The Haunting of Pastor Butch Gregory

The Haunting of Pastor Butch Gregory

It was right where he left it.

It is always a good feeling when something is found exactly where it is expected.  He expected it to be sitting there on the long folding table in the vast hallway.  He had left it there the night before.  The night before, just eleven hours ago, when he had turned off the lights, turned off the heat, and placed his old half-filled coffee cup on the table.  He was truly surprised to see his coffee cup there because the more familiar feeling is to never find anything where it is expected.

He had left it there last night because he didn’t want to walk back out to his study, and his hands were too full to put it in the kitchen.

It spent the night right where he put it.

The mug was like him.  On the outside was a picture of bright daisies yellow against a green field with a verse about Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life.  But on the inside it was all brown, stained with years of very strong coffee.  It truly was a perfect metaphor for his life: cheery and happy on the outside for the world to see yet dark and stained (or maybe strained, he thought out loud) on the inside from years of worry and struggle trying to keep the caffeine flowing to give the church a shot of energy.  He thought there was Bible truth in there somewhere—whitewashed coffee cups, he chuckled to himself.  That might just preach.  He would have to write that down in his little black book of sermon ideas and other miscellany.

He felt especially stained this morning.  Monday morning.  It was a dreaded cycle which repeated itself every week of his life.  For most of the free world, Monday is the first day of the week.  There is an understandable drain on most people about the thoughts of going back to work.  He understood that.  But what he felt every Monday was different.  It was psychic.  It was emotive.  It was physical.  But most of all, it was spiritual.

Monday was not the first day of the workweek.  For Pastor Butch Gregory, Monday was the second day of his cyclic labor.  His first day had been yesterday.  Sunday was the big show, and he had to be on his game.  If he wasn’t, it could mean disaster.  He even knew of some in his calling for whom a few bad Sundays strung together resulted in a long board meeting that ended in someone getting fired, and it was never the board which was fired.  Butch kept that pressure always in the back of his mind.  Sundays he had to be at least good, and if possible, great.

His family’s financial well-being depended on him performing to the church’s satisfaction.  An unfortunate reality, but experience had taught him it was cold, hard fact.

Fortunately, most Sundays Butch was at least good enough.  This Monday morning he felt particularly good about yesterday’s sermon.  It had pieced together quite a bit of biblical literature ranging from the Patriarchs to the Apostles as well as pop culture.  He had argued for a connection between Joseph, Paul, and Chuck Colson in their prison experiences.  He had likened it to a beluga whale he had seen at the aquarium.

The majestic white whale had caught his eye, and the two made eye contact—mammal to mammal, Ahab to Moby.  In the whale’s eye Butch thought he caught a glimmer of sad resignation.  The whale seemed to know the rest of her life would be spent in captivity.  A beast meant to frolic in the frigid seas was now being hand fed, spending its time pushing around a red ball while swimming in a giant pool.  God had made the behemoth to swim the depths of the ocean and live in the depth of mystery humanity would never know.  We had stolen that destiny from the whale and cast her in prison. (continue reading…)