Ken’s e-Pistle

May 31, 2023

Every now and again we get a revival over on our side of the mountain.  It seems that summer is the preferred time, when the crops are planted and the sons and daughters of toil have a little more time on their hands.  It never fails but that flyers are pasted on storefront windows and passed out like candy at Halloween.  No, probably not the best metaphor, but you get what I mean.  This past weekend I found one on my windshield, despite the fact that I have stickers for FPC Dalton and Faith PC in Blue Ridge prominently displayed on my adolescent truck.  As you probably know, we Presbyterians are far too sedate and dignified for such an undertaking.

Nonetheless, I come upon folk who are really hyped up on this kind of thing and just won’t feel right unless they get one of us to at least attend, if not actually go down the aisle at the Call of Invitation and “get saved” in front of a few hundred of our closest friends.  The fact that I am clergy only serves to make me more of a HVT (high value target.)

I overheard a bit of conversation at the grocer’s the other day.  Kind of a foretaste, if you will, about the topics of interest at this year’s installment.  It seems that the passage which admonishes, “Be ye perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect” will be one of  the featured attractions.

I thought that I might attend that one since the passage has been brutally abused by so many folk.  Allow me to expand.  In Greek thought and language, the word “perfect” has a utilitarian meaning.  It means something which functions as it ought.  My 30-year-old Case pocketknife, made famous by last week’s literary offering, is a case in point.  It is a perfect pocketknife because it does what it is supposed to do.  My coffee tankard at the Church House is a perfect cup because it does what it is supposed to do:  hold an obscene amount of coffee.

When Jesus admonishes us to be perfect even as God is perfect, He is decidedly NOT telling us to achieve moral perfection.  If we were called and expected to do that, then His work on the cross and His resurrection from the tomb would be meaningless.  He came to save us from our moral imperfections and still does.  No, Jesus is telling us simply to be about the task of fulfilling our callings to be His disciples.  Nothing more and nothing less.  It is enough for me to strive to be the best Ken McKenzie I can be.  And since I am the only me I have, it would seem to reason that pursuing that task is enough of a full-time job without taking on critiques of others.

I believe I’ll pass on this year’s revival season. I’d probably just go and  open up my mouth, asking all kinds of  questions.  In my experience of these things, “Amens” are acceptable.  Questions, not so much.

I bid you peace!