Face To Face With Faith

I often thought my mom might secretly have wanted me to be a preacher or, as would have been more likely given the specific side of the schism we came down in, a priest. I think I would have been good at the homily part. I would be up there pounding people on the specifics. I'd throw out a lot of interesting points. I'd skewer people with truths that they never thought to contemplate prior to me coming along. And I'd be doing it all in this increasingly bizarre fake Irish accent!

But as I grow older, I begin to feel that that approach might not really play to my unique gifts. Because when it comes to my whole comfort zone, where I excel the most, I think the natural leaning of my oratory is more in the mode of a right reverend southern-fried Fire n' Gospel style haranguer! I would be 110% awesome at that. I could just keep going and going for hours as needed, freestyle, without ever having to stop and go back for a missed point. Like so:

Bretheren, today we offer up all of our selfish desires and designs of our own, which we burn on the sacred altar of our hearts to the great glory of God's name. A sacrifice of burnt offering, as was done in heathen times. All to the glory of God's name! What could be more glorious than God's name? Oh, that blessed name! We all would like to know what it is, wouldn't we? I bet it's got a couple of long-A sounding vowels in there, what do you think? In God's name, we pray that one day we too will stand righteous and justified in the sight of God and hear that beautiful name when they whisper it to us sweetly on the way into heaven. That is sure to be one knockout of a scene! The trick is, first you have to die.

Just like going to sleep, isn't it dear bretheren? Except when you wake, you wake up in the bed of the Lord! Shout hallelujah!

We need to quit our mourning - what is this mourning? With heaven in our hearts, we should throw off all our black clothes of mourning and run joyfully, naked to meet our deaths! When Paul went down to Tarsus and he shook the dust of the road off his robes, and he went in to declare himselve before the Emperor's council, he knew that he was going in to his death. He knew that he would never again emerge from that vaunted chamber. He knew it like you know your own child. Yet he set his head, flexed his arms out wide and bellowed with a mighty shout of joy before God! And this frightened the superstitious pagans so much that they let him go. Now who now would not call that the hand of God?

And in our lives and hearts too, the hand of God moves in its mysterious ways. So-called mysterious! Mysterious to some, perhaps, but not to the Lord! The Lord knows exactly what He is doing, what is hidden from men's eyes is not hidden from God's eyes. For did not God say into the empty vessel: "Go forth! And be filled again." Hearken unto the lesson in that, dear children! Let that light down into your heart. For it is just now even as it was in the parable of the two servants, which we have heard. In those days, a man had two servants. To one of them, he gave thirty sheckels. The other he had stripped to the waist and publicly whipped! For who shall question the master of the house? Therefore, go and do likewise.

You know, and so forth exactly like that.

I would have been a great preacher I bet. The problem is, I'm no good at the requisite Southern accent. I'm much better at the Irish one! I can hit that Irish accent out of the park. Yet a sermon like the one above, delivered in an Irish accent, would only come off as preposterous!

As so as you can see, that's the dilemma that's kept me out of the pulpit, all these years.