Lean on your staff and worship God

Today I did something I haven't done in over half a year. I had made a choice to leave a part of my life behind and move forward, as I felt I had come to a dead end with it. But today I stood before my church and preached a sermon. When I stepped down from the Calvary leadership and teaching teams I vowed I would have nothing to do with anything that was pastoral anymore.

So how did I end up delivering the mail this Sunday?

My latest course I'm wrapping up is on worship; it's the last of my Bible/Theology courses in the program, from here on it's a semester's worth of liberal arts courses and then I graduate. My final project for the course was I had to design a worship service and implement it. At first I thought, "Great, just when I thought I was finished with that part of my life I have to do something pastoral." But then I found out that I didn't have to participate in leading it, which was a relief. However, as the planning went ahead there came a snag in who was supposed to speak on the Sunday in question. To smooth things out and keep some consistency with the overall theme I was aiming for, I decided to take on the task of doing the sermon.

Reluctantly, I might add.

So what I did was pick a Bible character, as today was the start of the summer character series, and used the corresponding passage to tie together the new series with the one we finished last week. And the series we just finished up was... wait for it... worship. In a nutshell I talked about how Joseph, a Patriarch of Israel, worshiped God even though his family sold themselves to Pharaoh (Genesis 47). Everyone in Egypt was starving and sold themselves to the Egyptian king so they had wheat for bread. Now God had promised Jacob that his descendants would settle in Canaan, which then became the nation of Israel. From there Israel would bless the nations, and ultimately this was fulfilled in the coming of Christ. By faith Jacob could see the promised fulfilled, which enabled him to worship. How that ties in with us today is there are things in our lives that we are enslaved to which interfere with our worship. Only our faith in Christ's sacrifice can then free us from what binds us so we can engage God in worship.

In addition to picking out the songs and readings for the service I planned out a ritual for the church to do before communion. I went out and bought some wheat (25kg I might add, which was the smallest amount I could buy it in), divided it up into Ziploc bags and passed them out to everyone. After the sermon the grain was collected and taken to the front as an offering to God, just like they did in the Old Testament (except we didn't burn it like they did...) The grain symbolized our bondage (it was for grain that Israel sold themselves to Pharaoh) and our poverty (grain was offered by those too poor to offer an animal sacrifice). Then the people took communion, which symbolizes Jesus' sacrifice for us. Jesus called Himself the Bread of Life, and it was fitting that we worshiped God today by eating food that came from grain. Anyhow, to sum up it was a very moving service; I know this because I saw a lot of people who were tearing up during communion, and a few came up to receive prayer afterwards.

So if everything went so well, why then you may ask did I decide to put pastoral ministry on the shelf? I'm going to be very honest here. One of the many little reasons why is the emotional toll it takes on me. Yes, it was a powerful service and I felt so much joy because of it. But then I take a bit of a hit afterwards and I end up feeling exposed and depressed. I've learned that I need some supports in place after I do a sermon, and even though I got prayed for afterwards and had friends there to support me I still ended up feeling alone and isolated. I'm sure if I didn't have those supports in place it would have been worse, but still I have to deal with it. Maybe that's what binds me up, I dunno. I never preached from the perspective that I've arrived, but that the sermon I'm delivering is just as much for me as for the rest of the church. Maybe there's a promised land that I can't see, but for now I need to just trust God and, as Jacob did, lean on my own staff and worship Him.

I also have to figure out what I'm going to do with 25kg of wheat now...