I wouldn’t be caught dead…

You’ve certainly heard the phrase before.  Perhaps you’ve even used it in conversation.  I wouldn’t be caught dead…  In reality, unless the Lord comes first, each and every one of us will be caught dead doing something.  I had a college buddy who got a letter from his mom informing him that their church organist had literally died in the middle of the service that Sunday.  Fell on the organ.  Imagine the sound of that last chord.  Needless to say, it was not a joyful noise. 

As a retired pastor, my own grandfather, William Frederick Dommer, died instantly of a heart attack administering communion to a woman in a hospital. That’s the thing about death—no matter when it happens, there is always a where.

In these two cases, both men died doing what they loved to do. But this phrase, I wouldn’t be caught dead is usually heard in the context of some despicable job or life situation in which we could never imagine ourselves.  Years ago, I served a church in the Chicago area as a minister of music and full time teacher in their Christian school.  Once, while taking my eighth grade students on a field trip to a factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I actually made the unfortunate and arrogant statement that “I wouldn’t be caught dead” working on an assembly line doing something menial and boring like that.  Almost a year to the day later, I was standing in a paper mill, counting notebooks and packaging them for shipment…eight hours a day, six days a week. 

It followed a fateful decision to leave that church position in Chicago and embark on a consulting ministry with a pastor friend of mine.  Long story short, the free-lance ministry never gained traction, and I found myself jobless with a wife and three young kids in Appleton, Wisconsin.  The factory job was my last resort.  In fact, I wasn’t found dead in that paper mill, but for close to nine months I found myself slowly dying inside. 

How could I have so misheard God?  How could I have been so presumptuous as to leave one job without securing another?  How could I take such a risk with my wife and family involved?  And what good was I now to God, when all my education and training was for “ministry?”  I’m making no music.  I’m not teaching young minds the things of God.  I’m not leading people in worship.  And to add insult to injury, any attempt at rational Christian thought was drowned out by the noise of high-speed machinery and worse, the loud blaring rock music over the factory PA system. 

Among the many decadent and depressing lyrics to which I was subjected was a song repeated several times daily by the rock band Pink Floyd.  Into my already dwindling self-esteem rang out this mantra…           

We don't need no education

We don't need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave those kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave those kids alone!

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Well I was no longer a teacher, but that is exactly how I began to feel.  In the kingdom of God, I had become just another brick in the wall.  So I cried out to God, admitting my sense of worthlessness, repenting of squandered opportunities and wasting His time in this God-forsaken place. 

It was then that God spoke to me in a way I had not heard before and have treasured ever since.  It went something like this: Tim, your value to me is not in what you do…in how much ministry you accomplish.  Your value to me is simply that you are my son.  I pictured, for a moment, those words ringing over Jesus after His baptism…this is My Son, in whom I am well pleased.  At the beginning of…not the end of…His public ministry.  God’s pleasure in Jesus was rooted in relationship, not behavior.  If that were not the case, God could not be pleased with any of us.  As the Psalmist says in Psalm 130:  If you should [keep track of] iniquities, who could stand?  God’s introduction of Jesus to the world was not “TAH-DAH! Meet the Savior of the world!” but rather, “Here’s my Boy, in whom I am well pleased.”  The Father delighted in His Son—first and foremost—because He was His Son. 

We have been bought with a price, not with silver or gold, but with Jesus’ very own blood, to secure that relationship.  It was, after all, while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us.  That’s how much we matter to Him.  Do you believe that on a deep level?  I know for me personally, it took me ending up in a place “I wouldn’t be caught dead” to really discover my true value to God.

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