Humility

taken from Facebook

Jacob Sensenig:
At the risk of over-romanticizing vacuuming the floor, I must tell of the revelation I had this evening. Tonight I decided that the floors of the sanctuary at FBC Hamilton needed to be vacuumed once again before Easter Sunday morning after receiving a lot of foot traffic yesterday and today. I knew our church janitor would not be coming back tonight and so I took it upon myself to sweep them. At first I was irritated. Two masters degrees, almost all of the coursework for a PhD, ordination, etc. and here I am sweeping floors the night before the biggest Sunday of the year. However, as I was sweeping I was reminded of two wise men who have served the church in very different capacities and have impacted me greatly.

The first was my father. When I was a child my father served on the janitorial staff at FBC Bowling Green and I have to admit that for many years I was ashamed to tell people what my dad really did. However, I remember many nights of going to the church and helping my father vacuum and wax floors, empty trash cans, move tables and chairs; you name it, he did it. Now as I reflect upon those times together I realize that the way he set out to accomplish any of these tasks was to treat them like they were acts of worship. In fact, that’s how he approaches most tasks in life. My dad knew that he was providing hospitality to the countless individuals who came to FBC, although he might not express it that way. He realized that God could be experienced by clean floors and full rolls of toilet paper. Can i get an amen?

The second wise man who came to mind this evening was Mark Haynes, who serves as a pastor in the UK. Mark and I only overlapped at the Iona Community for a few weeks, but the impact he had upon me was significant. I often come back to one of the final comments he made while on the island. He said that, “Every pastor should come and scrub toilets at Iona for six weeks.” Mark was pointing out the truth that most pastors could use a lesson in humility. Mark chose to spend part of his sabbatical serving others, principally people he didn’t know.

We talk a lot in seminary about servant leadership, but the truth is that most of us (Here I’m speaking to my fellow pastors) don’t really know how to practice it. I’ll admit that recently God has been working on my heart about the issue of humility and tonight I needed an encounter with the divine mediated through a commonplace vacuum. I also needed to be reminded of the examples set before me. It also doesn’t escape me that this revelation came at the end of Holy Week, where we turn our eyes to one who truly was too great to be nailed to a cross and humbled by a criminals death. I’ll resist the temptation of over-spiritualize this point and I’ll let you make the obvious connections.

All I can say is thank God for late nights alone in the church sanctuary.

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I came across the above post due to a cousin of mine, Mitchel. I come from a VERY strong, VERY deeply Christian family (including extended family....I am quite possibly the only non-Christian that I know of in the family), so it’s really no surprise for a lot of Christian things to pop up on my news feed due to various family members posting or liking these posts. And most of the time, I scoff and click the “hide” button. After all, I’m a loud and proud Pagan. I chose to leave Christianity almost 20 years ago and honestly, I haven’t looked back since.

But it was the pastor’s words on humility, on his personal arrogance – listing his accomplishments and grumbling that HE of all people was having to clean the church – that really caught my eye.

See, I’m struggling a LOT with my own personal arrogance and the shit storms I create for myself because of this arrogance. And my Ostara/Full Moon ritual (which I will be writing up soon enough), I had to shed all of that arrogance and lay myself bare before the Goddess and ask for aid. So just because this man prays to a different deity than I do, I should not discount his words off the bat.

Another lesson in humility....from an unlikely source.