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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
May 15, 2011
Well, here we are!
I’m so aware of the beginning held in this moment. I’m curious about you and you’re curious about me. When I imagined myself sitting where you are, when I thought about what I would want to know if I were you, I decided to talk a little bit about being a minister and what that means to me.
First let me talk about this robe. It’s called a Geneva gown, and it’s a hardworking symbol. It’s a teacher’s black gown, not a priest’s garb. A priest can speak for God; a priest is presumed to have some special connection to the Divine, even to be able to do miraculous things. I don’t think anybody can speak for God. I do think I can sometimes do miraculous things. I think you do to. Dancing, feeding people, doing art, making music, speaking lovingly, listening deeply, those are often miraculous activities we can all do.
I think of myself as a teacher, then, in a teacher’s robe. I’ve gone to school for this, I’ve studied and stacked up years of experience and poured myself into the life of a student of church life, of people, of theology, of how to lead a congregation, how to speak of things that are hard to speak of. The robe is like the one my mother’s uncles wore in their pulpits in the Carolinas and Tennessee, and this robe reminds me that I am standing in the broad stream of history and family tradition. They preached the best way they knew how, just as I do. My mother’s grandfather, James Hearst Pressly, was the minister of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Statesville, North Carolina for 54 years. He rode his horse to church from the home he shared with his thirteen children, his wife Mabel and one very mean rooster. Dinner time was somewhat chaotic, as they ate the food people had dropped off from their gardens or cellars, with guests who sometimes wandered in off the streets, people of various colors and socio-economic backgrounds who were always welcome without question. Everyone had to say a Bible verse before eating. That may have kept some of the riff-raff away. One evening the second-to-youngest boy Walter, who was called “Sad-Eye,” or “Sad,” for short, was being punished. He had to eat in a corner by himself. The children all said their verses. “Jesus wept,” said the youngest, David, for the fourth time that week. Sad, in the corner, piped up, saying “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” Two of those children became ministers like their daddy. The rest of the boys became doctors, no doubt having gained experience binding up the wounds inflicted by that mean rooster, who would hide and jump out at the kids and slash at their legs. My great-grandfather retired from preaching in this way: the Sunday after he turned eighty, he preached the sermon, then said “I do not think a man should preach when he is eighty. Today I’m retiring. Brother Matthews, would you have the prayer?” The surprised brother Matthews stood and asked everyone to bow their heads. While he was stumbling through the prayer, my great-grandfather walked down the aisle and went home. Me? I like parties, so that would not be the way I would do it.
The robe is like the one my father and his father didn’t wear when they preached. My grandfather Barnhouse was a famous evangelist on the radio in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. His sermons are still on the radio in some places in the country. He spoke around the world. People named their children after him, they bought his books and still do. He preached in striped trousers and a cutaway coat with tails. My father doesn’t like wearing a robe when he preaches because he worries that people will think he’s wearing it to be superior in some religious way. “I don’t want them to think that I think I’m better than they are because of some stupid robe,” he says. I say, “yeah, you want them to think you’re better than they are because you’re just better.” “Yeah.” It’s a joke. I wear the robe to signify that I went to school to learn this work. I wear it to remind myself of my link to the preachers in my mother’s family, who were journeymen preachers, and to the preachers in my father’s family, who struggled with being rock star preachers, who chafed under the idea that they were part of a larger denomination which laid demands upon them in terms of credentialing, ethics, behavior and connection. I will be part of this congregation and what it’s trying to do and be in the world. Part of something larger than myself. I always want to remind myself and my congregation of that.
“Preaching,” Mark Twain is said to have said, “is the ecstasy of presumption.” It is kind of an odd job. You’re paid to think about things, then to talk about the things you think about. In a UU congregation you are talking and thinking with people who are usually very good at both talking and thinking. You reflect on your life and the life of your congregation, you connect the congregation to the life of the community. You are called to be intellectually as well as emotionally intelligent and put both forward in perfect balance in your weekly sermons. Oh, and also in your daily life. You are called to help the people run their congregation by continuing to hold up the vision they are funding with their energy, good will, their minds and their means. You are friendly with everyone, even though you can’t be anyone’s special friend, because as soon as the minister is their special friend, they no longer really have a minister. Your job involves a lot of social interaction. I have people say “Come on, this is a party, you’re not our minister here!” Wherever church people are, I’m the minister. It’s just my luck that parties count as work! I love interruptions and stories and getting to know folks. I crave meaningful discussions and intense interactions and peaceful hanging out. I like filling a role that is larger than I am. Let me close by reading another of my stories, “Brick by Brick”
