Ministry is one of the strangest and most varied callings in the world. There are
those days (had a couple this week) when we wonder why on earth we are really
doing this. What were we thinking when we went for ordination? Working with
congregations is usually a lot like herding cats – and as much as I am a cat
person, it really isn’t quite what one hopes for in an occupation. Individually every person is a good person –
and we come to love them even with their foibles and even if they drive us
nuts. And we remember that we have our foibles too, and sometimes we drive them
squirrelly. We know there are the parking lot meetings, the people who can’t
let go of whatever, the resisters and the ones who get excited by changes. They
think we don’t know, but pssst! Yeah we do. It’s a sixth sense clergy develop
over the years. Remember how we thought our mothers had eyes in the backs of
their head? Clergy do too, and ears.
Part of getting old in ministry – and maybe just part of
getting old – is that some things cease to be issues any more, and other things
become more important. As we get older, we think about these things more, too.
Back in about 2007, I was minister in a Scarborough church
whose musician finally had to give up playing – illness and age finally caught up. In the
process of searching for a new musician, a young man came to us almost fresh
out of his Masters degree in music. One Sunday he arrived with his girlfriend,
who turned out to be an incredibly talented soprano. When they got married, they
asked me to do the ceremony. At the wedding were two other young people, best
friends of the wedding couple, who were also musicians. Several years later, when they got married,
they also asked me to do their wedding.
We haven’t seen each other a lot, but have kept in touch and followed each other on Facebook. Tonight they came to the
congregation to present an evening of music. Everything from serious opera to ‘Jesus
Christ Superstar’, to ‘Les Miserables’, operetta and comic opera –and for an encore
“Three Little Maids from School”, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado”.
I was close to tears a couple of times. Telling myself it
was the music – like ”Bring Him Home”, the prayer of Jean Valjean in Les
Miserables. Always makes me cry. The truth? Much more than that. Had I not been in in ministry in that church
at that time, I would not have met any of them. It’s called serendipity. And it’s
that moment when the lightbulb flashes on again, and we know why we do what we
do. Because we are privileged to meet, know, work with and form lasting relationships
with so many people in so many ways. The maudlin bit? That I am so incredibly
grateful to whatever forces in the universe, that I have lived long enough to
meet such talented people, and hear such wonderful voices, that it literally
makes me cry. And to be able to say “I know them.”
