The
following ancestral story informed a sermon I preached at the Stone-Campbell Dialogue
last year. That sermon is about personal
integration and the Eucharist, particularly for those, like Paul, who suffer from
post-traumatic stress and from what is now commonly called “moral injury.” The sermon is due to be published and is on the Disciples’ website at the following link:
I have a wide and varied spiritual
inheritance. My Grandfather taught me about theological reflection. My Dad taught
me to channel passions toward holy ends.
But it has always been the spirituality in my Great-Uncle’s Cletis’ preaching
voice that resounds in my head as I pray. One afternoon about seven years ago I shared my frustration with my own
development with my Great-Uncle Cletis, and, as afternoon turned to evening, he
told me about a pivotal moment in his own young life.
I repeat the story with some trepidation, for
numbers of my readers will remember my great uncle in later years with great
admiration. Some will still remember his father, my Great-Grandfather, Archie,
as a supportive Elder in the Church, who traveled across the county each week
to listen to his son, Cletis, proclaim the wonders of Christ’s reconciling love.
But
it was not always this way. Great-Uncle Cletis told me that he and his Dad (my
great-grandfather) were estranged for years, until my Great-Great Grandfather, Sherman Williams,
went over to Great-grandpa Archie’s one afternoon with the instruction, “Come
and go with me.”
Once
in the car, great-grandpa Archie asked, “Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Grandpa
Sherman replied.
As
they pulled into uncle Cletis’ yard, it was Grandpa Sherman’s Christian gravitas
that got both men—Father and son, Archie and Cletis--together at the kitchen
table, where, with tears in his eyes, Grandpa Sherman plead for peace. Something mysterious happened, and the two
men were able to begin an incomplete but life-long process of healing.
I am the third and fourth generation
removed from these forebears, and as a student of Exodus I am thankful that it
has been the ramifications of that healing
which have been visited upon me. I cannot
fathom what is at stake for a vast future at such tables. I probably can’t offer a greater tribute to
these three generations than to say that by the time I came along I never could
have dreamed that such bitterness ever existed. Yet,
to know stories like these is a precious inheritance to be passed down for a
thousand generations for those that fear God.
Raw stories like this one, especially when they they hit close to home,
seem to plant my feet more securely.
They infuse me with some kind of subterranean confidence. Transformation is possible even for me and my family. None of us who come to the Lord’s Table are
completely stuck. The family is
open. So is the table.
People often look at those of us who are
trying to lead the church as if we could not understand their difficulties. Sometimes that is only because stories like this
one get buried. Here’s the truth: the greatest
women and men that I've known have always had a story about how grace healed
their own broken heart. Any healthy Christian
ministry can name dirty laundry that has been aired and that the Savior continues
to wash. This was Paul’s story. Blasphemers,
violent men, they all belong at the family table. Sheep still hear and recognize the
Shepherd’s welcoming voice. So, as I still
hear Uncle Cletis re-sounding in deep places within me, I trust that through his
voice I’m hearing the Shepherd who welcomed my broken family to table generations ago.
