Preacher Picked the John 3:16 Cherry

For reasons I won’t bore you with here, I found myself in church this morning. Since today is Pentecost Sunday (commemoration of the holy spirit’s appearance to the apostles and the inauguration of the Christian Church), the preacher’s sermon was about the importance of spreading the Christian message to all people. The service was mostly boring and the sermon was way too long, but there was some entertainment to be had.

The entertainment began when the preacher spoke approvingly of Rockin’ Rollen Stewart (also known as Rainbow Man, because of his rainbow-colored wig), he of the ubiquitous John 3:16 signs fame. Those of you who have watched televised sports on American TV will be familiar with Rockin’ Rollen’s signs, as he made it a point to sit well within camera range at hundreds of televised sporting events in the 70s and 80s. Now, I’ll give the preacher a little wee bit of credit for mentioning, later in the sermon, that Rainbow Man is currently in prison. But, I’ll take that credit back because his bogus explanation for that fact was that Rollen had let his success go to his head and strayed from the straight and narrow path of salvation. The take-away lessons were

a) Rollen Stewart, under the influence of the holy spirit, had spread the gospel and was to be admired for that, and
b) Rollen Stewart, having strayed from the holy spirit, had gotten into trouble – the cautionary part of the tale.

I stifled my guffaws and managed to make do with a smirk and some eyerolls. The preacher didn’t raise any questions about the efficacy of Stewart’s methodology. If Stewart was sincere and wanted to spread the gospel of Jesus, one has to wonder why he chose to do it this way. How many people outside of church circles have a clue what John 3:16 means? It’s a reference that’s known to insiders, much as the term ripieno is known to people familiar with Baroque music, but meaningless to all others. Posting signs with that reference is not evangelism, it’s nonsense. The people who are supposed to get the message haven’t got a clue what the message is, nor may they realize that the message is addressed to them. If the preacher seriously wanted to challenge people to be effective witnesses of their faith, he should have either examined this question or picked a better exemplar. His choice of Stewart was especially ironic because Pentecost is the occasion on which the holy spirit allegedly gave the Church the gift of tongues – the apostles preached in their native language, and the listeners heard the words in their particular, varied languages. In Rainbow Man’s case, he displayed signs in christ-speak, and the only people who understood the signs were those who already knew christ-speak. Epic Pentecostal FAIL!

As if the cryptic nature of Rollen’s message weren’t enough to question his selection as an evangelistic role model, the rest of Rollen’s story really makes me wonder why the preacher didn’t find someone else. Since the 1980s, Stewart has served prison sentences for offenses ranging from stink bombing to kidnapping and is currently serving three consecutive life sentences. Some of Stewart’s bizarre and illegal behavior occurred during the period when he was wearing his wig and wielding his famous signs – not that wearing the wig and wielding the signs weren’t bizarre, but they appear to be about as close to normal as Stewart got. The only things the preacher said about Stewart were that he did the sign thing – and it was good, and he’s now in jail – that’s bad. Pretty slim biography for a role model. Maybe the preacher didn’t want to go too deeply into the bio because doing so would have raised questions about Stewart’s psychological stability. And those questions might lead questioners to conclude that maybe it’s okay not to be too much like Rainbow Man after all. If Rainbow Man’s the best hero the preacher could come up with, I think there may be a serious paucity of worthy role models in the christosphere these days.

Partway through the sermon, my skepticism kicked in and I thought, “Damn! What a great scam! If I wanted to attend hundreds of sporting events around the country without paying a dime, I could go to churches, talk about my conversion to Christianity and subsequent ministry, swindle them out of enough money to pay for gas and tickets, and have all the hot dogs and beer I want at any sports venue I choose! Too bad Rollen beat me to it.” All I could do at that thought was grin and say to myself, “Rockin’ Rollen may be crazy, but he’s crazy like a fox.”

– the chaplain

Advertisement