“Go Goose, Go!”

In our church, we seldom say, “Amen.” It’s a cultural thing. We may agree and even be moved by something the minister says, to which we may silently nod our head in agreement. It’s just not us to shout out an “Amen!” and thus call attention to ourselves. When someone does, we fight the urge to look around to see if we have a visitor in service. We are like the story Mark Twain told of giving a talk in New Hampshire and no one was laughing at his stories like they did in other places. After thirty minutes or so with no one laughing, he wondered what had gone wrong. After the talk, a man came up to him and said, “Mr. Twain, that was one of the funniest talks I ever heard. There were times I could barely keep from laughing!”

There is a time in our service when small children are invited to the front of the sanctuary where they are told a little story. It can be a Bible story, a morality tale, a review of something they have done of which we are proud or even a reminder of some upcoming event in which they will be involved. On a particular Sunday, Venita, the children’s choir director, was doing the Children’s Sermon. She was up front and had the small children sitting in the floor around her. She reminded them of seeing geese flying south in a V-formation for the winter and then fly back north in another V-formation for the summer months. Yes, they responded, they had all seen it.

“The reason they fly in that V-formation is because the goose in front has the hardest job,” said Venita. “He has to cut through the air and then that makes it easier for the others to follow him. They put the strongest goose in the lead because he has the hardest job. He goes until he gets tired and then he falls back to the end and another goose takes his place. They keep doing this all day long while flying, keeping the strongest goose in the lead.”

She then turned to the subject of the honking. “And,” she said, “have you ever heard them honking as they fly along?” Yes, they responded, they had all heard that honking. “Do you know what they are doing with all that honking?” No, they had no idea. “That’s the way they encourage the lead goose to keep going, keep cutting into the air for the flock to fly through. It’s like they are saying, ‘You go, goose, you go!’ Without that encouragement the lead goose might not be able to keep going.”

It was interesting. I had learned something in that “Children’s Sermon” I didn’t know. I was glad I was there. Later, the preacher, Dick House, was delivering the regular sermon and I was still reflecting on that goose which was being encouraged to cut through the air so the flock could fly south.

A few years back, our state voted for a state lottery, and once that was passed, it opened the flood gates for Indian Tribes to open casinos throughout the state. Overnight, a state which would have frowned on flipping for coins became overrun with casinos. While these provide employment, good employment, for many people and contribute positively to the economy of the Tribes, it also has created an atmosphere that for the first time requires public service announcements on where to get help for gambling addiction!

On that Sunday, Dick was preaching and during his sermon he mentioned this problem. I don’t know if he was planning it, but he reflectively noted that this was a problem and this was why he had personally worked on defeating the lottery initiative in the first place. “Sometimes,” he said, “you feel like you’re working all alone against insurmountable odds on things like this.”

There was a pause. He may have planned it as a pregnant pause, a time in which we could reflect on what he was trying to get across. It was one of those moments I should have probably said “Amen.” But, I was still moved by that story Venita told and I shouted, “You go, goose!”

Perhaps I shouldn't have done that.