Sometimes Even the
Good Ones Get It Wrong
November 2, 2025
I know a Christian church pastor, no names or other
identifying information here, of whom I am quite fond. They are a very good
preacher.[1]
As far as I know, they are a very good person. They are personable and
pleasant. On the whole, I am quite satisfied with them. I mean nothing here as
anything to detract from them as a good church pastor.
But. But at church this morning I had not one but a couple
objections to what they did, didn’t say, and said. So I’ve titled this peace
“Sometimes Even the Good Ones Get It Wrong.” The pastor of whom I write here is
one of the good ones. Yet, of course, the best of us make mistakes. I am
prideful enough to believe (to know, actually) that I am a much better than
average preacher and pastor, but I would never claim never to have made
mistakes. I know a whole lot better than that. Like every other preacher and
pastor, I’m human. That means I am far from perfect, and so is the pastor about
whom I write in this piece. Here, then, are the things to which I object about
their service this morning.
Today was a Communion Sunday. The pastor in question
presided at the sacrament. I love the sacrament of the Eucharist. Presiding at
it has been one of the joys of time as a parish pastor and of the times I have
been able to preside at it since my retirement. There are not many ways in
which I am a traditionalist, yet I am a traditionalist in at least some ways
when it comes to the Eucharist though I will never hold with a closed table.
When I preside at the sacrament I always say “This is the Lord’s table, it is
not our table, and all are welcome here….” I believe that truth with every
fiber of my faith, and I will never deny or reject it.
There is, however, something about traditional Christian
liturgy that matters here. In any worship service that includes the Eucharist,
the sacrament is, or at least ought to be, the highlight of the service.
Everything else leads up to it. After the Eucharist as the climax of the
service, the presiding officer may have the people sing a hymn and give a
closing benediction, but at that point the service ends and the people are sent
out into the world with the good news of Jesus, his teaching, and his
resurrection. There’s nothing more to say. Nothing more to do. Putting the
sacrament earlier in the service just diminishes its significance, its central
role in Christian worship.
Yet at the church to which I refer, the pastors usually,
though not quite always, put the Eucharist early in the service. They make it
the first significant thing that happens after the people are gathered and
called to worship. I know why they do it. They do it because they want the
church’s children to be able to participate in the sacrament, and they dismiss
the children, such as are there (which usually isn’t many), to what they call
“faith formation” and churches usually call “Sunday School” quite early in the
service.
When I was church pastor, I always had the children’s education
people bring the kids back into the sanctuary for the sacrament near the end of
the service. Yes, that’s a bit awkward. Yes, it takes a bit of coordination
between the faith formation leaders and the flow of the service. It’s not easy,
but it can be done. I’ve done it a great many times.
Yet the lead pastor of the church I’m discussing, not the
pastor I’m critiquing here, has established the pattern of putting the
sacrament early in the service so they don’t have to coordinate calling the
young people back into the sanctuary to participate in it. That’s what the
pastor did this morning. I don’t know if they would do it differently if it
were entirely up to them. I rather doubt it, but I don’t know. What I do know
is that they followed the lead pastor’s model this morning. And I know that that
is just flat liturgically wrong. It diminishes the importance and power of the
Eucharist, something no Christian worship leader has any business doing.
Then there’s an issue around what we call the “words of
institution.” The sacrament and the words that we say when performing it are
nearly two millennia old. They connect us with countless Christians who
celebrate the sacrament today and with countless more who have celebrated it in
the past. The words of the sacrament include what are called the “words of
institution.” They are: :”After supper he took the bread, blessed and broke it,
and gave it to them saying ‘Take, eat, this is my body broken for you. So often
as you eat of it, do so in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup,
blessed it, and give it to them saying ‘Take, drink. This is the cup of the new
covenant in my blood. So often as you drink of it, do so in remembrance of me.’”
