route was through towns, and while not faster than anything else, I didn’t have to pay for the express lane or be sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. I don’t think I would have survived in the pre-Apple Maps age, I’ll freely admit it.
I survived a whole week and a Sunday service - my first week as somebody’s (almost) minister - almost meaning that I’m commissioned to my congregation, so I get a ‘Rev’ in front of my name there, but I’m not ordained quite yet. I joking often say I’m somebody’s minister, though who that may be, who knows, not me. My ministerial mentor and the long-time senior minister of my congregation is on a sabbatical - good for her. It’s more than deserved. It also means I’ve been functionally left at the helm, and so here I am, learning what it is to be somebody's minster.
Having people come up to you and tell you they trust you, that they are willing to put some of their eggs in the shared basket, is terrifying. Why did no one tell me this?? That every time I write a sermon I will think of the prayer requests and the joys, the friends battling cancer and other horrific maladies, the injustice some and sometimes even all are experiencing. I think about their lives and mine, and I won’t be able to preach to them on a Sunday without seeing them in the back of my mind every time I break the loaf of bread and pour grape juice into the cup over a white cloth that I’m terrified of spilling on.
Our Easter sermon series is called ‘In Real Life’, taken from my own days as a Tumblr keyboard warrior and avid fan fiction writer - but it holds this meaning that our lives are meant to be lived, and that includes the pieces we’d rather look away from. That being Easter people, if we so claim, are being people of justice, love, and curiosity. And oh yeah, trust.
I think I still have some essays and reading due for school, an ordination interview, a care committee that insists I actually do things for myself and maybe a therapy appointment in there somewhere. Yet here I sit at my desk (really it’s Deb’s) on a Monday morning, still somebody’s minister in all of this real life. That’s something else if you ask me (please don’t ask to look at my to-do list). I’ve still got a Bible study to plan, and a sermon to write, and people to call. A prayer list or seven to update, and somehow I’ll still call my Mom on the way home, and sit through some zoom meetings and try to feed myself not McDonald’s, and also get some sleep and notice light patterns and pet some cats. Seminary’s taking a weird, real life turn.
One that is helping me start to connect all of these things about mercy, love, and justice with the life of the church. One that is helping me to see that even though I am still raging against the machine, mercy, love, and justice, are not avoidable even within the walls. That conversations can be had and invitations extended and meals can be shared and maybe we can find some kind of hope in the midst - which I will say, often seems bleak and I often feel powerless in my privileged seat at the table. But resistance also resides in the tension of good news that we can lay it all on the Table. Sometimes in pieces, sometimes all at once, but for us to name our real lives as they are, this too, is resistance to systemic sins that suck us in and convince us that we are better off always angry and bitter (righteous answer notwithstanding).
For our good news to be anything, friends, it has to be real. It’s why I like Thomas so much. Thomas is not satisfied with a good news secondhand, or one that he must believe without experiencing it in his real life. Thomas isn’t willing to settle for less because for Thomas’ grief to be understood, he needs Jesus to be more than a ghost. And if you ask me, friends, that’s a fairly reasonable ask. The Gospel that Thomas needs is rooted in real life – it’s deeply embodied and material, it needs to be real because if it isn’t real, then why, why would it give hope for the future of Thomas’ life?
In Thomas’s interaction with Jesus we can perhaps find comfort that living, happens in our bodies. Jesus moves through the world in his humanness, in his body, returns to us from the dead in his body, and encounters Thomas here in his injured, disabled broken body. And isn’t that a justice of its’ own, that our living is ours to do?
In any case, it’s kinda weird to be somebody’s minister, and maybe one day I’ll recognize all the GPS routes.
In all things love, beloveds.