PROFESSION: RUNNER [T, 8-4-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life by An Old Runner—PROFESSION: RUNNER [T, 8-4-26]

 

“Profession? I’m a runner.”

From the look on her face, it was clear that she was not expecting that answer.

She was the editor of the monthly magazine of my theological alma mater, back in the 1970s, when print magazines meant something. The one she edited, like those of most educational institutions, was designed to attract new donors and new students. I don’t know why, but she was doing a “puff piece” on me.

When she asked me, “How do you see your profession now?” I think she was hoping I would say that I was a social gospel preacher, specifically a civil rights activist. Or a preacher/scholar, since I was beginning to make a minor name for myself as a narrative theologian. Those were the areas she had talked about when she set up the interview with me.

I think she was hoping primarily for the civil rights identity, because the seminary had recently taken a black eye on human rights, which was unfair. They had always been progressive, accepting minority and women students. I had felt comfortable in sending girls from my campus ministries there myself. [Yes, we called college students girls and boys back then.]

But someone had found out that there were a couple of gay students enrolled there and protested. The protesters had a reasonable argument for expelling the gay students, even though their real reason, as always, was just being scared of anything homosexual.

At the time, the express charter of the seminary was to educate preachers for Methodist congregations. But also at that time, the Methodist Church refused to accept gays as preachers. The expeller advocates pointed out that the gays could never be ordained, but the Methodist church was paying for their education through the donations of those very congregations they would never serve. That money would be more fairly spent on those who would serve as preachers.

It was a cause celebre. The seminary did not handle it very well, and did not come out looking very good. I think the editor wanted to do an article about an alum who was known for being active on behalf of the unwanted, to show that the seminary had always had “open doors, open minds, and open hearts.”

I hadn’t even thought of myself as an equal rights advocate for a long time. It had been a dozen years since the Civil Rights movement. Quite a few years since all the black Methodist churches and preachers had been taken into full membership in the church, instead of being cordoned off in a segregated area called The Central Jurisdiction. I wasn’t an activist anymore; I was a runner. 

She was taken aback by my answer, and I was surprised, too. I hadn’t been running long, but it had become my identity.

 

As I finished my doctoral studies and returned to congregation pastoring, I had read Profession: Minister, by James Glasse. One of his main ideas was that a preacher had two selves, one personal, one professional. When church members gave you trouble, it was only your professional self that they criticized. Part of the profession was taking that criticism. But your personal self remained unaffected.

It sounded so right. I decided to take that professional approach to ministry. Now I wouldn’t have to be bothered by criticism personally. I would just let them criticize my professional self. My identity would no longer be Calling: Minister--since I had never been sure that I was actually called by God to ministry--but Profession: Minister.

You know what? Some people don’t play fair. They didn’t know they were dealing only with my professional self. They wanted to criticize me personally as well as professionally.

My answer was running. If my identity couldn’t be as a professional minister, I’d just identify as a professional runner. Not for money, of course, which is usually what separates amateurs from professionals, but in terms of my self.

 

The big running boom, fueled by shoe companies, was hitting the world in a big way, especially the world of middle-aged men, like Jim Fixx and Dr. George Sheehan. It sounded like long-distance running would be a perfect identity for me. Since there were no cell phones then, nobody could criticize me when I was out on the highways and byways, unless they were pretty fast and willing to endure a lot of sweat and pain.

 

So when the seminary magazine editor asked me about my career, about my profession, I said: “Profession? I’m a runner.”

My colon cancer surgery and adjuvant chemo ended my running profession, but I think that wasn’t a bad answer then, and it isn’t now. Life is a long run, even when it’s short.

 

Running the race with perseverance, the one marked out for us by God, that is always the identity that makes the difference. [Hebrews 12:1]

John Robert McFarland

 

 

LOOSE & LONELY [Sun, 8-2-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LOOSE & LONELY [Sun, 8-2-26]

Back in the 1960s, I heard Catholic social philosopher Michael Novak say that he could tell if a house guest was Catholic or Protestant by the way they took a bath. A Catholic just went in and took a bath, because their theology was connectional. Your house is my house. A Protestant asked first if they cold take a bath, because their theology was individual. Your house is your house.

When I reported this to Helen, she said, “Theology has nothing to do with it. Catholics grow up in big families. They know that if they get a chance at the bathroom, they have to take it right now.” [1]

All the lonely people? Where do they all belong? That was Paul McCartney’s question in Eleanor Rigby on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine album back in 1966.

The answer then, and more so now, is “nowhere.” No one belongs anywhere, because we live in an era that does not want connections, because connections mean commitments. So, of course, we are lonely.

It’s always a trade-off, between individual freedom and connectional relationships. Yes, you need both, and you can have both, but it’s very difficult to get the balance right. And when the whole earth tilts toward one or the other, it takes a super-human effort to push it back into alignment.

In theological terms, it’s always a struggle between original sin and original empathy, what John Wesley called “prevenient [preventing] grace.”

When talking about sin, “original” means from the very origin. We are born with the tendency to seek our own good at the expense of others.

Original empathy means we are born with the need to live in cooperative relationships. [“Original empathy” may be a term I just created.]

