Lenten Question: "Why Do We Keep Doing This?"

Through the years someone comes up to me and asks this question. “Why do you keep doing this?” They really are asking about my being a Pastor and why I am still in the church. And from time to time in some dark night of the soul I have asked it too. Sometimes I say I do not rightly know. I haven’t a clue. Even after all these years I still find myself struggling with this query. Taking off my Pious-Preacher-hat I try not to suffocate my answers with slogans. Somebody said mental illness is doing the same thing over and over. But sometimes I say: I don’t do the same thing all the time. Looking back at my six churches and a multitude of interims I remember now every church I went to was different. Rural, semi-rural, tiny experimental college church with folding chairs, a large college church, as my son put it: “with nail-down seats with a balcony”. Then a large Suburban congregation and followed by an inner-city church smack dab in the middle of the city. In those green first years as Pastor I asked the question a lot. Why? Why? A city boy and wife who had never lived in the country, living on a fragile shoe string, looking out on Sundays at folk that were mostly conservative—with a big “C.” Maybe I did it because I wanted to make a difference. Maybe I wanted to challenge some axioms: “Catholics are going to hell.” “Every word in the Bible is literally true.” “DIvorced men could not hold offices in the church.” My work was cut out for me. Those hard-working farmers and their wives taught me a whole lot more than I taught them. And those loyal school teachers that made a difference. Answering the question I could pathetically respond: “God called me” which answers very little. Maybe I said I wanted to suffer—and some days I did. Maybe I just wanted the spotlight as most of us egomaniacs do. That question still is a mite unnerving. As I Iook back down that winding road of 6 churches and 8 interims and still preaching some. I could answer by saying I do believe Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But on Tuesdays, Thursday’s, Saturdays I wonder. (Like broken, wounded Ukraine.) I’m no Mother Theresa but I stayed and even after all the ups and downs—I look back and smile. Why did I do this? I do not rightly know. Maybe I am amazed that God writes straight lines with crooked sticks. Maybe the book is right: “We hold this treasure in earthen vessels knowing the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.” Maybe, maybe that word treasure really is the heart of the matter. --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com