Nobody Is Pissed At Me

Sunday, Ginny went over to help our friend Barbara shower and dress in fresh clothes.

Some other friend of Barbara’s bought her a new robe.

Barbara feels the prescriptions related to her first chemotherapy treatment are the thing making her so weak and wobbly.

Yet in the midst of her pain, weakness and illness, Barbara remains gracious.

While Ginny helped Barbara bathe and dress, I sat outside on the patio smoking my pipe, fielding phone calls and watching a raccoon on the roof of the apartment across the garden.

And I thought about how things would be if I were a patient.

I doubt that I would be a patient patient.

Yes, I’d be on that nurse call buzzer like a teen playing Froger in a video arcade.

And the ghost of Florence Nightingale, herself would finally stomp down the hall in exasperation to press a pillow over my face to shut off my incessant whining and demands.

As I watched that raccoon, I thought about getting old and needing help to dress, and about Saint Peter….

Shortly after Jesus rose from the dead, He was talking with Peter—you know, the If you love Me, feed My sheep conversation—when Peter got to worrying about what one of the other disciples was doing.

Peter, seeing the other disciple asked Jesus, “Lord, what shall this man do”?

Peter’s nosiness seems typical of Christians ever since; we spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what other people are doing – or not doing.

We are born busybodies, meddling in other people’s affairs.

We call it witnessing.

The Lord’s reply to Peter applies to the rest of us as well when we get concerned about what other people are doing; Jesus said, “What is that to thee? Follow thou me”.

Not one word in the Bible tells me how somebody else ought to treat me.

It only tells me how I ought to treat them.

The commandment is not They Shalt Not Steal—it’s You, John Cowart, Shalt Not Steal.

Nothing at all about what somebody else ought to do.

Following Christ is an individual matter, not a spectator sport. Yes, there is some place for corporate, group worship, but I fear we confuse individual responsibility to God with collective bargaining.

Were you or I stranded on a desert island, not another soul in sight, altogether alone in the wide ocean, your role as a Christian is no different than if you stand in the middle of Times Square—to worship and serve our Creator.

When we focus on others, we say, “Lord, look what that guy’s doing”.

And the response comes, “What is that to thee? Follow thou Me”.

In fact, in this section of Scripture, Jesus emphasized individual following.

He said to Peter, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not”. … And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, “Follow me”.

When you’re young you can dress yourself, go where you want, do what you please—you are capable of doing acts of charity and kindness for others.

But when you get old, you stretch out your arms so somebody else can help put your clothes on—you become an object of charity.

This galls.

I think it would drive me nuts!

I want to be the one giving charity, not receiving it.

I want the active ministry, not the passive one.

I resist changes in my self-defined role as a Christian. I get comfortable in my role, I adjust my life to one way of being Christian, and when God calls me to another, I balk.

I define what I’m willing to do for Christ and how I intend to do it. I want to call the shots. To tell God just how He is to be served.

While I say I’m a follower of Jesus, I want to lead Him around by the nose.

I see what this man and that man is doing, and from my high vantage point of superior righteousness, I want to control their actions…

But Jesus says, “What is that to thee? Follow thou me”.

What is that to thee?

Follow thou Me.

After we left Barbara’s. Ginny and I drove back by a different route; she driving, me navigating.

There was some confusion about directions. Actually, there was a lot of confusions about directions. She thought we were driving to one place; I was giving her directions to another.

Eventually we ended up at Dave’s Diner which was crowded with folks enjoying lunch.

The place buzzed with conversations. The staff scurried here and there serving customers.

Gin and I landed in a corner booth near the radio which was turned up so folks far off could hear the music.

Since things seemed a bit testy between us I asked Gin, “Are you pissed at me”?

She muttered something I couldn’t hear.

I asked again.

Again she said something, but the radio and the conversations around the room drowned out her words.

I asked again… right that moment there was one of those silent dead spaces in dozens of conversation around the restaurant as Ginny shouted, “NO!”

Everybody looked at us.

Right then, the whole restaurant staff, Nichole, Billy, Robin, Chris—all turned toward our booth and shouted, “No, John!”

I yelled back at them, “Do you know what I’d asked her?... I asked her is she were pissed at me”.

The whole lunch crowd broke up laughing.

For the whole rest of the time we were there, people, even strangers, going up to the cash register would pass our table and say, “No, John”.

It’s good to know that nobody is pissed at me.