You Ain't Jesus, Preacher

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You Ain't Jesus, Preacher

This story originally appeared in two parts.

Part One: The Tower of Babel

Everyone has identity issues now and again. Maybe you don’t know who you are or don’t like who you think you might be. Maybe you’re a little too close to your mother, or maybe you live vicariously through your children. Maybe you think you’re Clint Eastwood or wish you were Jennifer Lopez.

The point is we all have times when we’re not sure who we are. It’s a human thing.

I HAVE noticed that most people do not think they are Jesus. There’s Jesus Christ, who lived two thousand years ago, and there’s you. My guess is you’re having no trouble keeping this straight in your mind. Am I right?

So why is it ministers have trouble with this? Have you noticed how many ministers think they’re Jesus? How grandiose is that? The minister can’t have normal issues like everyone else, oh no. If the preacher is going to get enmeshed with someone, it's going to be with the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

I’m serious now. We need 12-step program.

“Hi. My name is pastor Pete, and I think I’m Jesus.”

(All together now) “Hi Pastor Pete!”

I know a lot about this because I’m a minister, and sometimes I think I’M Jesus. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes I do. I’ve gotten better over the years. Sometimes I think I’m over it, but then I fall off the wagon and start thinking I’m Jesus again.

I have a problem. I hear admitting your problem is the first step toward healing. I hope that’s true.

Why don’t I tell you the story of how ministers come to think they’re Jesus and what happens when they hit bottom.

It all starts so innocently.

First, you decide that you’re not going to be that cheesy minister with the expensive suits and the store-bought smile. You’re not going to work the room, tossing hugs and lovey-dovey words into the crowd like Mardi Gras beads. You want real relationships. You’re not going to call all the little boys “bearcat” and all the little girls “cutie-pie.” You will know the children as individuals. You will know all their names.

Then you decide you’re going to be “authentic.” What you mean is that you intend to tell the truth. You aren’t going to sling bullshit religious slogans around. You aren’t going to give easy answers. You aren’t going to worry about whether you sound conservative or liberal. You’ll take whatever comes your way as a result.

You also want to be just the bestest pastor ever. You want to be insightful and wise, but tastefully self-deprecating. You will work very hard to preach good sermons, but at the same time you won’t take them too seriously. You plan to challenge without judging and inspire without seeming inspirational. You will be smart, well-read, and articulate, but you’ll only let the hem of those garments show.

Finally, you decide that you want to love everyone, even the visitors. You watch the room to make sure that no one is left alone. You will drop anything to talk to anyone. All they have to do is call you, and everyone has your number. Love is the main thing, and you hope that God might seem real to people because your love WAS real to them.

You’re serious, too. Really. You’re not false about this stuff. You are a lot of things, but false and manipulative you are not. You don’t want money. You don’t want fame. You just want to make God happy and be there to help people on their journey to discovering God.

See how it happens? See? You’re going to be everyone’s servant, and your love will bring people back to God. Suddenly, you’re Jesus. You had the best of intentions, but good intentions don’t mean shit if you start thinking you’re Jesus.

The crazy thing is, it’s the good ministers who end up thinking they're Jesus. The TV preachers who are trying to get your money and the fancy ministers who are building little kingdoms for themselves - they know they aren’t Jesus. Everyone knows they aren’t Jesus. Look at their haircuts, for pity’s sake.

No, it’s the good guys who fall into this trap.

And it IS a trap, because I got news for you, preacher. You ain’t Jesus, and you better figure that out right quick.

rlp

Part Two: Losing The Language of Love

This is the story of how ministers find out they're not Jesus. This is the story of hitting bottom.

You start figuring out you’re not Jesus when you begin to unravel and lose the details. And if you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking you’re Jesus, there are a lot of details to keep straight.

One day your act starts to fray around the edges.

There's the family whose son is in jail. Did you send that letter to the chaplain? Clay seems depressed again. When was the last time you had lunch with him? Remember that little girl who told you she wished you were her daddy? Weren't you going to do some serious thinking about how to respond to her?

