Thanks Sarah...

I drove home from Waco today. I was so tired driving. Several times I almost stopped to take a nap. One thing that kept me awake through some of it was thinking over things.


At one point I began to think about friends. I thought about old friends and new friends. I thought about graduations - high school, college, seminary. How were they different? How were they the same?


While doing this I realized I could be overseas and miss my ten year high school reunion (We are all getting old, you know?). Even if I am there it might be soon after returning, so I get to be the jobless guy trying to make a connection. I partnered this thinking with high school graduation and remembered one event that was both very painful and very redefining.


We were sitting on the hard wooden gym floor at Lone Oak High School (no snickers!). We were in alphabetical order practicing for senior night. (Senior night is something other than graduation but it is when they present a lot of awards and tell where people got scholarships, etc.) A row or two behind me was Sarah - she was in the W's.


Sarah and I and a couple others started talking about what we were going to do when we grew up. I mentioned that I was planning to go into ministry. After saying this I remember Sarah's words clearly. "I could never go to your church Chad." "Why is that?" "Because you would know how I was when I was a kid and I would feel guilty."


Sarah's intentions were probably not the same as the effect of those words. I recognized at that point and continually over the next year that I had an issue with being judgmental. I had never even realized that it was a reality.


I haven't reached where I should be yet but Sarah helped me realize that if I was ever going to be an effective minister than I would have to be a person that didn't make others feel guilty for the realities of who they are.


There was nothing wrong with Sarah. She was a teenager. Most of us (I was sort of a geek so maybe not me) did the same things. We hung out with our friends, we made silly mistakes we might regret in the future, we lived life and had fun doing it.


I am still guilty of being judgmental. I think poorly of people just by the company they keep or the places they go. I am the Pharisees with the woman caught in adultery. I am just as guilty as they are but I spend all of my time pointing out others rather than cleaning up my act. In fact I work hard to hide my blemishes so that others might not notice.


I am not sure I could ever be Sarah's pastor, because I know how I was when I was a kid, and I know how I am now, and I would feel guilty every time I saw her face.


I hope to see these words from Bonhoeffer next to the front door of my church one day:

"You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone."