Giving God His Due
Again, as promised, here's a story I wrote for my writing group.
GIVING GOD HIS DUE
Shabby, shabby people, the pastor thought. Forty-year-old suits and stringy white hair next to clothes bought only to be seen in at church. He took a deep breath and sat down in the chair behind the pulpit. Adjusting his raiment in his lap, he waited for the final notes of Bach’s “Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr” to finish vibrating in the old brass pipes. He slowly rose and stepped to the podium. Clasping both sides of the pulpit, he rested his weight on his hands and looked out over the congregation. Then he lifted his palms skyward and spoke.
“Rejoice and give thanks for you are in the House of the Lord. This is a day He has made and it is right to honor Him.”
He let his hands drop back to the pulpit. He looked down at the hand-scribbled notes and began to read out loud. “Welcome everyone. I’m glad to see you all here. We have a few news items first this morning. This week, the Ladies Bible Study group will meet at the home of Gladie Schwartz. That’ll be on Wednesday at three o’clock. Will you be serving tea, Gladie? Yes, of course. Parents, don’t forget that summer Bible School starts for the kids next month. I understand there are still plenty of openings. Now, we have several people we need to keep in our prayers. Tom Schilling is at Memorial Hospital in Springfield. He’s supposed to undergo surgery this week and we pray for his quick recovery. I understand Mary Perrings is finally at home recovering from her hip replacement. Let’s pray that her convalescence is comfortable. Finally, Julie Fishburn and her twins go home today, and Jack and Sarah asked me to tell you all that Julie will be back in school in a couple weeks. We should pray for the new family and hope that Julie returns to academic excellence. Now, does anyone have someone special to be remembered or news to share?”
Oh please, no one have anything. I don’t think I could . . . Here we go. Every week, we pray for Edith’s sister. Will she ever just . . . May’s daughter has been in hospital for months now. Yeah, we’re going to pray once again for the republican president. I wonder if that means the democrats are godless. Maybe, since we have to pray for him, maybe the republicans are godless. Bill wouldn’t hear of it being the republicans. Don’t these people know what they’re asking for? “Please bow your heads and remember them in a moment of silent meditation.”
Dear God, are you really listening? Is this really what You want to hear? People begging for themselves? Don’t You get tired of it? Don’t You just want to say, ‘Help yourself’?
“Now let us call to worship. O the depths of your riches and wisdom and knowledge, Oh God.”
They read their lines without knowing what they’re saying. They may as well be reading the text in Hebrew.
“For who has known Your mind or who has been Your counselor? Or who has given a gift to You that they might be repaid?”
Blah, blah, blah. Look at them. Mumbling through, trying to say the words with just the right rhythm so they all sound in unison. It’s not what they say that’s important to them, it’s how they say it.
“Let us worship God!”
In the same way we have for years and years. We say the same prayers as though saying them more than once makes them special. As though something about the words, the particular words, has a more significant meaning. We sing the same songs over and over as though we’re certain that You love the sound of music. And we believe, especially this crowd, especially Margaret Thomas, that the more boisterous we sing, the more pleased You must be. You must not be Mozart or Bach. Maybe Beethoven. Deaf. Do You really like music? Does it please You? What displeases You? Do You feel anything or are feelings a weakness?
“Praise the Lord. I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord, they are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever. And now join me in the Affirmation of Faith.”
Why do we make people stand for this? Is an affirmation made while seated somehow not as affirming?
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead . . .”
Who writes this stuff?
“ . . . I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church; the communion of Saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.”
I wonder if I inserted something like ‘the preeminence of predetermination’ in this last line how many people would notice.
♫ Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, Amen. ♫
Thank God for Warren Williams and his Sanctity of Life part. Now I can sit down. I wonder if I asked Warren what the Holy Ghost is if he’d know. Probably not. Yet, he and everyone else here just said they believed in it. Sang a song giving it glory. He wears the same black shirt and white tie every Sunday. Someone with that little imagination . . . of course he doesn’t know. Now, if he came to church in his work clothes, with his sleeves rolled up and a brace of keys clipped to his belt loop, I might not be so quick to judge. I might think he’s not worried about the impression he’ll make. Perhaps he’d be here because he feels it’s where he should be. Perhaps he’d know what the Holy Ghost is. Perhaps it’s the shell of a man wallowing in the shallow water of life while wearing a black shirt and white tie.
