Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I finally gave myself permission to stop and see a movie on my way home from church today, hoping that the Hollywood 27 would have at least one showing of "Hellboy" starting about the time I got there (1 PM) -- and lo and behold, there was indeed a 1 PM showing. Further proof that God wanted me to see that movie today, of course.

You see, I often come home after church on Sundays feeling like a bit of a slacker, because I usually resort to preaching recycled sermons for this tiny, tiny, elderly congregation (it's hard to get my 'juices going' to write a new sermon that maybe only six people will hear). And I was feeling especially useless when I drove home from the church after moderating their special congregational meeting Wednesday night, when, contrary to what I hoped and half-expected, a slight majority of those present voted to reject the Presbytery's offer to renovate their building and help them with their church growth plans in return for building their new offices on church land. I thought that if I had really been doing my job there every Sunday for the past two years, then they would have been able to look beyond their fears and old resentments and try to make a fresh start with the Presbytery. With that experience so fresh in my memory, I didn't even take the time to read through the sermon from 1989 that I decided to use today. I skimmed the first page to confirm that, as suggested by the title ("One in the Spirit, One in the Lord") it was indeed a sermon on church unity and how we ought to all be more loving toward each other, etc., and somewhere in the back of my mind, I was thinking, "This will show 'em! Won't they feel bad for being so contrary after they've heard this!"

However, when I stood in the pulpit and preached from that old manuscript this morning, I discovered that about halfway through page two it turned into an exploration of how we can be united in love while still disagreeing about many things, and how Christian unity can't be the same as conformity or totalitarianism, but people must always be free to tell the truth and follow the way of love as seems right to them. In short [I know: "too late!"], it turned out to be a sermon about reconciliation in spite of disagreements and disappointments. Shortly after the sermon was done, during our time for sharing concerns and prayer requests, the violinist suggested that they should all meet informally after church to talk through their differences and figure out where they go from here, in keeping with the subject of my sermon. And when I finally left at 12:45 (more than half an hour after they'd started talking together), things seemed to be going well -- including one elderly lady on the 'winning' side of Wednesday's vote who made a point of thanking the people who'd voted the other way for showing up this morning, just the same, rather than leaving in a huff, as has so often happened in the past when there were serious differences of opinion in the church.

What can I say? I felt that I'd maybe been just a little bit useful, for a change, and I really enjoyed that rare sensation.

And though I found the monsters in "Hellboy" almost too monstrous at times, and the CGI violence sometimes a little too real, I have to admit that the movie surprised and intrigued me, and that I thoroughly and completely enjoyed Ron Perlman's performance as the title character. Furthermore, it turned out that Hellboy shared with Angel and Spike the fact that he came into this world as a demon and cannot change that, but that he can CHOOSE to be a man, to choose the good, to protect rather than victimize, and that, ultimately, it's where we end up and the choices we make to get us there that matter far more than how we start out -- which is sort of what Spike told Dawn in "Crush", isn't it?