Peculiar Preacher

The church in which I grew up taught me that hats are vaguely sinister.  I never heard “Take off your hat in church!” because none of us wanted to commit an unpardonable sin.  Boys took off their hats because we were in the presence of God (and never thought to ask, “Since we believe God is everywhere, why would we ever wear hats?). 

The rule in my old hat Baptist church was “No hats” with one exception.  Each year women celebrated Jesus’ resurrection with hats covered with enough ribbons, flowers, and feathers to make Lady Gaga jealous.  These special occasion hats were acceptable in the same way chocolate Easter bunnies were an acceptable breakfast once a year.    

This inconsistent prohibition on hats in worship makes sense until you worship with a Jewish congregation.  Jewish men wear yarmulkes as a reminder that God is always above us.  In many African American churches women wear hats like the Queen of England wears her crown.  Bishops have pointy hats.  Cardinals have red hats.  The Pope has a white hat.  Catholic nuns and Muslim women wear headscarves.  Hindus and Sikhs wear turbans.  Some religious groups insist you take off your hat and others insist you put on a hat.  I’ll eat my hat if that makes sense. 

Paul, as is often the case, is not helpful.  The fezless saint writes:  “Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.  But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven” (1 Corinthians 11:4-5 KJV).  Paul says that men can’t wear hats in church, not even a dignified derby, if they are preaching.  Women who preach have to wear hats (especially if the woman is bald).

We should tip our caps to the Anabaptist women who were so concerned with violating Paul’s command that they wore head coverings in the shower so they could pray there.  Some Amish and Mennonite women cover their heads all of the time, because who knows when you will need to prophesy. 

Maybe Paul was talking through his hat, but like Paul, I like women’s hats.  I owe my existence to a hat.  Forty-five years before I was born, my mother’s father ran through the rain to catch a train.  He was a beginning student on his way to Mississippi A&M.  When he got on the train he saw a beautiful girl in a dark blue hat.  She had been out in the rain, too, and her brand new blue hat was losing its blue.  She didn’t know it, but blue streaks were running down both sides of her face.  My grandfather had never seen such lovely blue stripes on any woman.  He thought, “She must be rich to afford such an unusual hat.  I am going to marry that woman.”  He sat beside her and tried not to stare at the beautiful hat streaming down her cheeks.

I wonder what Paul would say about Bob’s hat.  When I was pastor of a rural church in Indiana, Bob wore a cap during basketball season that proclaimed, “The Lord is my shepherd.  Bobby Knight is my coach.”  We had no problem letting Bob pass the hat when it was time for the offering. 

Perhaps I should keep this under my hat, but I find myself questioning the embargo on sombreros.  When I wear a fedora I assume students see me as whimsical rather than as an old guy going bald. 

Is it possible Abraham Lincoln stopped going to church because they wouldn’t let him wear his stovepipe?  Would Sherlock Holmes have been a churchgoer if his deerstalker had been welcome?  Did Daniel Boone choose between his coonskin cap and a seat in the pew?  Would we hear more barbershop quartets in worship if we let them wear their boaters?

How could an usher justify asking Captain Crunch to take off his bicorn or Mr. Monopoly his top hat?  Wouldn’t the church be more fun with Laurel and Hardy in their bowlers?  Shouldn’t congregations have welcomed Winston Churchill with his homburg, Bear Bryant with his hounds tooth, and Elmer Fudd with his Elmer Fudd hat?  Cowboy churches began so that fake cowboys could wear real Stetsons.

Imagine your sanctuary filled with beanies, bonnets, hard hats, trilbies, wimples, pith helmets, party hats, and Panama hats (which are made ironically in Ecuador).  In the kingdom to come the chapeaued and the hatless will sit side by side.

In the early 1900’s, China became a republic with a president. The emperor still had hundreds of ladies in waiting, cooks, and guards, but he was only a figurehead with no real power. When the last emperor, Pu Yi, realizes this he says: “The forbidden city has become a theater without an audience, so why do the actors remain on stage? It is only to steal the scenery piece by piece.”

Ministers are tempted to spend our lives stealing the scenery, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, fiddling while Rome burns, and handing out aspirins while the world explodes.

Our vision for ministry is too small. We fall for the lies that what matters is the offering plate, that the website looks good, that we attract young families, and that the band sounds professional and the sermon peppy. We think the purpose of worship is to keep people satisfied so we sing the same songs, pray the same prayers, and preach the same trivialities.

We worry that we are going to hurt someone’s feelings. We worry about the mother who thinks her second grader is so smart she needs to be in the third grade Sunday school class. We worry about the senior adult women who say they had 300 for Vacation Bible School back when they were in charge. We worry that a blog on why The Big Bang Theory was never cool would be too controversial.

We debate the church’s wedding policies and wonder if we can take the flag out of the fellowship hall during the reception. We campaign for ten more likes on the church Facebook page and hope the cooks do not see the joke about Wednesday night’s chicken spaghetti. We stay busy trying to look like good ministers.

Our ministries end up being too much like Jay Leno, not enough like Chris Rock; too much Taylor Swift, not enough Mumford and Sons; too much suit and tie, not enough spiked orange hair; too much capitalism, not enough social justice; too much country club, not enough Occupy Wall Street.

We are tempted to spend our ministries caretaking, rearranging, fiddling, keeping things going, and acting like the competition is the Presbyterian Church down the street.

Our vision for ministry is too small for a world where people are hungry, damaged, and lost. How can we be satisfied with maintaining an institution when children starve, hearts break, and so many give up? If we are not going big and bold, we are wasting our time, our church’s time, and God’s time.

God will give us a bigger vision of ministry. Some days we think we just need to be more efficient, effective, and successful ministers, but the church has enough ministers who want to be efficient, effective, and successful. We need passion, anger, and desire.

The church does not need any more ministers who want to maintain the church. We need ministers who will poke and prod the church.

The church does not need any more reasonable ministers. We need ministers who will set their own hair on fire for what is right.

The church has more than enough predictable, conventional, cookie cutter ministers. We need ardent, zealous, fervent, fiery, incensed, inflamed, enraged, obsessive, and impassioned ministers. The church does not need any more temple administrators, Pharisees, or Sadducees. We need Amos, John the Baptist, St. Francis, Martin Luther, Lottie Moon, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa.

The followers of Jesus the church needs are the ones who are never bored with the church because they are always pushing, provoking, and pointing out that we can be more. God needs outliers, nonconformists, mavericks, dissidents, and dissenters. The church has enough people keeping rules. We need exceptions to the rules.

On Sunday mornings our sanctuaries start the day as empty boxes. The minister’s job is to be an instrument by which God fills the sanctuary with fury, joy, and revolution. The church can be an electric gathering if we believe that what we do makes a difference, love can be reawakened, and evil can be overcome by living like Christ.

We can want what God wants. We can worry about what God worries about. We can push for what God pushes for.

Rather than be satisfied with small ministries that support an institution, we can feed God’s children, heal broken hearts, and show the lost the way home. We can go beyond the routine and be the ministers God calls us to be.