The Misinformed Hip Pastor

In thick rimmed black glasses, white slip-on shoes, and tattooed forearms
the hip pastor tells the congregation “God is not weird “
he is long-winded, speaks passionately, and makes nuanced points
but misses his mark when he drills home the point “God is not weird”.

The word weird is relative
a cultural construct
accurately describing
different behaviors
in different societies
but if it wasn’t
and the Creator
was in fact
not weird
I don’t think
I could trust him
I’m suspicious
of “normal” people
and I’d be even more
suspicious of a “normal” God.

But fortunately [if weird were a concrete term]
the young pastor with his half beard
is misinformed about God’s weirdness.

If God is God, He is weird
and so are we, His followers.

We eat the body and drink the blood of a carpenter who taught that people should be re-birthed in order to enter into a kingdom that no one can see, a man who was prophesied about by another man who cooked his food over a fire of shit. A man who came from people whose most holy day commemorated a time when their ancestors covered their doorways with the blood of a sheep, specifically a one year old male lamb with no broken bones or scars.

So if the urban pastor with his seeker friendly sermons
is going to use the word weird in a discussion of God
he ought to drop the not from the statement
and testify that God is weird, His plans are weird
and we, His people, are most definitely weird.