Sixty Years and the Sound of a Rooster

I am sixty years old.

That sentence lands differently now.

It is no longer abstract. It is not theoretical. It is not about future possibility. It is about what has already been lived.

And what has been missed.

What is emerging in me is not a critique of seminaries, not a reform of the Church, not a manifesto about structures. It is something far more uncomfortable.

It is the slow realization that much of my anxiety about formation and institutional life is really about my own formation.

Or lack of it.

I have spent decades inside the Church.

Preaching.

Teaching.

Building.

Planning.

Raising funds.

Pursuing degrees.

Designing programs.

Counseling.

Speaking.

Writing.

Always doing something that looked like fidelity.

And yet beneath all of it there is this painful question:

How often did I casually look away from Christ?

Not apostasy.

Not scandal.

Just looking away.

Peter did not renounce Christ with a manifesto.

He simply warmed himself by another fire.

He stood near enough to see, but far enough to protect himself.

That is the denial that frightens me.

The hidden denial.

The denial that happens while still wearing clerical clothes.

The denial that happens while speaking about Him.

The denial that happens in busyness.

In exhaustion.

In constructing something religious that feels substantial.

In building a world where I am needed.

Where I am competent.

Where I am secure.

Where I am visible.

Where I am affirmed.

All of it wrapped in ministry.

All of it justified by responsibility.

And somewhere inside, the quiet movement of the heart away from simple remembrance.

I do not mean I stopped believing.

I mean I stopped abiding.

There is a difference.

I can see now how easy it is to build a religious identity.

To become “a priest.”

To become “a teacher.”

To become “a voice.”

To become someone who understands.

And all the while Christ waits in silence.

Not impressed.

Not angered.

Just waiting.

Waiting for the heart.

The real heart.

The one beneath the schedule.

Beneath the productivity.

Beneath the degrees.

Beneath the building campaigns.

Beneath the programs.

How much time was spent on what surrounds religion rather than on Christ Himself?

How many hours of planning.

How many meetings.

How many strategies.

How many emails.

How many worries about money.

How many calculations.

How many internal comparisons.

How many subtle competitions.

And how little time trembling before Him.

This is not false humility.

It is compunction.

I see that even what was good was often abstracted from intimacy.

I served Christ without always being with Christ.

I spoke of Him without always standing in Him.

I defended the Church while neglecting my own heart.

And now the rooster crows.

Not once.

But through memory.

Through exhaustion.

Through disillusionment.

Through the stripping away of identity.

I hear it.

And I realize my anxiety about formation was really grief over my own heart.

My concern about academics was really concern that I had built too much on knowledge and too little on repentance.

My discomfort with institutional life was really discomfort with how easily I could hide inside it.

Hide from nakedness.

Hide from silence.

Hide from the terror of simply being a man before God.

Sixty years.

How much of that was truly given?

How much was defended?

How much was subtly negotiated?

I am not accusing the Church.

I am accusing myself.

I made ministry safe.

I made it manageable.

I made it measurable.

I made it productive.

And in doing so, I sometimes made the Cross reasonable.

I softened it.

I surrounded it with structure.

I wrapped it in activity.

So that I would not have to feel its edge.

The Cross is not productive.

It is not strategic.

It is not efficient.

It is death.

And I have often preferred management to death.

Now something in me wants only Christ.

Not the idea of Christ.

Not the defense of Christ.

Not the expansion of His Church.

Just Him.

The living God.

The face that Peter wept before.

The eyes that did not condemn but pierced.

I do not want to reform anything.

I want to repent.

I want to remember.

I want to stand without scaffolding.

Without identity.

Without being needed.

Without building.

Without producing.

Without proving.

Just standing.

And that terrifies me.

Because it feels like disappearing.

But perhaps disappearing is what should have happened long ago.

Perhaps the last decades were mercy.

Time given.

Time allowed.

Time endured.

And now the invitation is simpler.

More severe.

More real.

Abide.

Remain.

Die to the need to construct.

Die to the need to be effective.

Die to the need to explain.

Die to the need to defend.

Die to the need to matter.

And seek only Christ.

If I had done that more faithfully, perhaps everything else would have been different.

Or perhaps not.

But at least the heart would have been whole.

Now, at sixty, I do not want brilliance.

I do not want influence.

I do not want expansion.

I want remembrance.

I want compunction.

I want the prayer of the publican to be enough.

I want to be found not building something around Christ, but hidden in Him.

And if that means becoming smaller.

Quieter.

Less visible.

Less necessary.

Then let it be so.

Because I am tired of standing by other fires.

And I no longer want to deny Him in small, respectable ways.