the most awkward backdrop to the end of a sermon i have ever seen
(the show must go on)


a day earlier, i commented to my father-in-law that the last thing a person wants during a football game is perspective. that moment after a play when a player doesn't get up. laying there motionless on the ground, something has gone awry that prevents his body and mind to tag-team up and take him back to the huddle. all of a sudden, the spectator is ripped away from his painted face. the obscenities he has yelled in the direction of the field or the television seem really, really trivial and shallow. the fun (for the moment) is gone, and you are slapped in the face with the reality that people can and do get hurt playing a game. a game that, for you, is entertainment. a game that allows a person to take a step away from a busy and stressful and lonely and broken world and yell and scream for a team that you may or may not have a good reason to be invested in. i hate those moments. the last thing you want during a football game is perspective.

fast forward to last sunday morning and toward the end of rick's sermon. a choir member falls out of her chair and onto the floor of the choir loft. the congregation notices the scene moments (although it felt like an hour) before the pastor does and he continues his message. finally, someone (or the murmur from the crowd in front of him) gets his attention and he turns around to check on the fallen choir member. from what i am told, rick is told that janice is ok. she just got hot. or lightheaded. she just needs to lay down. from my seat in the balcony, i do not get this memo. from my seat in the balcony, i wonder what in the world we are waiting on with regards to taking care of our fellow worship leader. rick stops, prays, and then comes the part that i have struggled with for three days. he finishes his sermon.

i am sure it was truncated and amended from his outline. but he finished. if you have any idea of the content of the end of the sermon post-janice falling, then you are a more focused person than i. then we sang a closing hymn? and then we ended the service with a benediction and a final verse as the cross, acolytes, and pastor exited all the while janice is still laying in the choir loft. there has been no announcement that she is ok. i guess it was understood. surely, the service would not have continued to it's routine end if she wasn't. but is that even the point? to me, my family, others in the balcony, and those throughout the church without firsthand knowledge of the goings on in the choir loft, we are left with the impression...the perception...that finishing out the service was more important than the immediate well-being of the choir member laying on the wooden floor at the front of the church.

i've gone back and forth with this. and i know rick was in a tough spot. it's his role to make sure that the congregation stays calm. that he doesn't act in a way that would cause people to panic when, in his heart, he knows there is no reason to. but as much as i understand the decision he made, i still haven't been able to agree with it.

perhaps it played in his favor that it wasn't sarah in the loft that passed out. that janice didn't have someone racing up the aisle that would have, to a greater degree, added to the confusion and awkwardness that was already thick enough that you could feel it sunday morning.

the last thing you want during a football game is perspective. to the contrary, personally, the first thing i look for in and at church is perspective. an environment where perception and reality meet because they are one and the same. that notion is still very much an idealism at huffman (probably every church), but it is something we must strive for. we are there for each other, right? from our pulpit, on many an occasion, we have minimized the importance of worship on sunday morning if it doesn't mean anything the rest of the week. shouldn't that idea ring true even if the "show" is interrupted. right or wrong, shouldn't we have just prayed for janice and for us and said, janice is going to be fine, but for the sake of being sure, we are going to end it here today?

who knows what i would have done had i been in rick's shoes. in the heat of the moment, i don't know. i know what my gut told me at the time what we should've done, but i don't know if i could've acted on those instincts.

i hope so.