Tom Loves the Little Children

No, you freaking pervert. I do not like little children in the Catholic Priest sense. 

I mean instead that this past Sunday I was bestowed with the  job of giving the children's sermon. After having heard horror story after horror story of the misdeeds of the youngsters as they gather around (read: gang up on) their beloved pastor (read: cursed play toy) during this special time (read: absence of God's love) I have actively avoided doing being saddled with the responsibility by demonstrating great eagerness in doing everything else BUT it. 

I am sad to report, however, that the head pastor's father passed away unexpectedly last week and he consequently had to be out of town and would be unable to give his sermon. SOOOO... the assistant pastor had one day to come up with a sermon on a theologically weighty passage and in order to ease her burden I took on the children's sermon.

The experience went smashingly well, mainly because we did not allow the children to come to the front to abuse me in ways that only small children can. Rather I walked down the center aisle and addressed with the safety of a few feet of wooden pews between us. 

The sermon itself made use of what I call "pastoral fiction." Basically, I made up a story to make a point. Here is text:

This morning I want to tell you about my Aunt Gladys. My Aunt Gladys was a tiny woman, about this big, had big round glasses like this and she always had a big frown on her face. Have you ever seen an iguana? Yeah, she kinda looked like that. Aunt Gladys lived out of state so I didn’t see her much. But EVERY Thanksgiving she came to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. And on the night before EVERY Thanksgiving I used to get down on my knees next to my bed and I would pray. I would say, “God I thank you for my family. I thank you for giving me Thursday and Friday OFF from school. I thank you for all the yummy food I’m going to get to eat tomorrow. Oh, and God, I have a request. Please, please, please don’t let Aunt Gladys sit next to me tomorrow.”

You see Aunt Gladys was like the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving. "Tommy sit up straight. Tommy, straighten your tie. Tommy, don’t eat so fast. Tommy, don’t talk with your mouthful. Tommy, eat your vegetables."

I was thankful for many things, but not for Aunt Gladys. What I didn’t understand was that Aunt Gladys loved me. She loved me soooooo soooooo much that she wanted me to grow up to be polit and have good manners. I'm not sure if she was too successful, though.

Maybe some of you have relatives like my Aunt Gladys and I know it may be very, very, very hard, but lets try to thankful for them this year. This Thanksgiving when we say our prayers, let’s thank God for loving relatives like Aunt Gladys. Wanna practice? Let’s try:

“Dear God. Thanks you so much for our families. Thanks you so much for all the yummy food we are going to get to eat on Thanksgiving. Thank you for giving us Thursday and Friday off from school. That's pretty cool god. And God, thank you also for relatives like Aunt Gladys who love us even though its sometimes hard to see. AMEN.” 

I thought the name Gladys would signal to the non-adolescent members of my church that the story was made up, but the comments I received afterward would indicate otherwise and make me feel like a liar.

I was also informed during the passing of the peace directly after that in this neck of the woods they pronounce it "ont" and not "ant."

I dun reckon these is mighty fancy folk.

Sermon

After many hours of writing, practice, and prayer, I at last had the opportunity to preach my first sermon to the congregation at the church where I'm interning - just a few hours ago in fact. The sermon was a beefed up and sexyified remake of the social gospel sermon I posted about a month ago. What I intended for it to be was an affirmation of the church's social outreach and a call to further action. I am left now only to hope that that's how it went over. All in all I suppose the the delivery and response wasn't too bad – we laughed, we cried, and only one person fell asleep. 

But now thinking it over, how absurd is it that a young preacher (50 years younger than the average parishioner) would pick a verse from one of the most provocative books in the Bible (Isaiah) and more or less tell people they need to get off their arses and do something for other people? Though of course it was not couched in those terms exactly, it is still a fairly audacious thing to do. And I did it and am now have mixed feelings over it. No one seemed outrightly offended. There remains, I guess, the distinct possibility that they weren't listening. 

Time will make their opinion known, I can be sure at very least of that. It usually takes about a week of ringing phones and commentary (a.k.a. gossip)  for a general consensus to be made in any congregation. Come next Sunday, if I am still allowed back, I will know I have a favorable verdict. 

Here's hoping.

Preach it!

My God, my God, my God is good.

This week brought with it the first day in a long long series of days (2,847) where I can truly say I am proud to be an American.

Regardless of your party affiliation, President Obama knows how to give a nice little speech.

Let us observe greatness:



AMEN.

UCC Conference

This past weekend I attended a statewide conference of the UCC in Worcester (pronounced: WUSS • tah), MA. It was indeed an excellent opportunity to see the inner workings of my denomination and get a grasp of the denominational move toward a process of "congregational discernment" for decision making (as opposed to using the Robert's Rules of Order), but it also left me a little bit anxious about the future of the church. 

You see, of the 600 some people gathered in that sacred space, I was the youngest by about 40 years. In fact, in the keynote address on the first evening, the speaker posed the following question to the crowd: 

"Did your children ever watch that television show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?"

!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

No!!!! I MYSELF watched the show and owned and played with a great many of their action figures, thank you very much.

If the crowd had been more honest, however, I would not have been alone in my negative response. Given the demographics of the audience I would suspect that most of their children grew up watching Andy Griffith in black and white and that their GRANDCHILDREN were the ones who watched TMNT. 

That just goes to show that you can't trust church folk.

All joking aside, the question of where all the young folk have gone is a big concern for the church. I part from Palin and McCain considerably and maintain that this conspicuous absence has naught to do with homosexuality or a timetable for leaving Iraq. I think I would actually argue the opposite: that the religious right's conflation of politics and nationalism with Christian values and identity has created for most people my age a perception of Christianity as an out-of-touch ideology for fanatics. I see where they are coming from and must admit that it is an accurate depiction in many cases. 

I am also led to wonder, alternatively, whether Jesus pop/rock/heavy metal and other attempts of American Christianity to appropriate secular culture hasn't led to a cheapening and misdirection of faith. Whereas Christian faith of old seemed to be oriented away from the secular and materialistic by providing an orientation toward deep, enduring principles, it would seem that Christianity today wants to be part and parcel of the capitalist enterprise.  

Or, maybe it's just that I can't stand Jesus pop. 

Either way, I just don't know. Tell me, where are all the whippersnappers?