A Fool With A Fancy Guitar

One of my very favorite “preacher stories” is from, John, who for a number of years was an Associate Pastor at a church in Seattle.  One Sunday John had the opportunity to preach and he says that as he left the pulpit he knew he had hit a homerun.  People cried when they were supposed to cry and laughed when he wanted them to laugh.  The congregation hung on every word and John remembers feeling as if he had just delivered the greatest sermon since Jesus went up on a mountainside to teach.

The next morning John was in his office, still basking in the glory of Sunday, when the church’s Senior Pastor appeared in the doorway.  He came in, closing the door behind him, sat down and simply began, “John, you know I love you right?”

Most of us know where that sort of opening usually leads – and it did – as he continued, “Why don’t you quit trying to be so clever and just tell people the truth.”

I think about that story constantly as I prepare messages and work with a team to plan services.  There is such a temptation to be clever – to take people to places where they cry when we want them to cry and laugh when we want them to laugh.  At times we even convince ourselves that’s what people want from us – and sometimes it is.  I’ve actually had people be honest enough to tell me that they expect to be entertained when they come for worship.  So we spend hours and hours figuring out new ways to capture their attention and entertain them.  But often I wonder if we (to borrow the title from Neil Postman) are simply amusing ourselves to death.

In a world filled with pretend – I could now ramble on and on about Teo’s pretend girlfriend, a story that fascinates me – people are longing for authenticity.  In a world full of lies – I could now ramble on and on about Lance’s lies, a story that disgusts me – people are longing for the truth.  Perhaps the most attractive (and therefore attractional) thing a church can do today is to quit trying to be so clever and just tell people the truth.

The words to Andrew Peterson’s song Fool With A Fancy Guitar somehow capture this idea for me and have become, at least for me, a reminder to quit trying so hard to be clever and just tell people the truth about who we are and the love that saves us.

It's so easy to cash in these chips on my shoulders

So easy to loose this old tongue like a tiger

It's easy to let all this bitterness smolder

Just to hide it away like a cigarette lighter

It's easy to curse and to hurt and to hinder

It's easy to not have the heart to remember

That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I've got voices that scream in my head like a siren

Fears that I feel in the night when I sleep

Stupid choices I made when I played in the mire

Like a kid in the mud on some dirty blind street

I've got sorrow to spare, I've got loneliness too

I've got blood on these hands that hold on to the truth

That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I swore on the Bible not to tell a lie

But I've lied and lied

And I crossed my heart and I hoped to die

And I've died and died

But if it's true that you gathered my sin in your hand

And you cast it as far as the east is from the west

If it's true that you put on the flesh of a man

And you walked in my shoes through the shadow of death

If it's true that you dwell in the halls of my heart

Then I'm not just a fool with a fancy guitar

No, I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God