Next-Wave Ezine > church & culture

Preaching the Mystery
By Russell Howard

I woke up at three in the morning, alone in a hotel room, thinking about a girl I danced with twenty-five years ago.

I don’t remember her name, and I don’t remember how we got to the gymnasium floor. I was an awkward junior higher, and so I assume that it was she who led me out onto the hardwood.

I do remember how short she was. As we danced, she laid her head on my chest. I was probably all of 5’ 5” myself. I could look down and map the part in her hair. And there was something about the way my hands naturally rested in the small of her back.

She was short with long hair reaching down to her waist. She was independent which was not a common trait among eighth graders. She was pretty. And I think I remember her mentioning a boyfriend from “out-of-town.”

What did I eat last night? What random dream shook this memory out? How is it that those three minutes spent swaying to the voice of Lionel Ritchie in 1980 keep me awake tonight?

I want to write a sentence, and craft each word to capture that moment. And to let each word in that sentence take me back a year. With this phrase I am back five years and seven with the next, until I am fourteen again. I long for the words to take me there. But in the end, I am speechless. I have only this sense that there is something significant about that moment, but what that might be, I don’t have words for.

That moment is a mystery to me. I sit here profoundly aware of how there are things in life that are too big for me grasp. Like ants. And Philly Cheese steaks. And the way my daughter cackles at a joke that only she gets.

This week I am sitting with a certain passage of scripture. More accurately, this certain passage is sitting on me, and I am painfully aware of how I am too little to speak for or even about the God that it reveals. What can I possibly say? What language is big enough? I am a flea trying to make sense of the Milky Way.

And yet there is this small band of people who in a couple of days will look to me for words. They will sit down and look to me and wait for me to get the conversation started. You would think they would have learned by now. I’ve got nothing.

I thought they would have figured it out when I baptized Chris Laramour’s head into the baptismal step. I don’t know what I’m doing.

I saw this comedian once who was a Saturday Night Live cast member. She was being interviewed, and she said something like, “I’m really not funny at all, and I am petrified that they are going to figure that out some day.”

On Sunday, my people (as in the particular tribe of Christ-followers I belong to) will lend me their ears. They will pay me their attention. And the truth is I’ve got nothing worth saying, and I am petrified that they will figure it out someday.

And I wonder why do I speak at all? I think about the weather-beaten old prophet complaining, “I can’t stop talking about God. He is like a fire in my heart and bones. I can’t keep it in.” And I detect a tone, a tone that is saying, “Crap. I can’t keep it in.”

Maybe having just lived those three minutes on the dance floor is enough. And it’s just important that I know it for the mystery that it is.

This week’s passage still sits on me. I do not want to teach it. I don’t want to be the teacher. I’d rather be a river guide. But I know that come Sunday my friends will look to me, and like I’ve done for all these years, I will speak. And I will trust that the Mystery will speak for itself, and I will pray that my words don’t get in the way.

Russ is the staff at a small, rural church in the backyard of Ohio. He lives with these firmly held convictions: his wife (Jen) is out of his league, his kids (Jackson, Cooper, and Josie) are good-looking and brilliant, and a good sandwich makes the world a better place.