I will confess a certain amount of hesitancy to share my profession in the public sphere. One of the worst places to share what I do is when I am negotiating a sale like at a car dealership or furniture warehouse. On two separate occasions, when making small talk with the sales person as we awaited finalization of a sale, sharing that Tim and I were pastors changed the way the sales person associated with us. They would often change their tone, telling us about their own faith or lack-there-of but they would also change their tactic, trying to pull on our relational heart-strings hoping this approach would keep us from negotiating a good deal. Because pastors are the perfect Christians, meek and mild and naive. Pastors are fools who can be manipulated and easily deceived, right.

Yet, I will also confess that there is a great deal of foolishness that is required of preachers of the Gospel. We preach life and love in a world shaped by the powers of domination and violence and death. We preach peace in the face of principalities and powers that overwhelm us by their seductiveness and their threat. We preach a new, heavenly kingdom where there is no mourning, or tears, or pain while living in this broken one. We point to something that is, yet isn’t; is here but is coming; is inaugurated in part and yet will be fully known in God’s known future. We are surely fools as are all who proclaim good news.  It is folly and we are all fools.

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