Titles are important to many folks. Now some people here call me “Paul”; most say “Pastor Paul.” I guess because I have a title, I know any fool can get one, so I’m not too hung up on that. There are occasions that I put on the clerical collar and bring out The Most Holy Rev. Whitlock voice…but that is rare, thanks be to God.
Forty years ago, when George Herbert Walker Bush was Vice President, he spoke at a prayer breakfast. Part of his comments told of his trip to the USSR to represent the United States at the funeral of Leonid Brezhnev—the old Soviet leader.
He talked about how the funeral was as precise and stoic as the communist regime. No tears were seen, and no emotion displayed. With one exception. Mr. Bush told how Brezhnev’s widow was the last person to witness the body before the coffin was closed for good.
For several seconds she stood at the head of the casket looking at her deceased husband and then reached down and performed the sign of the cross on her husband’s chest. In the hour of her husband’s burial, when all was final and done, she went not to Lenin, not to Karl Marx, not to Khrushchev, with all their impressive titles.
In that hour of finality, she turned to a Nazarene carpenter…a Nazarene carpenter who lived two thousand years ago. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who when confronted with the evils of the Nazis, proclaimed Jesus as the Christ. His words combined with his faithful living led him to be hung.
One of the things he said was, “The cross is laid on every Christian.” If we’re faithful, my friends, we don’t have to go out looking for a cross to bear. The world will offer us one sooner or later. Some crisis is going to happen, and you and I are going to be called on, when we least expect to be a Christian.
As Christians are in the business of following Jesus and being grace givers and being welcoming, the world is in the business of crucifixion. So, whether you realize it or not, you have a very important title, dare I say the most important title I can think of: Christian. And you and I wear that title wherever we go in our words and in our deeds.
Shalom, Paul
You have a very important title
