It's Short

Good Saint Anthony, look all round: something’s lost and can’t be found.

Why does he always have two pairs of glasses hanging on strings around his neck?

Because he always forgets the third pair, which are prescription sunglasses. 

The glasses with the white string are progressive lens for computer, pulpit and Altar. The black string are bifocals for everything else, and do not work for computer, Altar and pulpit. The constant switching back and forth is maddening but works. 

Without the strings they get misplaced and can only be found with the help of Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost things. And also because, being farsighted, my habit and preference for comfort and clear vision is to take them off when not being used; and without the string, two pockets are needed.

Last year an abrasive and nosy middle-aged clerk said to me, “I never saw nobody wear two pairs of glasses before, why are you wearing two pairs of glasses?” My response, “You don’t look quite seventy-five yet. Are you?” Her greatly offended answer: “Of course not.” My wrap-up: “When you are seventy-five you will get it.”

Going out of church, people sometimes ask for a copy of my sermon. Happened several times yesterday. For the past thirty years all my sermons have been printed, though an English bishop once advised at a clergy conference that we never print a sermon unless unavoidable; and then to make sure the print copy said what we meant to say, or wish we had said, instead of what we actually did say. That was the same English bishop who told us that unless we were preaching at least forty-five minutes we had no business wearing the collar. Anyway, that was good advice until the sermons started being recorded and posted online. They are still printed and available; but my experience is that folks who ask for a copy going out of church invariably forget about it the moment they leave the building! Besides, a friend told me long ago that reading them later he found that “something is lost between pulpit and page.”

Whatever.

Twenty-five years ago a friend who was pastor of Assembly of God church in Apalachicola kept pressing me to preach at his Sunday evening worship service. In time he wore me down. After the service that evening, as people were going out of church, a teenager who was in my daughter’s class at Apalachicola High School told me, “Brother Weller, I love your preaching.” As my head began to swell, I responded, “Why, thank you. What do you like about it?”

“It’s short.” 

Yesterday’s collect for the day has the phrase “that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility.” Not much is more humbling than finding out that what people like about your sermons is that they are short.  

TW+