Emails with our Pastor

I think I have posted here before about the Senior Pastor at our church, and how well he and I get along, despite my having "come out" to him (as an Agnostic) two years or so ago.



I send him an email nearly every week, with my thoughts on that week's sermon (compliments on points I thought he made well, criticisms on points which I felt he did not make well, questions about things I did not understand, and more.



These emails are generally good-natured, and he generally replies to them in kind.



This past Sunday, he started his sermon by saying that he likes bumper stickers, and what they may say about a car's driver. He then showed a slide of a photo of a bumper sticker he had recently seen which read:

Quote:

I'M IN NO HURRY I'M HEADED TO WORK

...and then he segued into the sermon about what he feels the Bible says about work (the first in a series of sermons he will be giving dealing with Work (from a Biblical perspective).



The next day I sent him an email which began:

Quote:

Pastor Mark: Your reference to bumper stickers in yesterday's sermon reminded me of one of my favorites (see attached): I liked it even before I self-identified as an Agnostic. I hope you can at least appreciate the intended humor. Being disabled, I'm not sure how much I can get out of this current series of sermons (although I did appreciate your clarifying how those who cannot work fit into the "if you don't work, you can't eat" paradigm).

The next day I received a reply, which began:

Quote:

Hey Robert, I loved the bumper sticker. I do trust that all people will get some things out of the next series even if they are retired or looking for work.

This morning I sent this reply:

Quote:

Pastor Mark: I'm glad you got a smile out of the bumper sticker. I almost bought one a few years back, and would have, if I had my own car. But, since my lovely driver is definitely NOT an agnostic, that would not have gone over very well. Which reminds me of a story (I know, what doesn't? ): =====[ BEGIN STORY ]===== This was at least fifteen or twenty years ago. I was still ambulatory, and still married to my first wife. I was driving down the freeway on my way to work early one morning (it must have been around dawn), when there was suddenly a loud, insistent honking from directly to my left. I turned and looked out my window. There in the lane next to me was a car loaded with kids in their teens and twenties, all of them smiling brightly at me, and ALL of them were flipping me "the bird"! What the heck? I had not cut them off or anything, so what was their problem? I decided not to take the bait, and just faced front and drove on. A few seconds later, their driver honked insistently at me again. I turned and looked. Once again, they were all smiling brightly at me, and, at some signal, they all flipped me "the bird" again!! Mark, I rarely made obscene gestures while driving. Back then, in L.A. County, it was a good way to get yourself shot. But these six or eight college kids (male and female), all laughing and smiling while flipping ME off - for the SECOND TIME! - was just too much. Fed up, I scowled and angrily returned their "one finger salute". They all looked shocked and horrified, and their driver pulled over a lane further away from me. I pulled ahead and tried to keep an eye on them in my rear-view mirror as best as I could. My off ramp came up shortly after that, and I exited the freeway without further incident (checking in my mirror to make sure that they had not gotten off as well). When I got to work a few minutes later, I parked in the parking lot, looked around to make sure the carload of young jerks had not somehow followed me. I did not see them, and so got out of my car and walked towards the entrance to the building, keeping an eye out for their car. As I climbed the few steps leading up to the entrance, something made me turn and take one last look at my car, and suddenly it all made perfect sense. The car was a beat-up station wagon - the kind with the fake wood paneling on the sides. We had purchased it only a few days prior to this, used, from a large family who had advertised it in the local newspaper. What I had not noticed until that moment was that the previous owners had placed on the rear bumper one of those silvery, plastic "Jesus fish" (I think they are called an "Icthyus"). Those kids had not been flipping me off, they had been giving me the "One Way Jesus" gesture, assuming (naturally) that I was a fellow Christian! No wonder they had acted so shocked and scandalized at my responding to their attempt at "freeway fellowship" with an obscene gesture! I can only imagine the conversation in their car after our encounter. ("What the heck kind of a Christian was THAT guy?!?!" "Hey, it was kinda dark. Maybe when we gave him the "One Way Jesus" sign, he thought that we had...NOOO!!") I felt badly that I had - mistakenly - reacted as I had, but I still had to laugh, realizing that I might be the only one of us who now fully understood what had happened back there. I walked back to the car and gently pried the fish off of the bumper before walking back to the office and starting my work day. =====[ END STORY ]=====

...and have already received his reply, which began:

Quote:

Oh Robert, What a blessed funny story. Thanks for the great laugh. I might even use that story sometime in the future. I will disguise your person, to protect your innocent name. That was just plain funny.

If he does end up writing a sermon around that story, it will not be the first time one of my emails to him has resulted in my being the (unnamed) person in one of his sermons.



It's a werd feeling!

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