Thursday, March 19, 2015

Those noble men and women of God

The other day I was at a conference for all the appointed United Methodist pastors in the state. I was talking with a dear friend whom I served with back at the beginning of my ministry some 17 years ago. We began talking about a friend who had replaced me in the churches that were my first appointment, Lutcher and Donaldsonville, who is retiring this June. The conversation drifted to who all was still living in those churches, as both churches were (at the time I was there) filled with very old persons.

I was quite saddened to hear that one lady had passed, Lil. Lil was hard of hearing when I arrived, so much so that in the first meeting I had with the governing body of the church, the SPRC committee I had everyone laughing in the first 30 minutes of our meeting. Everyone except Lil. I was assuming she didn't like me at all, when out of the blue I heard a squeal. She reached for the right ear, dug into it, pulled out a little something or other and said frantically, "These darn hearing aids. I can't hear a thing." 

Her husband would keep me informed about sermon time and the end of the service by making a slashing sign with his thumb across his throat as I approached the top of the hour to make sure I would finish and head off to my second church some 25 miles away on time. 

Lil made a scrapbook of photos to give Mary and I as we left the church after two wonderful years.

Now, both are gone.

The hardest thing about being a pastor is, well, being a pastor. Being a preacher is the most enriching, most rewarding 20 minutes I've ever experienced and I wouldn't trade it for anything, if I had the choice.

But pastoring is a completely different animal because it is an emotional choice. To pastor well, if I have ever done so, is to be open to pain -- the person you're pastoring's pain and your own. For to pastor well, one must give of one self. One must love as he or she is being loved.

And as with any loving, there is the chance one can be hurt, hurt by someone turning away your love and perhaps the more powerful of the hurts, hurt by someone accepting your love.

In other words, loving someone means there is a possibility one would have to say goodbye to the other person and when one does that it is like salt on an open wound.

As I continued our trip through the Psalms this morning (two per morning, and this morning it is 15-15), I read this: 

"I say to the Lord, 'you are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.' I say of the holy people who are in the land, 'they are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.' ... Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;  you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me."

What wisdom is found here. It brought me to my figurative knees in quiet prayer this morning as I pondered it.

I remembered many people I have loved over time, for one, two, four or even six years and the fact that when that season is over, when you've loved them as much as you could for as long as they (the Annual Conference) allow, you say goodbye and move on.

Only, it seems to me, if you are worth your salt as a pastor, you never really say goodbye and you certainly never move on.

I can see the faces of those noble ones who delighted God at every stop along the way. And I feel the boundary lines that fell into place that kept me in full knowledge of who I was with those noble ones. I never, for the most part, overstepped my boundary lines, never stepped on the toes of the pastors who replace me, never went out of my way to keep those friends around.

But it gets no easier every single time one must say goodbye. If one had to say goodbye, I mean. 

2 comments:

kevin h said...

One might offer a golf analogy - "Preach for show, pastor for dough," where "show" is more like "reveal" and "dough" has nothing to do with money. Which obviously is not to say I'm qualified to talk about preaching or pastoring or even golf.

Unknown said...

I like it, Kevin. Saying goodbye to all the fine folks at Gretna still is among the hardest things I've ever had to do. I didn't want to leave there, and still miss it most days.