Early Saturday evening, Pastor John came back to the sanctuary. He came back because there were still a few things that needed to be done. He came back when it was dark, darkness coming early near the twenty-first of December.

 

There was lots to do still. His office was in a mess. There were cards still to write and send out. He was worried because the clinic in Haiti particularly needed money right now to keep the nurses and the doctors compensated there.

 

And he had to go into the sanctuary and check on the chairs that the preacher and the liturgist sat in. The high school had had their winter choral concert in the sanctuary the week earlier, and many chairs had been added. The choir was going to be sharing what would be a wonderful presentation of “The Messiah” that evening. But in all the coming and going of singers, the preacher’s chair actually can be bumped from the loft. So he was coming back in to make sure that it was there, and to mark it in some way, where a zealous alto or an overly ambitious baritone might not take it by mistake.

 

As he worked in the room up in the chancel, putting a sign up on his chair that said “Preacher’s Chair” in big red letters, he saw in the dimming light a presence in the back of the sanctuary, kind of stooped over; and it surprised him.

 

“Hello!” he said, “Can I help you?” to the back of the room. And a voice answered, “Yes, I could use some help. Come on back here.”

 

It wasn’t the answer that he was expecting. And then he realized, as he walked towards the back, that it was the pew refinisher. Wally had hired an old gentleman to come in and refinish one pew at a time. The alternative would have been to take all of the pews out of the sanctuary and have the congregation seated on chairs, or even to have to meet back in the auditorium at the high school for a while. But instead, they had decided to refinish one pew at a time. So they had hired a gentleman whose work was known by many people in the congregation. He really did quality work. And he agreed to come in and take a pew out and take it down to his shop and refinish it there, then bring it back in while taking out another.

 

There he was, stooped over, putting in a pew. “I want to get this back in,” he said to Pastor John as he grew close, “before the big presentation tomorrow. I know you’ll need all the seats you can get.”

 

It was the first time Pastor John had really seen the pew refinisher. He was a shorter man, kind of bent over. Old overalls. A worn red cap. With hard hands. Working hands. And a leathered face. Scruff shoes with hard soles and toes so that they could stand a piece of furniture being dropped on them once in a while.

 

The pew refinisher with his leathered face looked up at Pastor John, who now was very close to him, and said, “Here – come help me with this. You pick up on this pew while I put this bolt in and tie it down.”

 

Then Pastor John realized that he was going to ask him to pick up the entire pew! Or at least one end of it. So he did. He strained and lifted it, and he could hold it up for a bit while the pew refinisher put the bolt in and started to fasten it with his wrench.

 

But it got heavier and heavier. His hand was underneath the bottom of the pew, and he knew he was going to have to put it down in a moment. “This is getting heavy!” he said to the pew refinisher.

 

“Just a second – I almost have it.”

 

“I think it’s coming down now!” he said, and he started to put it down. But he didn’t get his one finger out quick enough, and he pinched it. Then Pastor John said something he had never said in the sanctuary before! And the pew refinisher laughed, and it didn’t comfort the pastor at all. “That hurt!” he said. “I bet I broke it.”

And the pew refinisher chuckled again.

 

Some kind of emotional gate opened in the pastor, and he said, “Now I’ve done it! I’ve got so much to do, and now I’ve got to do it all with a bum finger to boot!” He said it right at the pew refinisher.

 

The old man, crouched down by the pew still, looked up at him with his grizzled face and said, “What do you have to do?” It was spoken like someone who didn’t believe he had much to do. Then he said that line that people love to say to the preacher: “I thought you only had to work one day a week, and then just twenty minutes at that! What do you have to do?”

 

So in the face of that old bromide, Pastor John did what he didn’t usually do. He told him. He told him all of the things that he had to still. “We’ve got to get ready for ‘The Messiah’ presentation tonight. There are pew cards that have to go in the fliers so the guests will be greeted. We’re doing caroling Wednesday, and the Jolly Trolley contract still has to be signed and executed. We’ve got candles that are still coming in from Cokesbury for Christmas Eve, and if they don’t get here, we’ll have to go pick them up. And there are seven bulletins that still have to be written and produced before Christmas Eve, which means sermons to go along with them. There is lots to do!”

 

The old man looked at him and said, “You don’t know much about Christmas, do you.”

