Pressing Matters

By Patrick C. Heston

While on staff at a church about a dozen years ago, I shared a rather large office with my friend, Peter Hough. He walked in one morning while I was at my desk and asked, almost immediately, “Do you play golf?”

It seemed a strange question to ask, especially right off the bat, unless he was planning on playing that afternoon and needed yet another person to complete a foursome.

I answered that I had once golfed somewhat regularly, at one point almost religiously, but that had been many years ago. I explained that there came a day, decades earlier, when I was on a course, preparing to play my ball from a second-nine fairway, when the obvious suddenly hit me and I asked myself, out loud, “What am I doing out here? I hate playing golf!” I told Peter I had played one time since that day, on vacation with my two sons — one game of golf in the last 45 or more years.

I then returned the favor by asking Peter if he played golf. He answered simply, “no.” It seemed strange. With curiosity welling up inside of me, I asked, “Then what prompted your question about golf?”

“Your shirt,” he answered matter-of-factly.

Sure enough … though I honestly hadn’t been aware of it, my shirt (inherited from my father-in-law) boasted the Masters Tournament insignia: the United States in yellow, with a red flag atop a green pole rising out of the soil of Augusta, Georgia.

_

“My shirt of choice that day was obviously stating one thing while the reality of my life spoke a different message entirely.”

_

I was wearing it because it was a comfortable shirt for a warm summer day, and I had donned it almost without thinking earlier that morning. Quite simply, it went with my dress pants and dress shoes. Beyond that, I had no reason for wearing it. Still, I walked around all day inadvertently advertising that I was a golfer, whereas few things could be further from the truth.

Duffer maybe, but golfer never.

My shirt of choice that day was obviously stating one thing while the reality of my life spoke a different message entirely. Of course, you wouldn’t know it unless you got me on a golf course.

That simple exchange with Peter stayed with me all that day and got me thinking seriously on a couple of levels. Obviously, it made a somewhat significant impact since I’m raising the issue again a dozen or so years after the fact.

_

“Are we just ‘wearing’ Jesus or are we genuinely Jesus-followers?”

_

Advertisements or Examples?

I wonder how many of us Jesus-followers there are who outwardly “wear” things that identify us as belonging to Him — faithful corporate worship, instinctual prayers over meals in public, and moral lives that are (perhaps) a cut above the normal. You know, things like that. Yet the truth about us (if that truth were known) doesn’t actually jibe with the message we wear.

In other words, are we just “wearing” Jesus or are we genuinely Jesus-followers? Are we merely walking advertisements for Jesus or are we actually walking examples of Jesus?

If I may summarize a Soren Kierkegaard story as I remember it …

An out-of-towner who, while walking to an important business meeting not far from his New York City hotel, realized that his suit pants were way too wrinkled. He soon came to a business window where he saw advertised “Pants Pressed While You Wait.” With some extra time before his meeting, and feeling a good pants-pressing was in order, he walked inside the store, stepped behind the counter, and started removing his pants.

The shocked clerk exclaimed, “What do you think you’re doing?”

The businessman replied, “The sign says, ‘Pants Pressed While You Wait.’”

“No, you don’t understand,” explained the clerk. “We don’t press pants. We paint signs.”

I wonder if Christians and churches are that way significantly too often — preaching help, healing, and wholeness in the name of Jesus, but as passersby step inside for assistance, we are forced to admit, “No, you don’t understand. We don’t actually do those things. We just talk about those things.”

So I have been wondering again — which I seem always to be doing, even more so as I age — do we as Christians, as the church of Jesus Christ, merely paint signs or do we actually press pants?

There is a significant difference.

_

“The shirts we wear as Christians should jibe with the reality of who we really are.”

_

Mixed Messages

It just seems to me that the signs we make as churches and the shirts we wear as Christians should jibe with the reality of who we really are. Certainly, they should jibe with the reality of who Jesus is.

Mixed messages are more than merely confusing; they are very real hindrances to ministry and evangelism, to loving and serving and saving people all around us.

I remember Jesus once saying something about looking all prim and proper on the outside but being all mixed up and messed up on the inside (Matthew 23:27–28). And wasn’t there that point He made once about people who mouthed His words and did things in His name, but then Jesus said He didn’t even know who they were (Matthew 7:21–23)?

That’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it? You know, advertisement saying one thing, reality another.

No wonder the world is so mixed up.

No wonder the world has so little use for churches and Christians.

I don’t want to be like that.

I don’t want the church to be like that.

I don’t think Jesus wants us to be like that.

Call me picky, if you want, but I just think that those signs we make and shirts we wear should be the truth about us.

+