What do you wear to church?
In honor of the sesquicentennial of the East Koshkonog Lutheran Church in East Koshkonog, Wisconsin, the congregation had t-shirts made that said “One hundred and fifty years of spine tingling sermons….except for last Sunday.”
This is very clever, but frankly it concerns me that so few preachers are preaching fire and brimstone anymore. Jefferson Prairie, I’m afraid, is full of people who might benefit from a little fear: too much kissing and hand holding going on there. At least, that’s what my dad’s cousin Jill says. Specifically, she says that if you’re kissing and holding hands in church, it means “you got a little last night.” And though she brought up the topic during the coffee hour, she insists that it is totally inappropriate for Sunday morning.
My brother Richard always says that if he were the preacher, the first Sunday that he preached he would read Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners at the Hand of an Angry God” in its entirety. That’s right, three and a half hours of fist pounding adamancy that people are nothing more than spiders hanging over the boiling cauldrons of Hell.
(It is interesting to note that this plan was hatched by the same “preacher” who went to a high school graduation party of a boy from the church, took about two hundred of the boy’s wallet sized senior portraits, and then arrived at church early on Sunday to put a photograph in every single hymnal, to mark the page of the morning’s hymns. (We sat in the balcony, to view the confusion and amusement of the congregation, and managed to keep a straight face even when the pastor’s eyes jumped up in bewilderment. After the service, my dad’s cousin Charlotte said to us “seems a bit egotistical, doesn’t it?))
Perhaps there needs to be some sort of an “awakening”, though historically that didn’t go particularly well the first or second time around. Besides, predicting the coming of Christ to my parents’ cornfields seems a little trite.
It seems that people are turned off by too much Hell—or at least that was my experience when last I went to a religiously themed haunted house. It starts out scary, like a haunted house should, but then ends with a lot of weeping and kneeling and, even worse, hand holding and kissing. Frankly, I don’t want to have a confessional at the end of the haunted house, I want to get out of there and go to the Steak n’ Shake for cheese fries and milk shakes.
Last September, my Great Uncle Vernon went so far as to nearly die during the sermon. I’m not sure if he was shocked by a face in the hymnal or what, but the paramedics had to come and revive him right there in the side aisle of the sanctuary. Through it all the pastor and the organ continued to drone on, as though they didn’t even notice. I think I might have stopped the sermon to pray, but at least, I guess, the pastor wasn’t dwelling on the horrors of Hell—it just didn’t seem like the right moment for that. And, all in all, it would be a peaceful place to go: surrounded by family, plush red carpet, stained glass windows. It would be kind of like being at your own funeral and everyone says the pastor is very good a funerals and that his eulogies are unmatched. (My grandmother wrote her own, of course, but the pastor read it beautifully at the service.) When Vernon was finally revived, despite Jill’s admonitions and the pastor’s indifference, there was much hugging. I think the reason, here, is quite clear.
At any rate, I’m considering making new shirts for our church: “Jefferson Prairie Lutheran Church: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
This is very clever, but frankly it concerns me that so few preachers are preaching fire and brimstone anymore. Jefferson Prairie, I’m afraid, is full of people who might benefit from a little fear: too much kissing and hand holding going on there. At least, that’s what my dad’s cousin Jill says. Specifically, she says that if you’re kissing and holding hands in church, it means “you got a little last night.” And though she brought up the topic during the coffee hour, she insists that it is totally inappropriate for Sunday morning.
My brother Richard always says that if he were the preacher, the first Sunday that he preached he would read Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners at the Hand of an Angry God” in its entirety. That’s right, three and a half hours of fist pounding adamancy that people are nothing more than spiders hanging over the boiling cauldrons of Hell.
(It is interesting to note that this plan was hatched by the same “preacher” who went to a high school graduation party of a boy from the church, took about two hundred of the boy’s wallet sized senior portraits, and then arrived at church early on Sunday to put a photograph in every single hymnal, to mark the page of the morning’s hymns. (We sat in the balcony, to view the confusion and amusement of the congregation, and managed to keep a straight face even when the pastor’s eyes jumped up in bewilderment. After the service, my dad’s cousin Charlotte said to us “seems a bit egotistical, doesn’t it?))
Perhaps there needs to be some sort of an “awakening”, though historically that didn’t go particularly well the first or second time around. Besides, predicting the coming of Christ to my parents’ cornfields seems a little trite.
It seems that people are turned off by too much Hell—or at least that was my experience when last I went to a religiously themed haunted house. It starts out scary, like a haunted house should, but then ends with a lot of weeping and kneeling and, even worse, hand holding and kissing. Frankly, I don’t want to have a confessional at the end of the haunted house, I want to get out of there and go to the Steak n’ Shake for cheese fries and milk shakes.
Last September, my Great Uncle Vernon went so far as to nearly die during the sermon. I’m not sure if he was shocked by a face in the hymnal or what, but the paramedics had to come and revive him right there in the side aisle of the sanctuary. Through it all the pastor and the organ continued to drone on, as though they didn’t even notice. I think I might have stopped the sermon to pray, but at least, I guess, the pastor wasn’t dwelling on the horrors of Hell—it just didn’t seem like the right moment for that. And, all in all, it would be a peaceful place to go: surrounded by family, plush red carpet, stained glass windows. It would be kind of like being at your own funeral and everyone says the pastor is very good a funerals and that his eulogies are unmatched. (My grandmother wrote her own, of course, but the pastor read it beautifully at the service.) When Vernon was finally revived, despite Jill’s admonitions and the pastor’s indifference, there was much hugging. I think the reason, here, is quite clear.
At any rate, I’m considering making new shirts for our church: “Jefferson Prairie Lutheran Church: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
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