Interruptions?

Here we are in Redmond, boxes and all. We are enjoying our new home and the wonderful weather (finally today it stopped raining)! But we are missing our church family greatly. We chose to go to a large Baptist church on Sunday, partially because it is only 4 blocks away. There were two services 8:15 and 11 with classes sandwiched in between. The early service is the "contemporary" service, while the 11 o'clock service is the "hymn" service. We wanted to sleep in, so we went at 11. My first observation was that we were the only people under 55 at the service, too late though we were already there. The service was not bad, old hymns I remember singing in church as a kid. We sang "Victory in Jesus" and "Footprints of Jesus" accompanied by a pipe organ. It was soooo Organ Grinder, I loved it, but it made me miss my Dad who would have loved it more than me (he always dreamed of playing at the Organ Grinder). Then Pastor Smart stood up to preach, I kid you not, Pastor Smart. And this is where service went all wrong. He is a descent preacher, very comfortable and funny, but he reached a bit.

He preached from Luke chapter 8, the story of Jairus and his dying daughter, and the unclean woman who wanted to touch Jesus' cloak. He compared Jairus, his daughter, and the unclean woman to flat tires, traffic tickets, and miscommunication calling all of them "interruptions!" INTERRUPTIONS!!! Come on Smart, what the hell are you thinking? His question was this: Jesus teaches us how to live, so what can we learn about how to deal with interruptions. I wanted to stand up and yell at him but Sarah wouldn't let me.

Here's my problem with Smart.

First of all, comparing hurting souls to car trouble and traffic tickets is absurd. They are not even in the same universe. It is a ridiculous example of how Starbucks/McDonald's like our churches have become, packaging spirituality in a way to make people happy, seeking the path of least resistance. Smart deliverd a message that was so pc it challenged his congregation to do nothing but feel good about shrugging off hurting souls in order to get back to your mission for the moment. A fastfood response to a complicated problem.

Second, hurting souls were not interruptions of Jesus' mission, they ARE his mission. The problem was Smart was asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how to deal with interruptions, we need to ask what attitude to have so that hurting souls become our mission and not interruptions. Jesus showed us EXPLICITLY, in this story from Luke 8, that interruptions are what he was all about. The unclean woman interrupted the effort to save Jairus' daughter, yet she was important enough for Jesus to give his attention even in a life or death situation like. Our everyday schedules and appointments are far less important than what Jesus was doing, so how much more should we be available to deal with interruptions. Nice job Smart, I won't be back.