Saturday, November 15, 2008

A Moment of Truth

Minutes come and go, and with them days, years, and even decades. But moments are different. They are like the Word of God, which our Jewish heritage has taught us is substantive and lasting. A moment, when it arrives--like the Word once it is spoken--hangs in the air all around you until it accomplishes what it was sent out to do.

Time stands still in a moment. Kronos becomes Kairos. Though your watch keeps ticking, your soul is drawn into a kind of eternal silence and your mind suddenly focused on who you are and why you are.

I had such a moment this week, sitting in the back pew of a beautiful large sanctuary, looking ahead on all the people who had gathered for the Memorial Service of a colleague's younger brother. Right in front of me was a tall strong football-like man--there for who knows why, yet not really there it seemed to me, noting his lack of singing and praying along. What was he thinking about life and death or the church and its ministry. if anything? Behind me were two older gentlemen, sitting on what must normally have been the usher's bench, constantly chattering with each other throughout the service. A bad sound system made it hard to hear and beside me sat an elder saint whose sagging head made it clear that even a better one wouldn't have interrupted his nap time for long.

Gazing from behind on a virtual sea of humanity ahead of me, I hungered all of a sudden to enter into each of their lives as human beings. What was really going on in them in all that was going on around them? And suddenly, in those fleeting, wondering minutes, a moment came to me requiring its own response. Who are you? I found myself being asked, and why are you here?

The moment had universal implications--as all such moments do--way beyond the minutes that go on around them. I was being addressed as a minister, a pastor, which is my life calling. Who I was in that moment--and why I was there--became crystal clear and compelling. It was as if a voice within me said, "Purity of heart is to will one thing, and one only--to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and worship him forever. And impurity of heart is to lose that passion in efforts defined only by minutes that add up to very little if anything at all. You are a servant of God, called in a world of sound-bite minutes to gather people like these around you into the very moment you are now experiencing. Do that and you will have lived well."

As the Memorial Service ended and people of every tribe and nation were ushered out in silence, the sea of faces I gazed on fueled a whole new passion in me to be, like Jesus, "about my Father's business." The moment, like all such moments in my experience, faded soon into minutes again--standing in a long line for lunch, engaging in conversation with a stranger who knew me though I did not know him, visiting a charming nearby museum of Swedish memorabilia, and then driving home. Yet, thank God, the moment remains, no less fresh for its passing, and no less compelling as a reminder of who I am and, even more, why I am as both a child and servant of God.