Another Sunday

Sunday arrives again every seven days, but each one is unique

I’m thinking about all the Sundays of my life. As a child, from the age of five or six, I was taken to church every single Sunday, until I left home for college forty-four years ago. In early adolescence I anticipated a career in law, followed by political service in my state or country. Influenced by my maternal grandparents’ polar opposite political stances, I was determined to be a Hubert Humphrey-style Minnesota Republican Senator. (My political views have since migrated considerably, but at that time I heard my grandmother’s continuing adulation of Humphrey’s concern for the forgotten, coupled with my grandfather’s brooding insistence that the country had gone to hell. This was, after all, the 1970s). I wanted to be a change-agent and a political life called my name.

By mid-adolescence I was hearing a different call, one that I felt little compunction to follow. When I was sixteen, attending a denominational youth convention, I was captivated by the preaching of a California youth pastor who regaled his listeners with accounts of what God was doing in his part of the world. He was unconventional, preaching in overhauls (a vestige of his Alabama upbringing), sharp-tongued but exuding love and acceptance. The night before the convention was to end, he challenged convention attenders to ask intentionally what God was saying to us. He preached from Isaiah chapter 6, in which the prophet responds to the Divine: “Here am I, Lord, send me.”

So, being the dutiful sixteen-year-old I was, I returned to my hotel room, opened my big Thompson Chain Reference Bible (IYKYK) to Isaiah 6, knelt by the hotel bed and said, “Here I am, Lord, send me.” I believed my prayer to be a confirmation of my intended path into politics, but Love guided me in another direction, one that would require me to hold Sunday as the most important day of my week.

And so it has been for the past forty-five years of my life, including my ordination thirty-eight years ago in the denomination of my childhood and young adulthood, and the transfer more than thirty years ago of my credentials into the denomination where I have now served Christ with thousands of others over the decades. Those years of pastoral service amount to nearly 2,000 Sundays. While I have not preached every Sunday, I have preached most of them, sometimes two three times per Sunday, so I figure to date I have preached between 3,000 and 4,000 times.

So many Sundays, and no two have been exactly the same. Even in pastoral appointments with more than one service, each time of worship has had its own unique flavor. It’s hard to find words to describe what Sundays have meant and continue to mean to me.

Without regard to the lyrical content — only considering the “feel” of the music — most Sundays feel something like this to me.

Life-filled, bright with possibility, the great majority of my Sundays have lifted my heart and caused me to be grateful for the incredible people I have pastored.

Some Sundays have been heavier, and I have had to force myself to be responsible. This was true, especially, when our kids were teenagers. It seemed like every law enforcement knock at the door after midnight came on Saturday nights (and yes, there quite a few of those). It got to the point where Claudia became the designated law enforcement contact, because I needed to sleep in order to be prepared for Sunday morning. There were some nights when I didn’t even wake up as she crept to the door and the living room to visit with an officer about the latest miscreant deed of one of our kids. So those Sundays seemed more like this classic song (again, only considering the feel, not the story told in the lyrics):

One of the joys for me as an itinerant preacher (Methodist lingo for the clergy deployment process, in which we are sent by our Bishop, not called by a congregation, to our field of service; the average tenure of a United Methodist pastor is somewhere between five and seven years now) is the many geographical regions and interesting people I have met throughout the decades. It seems like I’ve been everywhere, including more than nine years in Virginia, where Sundays often seemed like this.

And today, with all that’s happening in my native-born state, Minnesota, it’s painful and raw, something like the U-2 song, a reminiscence of the deadly Sunday in 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civil rights protestors, fatally wounding thirteen of them.

So, it’s another Sunday. In a few minutes I will turn off the lights in my home, put on my coat (it’s wicked cold again this morning), pick up my pup (I made the mistake of not bringing him to church last week and received many disappointed looks), step into the Kona and drive off to my church, located fourteen miles from where I live. The first to arrive, I will unlock the front doors, disarm the security system, turn on the lights and walk to the pulpit, where I will make sure the Scripture readings are in order.

On my way out of the sanctuary, I will pray for Love’s infusion once again. I will walk to my office, don my alb and stole and cincture. I will deposit myself near the entry doors to greet those arriving for worship. The time will slip away quickly before worship begins, and by 9:27 I’ll be making my way to the front of the sanctuary, where I will stand following the prelude music, extend my upturned hands and greet my congregation.

“The Lord be with you,” I will intone, and I will hear, “And also with you.”

I will lead the congregation in worship through prayers and music and hearing the Word read. Then I will make my way to the pulpit, where for the 4,001st (guessing) I will proclaim God’s Word. Responding to God’s Word, we will sing the Doxology, greet one another in Christ’s name by sharing peace, share our joys and concerns, and then in a few minutes, I will again stand in front of my people, extending my arms with opened, downturned hands of blessing and declare the benediction.

Somehow, somewhere, through some of our shared efforts to worship the Holy One, my congregation and I will leave with some degree of transformation afoot in our lives because Love always never ends, it never fails, it never gives up.

It will be yet another Sunday. But not an ordinary one, because no two Sundays are exactly alike.

And that’s why I do what I do.