“Let us recite the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, forever. Amen.”
He slowly stepped away from the pulpit and towards the center of the stage. When he’d positioned himself directly behind and above the table with the four wooden platters he stopped and watched the four old men walk down the center aisle, two-by-two. When they’d arranged themselves in a line at the front of the table, the minister bowed his head and raised his right hand.
“Help us who have received so freely from you to give as freely in our turn, and so have the pleasure of giving as well as the happiness of receiving. Amen.”
When he’d spoken the last word he lowered his hand and the four men each took a platter. The minister turned to go to his chair which was the cue for the four men to begin collecting the offering.
I wonder how we’ll do today. Will it be another meager Sunday? Perhaps it’s a referendum on my ability as a minister. A sort of tip . . . for services rendered. What will I earn? Ten percent? We’ve managed to try and deflect people from thinking like that. It’s a tithe to God. Give a portion of your income to God. It’s really kind of an obvious bait and switch. It can’t be that anyone here believes the money goes anywhere but to my salary and the national headquarters. Well, June Sommers might not know it. She believes she’s visited by angels. She would probably think that angels come down and gather all the offerings and haul them up to heaven storing them in God’s vault. He must have quite a stash. June . . . June. If you only knew your few dollars bought me my egg salad sandwich I’m having for lunch today. I eat your tithe to God. Everyday.
Oh no . . . Jim Shearer’s making change in the offering plate again. Fred caught him once putting in a dollar and taking out four ones, like he’d made change for a five. He told me that Jim was stealing money from God. Fred thinks I should confront him. What Fred really wanted to say was the Jim was stealing his money. I told Fred I’d talk to Jim. I still haven’t. What am I going to say? ‘That’s my egg salad sandwich you’re taking out of the offering plate?’ Besides, Jim probably needs it more than I do.
I wonder if it’s time to readdress letting younger people collect the offering. It’s getting harder and harder for Tom to get up and down the aisle. He leans on the pew for support while waiting for the plate to come to him. Before you know it, he’ll have a walker rigged with a tray for the offering plate. And Joe seems to be in such pain. I’m sure if I take it to the Elders, though, I’ll get shot down again. There’s no rule for it. It’s tradition. It what their father and their father’s father did. If it was good enough for them, it ought to be good enough for us.
What is it about tradition that’s sacred? It certainly is. This crowd may not admit it, but it certainly is. Maybe what’s sacred is the comfort that routine allows. Yeah, that’s probably it. If they say things the same way, use the same arcane language, sing the same songs everything will be the same. There’s comfort for them in the fact that nothing changes. It’s got nothing to do with praising a deity or living a good life. Routine is holy, change is evil for no other reason than change is uncomfortable. I wonder if they think comfort is in God’s favor while discomfort or change is in His disfavor.
Time to get up.
♫ Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise Him, all creatures here below; praise Him above, ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. ♫
“The Old Testament reading is from Proverbs, Chapter 3, Verses 13-18. “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.” These are the words of our God. Amen.”
“Now join me in singing Breathe On Me, Breath of God.”
God, I hate singing. I can’t carry a tune, the music is always in the wrong key for my voice, and I hate standing in front of everyone as though proud of my inability. And I know they can tell how bad I am. It was Marilynn that said, “Reverend, it’s so heartening to see you standing up there trying so hard to sing.” All I could think to say was, “Thanks.” What I felt like saying, though, was “Marilynn, it’s so heartening to know that the stained glass windows were made so carefully and well that they could withstand all the years that you’ve been shrieking.”
Careful, I don’t want others to see that I’ve got something else on my mind than the hymn.
“Today’s New Testament reading is from the Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 7, Verses 24-29. ‘Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.
“ ‘And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
“ ‘And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.
“ ‘And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
“ ‘And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine,
“ ‘For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.’
“A reading from the holy scriptures.”
Now for the hard part.
“I was going to . . . The Gospel according to . . . No. I can’t.
