Linda was a preacher's kid. That didn't summarize her entire identity, you understand, but ask any preacher's kid – it's kind of a big deal. Linda, fortunately for her parents, was the good kind of preacher's kid. Her older brother was the other kind. The hellion. She was the angel. Well. She WAS the angel. That had been many years ago, when she still lived under her parents' roof. She went off to college – a Christian college, of course – and had plenty of ups and downs in a lot of areas in her life, and she discovered a few things about herself. Things she had never discovered as the good preacher's kid. She discovered that she liked to drink. And that she liked to smoke. She discovered that the people that drank and smoked seemed to be pretty good company, and she discovered that lightning didn't strike her when she didn't go to church.
She graduated from college and moved to West Texas. A good friend of hers from college moved with her and they became roommates. Life was pretty good. She was thinking about graduate school, and better paying jobs.
Thanksgiving came along one year, and Linda asked if she could bring her roommate to the big family dinner. "Sure," the folks said, "The more the merrier." Little did they know. On the way from West Texas to East Oklahoma Linda and her roommate picked up Grandma. Trouble brewing. When Linda's roommate lit up a cigarette in the car, Grandma went ballistic. Words were said. Grandma asked to be let out on the side of the highway, refusing to travel any further. A truce was reached. The journey continued with simmering hostility between roommate and Grandma, and Linda on edge. See, Grandma was the reasonable one.
Thanksgiving holidays! A time for feasting, reunion, and animosity. Linda's roommate took her smoke breaks outside. This gave Linda's parents and Grandma a good opportunity to talk to Linda about the low character of the people she was associating with, and what did that mean about Linda anyway? Did SHE smoke? Did SHE drink? Well as a matter of fact, she did, Linda exclaimed. And that was the point where tension escalated into all-out war.
The day after Thanksgiving, Linda and her roommate took their stuff and left the house and went to a motel. Linda's dad drove around town the next day looking for them. Linda's mom called around town trying to locate them. Linda's mom found them first. Mom told Linda her father wanted to meet with her at his office. "No way," Linda said. She wasn't going to meet him in the seat of his authority. We need neutral ground. They met at the bowling alley. Linda's dad didn't exactly apologize, and neither did she, but they made steps toward peace. The next day was Sunday. Linda's dad asked her to come to church, and he offered her a concession. What sermon would she like him to preach? Linda had grown up with this, remember. Week in and week out, she heard her dad's sermons. She knew them all. "Joshua Adams," she said. 'Joshua Adams' was her dad's 'what if Jesus came today?' sermon. It imagined a prophetic figure coming into a town and sharing grace and forgiveness with the cast-offs and the lowlifes. Sharing grace in such a way that the high and mighty and holier-than-thous were offended, and ran him out of town. "Okay," Linda's dad said.
On Sunday morning Linda and her roommate sat in the pew of her father's church, sang the hymns, and watched as he got behind the pulpit. He preached a sermon about....the evils of smoking and drinking. In eloquently condemnatory terms he warmed to the topic. It took Linda's roommate grabbing her arm and forcing her to sit down to keep Linda from leaving the sanctuary.
It wasn't the last time Linda ever spoke to her dad, but it was pretty close.
Oh, it might also be good for you to know, if you haven't already guessed, that Linda's roommate was also her girlfriend. That was one of the other things she discovered at college – she was gay. Linda doesn't know if her parents ever knew that – she suspects Grandma knew, but never said anything. Grandma was the reasonable one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linda is a real person, but her name isn't Linda. Through an interesting set of circumstances we met and she got to tell me her story. This is the part that has affected me most, and that I wanted to share, with her gracious permission.
There are no words I can muster to express to you the heartbreak of learning that Linda's dad preached the sermon he preached instead of the one Linda asked to hear. The story speaks for itself.
What I can tell you, what I KNOW in the deepest, most sincere part of myself, is that the Other Sermon is still true. Jesus comes and preaches good news to the lost –that there is grace and forgiveness in the arms of the Father. And He does it today as surely as He did it then. Just because the Other Sermon went unspoken doesn't mean it isn't true.
Brothers and sisters, preachers and teachers, fathers and mothers, please preach the Other Sermon as often you can. Linda ASKED for the Other Sermon because she had heard it, and though she was far from where she started, she still wanted to believe that it was true. She was already well aware of the content of the sermon that she actually got that terrible Sunday.
Many of those we come into contact with don't know to ask for the Other Sermon. They may be only vaguely aware of the Other Sermon – the gospel of grace and the far-fetched story of a God who loves self-sacrificially. They likely already have quite concrete ideas about what sermons usually sound like – they anticipate the kind that Linda got. They get it. It's not hard to understand.
The Other Sermon is a different matter. The grace of God is deep. It is profound, and likely will need to be talked about multiple times. And it will need, in some concrete way, to be seen to be believed.
I got the chance to tell Linda that the Other Sermon is still true. Would you please do the same for those that need to hear it?
No comments:
Post a Comment