Surprise!
The Reverend Thomas C. Willadsen
It is 9:29 am on Sunday morning. I have just entered the sanctuary to lead my congregation's
weekly worship service. John catches my eye and heads for the exit. I brace myself. John's wife has been diagnosed either with "something a lot like cancer-it's pretty rare," or "That other doctor's crazy, this is cancer! Cancer I say!!" The diagnoses, and uncertainty, have been very hard on John and his marriage.
I walk over to the organist and whisper, "Stretch out the prelude, I need to talk to someone."
I rarely do this, but I'm not worried. Sarah's a pro. I meet John in the coffee hour room. He points to the announcement sheet in the bulletin, "Pastor, the bulletin says the pancake breakfast is February 5, but it's the 12th."
"Right. Thanks, John, I'll point out the error. Tell me how Karen's doing later, OK?"
I'm thinking "cancer," he's thinking "pancakes." This sort of thing happens in ministry.
It is Saturday night. I need a children's sermon. Tomorrow's gospel lesson is Jesus calling the
fishermen. I decide to do the same thing. The kids gather up front. I look at them and say,
"Follow me." I walk away to the side. They follow! I am not ready for this! I expect them to sit there and then we'd have a great dialogue about how hard it is to trust someone and how remarkable it was that Simon, Andrew, James, and John dropped what they were doing, quit their jobs and followed Jesus. We go to the corner of the sanctuary. I count the kids, stalling, buying time, "They're cooperating. Now what?" We walk to the back of the sanctuary. They are in a single file line. I'm Mama Duck, and they are imprinted on me. I count them again. We walk to the last corner of the sanctuary. Now everyone can see again how cute they are. By this time, I've got an idea. Not great, but it's something. We return to the front of the sanctuary. The kids sit on the steps as they had just a few minutes before.
"Why did you follow me?" I ask.
Catherine raises her hand, "Because you asked us to."
"Jamie, why did you follow me?"
"Because you're the pastor and we're supposed to do what you say at church."
"Do you think it was easy for the fishermen to follow Jesus when he said, ‘Follow me?'"
They're not sure. This is good.
"It might have been easy to trust me enough to follow me because you guys are up here all the time and you know me. I think it was a lot harder for the four fishermen to follow Jesus, but they
did. There must have been something about Jesus that made them know they could trust him, so
they followed him. Wouldn't it be great to trust Jesus enough to follow him, live as he did, all the
time? It's a lot harder than following me around the sanctuary. Oh, and another thing..." I rarely
do this. I bounced the message off the kids to the rest of the congregation, "You don't want your
pastor thinking he's Jesus. Thanks for coming up, see you next week."
The kids cooperated. I wasn't ready for that. In ministry, sometimes you have to be ready for the
gracious surprise of things working out.
My favorite description of grace is the feeling you have when you have received something so
surprising, so stunning, that you cannot even say "thank you." It is the feeling of getting exactly
what you wanted for Christmas, even though you did not know this was exactly what you wanted
until you unwrapped the gift.
Thursday is sermon writing day, and this week writing Sunday's sermon was the only thing on my "to-do" list. I've learned that writing sermons takes exactly as much time as I have. This was the rare day when I planned to spend eight hours crafting my fifteen minute message.
But this Thursday morning, my phone rang at 9:30.
"Pastor! Are you going to be in your office today?" It was a long-standing member. Demographers would call him and his wife "vigorous retirees."
"Yes, I expect to be here all day."
"Well, the wife and I want to stop in and see you. We'll be in this morning."
I alerted the office staff that I was expecting visitors. An hour later, the couple came into my
office and sat down.
"Pastor, we'd like to give the church $50,000. How would you spend it?"
"So, uh, you're both...all right?"
"No, we're not getting a divorce!"
"Actually, I was thinking ‘diagnosis'."
It took me a moment to recover. Several moments. No, about a week. In the course of our conversation, I learned how important the church's work with children is to this couple. I had
some thoughts, ran them past the Session and various committees and the Session accepted this
anonymous gift, earmarking $16,000 for our after school program, support for a seminar for parents, implementation of a new safe child policy for the congregation, and continuing education for our Christian Educator.
