A MORNING IN THE LIFE OF A SMALL TOWN LAY PREACHER

My dad's 80-year-old Bible came in handy but it threw me for a loop.

It is 9:55 a.m. and I am about to leave for Geneva Presbyterian Church in Chesley, about a 40-minute drive, where I am leading the Sunday worship service. On this particular morning I am feeling inadequate and unworthy, not confident that my message will be of any significance. This is not an altogether unusual feeling but more often than not, it is a signal to me that I need to "increase my faith", which is exactly the topic of my sermon this morning. I'll let you know how things turn out.

The above is a brief post that I dashed off this morning on my Facebook timeline with the overwhelming impression that something unexplainable was either amiss or in store for me. At the same time, I had reservations about my ability to adequately serve as God's messenger on this particular Sunday.

I'll simply recount the events of the ensuing three hours and in the process, hopefully it will all come into focus for me.

The drive to Chesley was a quiet one, so much so that even though I had a good eight hours of sleep the night before, I felt unusually drowsy and wished that I could pull over on the roadside and have a nap. The danger in doing that, however, would have been that I could have slept through the entire time that I should have been conducting the church service.

As it was, I arrived in downtown Chesley a good 30 minutes before the start of the service. I am always reluctant to walk into a church too early and try to avoid those awkward minutes twiddling my thumbs as the choir and others busily prepare for their roles in the service.

I decided to park my car on the ghost-like main street in order to while away some time. No one but me, a woman walking her dog and an oblivious-to-the world, groggy-eyed transient who had spent the night sleeping on a bench in front of the local legion.

I wondered about the dishevelled man across the street as he nodded off, falling in and out of consciousness (much like I felt like doing). What was his story? Did he at one time have family and loved ones? What had he done for a living in previous life? Did he have any hopes for the future, or had he completely given up on life? 

There but for the grace of God...I resisted the temptation to go over and talk to him, opting instead for a silent prayer on his behalf.

After about 10 minutes that seemed to pass in a flash, I drove the remaining three blocks to deliver my sermon on the topic "Leaning on God" to "Help Us Go Forward" in times of trouble and anguish when we are unable to go any further in life. Something about putting myself ever so briefly in the shoes of that old hobo empowered me to go forward with what I was called to do on this particular morning.

But I wasn't home Scot free just yet.

A chap approached me as I entered the Sunday School hall at the church, announcing that the lady who was to have led off the service by leading the Call to Worship, had been unable to meet the commitment and that he would be pinch-hitting for her. He said that he could handle the customary announcements at the start of the service but was not sufficiently prepared to do the usual scripture readings as well.

That news sent me scrambling.

I develop all worship services using scripture from my working copy of New King James Version of the Holy Bible and wouldn't you know it, I left it at home this morning. All I had in my brief case was my late father Ken's 80-year-old copy of the original Authorized (King James) Version, and there is a difference. I should explain that as a comforter of sorts, my dad's old Bible (held together by trusty duct tape) goes with me wherever I go. "No problem, I'll just read from that," I reasoned, not to be deterred by the unexpected change in the order of service.

It wasn't until I came to the Gospel Lesson taken from Luke 17:5-10 that I realized I had a problem. In this chapter the Apostles asked for an "increase in their faith" and Jesus points out that if they had the faith of a mustard seed they (according to my dad's Bible) "might say to this sycamine tree 'be thou plucked up by the root, and planted in the sea; and it should obey you'."

The trouble was, for my sermon I liberally sprinkled the word "mulberry" tree into my text because that is what the tree was named in the updated King James version of the Bible. I literally had to go back to the drawing board while on the run with this one, explaining that sycamine and mulberry are thought to be the same kind of tree, as much for my benefit as it was for my audience.

Not a big deal really, but it is kind of off-putting when you have to think at the same time as you're on your feet in the throes of speaking.

Anyway, I got through the service and seemed to sense that people appreciated the message: "It is faith that uplifts us -- not faith by earning God's love, but by accepting it. It is faith that reflects God's love made real in the way we live and by the way we love." We have only to lean on God when we are at a low point in our life and He will lift us up.

I'll never forget my time in Chesley this morning for three reasons 1) I should practice what I preach when it comes to having faith, 2) that old transient sitting on the bench in front of the legion and 3) sycamine/mullberry trees.

P.S. After the service I was unusually famished. Generally on such trips I stop at a favorite coffee shop in nearby Tara. As luck would have it, they were closed this morning and I had to settle for a breakfast sandwich at Tim Horton's when I got back to Southampton.

All in a morning's work for a struggling lay preacher answering a call in the four-church Co-Op Ministry of Central Grey-Bruce.