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I’ve had a lifetime love affair with the Indianapolis “500.”
As a resident of central Indiana, it’s been relatively easy to make my way to the track on race day so I can join 300,000 of my closet friends.
Back in the early 1970s, however, things got trickier. The date of the race moved from May 30 (which used to be the fixed annual date of Memorial Day) to the fourth Sunday of the month, one day before the current national holiday on the fourth Monday.
How does a pastor go to the track when the biggest racing event of the year is held on a Sunday?
The answer is to grow your church large enough to hire a second pastor – one who annually receives the “privilege” of preaching on Memorial Day weekend.
That makes sense. But it didn’t address my neurotic guilt that I was somehow being a slacker by surrendering worship leadership in order to go schmooze with the crowd.
My anxiety about this came to a head more than 30 years ago.
At that time I wore glasses only for long-distance vision. My glasses would come off and on throughout the day, and I frequently misplaced them.
On the morning of the race that year I couldn’t find my glasses anywhere. I knew I would need them to get a clear look at the field of 33.
Suddenly I realized where they were. On Friday afternoon I had left them sitting on my desk at church.
Rats.
What made things interesting is that the very time our family would be driving toward the track coincided with the arrival of our worship crowd.
I drove into the church lot and parked well in the back. My family sat there with me. “So, are you going to go inside and get your glasses, or not?”
I couldn’t muster the courage to walk into the building wearing shorts and a T-shirt on a Sunday morning. People do that rather often these days (pastors included). But at the time it seemed like I’d be sending a really bad message.
So I did the brave thing: I passed the buck.
I turned to my oldest son and said, “Here’s the key to Daddy’s office. All you have to do is slip inside and get my glasses.” About that time Mary Sue gave me a look that communicated, with unmistakable clarity, that Real Men Get Their Own Glasses.
Which is why I decided, with a deep sigh, to drive away. I spent three hours that day watching semi-blurry race cars.
A few weeks later I told this story to my congregation. I was totally caught off guard by the response. A number of people were genuinely angry with me – not because I was a race fan, but because I didn’t walk into my office that Sunday morning.
I’ll never forget what one of my key leaders said to me afterwards:
“Don’t you ever do that again. Don’t you ever give in to the fear that you can’t be a real human being with us.”
It was a priceless opportunity to learn something about leadership transparency. And it was a hard-won lesson in the difference between true humility and the false self that so often masquerades as the Real Me.
The apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:7, “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
It’s all about God’s gift of new life. It’s not about the clay vessel. We just get to be the containers of God’s best stuff.
Therefore we must not take ourselves too seriously.
Three weeks from this Sunday I’ll once again attend the Indianapolis “500” – grateful simply to be one of God’s cracked pots.