Jennifer and I were talking the other day. I celebrated my 15th anniversary here at Douglass on Monday. So, we were commenting on other work anniversaries within the past couple of months. Our music director, Ben Powell, also celebrated an anniversary this week—his tenth; while Amy Powell has been here even longer than I have (I’m not sure of the correct number of years). Joanna, our financial secretary, recently celebrated her 20th here. Our organist, Alan Martin, will celebrate his 10th anniversary next year. And, of course, Jennifer has been here for over 21 years.

It says a great deal about a congregation to have that kind of longevity in its staff. Either we’re all the victims of some next-level mind-control stuff, or this is just a great place to be. I suspect I can speak for the others when I say that, at least in our estimation, it’s the former and not the latter. Being the pastor of Douglass Boulevard Christian Church is how I’d draw it up if someone asked me to imagine what the perfect job for me would look like.

So, thank you. From all of us, thank you. This place feels not only like home but also makes the thought of other jobs impossible to imagine.

But, at least for me, this wasn’t supposed to be my life. After my last ministry position, I never wanted to work in a church again. Putting it that way makes me sound decisive and in control of my destiny. But, in reality, my wife saw what ministry had cost me and told me she’d divorce me if I ever tried to be a pastor again.

For those of you who don’t know, the way I got started at DBCC was as a three-month interim when Dean Bucalos, my predecessor here, went on sabbatical, and the fine people of DBCC and the Lilly Endowment hired me to fill in over the summer of 2006 before I was to start teaching in the Fall. The whole experience was so wonderful and healing that when Steven Johns-Boehme, an associate regional minister and a member here, called me after Thanksgiving a year later in 2007 (and Melissa Newell-Smith shortly thereafter) and asked if I’d like to come back to do another interim after Dean moved on to other things, it was an easy decision (for Susan and I both).

Absolutely!

But I never intended to stick around longer than a year or a year and a half. So, as I thought of it then, this job was fine while I was preparing to finish my Ph.D. and start over again as a university professor. In fact, it seemed perfect as a short-term gig. Work with and for people I cared about for a little while until I could move on to the next exciting stage of my career, all while making some much-needed money. What the kids call a “win-win.”

But the thing of it was, those first six months were difficult. First, we had a staff shake-up over a serious issue. We had a sizable scandal among some members that broke several people’s hearts. Someone who’d asked to pray in our sanctuary went into our balcony and stole thousands of dollars worth of sound equipment. Finally, we initiated and completed the months-long process of becoming an Open and Affirming congregation, publicly vowing to welcome and celebrate our LGBTQ siblings—which was an especially tense process because five years prior, that process same process had led to several people leaving the church.

Oh, and Dominic was born, and I had to study for and pass three Comprehensive Exams for my degree. That was my first six months on the job here.

Then, on June 28th, 2008, the congregation voted to become Open and Affirming … without a single dissenting vote. I went home and told Susan about it. Her words to me were: “If you want to keep working there permanently, I guess you’d better tell somebody.”

So, I called Dick Burks, who was on the Pastoral Search Committee, on Sunday afternoon, June 28th, 2008, and told him I’d like to be considered for the permanent job of Senior Pastor … if the church thought that would be a good idea. Apparently, in March 2009, they did because they voted to call me … and here I am.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t realize I wanted this job until long after I’d agreed to start working here. From my perspective, this was entirely the wrong career for me. I’d always wanted to be a university professor. I don’t think I ever wanted to be a minister.

And let’s be honest, I can’t imagine many places taking a look at me and thinking, “Yeah, that guy should be our next minister.”

So, this was the wrong job, and I was the wrong guy.

That ever happen to you? You have a picture of how things are supposed to be, a vision of how the world is supposed to be arranged, only to find out that not only were you wrong … you were utterly, shockingly, blessedly wrong.

You know what I’m talking about?

That’s the subtext of our Gospel this morning: everything about it is wrong—the place is wrong, the people are wrong. Even the king is wrong.

I mean, look at the cast that makes up the moving parts of this little drama. You’ve got a vulnerable new child bride and mother.

You’ve got the guy whose pals down at Jewish Carpenters’ Local #218 are convinced he’d been cuckolded by an unwed pregnant teenage girl.

You’ve got a client-ruler who calls himself the “King of the Jews,” who’s only half Jewish (and has always, therefore, been greeted with suspicion by his Jewish subjects).