Inside Preaching
M. Craig Barnes
October 1, 2003
Every time I stand at the baggage carousel in an airport, I am reminded that everybody prays. Not long ago, while joining this circle of prayer, watching well-worn bags revolve in front of me, I was overcome with a sense of déjà vu. What did this remind me of? Then it hit me: pastoral counseling. Seldom do people make appointments with a pastor to say everything is fine and they're just so grateful they can't stand it. No, they come to a pastor when they are weary from their journey. For a while they may have checked their baggage as they flew through another new job or relationship, but eventually the time always comes to take possession of their issues. That's when they need spiritual help. As they talk, the old baggage eventually appears. It usually isn't long before the parent baggage tumbles down the chute (that's a big one), trailed by the self-esteem baggage, and the bag marked "unsatisfying work." They may want to discuss their dreams, which is the baggage that somehow got lost. At least one bag has the word HURT scrawled across it, a plea for this one to be handled with care. The same bags continue to circle round and round. Every time the pastor thinks the parishioner is done with an issue, it's soon apparent that it was only out of sight a while and has now circled back into view. It took me a while to figure out that parishioners think pastors are skycaps who are going to lug all of this stuff away for them, which is not our job. So instead we just listen. But when the time is right, we do invite them simply to walk away from it all. As Dante, Bunyan, Lewis, and most important, Jesus kept reminding us, the Christian journey is difficult and no one who is burdened down by baggage can make it. The hardest thing to ...
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