The Preacher & The Eggs

Do you suffer from PBC? I’ll get back to that in a second, first a quick joke.

The Preacher & The Eggs

There's this preacher and one day he's running around the house looking for his tie. While looking in closet he found this shoe box, opening it up he found 3 eggs and $100 in cash.

He turned to his wife and asked what it was. She replied, "Well I didn't tell you because I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

The preacher said, "Well, what is it and why would it hurt my feelings?"

She replied, "I've been keeping this box for 25 years, since we got married. Every time you've preached a bad sermon I've put one egg in this box."

The preacher thought, well that's not too bad, 3 bad sermons in 25 years. Then he asked, "Well, what's the $100 for?"

His wife replied, "Every time I got a dozen eggs, I sold them to the neighbors for $1"


I’m not sure if my wife has a similar shoe box in our closet however, if she did, there would have been an additional egg in it this afternoon. Over the past 20 years I’ve preached hundreds, maybe thousands of sermons, today wasn’t one of the better ones.

As expected the church was full for Easter, I have wonderful people. Worship was awesome, as usual. I had prepared well, I liked what I had planned to say but, I just couldn’t get there. There seemed to be a disconnect somewhere between my heart, my head and my mouth. I don’t know, maybe there was a disturbance in the force? My people love me and are willing to extend me lots of grace, for that I am thankful.

As a younger man, still a novice at leading Sunday morning worship, I would play the wrong guitar chord or sing the wrong note and it would ruin my whole day. Heck it would ruin part of Monday as well. Twenty years later I’ve mellowed a bit and learned a few things.

Although I strive for excellence in serving the Lord and my desire is to offer my people fresh spiritual bread, sometimes I’m just going to miss it. Scripture says that His mercies are new every morning. That comforts me; every day is a new beginning.

I’ve also learned a few things about grace. Grace is the antidote for PBC, Performance Based Christianity. What does that mean? That means I get to be real, I get to be genuine, I get to be honest. It means I don’t have to be perfect, I don’t have to always look good and neither do my people. Now that’s freedom!

Paul wrote to the church in Rome:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

I think it’s theologically sound to find room in those verses for a lousy sermon.

To all my people, thanks for loving me and pray for fresh bread.

Copyright © Tom Zawacki 2006