Tired of Fighting

I was once, briefly, that neither-fish-nor-fowl creature known as an Associate Pastor. I wouldn't wish that curse upon anyone, but this week a statement from that year kept coming to mind. The church in question is one of those that has spent most of its life at war with itself. My authority is a now deceased colleague who sought to comfort me during that time with the assurance that it wasn't me, it was them. "I was their pastor during World War II," he said in the late 1980's, "and they were doing the same thing then." The reason for the conversation was that when the rabid of the congregation failed to muster the required vote to dump the Senior Pastor, they decided to punish him by getting me. That worked. And he was sad. But I was crushed.
Shortly after the committee vote, one of the very fine members of that church came by my office and apologized. "I'm sorry, but we're just tired of fighting," he told me with tears in his eyes, explaining why the good folks let the thing happen. Then, at 28, I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. I probably felt worse about him in that moment than I did about the lout that had pushed the whole thing.
Now, at 46, I already understand. And I'm nowhere near the 74 years of age that the tired old man was when he came to speak with me.
Annual Conference makes me tired. It is migraine week, every year. I don't want to spend hours at a time arguing about which motion has to be made first to suspend a Standing Rule that should only be suspended in moments of genuine import, not whenever one of our Permanent Dopes has a "Gee, I haven't been to the microphone yet" moment, and wants to reinvent the cross. I'm fed up with those who try, every year, to find some point over which to attack our Treasurer, or one of the Superintendents, or the Bishop. In spite of my perpetual frustrations with many of those people, trying to embarass them on the floor of Annual Conference is just rude, and it always has the impact that a divorced mom or dad has when badmouthing the other parent to the kids: it just makes the talker look awful.
And I'm tired of people who either don't have a clue what they are talking about, or are pandering to the base. Case in point: our debate on Global Warming. The guy who brought the motion is one of those important people who thinks that we can't vote on anything without everyone knowing how he feels about it. (I don't speak on the floor of Conference, ever, period!) For once, however, he had something right. There is, or course, Global Warming. We are, of course, aggravating the condition terribly. We must, of course, stop it. That's pretty much all the darned motion said. A colleague who I've always considered a bright guy jumped up and proposed castrating the already impotent motion because "there is debate over the science."
There is also debate over the relationship of smoking to lung cancer. Among the "scientists" bought and paid for by the Tobacco Institute. And debate rages over the presence of WMDs and pre-9/11 al Qaeda in Iraq. Between Cheney and the rest of the world. And in the year when even the Kansas legislature sobered up and stopped their creationism over evolution hysteria, the question is heavily debated, between the real world and the goof in Kentucky who has opened a (I kid you not) Museum of Creationism.
I don't know if our guy is serious (scary) or just pandering to where he thinks his bread is buttered (disgusting). He is a ladder-climber, always dressed and coiffed like a preacher, and wearing the bemused face of the televangelist. Another colleague was once asked, in my presence, where he was going to lead the congregation he was about to be appointed to serve. "Where ever they want to go" was the sickening answer. The statement might be the motto of this week's amender.
I'm afraid that we just like our semi-Middle Class lives a little too much these days. Hey, boys and girls, I've been moved at a salary loss in each of my last three moves, a total loss of over $30,000. It hasn't been fun, economically. But I haven't had to go searching for my lost integrity, not even once. And when I have had trouble sleeping at night, it hasn't once been because I was afraid I had sold out to get ahead.
We are called to be faithful. Sometimes that means prophetic. And by definition, that means we are going to get into trouble with some people. I'll let you in on a little secret: you want to be in trouble with those who will be angry with you for being faithful. Once while on the staff of our retirement homes, I was with one of our site managers while she counseled a resident about his racial abuse of some of our staff. My friend, one of the great people I've ever known, was about 50, and a beautiful African-American woman. She was patient and thorough with the man. He waited until she was finished, looked the two of us over, and told us that he could straighten out all of this "race business" if we would just let him bring his nephew up from Alabama to talk to us. Seems his nephew was the Grand Dragon of the Klan in good ol' Bama. She didn't blink, didn't take the bait, so he turned to me. "So you're just a n-lover" he accused in one of the South's nasty little endearments. My always gracious response: "You just violated the rules as they have been shared with you, sir, so as far as I'm concerned, you are evicted!" At that point, he took a step toward me, as menacingly as an 82 year old man can muster. In that moment, I genuinely wished that he had hit me. In a moment of a complete lack of Christian charity, I told him to go ahead, but his first punch better be a good one. I was sick of listening to him call my staff people every vulgar name in the book, hit them with his cane, accuse them of stealing from him when he was just too old to remember where he had put anything. "You ain't much preacher" he told me. I thanked him. He said it wasn't a compliment. I told him it was. He asked how. I explained that as far as I was concerned, what I would have to be to be a good preacher in his eyes made it a compliment for him to acknowledge that I wasn't that. He never did get it.
Neither do far too many of my clergy brothers. (Yes, brothers; overwhelmingly, my clergy sisters do get it) Either they have never allowed the gospel to change them, or they have, but don't want to rattle the cages of those loud ones who may try to move them for a prophetic witness. To those brothers: come on, boys, grow a set. It just isn't worth keeping any particular pulpit to sell Jesus Christ and his gospel down the river.
Wow. Maybe I'm not as tired of fighting as I thought I was.