As I am frying up some delicious pierogies from Pierogies Plus in Pittsburgh, I was thinking about a question Stefani asked me the other day. “Daddy, can I ask you a question?” she asked. “Which do you prefer, being a pastor or a chaplain?” I replied, “A chaplain.” She said, “But you work with death!” I had been thinking about this for a couple of days and then realized all pastors, counselors, chaplains, or missionaries work with death.
David said he was born into sin by his mother as well as from conception ( Psalm 51: 5) and the Bible says the wages of sin is death. The sentence of death does not wait till a child is born. Going through training at Virginia Baptist Hospital related to stillbirth, ectopic, and neo-natal death, I guarantee families who lost a child, either before birth or after, grieved the loss. Man begins to die from conception and whether we live a few hours or many years, the final verdict is death. In hospice patients and their families know from the doctor the prognosis is grim while the rest of mankind rejects in their minds death. However, for twenty years in pastoral ministry the other form of death was from those in the pews. This may sound strange until we see what James says:
“If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.” (James 2: 16-18 NIV)
and
“As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” (James 2:26 NIV)
Often times the role of a pastor is to encourage believers to put into practice what they confess. Many times they are incapacitated by fear or immobilized by prejudice. The first one, fear, makes us worried we may fail and then God might be angry or disappointed. They forget he knew what would happen before you were conceived and he still chose to call you to faith. Instead of fear, seek him out for the strength to serve.
I am not talking about racial prejudice but the kind which Paul reminds us not to be “high-minded”. The other example, prejudice, may come having forgotten the past (or choosing to forget the past) which says, “Except for the Grace of God go I.” None of us were born special. We were born into sin which all of its trappings, pleasantries, and pains. Some we practiced and some not, but this does not make us better than those not sitting in the pew with you. Of the two of these, I think prejudice is the worst because it comes from an attitude of superiority. Even Jesus came in the form of a servant and he is FAR SUPERIOR TO US!
The pierogies were delicious—I made hot sausage for me and spinach and ricotta cheese for Vicki. A pierogie is dough shaped like a clam shell. Inside they are filled with different things. Some are potato and cheese while others are potato and kraut. Depending upon which part of eastern Europe you come from, some are boiled while others are fried. Pierogies Plus has won the award for the “Best in Pittsburgh” (I do not receive any advertising revenue from this) but when I picked up the order the other day, the music in the store was on K-Love, a Christian station in Pittsburgh. I remarked to the owner, a Slavic lady in this country for about forty years, I liked the music. She immediately said, “I love the Lord!” I told her I was a born-again believer and she saw my badge stating-Chaplain. She went back into the store and brought me a dozen more pierogies.
FAITH WITH WORKS IS A BLESSING—AND DELICIOUS.
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