He was an ordinary pastor, Brother Palmer, the sort of pastor you would expect a Methodist bishop to send to our south Arkansas town.
South Arkansas in the middle of the twentieth century was unprepared to face the present, much less the future. The Civil War hung like a heavy shroud on this declining railroad town. Less than one hundred years before, Yankee soldiers had unceremoniously marched through our swamps to Vicksburg. To our shame, no significant resistance was offered, except a brief skirmish at Boggy Bayou.
Perhaps this was the genesis of the unspoken guilt, or perhaps it was earlier when Zulu warriors were chained and transported up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and forced to chop cotton. But, whenever and however the guilt arose, it permeated our life.
A pastor distinguished only by his mediocrity, Palmer seemed committed to irrelevance. Despite the fact that desegregation was fracturing our fragile community and some of our neighbors and relatives were warring with the Army Reserve units, Brother Palmer was warning us of “immoral thoughts.”
Even though we knew Bishop Hicks never left a pastor in our pulpit longer than four years, Brother Palmer was a trial to even the most committed saint. We were too cowardly to say anything to him directly and too embarrassed to mention his flaws to one another, so, in characteristic Southern fatalistic fashion, we silently conspired not to mention Brother Palmer at all.
To me, the only redeeming feature of Brother Palmer’s sermons was that they were short. They allowed us to get to Lawson Cafe’s hickory-smoked pork ribs before the Southern Baptists showed up.
I never liked Brother Palmer’s sensitivity. It seemed so effeminate-unChristian really. He seemed to me an incorrigible sentimentalist. And, although Southern ethos was full of tradition and veiled sentimentalism, we fiercely hid true emotion.
For instance, when Mr. Wiley tried to kill himself, no one expressed surprise or shock. Such an act was expected from an unstable person whose alcoholism had brought dishonor on his family and town. The only thing that bothered us was that he failed. Such a vulnerable act demanded resolution, and we perversely expected Mr. Wiley to act like a man and do his duty. Although we never said anything to him, he knew what needed to be done and did it. Mr. Wiley’s death reestablished our community’s fragile equilibrium and sense of decorum.
Brother Palmer, however, proved a greater threat than we’d thought. Dwight Washington, a high school scholar and track star, had a conversion experience at our revival service. He foolishly thought he would be equally welcome at our sacred morning worship service. But when he was politely asked to leave during the assurance of pardon-because “nigras” should go to their own churches-Palmer suddenly changed.
Not that he castigated us. We could handle that. We tolerated, even enjoyed his paternalistic diatribes. No, Brother Palmer did the intolerable: he wept. Right in the middle of morning worship, as if it was part of the liturgy, he started crying! Not loud, uncontrollable sobs, but quiet, deep crying.
Old Man Henley, senile and almost deaf, remembering the last time he cried-when his wife died-started crying too. And then the children cried. How we hated Brother Palmer!
Within the year the Bishop removed Palmer from our church. We heard later that he had a nervous breakdown and his marriage failed. Although no one said it, we felt at the time that God had correctly punished this foolish man.
But I never forgot Palmer. Although I had not cried that Sunday-of course not!-I was affected by his vulnerability. It was the unknown quality in my life that I could not quantify, could not control. It was spontaneous, clean, and raw. It was appealing and repulsive-both at the same time. It was God. And I had to have it. By his innocent example, Brother Palmer birthed something in my life that became a call to the ministry.
At first his vulnerability irritated me. And then it piqued my curiosity. Why would he respond so foolishly? Was this the spirit of God-to cry when Dwight could not come to church? As I pondered this oddity, I was drawn deeper into my call. His tears precipitated my theophony. It became my call, that moment when I stood like Isaiah and experienced a powerful cleansing and a demanding God. He wanted my life, but only if I knew how to weep.
During World War II, in a small Latvian town, a Jewish mother and her 2-year-old daughter hid for months and months from the Germans. The mother taught her daughter to stay quiet, to hold her emotion. Finally, when liberated, her small daughter asked, “Is it all right to cry?”
When a friend of mine was raped and taken to the hospital, she told me the physician in charge cried. Those tears did more to help her healing than all subsequent counseling.
I cry when I see a deaf child sing off key in Vacation Bible School because his father mercilessly beat his head against the kitchen door.
I learned theology at seminary, but Palmer taught me to cry. And I weep often now.
Sly Palmer understood: at times a good cry is the calling of God.
-James P. Stobaugh
Fourth Presbyterian Church
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
