I was raised–and still live–in a part of the world where things like cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and pickup trucks are commonplace. Of course, not everyone here has or uses these things every day, but even for those who don’t, they would probably see all three on a daily basis. Naturally, I grew up thinking the hats, boots, and trucks were normal everywhere–even if they were used less often in other places.
That was my assumption until I went to college in another state. As far as I can remember, there were a few others on campus who had trucks, but if my hat and boots had feelings, they would’ve told me it was as if they’d been sent into exile. My basketball coach was from New Jersey, and I can still hear him asking me, “People really wear that stuff down there?”
After living other places for a little more than a decade, I have been very glad to be back in the land of the hats, boots, and trucks. Recently, though, I’ve been delighted to find myself going to school once again with others who aren’t familiar with these Texas customs. I am studying spiritual direction with a group of classmates from all over–not just the country, but the world. In the course of the typical “What’s something unusual about you?” personal introductions with my classmates, I mentioned that I’ll likely be the only one in the group who wears cowboy boots on a daily basis.
I like having that fact about myself in my pocket in those situations so that I don’t have to think any harder about what to say, but I’m realizing that the farther someone’s geography or culture are from my own, the more likely it is that they would form inaccurate ideas about me from my attachment of the word “cowboy” to my boots. So, I realized the need to explain something that everyone desperately needs to know: there are different kinds of cowboys.
Read MorePastors have moments of utter exasperation with some church members sometimes. The power-plays, the self-centeredness, grown men and women acting like selfish toddlers who simply won’t understand why they can’t have everything their own way. Plenty of church members get exasperated with such fellow members too. So much infighting and bickering over who’s in charge, over which factions get the power. Very little discussion of mission, of how to reach others with the Good News of God’s love and kingdom coming in and through Christ and, supposedly, his church.
I’ve had to confront church folk at times. This isn’t because I enjoy such confrontations—I don’t…at all. But for one, I am ordained to the ministry of Word, Sacrament, Service, and Order. That Order part means that it is my job to humbly order the life of Christ’s church, which includes confronting and correcting such power grabs and factions. And two, these people have no idea what they’re dealing with. It’s for their own good that they must be kept from their attempts to control and/or divide the church. This is Christ’s church—the Body of which the Son of God is the Head (Col. 1:18). We’re talking, to borrow from Ghostbusters, “real wrath of God type stuff.” And so, to borrow from Anchorman, it’s kind of a big deal.
So it was in the midst of such grabbing and dividing and general harrumphing that I fled to the Lord in prayer. I hung my head and said aloud, maybe as much to myself as to Jesus, “Don’t they realize you’re the Head?!”
Almost immediately and very unexpectedly, I felt Jesus reply, “Yes, I am the Head. And they are the Body. My Body has many scars.”
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