Following is what I presented to the Session at my church in order to be recommended to serve as elder.
I have a problem with Jesus’ parables. I don’t understand them, and He’s always saying, ‘He who has ears let him hear.” I do have ears. I am listening. Jesus, I’m trying. But I don’t get the story.
It reminds me of my high school French class. My teacher was in some kind of war – World War II, maybe – I can’t remember but he rode his bike to school every day which doesn’t seem like a big deal except he rode something like 250 miles and not on one of those motorized bikes, either. We would ask him how he biked in a suit and tie, and he told us he didn’t; that he folded his teaching clothes in such a way that when he pulled them out of the little knapsack he clipped to the back of his bike, they were crease-free. He learned how to do this because he was in a war.
“That is crazy,” we would say.
“It’s time to conjugate verbs,” he would respond.
He had a poster on the wall of his classroom that read, “I know I’m somebody ‘cuz God don’t make no junk.” I always chuckled at it. I liked the message, sure, but I liked it more for the grammatical irony: Here we were naming the 3,562 forms of a verb and “don’t make no” is waving at us like a kid in the hallway trying to make us laugh.
One day, he called on me to conjugate a verb. I want to say it was, “essayer,” my favorite verb because it means, “to try,” but more likely it was something like “run,” or “think.” Anyway, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t understand how to change the verb, and I started to cry. My teacher moved so that he was just to the right of the poster and he said nothing but he didn’t let me off the hook, either. I looked at the poster, and then at him.
“I can’t do it!” I yelled. “I don’t get it!”
Nobody laughed. My teacher didn’t yell back. All was silent.
I wiped my eyes and nose and picked up my pencil and pointed it at the paper while “God don’t make no junk” pulsed between my ears.
It’s just that verbs drive me crazy. I need nouns. Give me something to hold. To feel. To eat. Of all the verbs the Brief Statement of Faith used to tell what Jesus did, “eating,” is the one I can get behind. I wonder if the eating leads to the preaching and the teaching and the healing and the forgiving and the calling.
A friend of mine has a daughter who, on a walk home from school recently, got into a heated argument with a kid who was using derogatory language. My friend’s daughter told the kid to cut it out, but she wouldn’t and so my friend’s daughter – I’ll just call her Esther – used the mother of all swears to tell the other girl to buzz off.
A third girl was there. I’ll call her Martha. Martha is not precious, but she’s thoughtful and kind. She’s the quiet one who makes sure everyone has sharpened #2 pencils, and who willingly and cheerfully packs extra Goldfish Crackers to hand out to her friends. Using the mother of all swears in front of Martha is the equivalent to kicking a puppy.
Esther told her mom she knew Martha was upset, and she wanted to apologize but Esther was, after all, standing up for another human being. She was working for justice! Esther was upset that Martha didn’t understand this, and so what do you do when you’re changing from something elementary into something more nuanced? Can the friendship grow and stretch and become something new, too? Must we understand all of the story, or is it the promise that we keep listening?
Esther’s mom suggested the two walk to a neighborhood coffee shop for hot chocolate because Esther’s mom knows the settling power cupping a warm mug of something frothy and bitter, sweet and soothing, has on two people grappling with growing up, friendship, and the usage of verbs.
I believe I was created and I continue to be created wonderfully and fearfully by a God who’s filled me with the stuff of stories, and who calls me to figure out and tell them. I believe confessing my doubt is vital in carrying out my faith. I believe God uses all that I am, all that I’ve done, all that I will become and all I will do to point to His love for all of creation. I believe the Holy Spirit is a wild essence that dares us to use our imagination – to cling to it – especially in the dark, when murky monsters make their way to face us, hoping we have the courage to see a new form and to bring it forth, walking and leaping, and praising God.
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