it looks like I think I'm Jesus

Saturday night, as I was doing my usual pace-the-floor, mutter-to-myself, bite-my-nails routine, my beloved pointed out to me that I've never, not once, liked a sermon I'm about to give.

Hmm. Pause. blink. try to remember one....

nope.

It seems that I've fallen into the trap of thinking I'm Jesus. Hmm, this ditch looks familiar. I've been here before.


Sometimes you end up in the ditch even when you know it's there. In CPE, trying to learn to be a hospital chaplain, I got myself into this funny cycle. I would go to 'classes' in the morning, and then see patients in the afternoon, after lunch and until 5 in the afternoon. Then I started staying later. Then a little later than that. Then I started working through lunch.

I was assigned to a floor, two wings, probably twenty or thirty beds, plus a huge outpatient clinic. The routine was pretty clear: get list of inpatients on my floor, go up to the floor, check in with the nursing staff, then go knock on the doors of the new patients. Introduce myself, see if they wanted anything, pray with them if they asked. Go back outside. note visit on chart. repeat. Go see people I'd seen in previous days. repeat.

twenty beds might not seem like much. But think about the length of the last meaningful conversation you had. An hour? half that? There were people who were only there for a day or two, undergoing treatment or procedures, and if I didn't hurry I wouldn't see them at all. So I stayed, later and later. It was the day I walked out of the hospital and it was all the way to full dark that was the beginning of the epiphany.

I went for a long walk and had a talk with God. And here's what God said: hey, buddy, you're in my chair.

I'd started thinking that I had to see every patient, had to pray with each one, or they wouldn't be healed. Or wouldn't feel good, at least. If you asked me if that's what I was doing, I'd say no, of course not. But then I stepped back and reviewed where my feet and hands had been for a month, and I realized that I thought I was Jesus.

it was actually funny, in a way. I did manage to laugh at myself. later.



So now, here I am, the first-year preacher. Never satisfied with a sermon text. Spending more and more time preparing. Constantly thinking about the next sermon. Devouring preaching textbooks with a ravenous, unsatisfied hunger.

Hmm...this ditch sure does look familiar.