"My Pastoral, Rascally Friend"

By Cynthia L. Rigby

We even know each other’s sleeping and working rhythms. For about a decade I had a habit of getting up super early and David would stay up super late. Sometimes, if I woke up super super early, I would see his light on in his study and realize he hadn’t gone to bed yet. Sometimes we would email in that weird timeless postnight, pre-dawn space. One of these times—I’ll never forget it—David asked me to read the sermon he had just completed. It was the homily for Stan Hall’s funeral (Stan was a professor of liturgy and homiletics at Austin Seminary from 1990 to 2008 and died of a rare disease at age fifty-eight). In it, he told the story about how Stan got fired from his first job—which was making pancakes in a pancake house. “He used a ladle full of batter,” David explained, relaying Stan’s story, “and produced a plate-sized pancake. One day, his boss told him that they needed to make more money, but they didn’t want to raise their prices. So, said the boss, don’t use a full ladle, use a little less—two-thirds, maybe. Stan didn’t protest. He didn’t quit. He didn’t stand outside the restaurant with a sign. He just didn’t do it. He kept on using a full ladle for each pancake. He was fired.”

David’s sermon was, characteristically moving and comforting. But just at the end I was zinged with the words, “Peace, brother. We’ll be along.” Leave it to David to take a sharp turn off Comfort and onto Mortality at the last second, with no possibility of rebuttal. The Word I heard for Stan was: “You made it.” But the Word for me was: “You still have to do this, you know.” I suddenly found myself asking whether I would sacrifice a job for my conviction that everyone needs a full pancake.

I like to think David is the professor most often invited by the students to preach at Baccalaureate because we have taught them well that being “pastoral” isn’t only about being nice, but about helping people see the truth and staying with them when they are undone by it. David does this with wit and wisdom, but also with love, reminding us of the gospel (there’s a reason his book is called Trust in God). He somehow also manages to do it in a very down to earth way, not floating above us as some kind of Spiritual Giant, but speaking as one who is cognizant that he, and we—along with all the Saints—are (as Barth puts it) “wicked rascals.” We all live in the dialectical tension of the simul—we are “at the same time” righteous and sinful—and this affects how we act, including how we interpret the events of our lives. I may be taking more liberty with the phrase than Barth intended, but it seems to me that acting as a “wicked rascal” is to be endearing as well as guilty, culpable as well as cute. It’s the place most of us spend a lot of time, trying to be helpful and good, but still watching the clock, counting our chips, twisting the truth ever so slightly, defending our good intentions, or engaging in acts of piety that we can’t help but hope will impress others. To be a “wicked rascal” looks not like 101 Dalmations’ Cruella de Vil or Superman’s Lex Luther, but more like Curious George or Lucy from “I Love Lucy.” When Curious George spills grape juice on the carpet and floods the apartment trying to clean it up, it’s kind of cute. But in the real world, being unchallenged in relation to our rascaliness eventually leads us, it seems to me, to having a deluded sense of self that interferes with our relationship to God and to one another. David has the rare gift of cutting through all the rascaliness, even when it is being missed by everyone else, by somehow taking account of his own.

Let me share with you a story that up until now only David and I knew. David is the only one I have ever called on to cast demons out of me. Long story short; it was one of those long, extra COVID-y nights and my left shoulder (which I since have figured out and had replaced) was terribly painful. I was home alone; my husband and our daughter were at her soccer tournament, and our son was out making music with his band. My shoulder and arm had reached a new level of pain and started to shake uncontrollably. I started to think about the story in Mark 9 of the boy who can’t control his movements because he’s possessed by an evil demon. I thought to myself—it’s worth a shot—maybe it would help to have someone lay hands on me. And what luck! I have David Johnson living next door! So, I texted him my unusual request to lay hands on me for healing. “Well, we could do it outside in the driveway between our houses, tomorrow,” he said, “but I haven’t been vaccinated, yet.” Well, we were in Stage 5 in Austin, and I didn’t want him to risk it, so I asked him to pray for me instead. “I am praying for you as someone I love,” he answered. My shaking slowed. And then he asked the feet on the ground question: “Do we need to get you to the ER?”

Do you see what David did there? He took account of his own rascaliness. I mean, it must have been a little tempting to run right out to the driveway, jar of oil in hand, risking COVID for the sake of anointing a neighbor/colleague. But David instead slowed me down, pointed out the danger to him, and asked me the question that shook me out of my bravado and gave me the strength again to trust in God. No, I did not need to go to the ER. Yes, I’ll call you again if it gets worse. Thank you for praying. Sure, we can talk later about the laying on of hands.

Barth noted that saints are “wicked rascals” just as much, and perhaps more, than anyone else. The difference between people who identify as Christians and those who do not is not that Christians sin less because they have acquired spiritual superpowers by way of pious acts. The difference is that Christians know their hope lies not in their actions, and so they neither have to override their sufferings nor deny themselves pleasure. Instead, they may authentically cry out to God and enjoy God’s good gifts of this world, “using them for God’s purposes” (Calvin). Thank you, David, for reminding me that I am a wicked rascal. Thank you for reminding me to trust in God. And thank you for being the most un-spiritual spiritual person I know.

Cynthia Rigby is The W.C. Brown Professor of Theology at Austin Seminary. Dr. Rigby’s latest book is Holding Faith: A Practical Introduction to Christian Faith (Abingdon Press, 2018). She is a general editor of the nine-volume lectionary commentary series, Connections (Westminster John Knox) and is currently completing a book on Christian feminist theology and a book tentatively titled Splashing in Grace: A Theology of Play.