“Do you see this?” he waves a handful of papers in the air. “Do you know what this is? It’s the sermon. It’s not mine. It’s not yours. I printed it out off the Web yesterday. I made a few changes, added some contractions here and there, found an appropriate joke and added it to the beginning. But it’s not mine. It belongs to someone whose job it is to write these things. They probably stuck him in a small room with a computer, said ‘Write a sermon on . . . uh . . . the sanctity of marriage,’ then closed the door. The person who wrote this probably composed it, biblical references and all, in less time than it would take me to deliver it. Impressive, no?
“No. It isn’t. There’s no heart in it. It’s a mathematical equation. Take some of this, some of that, add a bible verse and a parable or two and, voila, a sermon on the sanctity of marriage. Next!
“Let’s try something new, and I need your help. We’re all going to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I’m serious. Okay, ready? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
“See? Could you hear it? You were beautifully in unison. Have you been practicing? Of course you have. All your lives. You can say it without thinking. But do you really know what you’re saying? You might answer, ‘I’m giving my allegiance to my country’ to which I’d say of course you are. Are you? I’ve got you thinking about it, don’t I? You’re probably going back to your high school civics class memories to dredge up what a republic is. Some of you may start wondering about what indivisible means. Others may be thinking ‘What’s Reverend up to? What does it matter if I don’t think about what I’m saying?’
“Oh, but it does.
“When do you think you learned the pledge? When you were young probably. Grade school or kindergarten. Maybe even younger. You probably remember memorizing it and learning to say it in such a way that it sounded good in unison. Every morning you’d stand behind your desk, put your hand over your heart, face the flag and say the pledge like a song—occasionally confusing indivisible with invisible. We all did. You were too young to know what a republic was, what it meant for a nation to be indivisible. You just said it and said it until it became a matter of fact. So matter of fact that when you became old enough to know what you were saying, it never crossed your minds to stop and think about it.
“Let’s try something else. Let’s all say the Lord’s Prayer again, only this time you can stay seated. I know, that’s a bit out of the ordinary and it may throw you off, but that’s okay. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from sin, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
“Very good. You started off a little rough, but then you must have heard those around you and you all found the common rhythm you always have.
“Now, what did you say? You have to think about it don’t you? Have you ever stopped to think if it’s really what you believe? Or is it something you learned in Sunday School a long time ago and you’ve been saying it ever since? Like the Pledge of Allegiance.
“First, let me point out that Matthew says this is what a prayer to God should sound like. It has the correct form for prayers. Luke, on the other hand, leads us to believe that this is the prayer that God expects. I won’t go into the whole history of how the prayer has changed in its translation from Greek into Latin into all the other languages. There have even been changes in the English version. You all know the Methodist adopted a slightly different Lord’s Prayer than the Presbyterians adopted.
”Let’s get beyond that though and stop for a moment and consider what’s in the Lord’s Prayer. Take, for instance, ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ Here we are praying for God’s will, what He wants, to be done right here. It’s as though we’re saying that even though we want His will to be done, it’s not here now or it may leave at any moment. If God was to have His way on earth, could you imagine praying for it to happen? Kind of sounds like God is sitting in heaven watching things transpire down here on earth with the curiosity if we’ll get it right or get it wrong while we’re down here praying that we’ll get it right. Is that what you believe?
“Then we go and ask that he forgive our debts. What debts are we praying for relief from? That’s pretty selfish of us, isn’t it? What if God’s intent is to teach us humility through debt? But, there’s a qualifier at the end—as we forgive our debtors. Maybe that’s why God hasn’t done anything about the current level of credit card debt in this country. Let’s think about this. If we truly believe that God will forgive our debts if we pray for it, what’s the point of being a debtor?
“One last thing, and then I’ll get to the point of all this. In the Gloria Patri we sing our praise to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Ah, the Trinity. God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Are they three things or one? I think most would believe that they’re three distinct things. You know, there’s God, then God’s offspring, then there’s this mysterious other thing, the Holy Ghost or Spirit. There are some who say they’re separate and distinct, yet inclusive of each other. Confusing? It gets worse. There are some tenets of Christianity that say that the Trinity is simply different manifestations of the same thing. So when you sing the Gloria Patri are you praising three things or one? You’re praising it. Shouldn’t you know?
“If you say you love John LeClaire’s latest novel, aren’t we to assume that you’ve read it? If you say you don’t believe in the feature of the string theory of matter that results in multiple universes can’t we assume that you’ve at least heard of the theory and what it’s about? Don’t we need to be able to explain what it is we believe? If we praise something, don’t we need to know what it is we’re praising?
