Oh, Lord… Here We Go

Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?

I have alternated between the quietest and the loudest person in the room for many years. This is because as a preacher’s kid, you have the personality you use with parishioners and the one you use at home, when you’re with your normal family…. the one that already knows you’re weird. I started doing things with music/music theater when I was three. And in fact, if I remember correctly, the first time I was in a choir performance I waited until it was over and then decided what the people really needed was a solo.

A few things that I’ve said have stuck with me, though.

At Bridgeport, I told the congregation that they were my Thanksgiving, and I meant it. Preaching in person is a whole different vibe, and I’m glad I know how to do it, and sometimes be incredible, even if I didn’t choose to go after it as a profession. It is enough to know that I could have, I just didn’t want to in the end. All I wanted to do was speak, and that’s not what pastors do. I’d be horrible at pastoral care and I know this about myself. It’s not that I wouldn’t listen. I would, intently, and then I would spend more time trying to figure out their problems than my own….. just like I do now, but I am only taking care of my family. They’re all over the world and right at home.

I wish I’d gotten to preach with Zac in the congregation at least once. I would have played so far against type that I doubt he would recognize me….. until I started preaching. Because yes, Zac, I have quoted Snoop Dogg in a sermon. It’s also just fun because he’s an atheist and also very, very smart. Therefore, we can have great discussions without ripping each other’s heads off. Religion is desperately, intimately ontological. God only exists as much as you believe God does.

I preach from the standpoint of resolution and resurrection, my faith absolutely secure in the mysteries of our faith, because the things that have been attributed to God are not God. I’m not even talking about The Crusades. I mean that people like Abraham didn’t write down God’s experiences, they wrote a record of their own.

It’s why I’m so glad this blog exists, because it is very much the Bible I am writing. Both in looking out over my experiences and processing them for better understanding (to me it’s a form of prayer), and because no one in the Bible is more important than me. The only reason my book of the Bible doesn’t count is that I was born a little later than the council of Nicea. I honestly treat my relationship with Jesus the way I treat my relationship with Zac when he’s not here. Jesus and I are kind of the same person, so I tease him all the time… and that’s a plural. I tease Jesus and he’s got some sick burns on me, too….. but those are just what I think he would say, and I like the comedic version of Jesus best.

If I had to pick a favorite Jesus representation, it’s the one from South Park. He manages to be relevant and yet the same calming presence he was back then. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, and I’m paraphrasing, “if you can’t laugh at your own religion, you haven’t picked a very good one.” I tease Jesus in his WTF? moments because I know I couldn’t have done any better. For me now, it’s thinking about me being so much older than he was. Having to go through that much, that young.

My whole take is that the best part of the resurrection was not having to do pastoral care. “Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home.” The truth is that Jesus was one of many people who thought he was the Messiah at the time, because the Jews were genuinely looking. If there is a Messiah, I choose to believe he’s it. That’s because none of the self-help he taught has changed for thousands of years. Brené Brown is an Episcopalian. Steven Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jim Gaffigan are Catholic. Trevor Noah isn’t a Christian, but he was raised in the church. Sarah Silverman is Jewish. Even under the Abramic tradition, we find our way in the world doing great things. For Sarah and me, it’s comedy (Sarah believes she’s one of God’s chosen people, and I believe Jesus is magic.) I don’t believe that it is the one true way.

I believe everything comes from us. We are not connecting to an Abramic or Hindu or Egyptian god, we are connected to The Source, the idea in which religion was created. We did not create The Source, we are all subtractions from it. You are a tiny piece of something great, but you block yourself from receiving it with ego.

But I didn’t come up with that idea. Jesus did. The check is in the mail.