38 FEATURE
PEOPLE HAVE AN IDEA THAT THE PREACHER IS AN ACTOR ON A STAGE AND THEY ARE THE CRITICS, BLAMING OR PRAISING HIM. WHAT THEY DON ' T KNOW IS THAT THEY ARE THE ACTORS ON THE STAGE; HE( THE PREACHER) IS MERELY THE PROMPTER STANDING IN THE WINGS, REMINDING THEM OF THEIR LOST LINES.
Three suicides and two sudden deaths leave you reeling. The last couple of years have felt like I have been standing in the middle of a nuclear fallout zone. Marriages lying in ruins, families torn apart, windows of hope shattered, pathways forward strewn with the detritus of heartbreak. I conducted the funerals for most of them too. It’ s hard to be faithful to God when those you love the most wonder where he is, why he’ s let their lives fall apart and most of them aren’ t Christians. Preaching resurrection is difficult when you smell the stench of death clinging to you. Yet I have kept preaching and teaching through these last few years. What has helped me to keep going? There are many things, but let me highlight three – calling, confidence and vulnerability.
CALLING – A COMPELLED CHOICE
In our church building the preacher has to walk up a set of steps onto a stage that is visible from both the ground floor and the balcony. Sometimes those steps feel like nothing to me but sometimes they feel like the north face of the Eiger. As I spoke of Christ’ s resurrection on Easter Sunday last year, every single word had to be pulled out of the centre of my convictions. It was hard because this was my church family and they walk with me. They had loved me, cared for me, wept with me and carried me through the pain and sorrow of the adversities that had hit us; in many ways they are still doing that. Talking to them is talking to those who know me. They’ ve seen me at my best and they’ ve seen me at my worst. They knew that this was a hard day for me, that it was taking every ounce of energy I had to get through the message; but they also knew that despite my struggles what I was preaching was what I believed. I was choosing to proclaim life and hope in the midst of death and despair. I was choosing to share faith whilst shrouded in doubt. I was choosing faith.
In some ways the choice was a compelled one, not out of fear or obligation but rather out of a sense of calling. We can resist our callings. We can run away from them, like the prophet Jonah. God has given us freedom. Jeremiah must have felt like that. In the face of huge persecution and deep uncertainty he said,