The Teacher

For me, preaching is teaching. Many ministers try to indoctrinate their congregation in a Jim Jones, Peoples Temple, drink the Kool-Aid kind of way. I approach the pulpit in a different way. As I plan a sermon, I am lead by the following question....What are the needs of the people present? I have come to understand life in the following way: Each of us wants to be fully known, an Eden like experience, where we are naked and bouncy and transparent before others. But we have been paralyzed by fear and mistrust. When we were younger, we told our best friend a secret, and even after a double pinkie swear....it was told to someone else. Society told us that we must act or dress or speak a certain way to fit in. Our friends liked us in high school when we were cool or had a nice car or through the best party, or knew where to get alcohol without being carded. So, we became someone else, hiding behind a caricature of our authentic self, to live a life as a fraud, an actor, a mime. We want to be ourselves, to share openly who we are: alcoholic, psychotic, adulterer, obsessive, abuser, or controller. But we are afraid to be who we are....instead we are settling to be who others say we should be.

This point melts into the second one...Each of us also wants to be fully loved! We want people to love us and walk beside us and share our joys and pain. Most of our actions are a sad fumbling, drunken, attempt to cry out to others and say...love me...listen to me...help me to be me.We are really providing ministry to the lives of a person, when we allow them to be their Authentic self. We are whole only when we are fully known and fully loved..even after we are fully known. The scriptures tells of this because of the Love of Christ toward us. Romans 5:8 says that God knew us fully(While we were still sinners) and loved us anyway(Christ died for us).

We are only authentic when we realize that our merit is therefore, not based on our DOING, but is totally, hopelessly, and graciously based on our BEING. So, another Sunday is coming. We will gather around the table of Christ, and break bread and drink from the cup and hear Him whisper....."I love You.....still."