“I know I’ve asked a lot of questions this morning and given few answers, but that’s the bottom-line of this impromptu sermon. We all come to church each Sunday and do the same thing over and over without a thought for what we’re doing. Many of you were part of this church from the day you were baptized. You came to Sunday School because it’s where your parents brought you. You learned the Lord’s Prayer, the same one, word-for-word, that we said today. And you never thought to ask why you say it, because it was expected. You learned the Ten Commandments, the twelve disciples, the Gloria Patri, the Trinity. You learned it all, and nothing at all.
“Did you ever wonder why we sing? Yet we sing every Sunday convinced that what we’re doing is praising God. We sing the same songs over and over. God must love Rock of Ages because we sing it about once a month. When I pick out the hymns we’ll sing what do you think I’m thinking? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I choose hymns based on the topic of the sermon someone else wrote. I have a book that says if I want a hymn that fits well with, say, marital fidelity choose one of these hymns. Or I look for one that’s a perennial favorite, like Rock of Ages. It’s got nothing to do with what God wants to hear. How could I know that?
“Don’t be satisfied with religion as a habit. For most of you, going to church is just that—a habit. It’s like your morning routine. You get up and do it without thinking. You dress in the same Sunday clothes, you know when you’re supposed to stand, you say the Affirmation of Faith and Lord’s Prayer without knowing what you’re saying, you sing the hymns by memory like you were reciting the alphabet.
“Religion isn’t something that allows us once a week to hang up logic on a peg, put reason on a shelf, hide introspection in the back of the cupboard. Religion should engage our intellect. Make us think. Belief in God shouldn’t be the final word. It should be the first word in a lifelong intellectual endeavor. Faith shouldn’t be the end of questions. It should help us ask the next question.
“So when you leave here this morning, don’t go home and sit down to your pot roast and potatoes and green beans and say the same prayer you’ve said since you can remember . . . the same prayer your father and his father said. Think of something new to say. Talk about what I’ve had to say. Talk about what the Trinity is. Talk about whether God is active or passive in the world. Discuss what faith and belief are. Bring intelligence back to religion.
“Let us bow our heads in silent prayer.”
Oh boy, you’ve done it now. No tips for you. I’ve probably offended every one of them. All except those that were asleep. They’ll be offended when they hear about what I said, though.
“Please rise for hymn number 702.”
But why should they? I was encouraging them to use their minds. I might have sounded like I was saying they’re lazy with their religion. Maybe I did infer that they use Sunday to be stupid. But I did it with the intent of rattling their cages a bit. Putting them outside their comfort zone. I guess we’ll see.
The minister made his way down the right aisle, past the ten-foot stain-glass windows dedicated to the founding church members.
Their singing sounds different. I don’t hear Marilynn. Not a good sign.
He arrived at the back of the sanctuary, turned and faced the congregation. Their backs were to him.
This is kind of appropriate. After a sermon like that, positioning myself so their backs are to me.
“May we each understand and contemplate the nature of our beliefs and of God; may He bless you and keep you, may He shine his countenance on you and give you peace. Amen.”
With the first note of the Prelude and Fugue in G Major, he turned and opened the double entrance doors. He then took his station to one side to shake the hands of the congregation as they filed out.
As is always the case, the first to pass him were children, dashing to their freedom, he thought. The first adult to get to the entrance was Fred and his wife, May. Fred stopped short of the minister. The minister smiled at Fred and put out his hand. Fred stared at the minister for a moment without returning the smile, then he turned to his wife and hustled her past the minister keeping himself between the minister and his wife. He didn’t accept the minister’s hand.
“Have a good day, Fred, May,” the minister said to their backs.
As he said that, Bob and Jackie slipped by without a word. The minister turned to face Mike and Peg.
“I’m glad you came today.” They avoided looking at the minister and left.
Frank shook the minister’s hand and said, “Fine sermon today,” but the minister knew that Frank had slept through the entire delivery.
When half the congregation had left and he’d only shaken the hands of three people, the minister left his station at the entrance and returned to the front of the sanctuary. As the remaining people departed, he sat down in his chair behind the pulpit.
Ahab, behold my white whale. How would you have handled this? Should I nail a silver dollar on the cross?