 

Pastor John was indignant! It was obvious that this guy didn’t know him very well. He said to the pew refinisher, “What do you mean? I’m the King of Christmas!”

 

The grizzled face looked at him still and said, “No. I think that would be Jesus. You’re just a herald. You’re just a witness to Christmas. A testifier. No, Christmas doesn’t have nothing to do with you, or what you do.”

 

Pastor John looked incredulously at this old, grizzled furniture refinisher, and he was thinking, “Well it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with what you do. You’re just getting a pew in.”

 

Then the old man said more gently, “No. Christmas has to do with what God does. God’s doing all the planning and the work.” He leaned back on his haunches. “See,” he said, pointing up at the chancel, “you’re just a herald. You know, get you up to a high mountain. Prepare the way. You’re telling people what God has done. You’re telling them not to give up, that God’s still doing it. God’s smoothing out the rough places in this world. You’re not doing it! I’m doing it in a couple of places – I’m a pew refinisher – a rough place here or there. But you’re pointing people toward it. All that stuff you do – the singing and the preaching and the getting ready – that’s just things you do because you’re glad about what God has done. You’re a herald. You don’t have anything to do with Christmas.”

 

Pastor John, kind of taken aback now and a little shaken, said to the old man, “But I don’t see many rough places becoming planed unless I work at it.”

 

The old man looked back at him, still and crouched on the floor, and said, “Oh… so I get it. Christmas only happens if you do it, huh? You don’t think much of yourself, do you?”

 

Pastor John said, “I don’t see it happening without me doing it.”

 

The old pew refinisher said, “No, people don’t see it. They’re not going to be able to see it. It’s just too big. And that’s why you’re supposed to tell others about it, because they can’t see it, either. You tell them about it because you believe it, and encourage them while they can’t see it. You do believe, don’t you?” he said. “Being the preacher and all, we’re kind of hoping you do. You know, some don’t believe it. But we’re counting on you to believe it.”

 

“No,” said Pastor John, “I believe it. I believe it. It’s just that I see so many rough places that aren’t getting smooth. Do you ever see any, any get smooth?”

 

The old man said, “Oh, now and then I sees a bit. Enough to keep me going. Enough to keep me at it. But like refinishing this pew, when you start you can’t see the whole picture. You just can’t imagine it. It’s hard to see all of the pews in this sanctuary finished. But a little bit here and a little bit there. So you just say to the people, ‘Behold your God!’ The best we could do is look at Jesus – you just point them that direction.”

 

Now he was picking up his tools and starting to head for the door, and it was Pastor John who was left back at the pew. The old man said, “You’re kind of just like the choir. You just keep pointing people in God’s direction, like the choir does. You just keep telling them, and keep encouraging them, that God is going to finish what God started in Jesus. You tell them not to lose hope.”

 

Pastor John didn’t know what to say to the grizzled face now, instructing him on the profession of ministry from the chancel door. He closed his tool box lid (he was obviously leaving), and he turned and said, “You know, John, if you ice that finger really well tonight, it won’t hurt as much in the morning. You’d better go home and finish that sermon, and leave smoothing out the rough places of this life to me and God. I’ll let you lock up.”

 

Back in his study at home, he stuck his finger in a glass of ice. And he read the commentary on the text from Luke, from the Lutheran Bible scholar in Chicago. “Advent,” he said, “is a time for predicting. Not a time for predicting, but rather a time for testimony. Such testimony will involve both words and faithful actions of people infected by hope. We ourselves will be signs. Our hope will be contagious. And some around us may be infected with what has been called A Resurrection Hope in a Crucifixion World. The pastor in Advent should say to the people what the people should be testifying to the world: “Raise your heads. Be alert. Look up.” These are not merely bits of moral advice from a great teacher, they are God’s words to all to whom the promises have been given. And they are meant to encourage a world that can’t see the rough places being smoothed out. To encourage that world to hope. To prayer. To endurance. To testimony. To faithful obedience in the knowledge that our lives have a great place in the purposes of God, as these are being distinctively worked out and decisively in Jesus Christ.

 

Then Pastor John looked at the text one more time, the last thing he read that night, where it says, “Say to the people of Judah, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked be made straight, and the rough ways be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

 

And then Pastor John got up and took two ibuprofen, and went to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006