Divorce. Windfall. Fear. Blessing. Gracious surprises happen often in ministry. They are fertile moments when God throws us off balance in stunning ways and reminds us that God's in charge and has something better in mind than his children dare to hope.
At my last church, an eight year old day was diagnosed with a very aggressive abdominal cancer. I would visit Jeff in the hospital at least once a week. Usually, I would talk to his parents or grandparents. One Friday morning, he was all alone. I was not ready for this. I asked how he was feeling, how his treatments were going, the sort of questions one always asks of people in the hospital.
Jeff asked why God would give him cancer.
"I don't know, Jeff. It doesn't make sense to me. But I believe that God is feeling what you're
feeling."
"So, when I get the chemo stuff and it makes me have a funny taste in my mouth, God can taste
it too? Cool!"
I'm talking process theology to an eight year old, and he totally gets it!
"Right, Jeff. God can taste it and can feel how achy and tired and hot and weird all these drugs make you feel."
Jeff also asked me why President Clinton didn't find a cure for cancer. I suggest that Jeff might want to become a researcher when he gets older. He would have a great perspective on that kind of work, because he knows how it feels to get chemotherapy.
I ask about the food, because hospital patients always have opinions on the food. Food tastes
funny to Jeff these days.
"Pastor Tom, what's your favorite food?"
"Chicago-style pizza. But I haven't found good pizza here so I've learned to make my own."
"What's so great about Chicago pizza?"
"Tell you what, Jeff. When you get out of the hospital, I'll make a Chicago-style pizza for your
family, and I'll bring it to your house!"
I felt uneasy about saying this. I expressed a confidence I did not have. I thought of a scene in
"Hoosiers." During the last minute of the semifinal game, down by one point, the worst player on
the team coached by Gene Hackman's character is fouled and goes to the free throw line. During the time out, Hackman says, "After Ollie makes the second shot-and you will make the second
shot..." He's speaking with a confidence that is not rooted in anything beyond wildest hope and fantasy.
Jeff was an extremely sick little boy. There was a very good chance that he would not be getting
out of the hospital. Still, as I walked to my car in the parking lot, I smiled to myself about having
talked about process theology and pizza with an eight year old. It was a moment when I felt great
joy in being a minister.
Ollie made both free throws.
Six months later, I announced in worship that Jeff had been declared "cancer free." I stood in the pulpit and wept, as I do now, recalling that moment. It was difficult to get the words out, but I took my time. Crying at that moment seemed the most honest thing I could do. I didn't wipe the tears away.
I could tell by the number of parishioners who told me after the service, "It was just fine, Reverend, what you did" that crying ministers were not "just fine" at that particular franchise
location of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Jeff's family threw a huge "No-Mo-Chemo" party. I could write pages about the party alone, but I'm writing about grace and surprise, not frivolity, so I'll only say that this was one of the great parties of all time. They had a bouncy castle, a steel drum band, a popcorn machine, and a llama.
A few weeks after the party, I made good on my promise. I brought a hot, homemade Chicagostyle pizza to Jeff's house to share with his family. It felt sacramental and triumphant. I told Jeff's parents and brother about how much I love kneading the dough and the smell of the yeast. And how yeast is like police dogs and college math professors. It can sense fear. You have to trust and be confident when working with yeast. And I told them how the sauce looked a little lean, so I went out to the garden and picked three Roma tomatoes and crushed them with the garlic and basil. I was proud of this pizza. I was stunned at Jeff's recovery. We were all still giggling about the llama.
A few years after Jeff's recovery, his father shared this reflection with the congregation:
"Sometimes you witness miracles that reinforce that deep-seated, irrational belief that there is
more to life than that which you can put your arms or your mind around." Which is another definition of grace.
But, at this particular moment, Jeff shrieked, "This has tomatoes in it? I ain't eatin' it!"
His parents were mortified. I laughed till Pepsi came out my nose, which I now know, is another indication of a surprising, fertile, gracious surprise.
This article first appeared in The Cresset, published by Valparaiso University, Michaelmas, 2006.