Hollie Hamilton and I did not get off to a good start. It was so bad, the people at The Rock were wondering who on earth the Bishop sent them… Hollie was a homeless alcoholic. He lived on the railroad tracks. The church had been building some relationship with him and his friend, Barbara. They had slowly gone from talking to people here and there, to coming to the steps of the church, staying in the vestibule, to sitting in the balcony. Well, Hollie comes in one Sunday a few weeks after I got here and wants something I wasn’t going to give him. So he bowed up on me and started cussing me.
I don’t take that kind of crap and I bowed up, too, and kicked him out.
Well, all these good folks who had put so much into him were just crushed. I didn’t help my case any when I was still ramped up and I asked them why was he still a raging drunk if they’d been working with him for three years? I can be hard and stubborn at times, but that can be love, too. In the end, Hollie and I got on a good footing. In fact it was only a few weeks later that I saw him at 12th and Broadway and we talked and hashed things out. His friend Barbara said tonight, “You don’t know how big it is that Hollie apologized to you. He never backed down.” I told her he didn’t back down. “We’re both the kind of guy who will tell you what he thinks if you ask him, good bad or indifferent. That’s why we were ok—he knew I would never lie to him.”
Well, Hollie died about a month ago. There’s a lot to tell, but here’s the story for now. We had a memorial service for him tonight. It was pure Rock: homeless, drunks, black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, in between, believers, non-believers, almost-theres.
We sang some songs, prayed, heard a few remembrances, and I had a small sermon. Then we listened to Hollie’s favorite song, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird.” The live version, in all its Three Guitar Army Glory. Ha, people were singing! It’s a lesson—they didn’t know Peace in the Valley so well, but they knew Skynyrd!
If you can understand “Freebird,” you’ll get closer to understanding Hollie, and hard-living people like him. Skynyrd doesn’t know how to end a song. It’s a sonic assault. It’s frenetic, because that’s how many people live, on the edge, little control, want to build up to a frenzy and let it out. You go see Skynyrd, Hank Jr., and 38 Special so you can get it all out and not kill your boss on Monday. There is a strange priesthood in rock music. They usher in some mystery. If it weren’t for ass-kicking Southern Rock and Monday Night Football, there would be a revolution. That’s just a fact. If I didn’t have Van Halen in my CD case, I’d be superfly TNT. Not pretty.
I have to tell you this crazy thing. Harold Dorsey, a retired pastor (started preaching in 1936!) and I did not get off to a good start, either. I had never met him until we met in the elevator at Annual Conference in 2006. When he found out I was coming to his church, The Rock, he started in on the things he thought were wrong, why Asbury (my seminary) was messing things up, etc, etc. Jean Hawxhurst got off the elevator at just the right time because then I took my turn on how we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in if three or four generations of preachers hadn’t quit preaching the gospel and didn’t give a rip if no one came to Jesus, and sometimes you have to burn something down before you can do anything with it… you can see where this was headed. Well, Dorsey and I are half-way friends now. I know he thinks I’m nuts, but that’s ok.
Well, I sure expected to hear about it from him that we had Skynyrd in the chapel. Instead, he wants to know all about Hollie, came down and ate with our crew, and he said “the problem is that we Methodists are a class church—we don’t know what to do with people who are not middle class. But you’re doing a fine job changing that.” Not me. The people who came before me, the people here, the people yet to come. But here’s where I am going—if you welcome a few different kinds of people, then pretty soon people believe everyone and anyone can come. And next thing you know, Pentecost is happening as all kinds of people hear the gospel in words and relationships that everyone can easily understand.
The question remains: do we have the guts to do this? I mean more than every once in a while, when we feel good for doing something out of the ordinary? It is going to be a gut-check.
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