When the pastor nominating committee was interviewing me under such circumstances, it seems as though there was a question they might have missed. They never asked me, "Did they ask you to leave?"

The answer to that question is "yes - they did."

Well, since I have everyone's full attention now, you probably want to know why. As you might have inferred from your own experience - there was a real disagreement about what constitutes positive ministry, at least there was in one of the two congregations I served. I thought that ministry was about renewal and transformation. I thought ministry meant getting involved in the community and making the voices of young people heard. But in this particular church, they disagreed with me heartily. They thought ministry was about visiting the sick and the lonely, shepherding the congregation, and preaching sermons that made everyone feel good. The rift got noticeable quickly after some of the efforts I made towards redevelopment. People complained that I hadn't visited enough and that I had moralized too much about the stewardship of their yearly chicken barbeque to raise money for the church. I complained that this stubborn old mule of a church would never change and probably should die. It came to a head at one of our Session meetings after months of frustration, and I asked the elders if it had come to the point where they would prefer dissolution of the pastoral relationship. The vote was unanimous for me to leave, but because of the Shared Ministry we needed to sort out what should happen next with help from the Presbytery.

The Stated Clerk, one of the most genuine pastors in the Presbytery, was asked to come hear about what was going on. He heard painful truths from multiple angles. The church's needs and my needs seemed to be in a place that those in the legal world would call "irreconcilable differences." This church was hurt and jealous that things seemed to be going better with the other congregation, but they also knew that the finances and the small membership of both congregations seemed to lock them into sharing a pastor. A decision had to be made.

Much to my surprise, the pastor who had been listening to these gruesome conversations made a recommendation to the Presbytery that we should stay in ministry with one another. The rationale was that the churches were yoked, and breaking the yoke at this point would hurt both congregations financially. He also acknowledged that both churches needed pastoral leadership even if it wasn't exactly as they had envisioned it, so I should stay, happy or not, and they should keep me, happy or not. He may not have known what he was asking - but God often does strange things through the course of human events.

Nevertheless, it was an ugly call to make. Not without hesitation and a lot of prayer, Third Presbyterian Church and I, as their pastor, both promised to make a go of it, and I stayed with them four years following the vote to have me leave.

I want you to know that I'm not telling you this story to rehash painful memories, or to claim that I was right, or even to do a "true confessions" sermon. I'm telling you this because I STAYED, I stayed four years after a church asked me to leave, and it was probably my greatest lesson in ministry. My first assignment after agreeing to stay was to go and visit a whole bunch of people who were members of the church. Well, after having something like a session voting for you to leave, let me tell you, that's not a fun time. People were mad as hell, and for the most part, that anger was directed at me. Some people were mad at the church, but not all that many. My tenure there had been short. It probably would have been easier to get out of town. At least then, people would have had the ability to get past the pain without having to think about it too much. My supporters would have had a great grudge to carry on the church, and my detractors could have celebrated an easy victory.

It didn't happen that way. Together we had to walk the painful walk of forgiving one another. I had to sit and hear how people had been hurt - really hurt when they couldn't think of anyone else but me to blame for that pain. I listened to story after story of disappointments that their beloved church wasn't what it used to be. I sucked up my pride and joined them in ministry. Perhaps that church will never grow or get involved in the community as I had imagined - but to tell you the truth, I hadn't really been listening. When I was forced to focus on listening to them, some opinions changed. They realized that I wasn't out to get them or further my career by walking over their backs. That doesn't mean that everything changed. A lot of hurt and anger remained on both sides. We still had wildly different ideas for what ministry is supposed to be. Human forgiveness is rarely perfect, but a little goes a long way.

Such forgiveness though makes people very, very nervous. There's an uncomfortable vulnerability there. At any time thereafter, I knew the church could get rid of me. And anytime, they knew I could leave them cold. That's why in Mark's gospel, the scribes are mortified when Jesus said to the paralytic man, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Who could have that power? They assumed only someone speaking against God's Word could offer such an outlandish proclamation.

Today, we still have trouble with the promise that God offers us forgiveness because that means we faithful Christians are not permitted that grasp on anger that is so satisfying to our prideful egos. It means that Jesus might tell us to stand up, take our mat, and walk. We might actually have to go to those people who have hurt us or whom we have hurt and find a way through our pain. We might, God forbid, also have to forgive ourselves which means claiming our own capacities to be a part of such painful experiences.

I believe that what this church really and truly needs is to discover the incredible joy and freedom that comes from living as "forgiving and forgiven" people. God says through the prophet Isaiah, "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? ……I give water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people I formed for myself." This way through the wilderness, and rivers of drinkable water flowing through the desert are signs of the living promise that comes with forgiveness. "Don't remember the old things," God says. And later God even promises to have a dull memory for the many iniquities that we've placed as a burden, and the multiple sins that have wearied the divine heart. We need to let the hurts of our own past become distant memories so that we can find the path that God makes even through our thickest wilderness wanderings and even through our thirsting in the desert.

The reason forgiveness is as scary for the institutional church as it was for those scribes and as problematic for individual Christians as it was for God's chosen people long ago is that it forces us to change. It forces us to accept that God's bigger picture is the true picture. God promises paths through the scary places - but they are places that, more often than not, we don't even want to go. We'd rather guard our secrets closely and keep our grudges against one another, thank you very much. Letting them go may mean that we have no more finger-holds where we can hang on to our anger and pain and we'll begin a free fall into a place we can't even imagine.

We must trust that the insecurity of that place is better than the security of our pain. Trusting the other, trusting God can even help the person most paralyzed with fear to stand up, take his or her mat, and walk. When we do walk, and do trust, the God of life will teach us those things that will end up being the world's most valuable gifts. In those four years, I had to learn that God's time doesn't always match up to Kerra's calendar. Also, I realized that I could only be their pastor if I placed my trust in God and stayed in relationship with the congregation. Reading books by the latest and greatest "church growth" guru were only partially helpful. But my greatest lesson learned from that experience was finding out that being part of a faith community means being held accountable for my mistakes and forgiving others for theirs.

When a story repeats itself in the life of a person, or in the life of a congregation, the only way out of the pattern is to recognize when God is doing a new thing. God is doing a new thing in this congregation by sending me to you and calling you to me. The new thing is not that I am a woman. It's not that I have fewer titles behind my name than previous pastors. What it may be was pointed out to me by another pastor in the Presbytery over lunch. I was telling him that I have been perceiving a real need for people to experience forgiveness here, and he said to me, "Perhaps your call is to screw up really big so that they can forgive you!" Maybe it is. God, I hope it isn't, but maybe it is. Just maybe you need someone stubborn enough to wait out the time it takes to get through those periods of darkness, step by step, bit by bit, until together we make it to that point of knowing that God's grace has no boundaries. Amen.