what does all that have to do with friendship and porches? In John 15:12–17, Jesus calls the church a community of friends who love one another. To me, the primary responsibility of a pastor is the nurturing and growing of such a community of mutual love. And that includes the pastor. We’re in it, too. We’re not separate or distanced from this community of friends. We’re immersed in it; we participate in it. I believe we call it incarnation.
The pastor’s authority comes out of this mutual love and friendship, not in spite of it. Over time, the members of the congregation come to know the pastor as a friend—a friend who prays for them, loves them, cares for them, shows up and works alongside them, and listens to them, while also being a friend who is immersed in God.
When Sunday morning rolls around, the twenty minutes of preaching comes out of this mutual friendship, of listening to the people and to God. My authority comes from being a friend who sometimes shares a strong word of challenge, and other times, a word of comfort in the midst of heartbreaking grief. They listen, not because I hold an office, but because we love one another and they recognize the gift and work of the Spirit in and through me. That’s why they come and visit on my porch.
Cultural critic and writer bell hooks says, “In the days of my girlhood, when everyone sat on their porches, usually on their swings, it was the way we all became acquainted with one another, the way we created community.”
She goes on: “A perfect porch is a place where the soul can rest.”2
That sounds right to me. Sitting on my porch among friends, our souls can rest.
2. hooks, Belonging, 147, 152.
Truth Dazzles Gradually
Kyle Childress
At age fifty-one, Noah Adams, a host on National Public Radio, abruptly decided he had to have a piano so he invested in a new Steinway upright—a financial commitment that provided extra incentive to practice.
Adams tells this charming story of his first year of learning to play the piano in his book, Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures. Yet learning to play was a daunting task, particularly given his already demanding schedule. He found it difficult and frustrating; he couldn’t simply sit down and make the beautiful music he wanted. There were scales to learn, and basic rhythms to be mastered. Initially, he decided against going to a teacher, trying such shortcuts as a “Miracle Piano Teaching System” on the computer. A friend’s warning proved to be prophetic: “You might be learning music with that computer, but you’re not learning how to play.”3
Eventually, Adams signed up for an intensive ten-day music camp. He discovered that there is no substitute for regular, disciplined practice and the tutelage of teachers. By the end of the first year, his frustrations began to recede. He actually desired time for practice. He had become initiated into the art of piano playing. He also learned to appreciate the craft of making and caring for pianos, as well as the importance of the history of pianos and great pianists—classical, jazz, blues, even rock-and-roll.
Some things take time. They can’t be coerced and they can’t be done quickly or easily. Besides playing the piano I think of gardening or learning to hit an inside curve-ball or reading poetry or learning to paint or dance. Raising children and being married is done over the long haul, too. I remember a comment by Wendell Berry who said that it takes more courage to be married day after day for fifty years than it does to be Samson. Samson goes out and does one spectacularly faithful act while long marriages consist of thousands of small acts of fidelity over many years.
Knowing God takes time, too. God walked with his people for forty years across the wilderness, sat with his people for seventy years in exile, became a human being and pitched his tent with us for over thirty years before dying on a cross and then taking three days to be resurrected. To know this God means learning to walk alongside at the pace of God. When God called to Moses through the burning bush it was after Moses had been walking those desert hillsides for forty years. I’m convinced that those forty years were a kind of twelve-step recovery for Moses that freed him from his addiction to empire; it was not simply that it took forty years for Moses to be ready to lead the people out of imperial bondage, but it took forty years for Moses to be able to see the burning bush in the first place. For all I know, God had been burning bushes out there in the wilderness for a long time and Moses never had the eyes to see them or had failed to slow down enough to notice them.
The same goes for walking with Jesus. There is no substitute for the slow, sometimes painful growth that comes through disciplined habits of practice shaped by the crucified and risen Christ. One does not become an excellent piano player, painter, dancer, carpenter, or baseball player overnight; neither does one learn to become a Christian overnight. We can’t know Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, in five quick easy lessons accompanied by an inspirational DVD. One needs teachers and mentors and a community of friends, and one needs to practice over a long period of time.
The first words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel according to John are, “What are you looking for?” (1:38). He is talking to two disciples of John the Baptist. And they respond in what sounds like a strange way, “Teacher, where are you staying?” What they are looking for, what they seek, is not so much information from the teacher; otherwise Jesus could have handed them his book or directed them to his website. No, they want to know him.
The word we translate as “staying” refers to the source of one’s life and meaning. So when these two disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” they are asking, “What is it that sustains you? What power do you have? Where do you remain? Where do you live? How do you live? Who are you really?” It’s the same word used in John later, over in chapter 15, when we are told we are to abide in Christ. Abiding, staying, remaining, residing, dwelling—they all take time.
Jesus says encouragingly, “Come and see.” Then John tells us, “They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.” Here, in a simple and understated way, John gives us the essence of Christian discipleship. Discipleship is not primarily getting information or receiving the “right” answer; it is moving into the “house” with Jesus. It is living with Jesus Christ. And to live with Jesus takes time and community.
Emily Dickinson wrote, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— /… The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.”4 There are some things, and truth is one of them, that can be understood rightly only if we understand them over time. The very essence of truth is that it can only be known slowly, in bits and pieces that are chewed on, meditated on, reflected over, talked about, practiced and then practiced some more with others living with the same truth.
Gradually, as we come to know the truth of Jesus Christ, we may be dazzled.
3. Adams, Piano Lessons, 86.
4. Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, 506.
Out of the Old Rock
Kyle Childress
On the floor of the little church building where I served my first pastorate were three spots on the floor along the second pew where the varnish and polish were worn down to the bare wood. It was where Dude Templeton, Olga Blair, and Irene Calhoun rested their feet
