We live in a rather quiet neighborhood where nothing big ever seems to happen. At least so it seemed until several weeks ago when we became front page news! A small plane crashed into a house down the street from ours, sending tremors through the ground beneath our feet, and gathering television crews like kids to an ice cream truck on a hot summer's day.

The single engine craft had been out patrolling the lakefront breezes, and the pilot was trying to land at a tiny township airport nearby. Surprisingly, the tragedy took place on a clear day with no threatening storms in sight. The skies were beautiful, and those who were in the plane had probably enjoyed the spectacle of creation from their lofty vantage point.

Yet in the few final moments of flight, the novice at the controls made several critical blunders and took his passengers on an unscheduled house call. Two died in the disaster, and now none of the survivors remembers the delight of soaring. All that will live on in memory is the disastrous crash that brought it to a ghastly halt.

A Sermon That Will Live In Infamy

The incongruity of the glorious flight and its bitter end pulled a skeleton out of the closet of my memory. Not long ago I was looking through a stack of old sermons and experienced a horrible recollection when I came across the sketchy notes of a message I delivered in my second year of ministry. Those were the days of mad rushing trying to stay ahead in the race of meeting every demand in my moderate-sized congregation. Of course, the hardest part was preparing two new, fresh messages each week.

Often I tried to work in series, thus reducing the overall study time by stretching the research to give substance to several messages. The sermon that crashed was the second on the topic of "discipline." In the first I explained the concepts of church discipline based on Jesus' teachings in Matthew 18. I thought that I could expand on those insights in a follow-up message addressing discipline in the home, reflecting on the wisdom of several of the Proverbs.

I remember starting well, opening with humorous reflections on the fact that I was not married and didn't have children, so obviously I was an expert on these things! Then I got into recent news stories of youth violence in our nearby city that were blamed on the permissiveness of parents. I transitioned into the main thrust of the message with a quote from Napoleon. When he was asked how the training of the young should be handled, he replied, "You start 21 years before they're born by training their grandmothers how to teach their daughters to be mothers."

Leaning heavily on James Dobson's perspectives in Dare to Discipline I went on to address the values underlying discipline, the means of discipline, the concept of a "disciplined life," and the relational end of discipline. At that point I simply ran out of material. I was empty. There was nothing on paper, and my mind was blank.

I remember standing at the pulpit with absolutely no words to speak. I felt my face get hot and red. The people shifted restlessly in their seats, every eye now awake and wondering what was happening. After what seemed to be an eternity of silence (probably only about 45 seconds!) I said that I wasn't feeling well (which was emotionally true), asked if we could sing the last hymn, mumbled a prayer, and walked out the door, heading straight for home. I crawled into bed and stayed there till the next day.