I live in a wonderful historic neighborhood inFort Worth, Fairmount, and one of its distinctions was that it had its own plumber, Gene Forman. Gene was a large, affable man in his early sixties who had created a niche for himself in our neighborhood. And we kept him and his erstwhile partner, Petey, plenty busy.
In fact, I thought us Ritsches needed to keep him on retainer. With all our failing pipes, new fixtures and water heaters, and impossible clogs, Gene and I got to be pretty good friends.
Gene and I talked a lot about faith. He had been involved in the founding of a church years ago. He’d been fond of the pastor and consequently been hands-on in both building the church and leading it for awhile. But for some reason–I gathered because of inevitable church politics–he’d gotten discouraged and fallen away. He may have been disappointed in the pastor. I’m not sure. It was years ago, and he hadn’t attended since.
He was fascinated to discover that St. Stephen had an open-minded attitude about gays and lesbians and served homeless folks meals. He thought that being exclusive was where a lot of churches went wrong.
Once our basement crawl space flooded. Gene showed up and took a quick look under the house. “Bring the wetsuit, Petey?” he asked.
I don’t know whether he was joking or serious. I do know that the problem was serious. He explained that this kind of serious flooding was also an electrocution risk.
I’d never thought about that. I’d always thought plumbing was dirty, nasty, unpleasant work that I was grateful somebody else did . I never thought of it as dangerous–even life-threatening.
Last month I was shocked to learn that Gene had dropped dead suddenly–a stroke or a heart attack, I’m not sure. Then Petey dropped by the house and asked my wife if I could do the service.
By the time I got the message, they’d asked a stranger, but I volunteered to do a eulogy. I met his wife Christy and grown children, who told me that really I was the only pastor Gene had known or talked about.
It occurs to me that Jesus and plumbers have more in common than maybe we’d like to admit. We say He bore our sins on the cross; we say in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus descended to hell. Underlying this is the idea that Jesus dives down into the very depths of human depravity and, like Heracles or Orpheus, rescues us from its clutches. Jesus is a plumber, diving down into the dangerous flooded crawlspace of our souls, dealing with the, ahem, refuse of our lives, the piled up, stinking crap of our souls that we want gone, but haven’t got the nerve to get rid of ourselves.
It’s a dirty job, and dangerous, and we don’t want to do it, but somebody’s got to.
Jesus, plumber of our souls.
I suppose that somebody will consider this analogy degrading to Jesus. On the contrary. It’s theologically exactly on the mark. I shared it at Gene’s funeral because his life and his death gave me the insight.
If anything, I’m going to look on plumbers with a lot more respect. In the past I might have said, perhaps with an ironic edge, that they’re doing God’s work.
Now, thanks to Gene, I know it’s true.