I have to blame somebody, Philadelphia

On Monday, July 29, I felt like a summer cold was encroaching.

Knowing that I was supposed to travel on Thursday, on the morning of Tuesday, July 30. I took a COVID test.

Wait time for the test kit didn’t matter. I was positive immediately. Just what I expected to happen.

I spent the next few minutes trying to remember everyone that I had spent time with on Monday. I compiled a list and sent an email to Kim Tingler at the Trinity church office. Graciously, Kim forwarded the email for me. I said a silent prayer asking that none of these people get the COVID.

I’m sure it didn’t help that from July 23 thru July 28, I boarded four different jets in four different airports traveling to and from the Experimental Airline Association’s annual airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Over a half-million people from all over the world attend the show every year.

But this bout of COVID, I’m going to blame on American Airlines and the night I spent in the Philadelphia airport.

Tuesday, I was miserable, and that pushed into Wednesday a bit. Nasal congestion, a raspy voice, a few chills, but no sustained fever.

By Friday, I was feeling better, and I volunteered to open Trinity on Saturday morning so that construction workers could keep hacking away at our renovation project.

They worked from 6 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. A little before 3, I drove to the building to make sure that all of the exterior doors were locked.

Wearing my mask, I saw that someone had scribbled on a piece of cardboard that one of the slats in a Bible rack in the Sanctuary had come lose. So, I tracked it down . Sure enough, the slat was just dangling there.

Internally, the harsh words were rising. It is beyond me how someone can properly place his or her foot on that exposed slat and exert enough force to make four pneumatically installed nails fail. I curse every time this happens.

But, I’ll tell you what aggravates me even more, we never use those Bibles during Sunday morning worship. In my thirty-two years of membership, I can remember a handful of times when a minister says, “please take out your pew Bible, and follow me in the scripture reading.”

Technology changed all of that. Now the scripture reading appears on two TV monitors at the front of the Sanctuary.

I grabbed the tools I needed to make the repair. To do this, I have to be flat on my back. I search for the right angle to be able to position myself to use a hammer to tap the slat back in place.

Sometimes the nails and slat play nicely, and other times they are uncooperative. Today, it is 50/50. One end complies. The other end sticks it to me.

Flat on my back, I stare up at the ceiling as I shift strategies to combat the non-compliant end.

I start thinking about other quirks of managing this building that aggravate me.

Un-flushed toilets and urinals are the worst. This is especially true if they have sat for several days. The aroma is like a port-a-john that was left on a construction site for a month. What I want to know is if you flush at home, why can’t you flush at God’s house?

Next would be our two church vans. A few times they resemble a frat house after a weekend kegger. The floor of a van is not a trash can.

And yet, I keep coming back to fix pew racks, flush restroom equipment, and cleanup two weary vans.

Why?

Maybe its God’s way of getting back at me for all the times I have let him down during my lifetime.

Or maybe, it is because of the Trinity people. Despite my grumpy, grouchy, crabby, shirty, picky personality that surfaces more frequently now, it is the hearts of Trinity that make me hang around too.

In your hearts are stories. Stories that need to be told. I only wish we could peel those stories out of you before you croak. Reading about your hobbies, talents, and skills in your obituary is frustrating.

You see those stories allow people to make connections. Connections provide an opportunity for a relationship to develop. A congregation can’t develop a relationship with “ashes to ashes, dust to dust, now you will no longer he with us.”

If a church is going to continue to attempt to live, it must be capable of telling stories.

Stories make us think. But stories also push us to ponder deeper, to dream, to wonder, and ask.

There are more stories in this building than broken slats, un-flushed toilets, and trashed vans.

I love the ancient Cokesbury Worship Hymnal. Confession, yes, I took one from Trinity.

I keep it on a shelf compartment below my desktop at home.

On page 286 is the classic “Tell Me The Stories of Jesus” written by William H. Parker and Frederic A. Challinor. The words are straightforward, and even for a guy like me who can’t sing a lick, this is a singable hymn.

But more importantly, the writer wants to be told the stories of Jesus.

And yet for my old brain, I think some days, Jesus is thinking—“Hey enough of me, this world of ours is making me weary, I need to hear your stories. I need some hope. I need some light. I need to laugh. I need some different angles to see the world. I’m running out of Kleenex up here.”

Yes, I will blame my latest confrontation with my dear friend COVID on my unscheduled overnight stay in the Philadelphia airport.

But, if we fail to share our stories with each other before we croak, we have no one to blame, but ourselves.
We never know how sharing a life story might make a difference in the life of another person.

My wife’s nephew, Brad, and his family live in London, England. Brad grew up in Los Angeles. He still follows the ups and downs of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

A couple of years ago, Brad told me about the Eric Nusbaum book Stealing Home. The book is about the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles and the “lives caught in between.”

I love this quote from page 202: “The fact that big-league baseball hadn’t already reached the West Coast was a character flaw, a result of baseball, almost by its very nature, being resistant to change and obsessed with its own past.”

I’m an imperfect human being, I have character flaws, God knows my poor choice of words in his house.
On paper, Trinity is still a good sized church.

However, if we continue to be obsessed with our past, and resist change, we’re dead.

Stories can move us out of the past.

Stories can form the steps for change.

And stories can come from an unwanted, overnight stop in the Philadelphia airport with COVID as a post-script.

How many other people in our congregation have had a similar travel experience and a confrontation with COVID?

Sharing those stories establishes a link, a connection, and the opportunity to relate to a person that I might not have known ten minutes ago.

Jesus was a storyteller.

It is time for you, me, we, us to share and tell our stories.

You, me, we, us can’t continue to hold our stories for the obituaries published in a newspaper.

Perhaps, this verse from Psalm 119 verse 130 will nudge us: “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.”

Author’s note: I confess, I’m an imperfect caretaker of God’s house. If my whining wounded you, I apologize.