Did you pick up that book for Susan's husband, like you said you would? He doesn't feel at home at church. A little gesture like that could mean a lot. Hey, remember Bob and Linda? Jim's children? They haven't been to church in quite a while. They were moving to Hondo, right? Or did Jim say they weren't moving after all? Holy Shit, you forgot to call Kay. Her grandmother is sick, and her mother just died. How could you not call her?

Is that wedding THIS week? What's the groom's last name again? Did you visit Joan in the hospital? She was there for three days. Wasn't there a little girl who wanted to talk to you? Weren’t you going to have lunch with…um…that one guy?

The voices in your head come together as one pounding headache of an entity and boldly name themselves Legion. The details are knotted into a dirty crowd, like starving kids on TV. There are so many of them, each precious, and you aren’t keeping up.

You CAN'T keep up, but you MUST keep up, because how can you NOT keep up?

You swear to God that you'll try harder, but God doesn't want that oath. God wants you to find a quiet place, sit down, and remember who you are.

But you want to try harder, because down inside you think you’re supposed to be like Jesus. So God stands aside and lets you have your way. The details rush into the void like giggling demons, and everything starts to fall apart.

Calendars blur before your eyes and become your greatest enemy. You know you wrote something down in a Monday square, but later it’s in a Friday square. You would swear on a stack of bibles that there is another week this month, but there isn’t. All the weeks are gone, preacher. Time’s up, and you’re on. Weddings and speaking engagements skate furiously out of the distant future, pulling up short on the tomorrow square, spraying ice in your eyes.

Even your beloved words begin to fail you.

The blessing you have quoted every Sunday for eight years disappears from your mind without a trace, leaving you speechless before the congregation.

The people at church think your absent mindedness is kind of cute. Maybe they think that’s what comes with a creative personality. You hope they think that. You wonder if something might be wrong with your brain.

You develop a little tick. You start needing to squeeze your eyes shut tightly and jerk your head to the side. It occurs to you that it must look like you're saying, "NO!". You consider seeing a doctor, but that's another detail you leave hanging.

Then one Sunday a woman raises her hand in church to share a prayer request. You know this woman. You were there the night her baby was born dying. You held his premature body and watched his final heartbeats through the waxy skin of his tiny chest. YOU KNOW THIS WOMAN. You know her husband and their boy, but her name is gone from your mind. Her name is nowhere. The pause gets too long so you just point at her, and she knows you forgot her name. You can see it in her eyes; you can see it hurt her. She’s the saddest person in the world, and you hurt her.

Grief seizes your chest, and all your energy drains into your shoes. You want to stop in the middle of the service, take a seat in the pew and say, "Someone take over. I can't preach or pray or talk. Someone put your arms around me because I can't do anything."

But you don’t do that. You don’t want to let everyone down, so you dig deep and find energy in a secret place. The price of this energy is putting the woman out of your mind. It’s a terrible price to pay. It's a quick fix, but in the long run you lose your soul.

This is what you’ve come to. Putting people out of your mind so you can finish the sermon. Is this what you call love, preacher?

You see, when you start forgetting blessings and names, you’ve lost the language of love. You can forget a lot of things, but you cannot forget a woman’s name and claim to love her. You cannot.

You tried to build a tower to the heavens, so God took away your words. It had to be this way. This was the only way you would learn.

Now you understand. You're not Jesus after all. You're a man who is good with words and who feels things very deeply. You’re a dreamer and a silly person, like all the other silly people at church. You cannot love everyone, and you cannot be all things to all people.

Welcome to the human race, preacher. Now you're ready to begin.

You will love some people deeply. Others will receive lesser kinds of love. Some will get a handshake and a kind word. Their journeys are their own, and they may have to get what they need from someone else.

Love the ones you can. Touch the ones you can reach. Let the others go. If you run out of gas, sit down in the pew and point to God. That might be the greatest sermon you ever preach.

You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone.

You can't be a real live preacher until you understand that you're only a real live person.