I like to think I am uniquely qualified to handle distractions in the church. Growing up I attended Red Bud Baptist Church in Mooresmill, Mississippi. It was a small country church where my Grandfather and all his kin had been attending since time out of mind. There was a sense in which the whole service was kind of distracting. There was no air conditioning, and in the dog days of summer the whole place was in motion with people fanning with these fans with a picture of Jesus on them donated by the local funeral home. There was no bulletin so you never knew what might happen next. The preacher, who would come there every other week on his circuit, might be a favorite or he might not be, but that really didn’t matter. He would have to speak loud to get over the drone of the attic fan that was providing enough circulation combined with the funeral fans to make it bearable. Of course being located in the country with the windows open often a wasp would come into the hallowed meeting and then it would really get interesting. As a young boy, this was what you prayed for. I was interested in watching the people who were being dive-bombed by the wasp as well as the preacher. And, I was interested to see how the minister would handle it. Often times he would never miss a beat. People would be bailing out of chairs, ducking for cover, throwing things and he would just keep preaching!

The first church I ever supplied while in seminary was a country church at the end of the gravel road in Forrest City, Arkansas - Ragland Memorial Presbyterian Church. It was much like the Red Bud Baptist Church in many respects. There was an attic fan over the pulpit that sounded like a jet engine; the windows were open so wasps and other flying insects visited there also. The only difference was Ragland had pews that were so narrow; you could barely fit your bottom on when you sat down. Redbud had pink theater seats. Of course this was no big deal to me since I didn’t have to sit in them. I just preached till I got through. I do suppose I was much like the ministers of my childhood, preaching through no matter what came in the window. I had fire in my mouth and something to say and I would say it come hell or high water! Teri and I were engaged when I first started preaching there, and she would faithfully go with me every Sunday. She even gave me a watch for our wedding gift—early, so I would have some regard for the ancient wisdom that the mind can’t take in more than the bottom can endure. It never fazed me, I just delivered a dump truck load of information every week and because they were good, gracious country people, they never said anything. However, the elder in charge at precisely noon time would close his Bible and fold his arms. I didn’t figure out that was my queue to finish till after I got my watch and saw the correlation between noon time and the ceremonial closing of his Bible. Even then, he never said a word and I never quit!

As I said, I think I am uniquely qualified to handle distractions in worship services. Yesterday we had the first major distraction in worship that I can remember in a long time. I was in the middle of talking about the messiness of the gospel when all of a sudden I noticed something larger than a bug dart out into the aisle and Jim Fox jump up. I noticed other people starting to move and saw that I was losing the attention of the congregation fast. I thought to myself, do I continue like I would have in my youth —“damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!” Or stop? I stopped and asked, “What is that?” Several people hollered, “It is a mouse.” At that point I saw my mother-in-law stand up on her chair and other people begin to move their feet. Then, the mouse proceeded to come right down the aisle and under the communion table.

When you are talking in front of people you have to think on several levels. It was coming towards me and I will admit my first thought was to jump down from the stage and just stomp it and restore order. Wisdom won out and I didn’t. I had a vision of women screaming, swooning, and fainting, and of children traumatized for life and before I could think of anything else to do, Collin Champagne came calmly down the aisle and in about a minute’s time caught the mouse and took it outside. Like I said—messy! I couldn’t pay for living illustrations of sermon points like that. I couldn’t choreograph a point in a sermon that well.

Author Annie Dillard has visited worship services all over the world—from high mass in stone cathedrals to the rural folk liturgies in the country churches of my youth. This is what she had to say about worship: “We have been trying to get this right for 2,000 years and we still can’t do it.” I somehow take great comfort in that. If a perfect liturgy or life were expected, we would all be as nervous as cats, always standing on our on dignity and never really getting at the essence of what real worship or Christianity is all about. As I ponder the mouse in the church, an unexpected variable, which dropped, like a bomb shell on our worship and the side-splitting laughter of the folk of St. Patrick, it may have been the closest thing we have experienced to what worship in heaven will be like. We always talk about worship being about-Word, Sacrament and Prayer. If we ever omit laughter, we have missed it. When Jesus is your righteous and your worship, you can laugh because you don’t have to be perfect anymore or have perfect ceremony. I imagined as I stood there that I could here an echo in heaven and it was the sound of laughter and joy. May we never lose that, even when there are no mice in the church!