“No [insert name of Christian Radio Station here]! Don’t steal “You Will Be Found” from  Dear Evan Hanson and say that it’s about Jesus. It’s not. Let musical be, church. You don’t need to claim Broadway for Jesus!’

    This is a text that I sent to a fellow clergy person. Or at least close to the text I sent him - with retractions and more grammatically correct for the sake of writing. 

    I was driving and had the radio on instead of a podcast or music. Mistake. All of the sudden in the midst of praise songs I didn’t know the words to, I recognized the lyrics to a song I recognized. Only it didn’t sound like anything I would listen to. Then I had an “ah-ha” moment - this was a broadway song. Or a rendition of a popular Broadway song - not sung by anyone from the cast. 

    At the end of the song, the DJ came on to explain that this song was called “You Will Be Found” and was talking about how Jesus will find us no matter where we are. 

    No!

    No, church. 

    That is not what this song was about. That is not what Dear Evan Hanson is about at all. 

    And in that one comment from one DJ, a decade of spiritual wrestling came back to me. 

    As the church, we can have get into the sticky place of putting a religious spin on the secular for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we say it is to reclaim something for God. Or we say that something was created with a deeper and truer intent that only we can see - when that is not at all what the song, poem, or story is about. 

    Now do I believe that Christ can be see even in things that are not explicitly Christian? Absolutely. There have been moments reading a fiction book or watching a secular movie where Christ shines through to me. But that doesn’t give me the right to dismiss the original intent of the creator.

    And it certainly doesn’t give me the right to re-brand their creative property for Jesus.

    Sometimes in our haste to witness to the glimpses of Jesus that we see through the grace of the Spirit, we actually do harm. We don’t represent the best of Christ to the world. 

    Not everything needs to be labeled Christian in order to bear witness to Christ, church. 

    Let that sink in. 
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    And let us appreciate beauty for what it is instead of trying to claim it as ground for the Gospel. 

I recently was accompanying a rather large family in preparing a service to honor their patriarch. I was blessed to be able to get to know him through invitation of his spouse, as he ended up bouncing back and forth between the hospital and rehab facility for several months. While not an avid church attender, he was always open to my pastoral presence. 

    I grew rather fond of him and his dry-wit and quiet faith, as we would see each other at least weekly if not several times during the week as his illness progressed. At the funeral, one of his daughters was sharing that for one of his hospitalizations he asked that I be called before his wife, because he was so worried that I would drive the forty minutes to the nursing home to see him that day just to find out that I wasn’t there. 

     In preparing for his service, one of his grandsons, a ministry student, asked if he could do the eulogy. I sensed that this was a final tribute for his grandpa and readily agreed. Only what came out in the next hour was that he didn’t actually know him very well, due to the private nature of his grandfather that he wasn’t used to as someone of a different generation.

    If I’m completely honest, I was becoming nervous - not just because of the wording choices being made or that this wasn’t how I would speak at a funeral service, but also because he is a ministry student at a school that has not always had the best track-record of lifting up women in ministry. 

    What I wanted to say to the grandson as he talked about his grandpa was “surprising wise” and “surprisingly a family man” before demanding that I tell him everything that his grandpa and I had talked about over my numerous visits (subtexts - to make sure he was saved) was that there is a difference between being a preacher and a pastor. 

    Preachers show up at funerals with their own theological agendas, having alter calls and lifting up scriptures that were important to them and not the deceased or their family. Preachers  can push for the dramatic conversion moment that appears to be more of a notch on their own belt instead of attending to the grief of the people in front of them. Preachers have no concern for the constraints and contexts of the service itself - placing themselves at the center of the day. 

    Pastors on the other hand know that their words matter, but so do their actions. Their showing up and trying to honor the family and their loved one. Pastors are going to continue to walk with the grieving family, week after week, well after the flowers have lost their bloom and the casseroles stop coming. Pastors care for the entire person, including their souls, but also their hearts that don’t know they are going to keep beating in the face of loss. 
 
     As such, pastors need to think about how their words will be heard and received, instead of simply saying whatever they wish. 

     I am a pastor who preaches. I am called to be a pastor who loves and cares and holds space for the grieving. And I will show up fully from that place, without alter calls, unless the family desires it, and holding fast to the Good News that we do not grieve in solitude, but as a community that hopes. 

    And as a pastor, I am often part of the grieving, not at the center, but holding the hands of everyone else who is right there with me. 

​     How do we teach young students how to be not just talented preachers, but wise pastors, with hearts big enough to hold both preacher and care-giver in the role that we have been called to step into?

    “Can grape juice sit out when opened?” - a phrase that I never thought I would be typing into a search engine on a Saturday evening. A new group of communion stewards had been working hard in the kitchen, getting elements prepared for to be served the next day. I had even went down to the kitchen to help find lost linens and to check that everything was going smoothly.

    But when I entered the sanctuary a few hours later for final preparations for the day ahead, there sat the elements - including all of the individual cups of grape juice that had just been filled. Enter my google search. 

    The answer was resoundingly - no, that could be really bad - to my grape juice question. So I scooped up the trays filled with juice cups and headed downstairs to the refrigerators. Only I had just been told that one of the refrigerators was broken and had failed to ask which one. So I took a guess and stuck the juice trays in the farthest refrigerator to the right. 
    You know where this is going, right?

    That “refrigerator” actually ended up being the standing freezer and when I pulled the trays out the next day, they had a nice white frost on the top of them. I still didn’t think about it, until uncovering that lid post-consecration to find that each little cup was frozen. Solid. 

    The woman who was helping to serve and I exchanged a smile as I explained that it didn’t matter how much bread we ate or juice we drank, that this was still the meal that helped us to remember the love of Jesus. I then held up the frozen cup and said that Jesus understands when we make mistakes. 

    What I couldn’t have anticipated was the wide variety of reactions. I was used to not even being able to serve the cup in one of the nursing homes where I led worship post-COVID. I’ve also had juice spill all over folks from time to time. I really meant what I had said about the fact that it didn’t matter how much or how little juice you had - the amount wasn’t the point. 

    Yet, it only took until the next service for rumors to start to work their way back to me about “people” (unnamed of course) being upset about such a colossal mistake. But it also only took that long for people to tell me that we should make mistakes like that all the time, because they appreciated the “Jesus-slushie”, with a wink and a nod.

    The woman who coined the phrase, however, had a much deeper theological reflection that followed. She said that she had to actually hold the cup in her hand, not politely setting it aside and ignoring it until it was time to partake. And in holding it in her hand, she was reminded of the depth of Christ’s love for her and for us all. 

    One little cup. One little mistake. One big reminder. 
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    I cannot in good conscious promise the people of my congregation that I won’t make a mistake at communion again. But I do know this, Jesus’s love is bigger than any mistake I may make. This isn’t a table for the perfect, but for those, like me, who screw up all the time. Christ’s table, just like his love, is big enough to hold all of that too. And even redeem the “Jesus-slushie”
to break into hearts who are waiting to receive.