The Unbusy Pastor, 22 October 2009

I always used to wonder what my pastor did all day. I remember his office, left past the secretary's L-shaped desk, down a short, narrow hallway, behind an an likewise narrow door (which was always open). To the right as one entered was Pastor Lloyd Powers' broad hardwood desk where he would sit with his back to a window facing a street with a name I can't recall. I remember the books; so many books in dark shelves, floor-to-ceiling all along the three other walls. I used to wonder if he'd read all of those books. Maybe that's what he did all day. Or maybe he sat behind that desk in the black suit with the white clerical collar, praying for us (specifically, me) all day long. What else would he do? It couldn't be his Sunday sermon. All he did was read the bible and talk about it, which seemed like a perfectly obvious thing to do. Even as a 10-year-old I was sure I could do it. The liturgy alternated in a two-week cycle with communion, and never changed otherwise aside from the High Holy Days. I can still recite most of it by heart to this day. No preparation needed there.

From this 30-year distance, I know something different: Lloyd Powers a pastor of the ordinary. He was a priest of the utterly commonplace.

He was a gentle, loving servant who saw divinity in the menial, who taught me as much about God through casual interaction as he did in the Easter homily. His familiar presence in the lives of the 200 or so congregants of St. Mark's Lutheran church brought the presence of the Lord into birth and death, marriage and divorce, piano recitals, back yard cookouts, Easter egg hunts and birthday parties. He was there the day I was confirmed. He was there when I ripped the back pocket off my new corduroy pants during an attempt to escape a secret crush (who will remain nameless). He was there when each of my parents died. He was there nearly every Sunday over the course of 20 years; the Sundays he wasn't are memorable specifically for his absence. He counseled me after I was released from rehab the first time. His figure is in the center of, and head-and-shoulders above, the pictures of dozens of classes of confirmands. He looked the same to me in 1980 as he did in in the black and white photos from 1965.

What did he do all day? He loved God in every ordinary way imaginable, and he did it on purpose. In so doing he released to God almost every freedom, even what he would wear each day. He took seriously the injunction to love the Lord with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength, understanding that no part is insignificant and beyond redemption, and by extension, no person is insignificant or beyond redemption. I think that he had long abandoned the act of making distinctions between the sacred and the profane. He understood the the Sacred has already chosen us, and that each one of our choices speaks of our recognition of this fact and a worship born of love, or a stale-hearted rejection of it that leads to interior death by exhaustion.

The Truth is this: everything matters. Everything. There is purpose in it all, and I don't mean some lock-step predetermination that renders freedom meaningless. We are not crushed under the weight of God without heart. I mean the loving interaction of two wills that results in meaningful, joyous liberty. I mean that there is opportunity to adore God intensely in each workaday activity. Every average interactions carry the potential for miraculous love. The banal bears heavy on the eternal. Inside of suffering there is the capacity for sanctification.

As the bush in Exodus 4 burns without being consumed, so burns the sacred from within the commonplace.