Of Course, I Could Be Wrong...: DON'T BLAME MADPRIEST, BLAME THE NUN

A funny for the day care of MadPriest (a/k/a The Rev. Jonathan Hagger).

Of Course, I Could Be Wrong...: DON'T BLAME MADPRIEST, BLAME THE NUN: Bob feared his wife Peg wasn't hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her...

Temptations

Yes, clergy are subject to temptations - just like everyone else. Prayer doesn't eliminate them nor does any other religious praxis. They are just there ... but not all of them are terrible and destructive. Sometimes they are funny - the kind of temptations that point out something absurd or humorous.

I was tempted yesterday to process into the church to the tune of Auld Lang Syne ... it was, after all, the Church's "New Year's Eve" celebration of the Feast of Christ the King ... the very last Sunday of the Church year. But we didn't have an organist yesterday ... so I let it go.

Then there was the temptation a fellow pastor friend had to use Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days as a recessional after preaching about how he didn't want to hear any more about how things "used to be so much better at our church."

These are the kinds of temptations you know you probably won't act on but we think about them nonetheless.

Occasionally though, the absurdity of something just gets the best of me. Like two weeks ago when I had left a message on the National Cathedral's voice mail system regarding getting my pass to attend the consecration of Bishop Mariann Budde. A couple of days after leaving the message, my phone rang and a woman's voice on the other end said:

"Hello. This is the National Cathedral calling."

And my absurd gene kicked in and responded:

"WOW! A talking cathedral! That's a nifty new feature! Was this part of the improvements put in as part of the earthquake repair?"

So temptation got the best of me on that one ... and for the record, we both laughed until our sides hurt.

Who sez Anglicans are boring?

I'm filing this under "Best Parodies EVAH!"

What the ... ??

Just about the point where you think you've seen it all, God surprises you with something. Today's surprise could be filed under, "You gotta be kidding me!"

My sister-in-law contacted us about some family matters and told Beloved Husband that their father had been called up for jury duty. On the surface, this isn't very remarkable as people get called up for jury duty all the time, right? Well, yes ... but they usually don't get called up AFTER they die!

That's right people, the State of Maryland wants a dead man to serve on a jury! I wouldn't have believed it ... but it happened.

So we suggested that if my sister-in-law can free her schedule to report for duty with Dad's ashes in hand, maybe they'll let him off this time. :-D

You just can't make this stuff up!

If there's anything I've learned in my years of serving the church, it's that all sorts of weird and wacky things happen there. Now I'm not talking about your average run of the mill funny stuff that makes you chuckle. No, I'm talking about the belly laugh, "No way! You gotta be kidding me!!" kind of stuff.

Like when I went to visit one of our shut ins this week at Calvary and he told me about the time the head usher's pants fell down ... as he was standing at the front of the church! And he told me about the time he knocked over a whole row of folding chairs just as the choir finished singing their anthem. Talk about a bang up finish!

Then there was the time our senior pastor first visited Calvary as a guest speaker many years ago. When he got up to the pulpit and started to speak, a stream of obscenities came out over the sound system. He stopped talking and it stopped ... but when he began to talk the obscenities started up again. Five men jumped up and ran to the sound system to change the wireless channel to another one. Turns out, the sound system had picked up a local trucker who was saying some rather colorful things over his CB radio. I told him he should have claimed he was speaking in tongues with a bad dubbing job.

Then there was the time many years ago when a friend of mine was a teenager and was practicing with the thurible at the Cathedral and the chain let go. (For those of you who don't know what a thurible is, it's the metal container on a chain in which you burn incense and sling the smoke around the church) Imagine the thurible, flying hot coals and incense shooting through the air like a comet and he's just praying it doesn't land on a car! When it landed on the sidewalk, he thought he had stomped out all the coals and cinders ... but no, the mulch caught fire and Baltimore's fire department responded to put out the fire.

Or the acolyte who, back in the days before air conditioning, just wore a surplice to stay cool in a hot humid church. But when he bent over to pick something up, the fans which were running blew up the surplice and all he had on were his boxers! A sight the visiting bishop will not soon forget.

Now I'm not saying that every Sunday is this entertaining, but I do believe God lets funny stuff happen in church and I think it serves a purpose. We need to laugh ... it's just that simple. These kinds of crazy things remind us that we are not as self-important as we think we are and there are times we just need to lighten up.

And yes, all of these things really happened in real churches ... you can't just make this stuff up!