In the Roman Catholic ritual there is almost something magical about these
words. They are the point at which the bread and wine become the body and blood
of Christ. There isn’t anything magical about them in the theology of my
Protestant tradition, but they are still important. They are what makes the
sacrament a sacrament and not just a ritual. To me and, I believe, to all
sacramental traditionalists, it is important that they be said properly and
completely.
This morning, the pastor in question didn’t say them
properly and completely. For both the bread and the wine, she left out “give.”
She had it that Jesus “took” and “blessed” the bread and the cup, but she
didn’t have him giving it to his disciples. I’m sorry, pastor. That’s just
wrong. There is a specific movement built into the sacrament. It appears in its
full form in reference to the bread. It goes: “Took, blessed, broke, gave.”
It’s a four-part movement. It concludes with Jesus giving the bread to the gathered
disciples. Without “give,” the disciples aren’t involved at all. Neither are
we. Dear pastor, you really shouldn’t have left “give” out.
They we come to the sermon this pastor gave this morning.
They really are a good preacher, and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But
this morning they were talking about the story of
Tamar in Genesis. Look that story up if you’re curious about the details, but
the important part of the story for my purposes right now is that in centers
around something called the law of levirate marriage. Levirate marriage is an
ancient Hebrew law that says that if a man is married but dies without leaving
a male heir, the deceased man’s eldest surviving brother shall marry his widow
and with her produce a male heir not for himself but for his deceased brother. That
male child becomes the deceased brother’s heir, not the heir of the child’s
biological father.
This law arose and was practiced (if it was in fact
practiced at all) in a highly patriarchal society. In that society and its
culture, men mattered, women, for the most part at least, did not. Hebrew
scripture is full of admonitions for the people to care for widows, but there
was little if any law that dealt with that issue.
The law had many provisions dealing with property rights and
inheritance. Under that law, only men had the right to own property. Hebrew
culture considered it vitally important that real property remain within the
owner’s family, more specifically, in the owner’s direct line of descent.
That’s what the law of levirate marriage was all about. Yes, it involved a
woman, a widow actually; but it was about a family’s property rights not about
the protection of women.
This morning the
pastor in question got the law of levirate marriage all wrong. She did mention
the property succession issue briefly, but she talked far more about the law
being in place to protect widows. She said its purpose and function were to
keep a widow within her deceased’s husband’s family and thus to avoid her
becoming alone and without means of support. She said that Tamar did what she
did to protect herself by reconnecting herself with her former father-in-law’s
family. Perhaps she used the applicable law in that way, but that simply is not
what the law was about. This morning, this pastor just got it wrong. It seems
to me that she was reading something into the relevant law that she would like
for there to be there. I get that. I wish ancient Hebrew law cared about women
a lot more than it did, but it just didn’t. Our pastor in question was just
wrong here.
Now, of course, all of us preachers make mistakes. I have
quite liked the pastor in question in the past, and I still do. But here’s a
thing about being a preacher listening to preachers. We all evaluate. We all
judge. It’s not so much that we want to. It’s just that we’ve done what the
preacher we’re listening is doing. We’re trained and experienced in what she’s
doing. We know more about what she’s talking about than most (if not quite all)
lay people do. Try as we might, most of us just can’t turn off our judgment
function. I didn’t turn mine off this morning. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps
we all should be able to, but I’m hardly the only preacher I’ve heard say we
can’t do it. So be it.
This morning, this preacher got more than one thing wrong.
That doesn’t make them a bad preacher. Most of the time they’re quite a good
preacher. It doesn’t make them a bad pastor. I’m quite sure they’re a good
pastor. But sometimes even the good ones get it wrong. That’s what this pastor
did this morning. God bless her, and God bless all of us who dare to preach the
gospel of Jesus Christ. God knows we all need grace to cover our mistakes.
[1]
This pastor uses “they/their” as their pronouns. I’m old, and I’m old enough
that I have the devil’s own time making those pronouns anything but plural, but
here they are used as singulars, so I will use them for this person too..
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