I heard my mother-in-law say now and again that she ‘suspicioned’ this or that. I always thought that was a made up word. My Merriam-Webster says it is a word though they consider it “chiefly dialectal”. I always liked the word because you knew what it meant and it was apropos to many things.
Well, for about 5 years prior to retiring, I had suspicioned that indeed it was me not the laity who despised the ministry. It was me not ‘them’ who took it for granted, didn’t think it worth that much, and had value only in crisis. Now after over a year of sitting at the feet of a faithful Confessional Lutheran pastor, I repent of how horribly wrong, mistaken, and downright sinful I was.
While still in Office the Mrs. tried to help when she said out of the blue one day: “You know you never get to hear what we do. No one pronounces your sins absolved every Sunday; no one tells you week after week that your sins are not on you but on Jesus. You hear an Elder say, “‘Take, eat; take drink this is the true Body and Blood of your Lord Jesus Christ given and shed for you.’ But it is so much different to have that word preached into your ears or even taught into them.”
If you belong to the group that has pointed out that Romans says “Faith comes by hearing not by reading” and the rich man in hell is told that his living brothers should hear Moses not read him, you are now being told you’re emphasizing a point that is not really there. You see, these scholars, correct us, that books were so expensive hardly anyone had them and not many were literate anyways, so that’s why it’s hearing not reading.
I’m not saying there is no value in reading Scripture, but hearing has taken pride of place ever since the Great Shema bellowed: “Hear, O Israel” not read, not see, not remember but “Hear!”
I haven’t missed the privilege of preaching or teaching but I have missed the dust. Not Bunyan’s dust that is Christian’s Original Sin and nearly chokes him when swept (24. “A Dusty Parlor”). But foundry dust.
In 1977 I worked all summer in the Chevrolet Grey Iron Foundry. I ran a V-8 sand mold press. I wasn’t there long when I noticed fine dust was everywhere. Almost too fine to see except in certain places where it accumulated. I started wearing for 10 hours a day an industrial dusk mask.
When you preach and teach the Gospel a byproduct is a fine dust of the things of God. Think of the Catholic’s odor of sanctity that come from saints. Well, this Lutheran has found a dusting of sanctity. And you know how halo comes from the Greek for ‘threshing-floor’. That’s because you can see the grain dust floating around the heads of the threshers in a ring. Well, that’s what you get as a byproduct of proclaiming the Gospel from pulpits and lecterns and in hospital rooms and homes, both funeral and familial.
A “gross” illustration might help. I asked my dental hygienist, Leo, why he dressed in long sleeves and all buttoned up even in summer’s heat. He explained, “There’s a fine particulate of mouth matter that is released when you polish, drill, file, etc..” And so it is when baptizing, preaching, absolving, and celebrating the Lord’s Supper. There’s a fine particulate of the divine hoovering all about.
I do miss that, but it’s nothing compared to being on the receiving end of Word and Sacrament, Law and Gospel, Christ and Him crucified. You can fail to see and/or use that find dusting of sanctity that is there for those in the office. I still think there is some benefit to breathing in the fine dust even when you’re not aware of it, but it was not till I was out of office that I actually saw it. Only when it was gone did I realize it had be there all along.
Jeremiah 23:29, “‘Is not My word like fire?” declares the LORD, ‘and like a hammer which shatters a rock?'” Burning and shattering produce a fine particulate you know. But it’s even more of a joy and privilege to be “burned” and “hammered” every week. Maya Angelo knows why the caged bird sings, but I now know why the released bird does.
I suspicion I will always miss the fine mist, the halo, the odor of sanctity that wafts around the one loosing the fire and hammering sins into powder, but to see my sin and sinfulness so burned and smashed is better still.