Right now, and at least since the time of Eleanor Rigby, the whole earth has been tilting toward individual freedom. By earth, I mean not the physical globe, but the overspreading culture of the whole world.

The world’s culture can tilt so quickly anymore because of immediate electronic connections. Those immediate electronic connections allow us to be totally free of real human connections. So, at the same time that we think we are most connected, we are the least connected.

But we are interpreting the absence of connections as freedom, and it really isn’t.

I recall reading William Stringfellow’s Free In Obedience the year I was graduating from seminary. It wasn’t a new idea of course. It goes back at least to Jesus, and was expounded by Paul of the New Testament epistles. But that phrase resonated with me as I started my career. I knew it would be the crux of the next 60 years of my ministry and life. I wanted to be free. And I wanted to be obedient. Could I preach, and live, freedom in obedience?

I see the church as a primary battleground for this conflict between connection and individuality today. So many forces in the world are trying to take our freedom, so we don’t want to be part of a connectional church, have to listen to other Christians who think differently. The flourishing churches are not denominations but congregations that exist in their own little world, where the illusion is that their members are thus free. So, most Christians choose an isolated congregation, or choose to be “free” of the church entirely.

The church is The Body of Christ. It is not primarily an organization or institution. It is a state of grace.

Where are all the lonely people? Where do they belong? They belong in church, that state of grace, with all the other malcontents and misfits and sinners and idiots, free in obedience.

John Robert McFarland

1] I think this was the beginning of Helen’s famous Home Ec Theology. If she wrote a book, it would be a best seller. [And turn theology back two thousand years.]

NEW TUNES FOR OLD WORDS [F, 7-31-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Hymn Singer—NEW TUNES FOR OLD WORDS [F, 7-31-26]

 

I once attended a conference of several thousand church people that went on for several days. It was in a huge arena. I was among the least important attendees, so my place was in the second balcony, at the end farthest from the stage.

I was glad to be there, but I was quite lonely in the midst of all those good people. I was undergoing treatment for cancer, with the real expectation that I might die within a year or two.

At some point, one of the organizers decided that his son’s garage band should play for us, which seemed like a very strange choice. Half a dozen skinny teen boys in ratty life-beater shirts and ripped pants, with drums and electric guitars. By the time they got set up, nobody was paying attention to the stage. Then they started to play and sing. Well, shout, actually. It was loud even in that arena. It was no longer “…the noise of solemn assemblies.” It awas the noise of rock and roll. Well, more like heavy metal. Even in the far balcony, my seat was vibrating.

Then I realized that the “melody,” if you could call that, sounded sort of familiar. Good grief! They were screaming Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God almighty… It wasn’t morning, but… early in the morning, our song shall rise to Thee… Rise it did! All four verses! It was a Presence of God moment.

From as long as I could remember, I had sung those lyrics to the Nicaea tune of John B. Dykes. That was the standard tune even in “the brown book,” which Forsythe Church preferred to use, instead of “the blue book,” which was the official Methodist Hymnal. That was the tune that garage band was using, but it sounded so different.

I’ve always been intrigued by hearing familiar lyrics to a different tune. They always seem to have a fuller meaning that way.

I remember the first time I heard Amazing Grace to the tune of The House of the Rising Son. No, not The Blind Boys of Alabama, although that is their signature song, but another skinny teen boy.

I was in charge of our conference’s Labor Day Weekend retreat for senior highs, sort of a “last fling before school.” The whole group was gathered in the tabernacle, singing camp songs. One kid stood up and said, “My friend here sings Amazing Grace in a different way. You should hear it.”

I didn’t much want to interrupt the flow, and what if the kid couldn’t sing? It would be embarrassing. Also, the kid he pointed out looked shy and reluctant, but I asked him to sing. He didn’t come up front, just stood where he was, and in a clear but haunting voice sang the words of saving grace to that melody of dark sinfulness. It was hearing those words again for the first time. It was a Presence of God moment.

Sometimes now, our church sings an old familiar hymn to a different tune. I sit there on my sofa and scowl. How can they do that? That hymn isn’t the same with a different tune! Then I remember… no, it isn’t, and that can be a good thing.

When we’re old, it’s okay to sit back and enjoy the old lyrics and melodies of life. They have served us well. We’ve earned the right to enjoy those old ways. But it’s okay to be stirred from complacency, too.

John Robert McFarland

ON BEING A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL [W, 7-29-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ON BEING A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL [W, 7-29-26]

 

When I was growing up, conservative and liberal were both good words, at least where I lived.

Conservative meant honoring the past. Biblically, it meant keeping the fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and mother.” We sang “Faith of our fathers, holy faith…” It meant hanging on to what was good, not “…throwing the baby out with the bath water” as we made “progess.”

Liberal meant generous, as in a liberal giver. It meant broad, as in a liberal education, covering all the arts and sciences. It meant progress, which was always touted as a good thing, especially by business people.

When I was in high school, in the early 1950s, those words began to pull apart, primarily because of the issue of racial integration. Brown v Board of Ed was decided in 1954: separate but equal was neither equal nor Constitutional. Honoring the past meant hanging on to racial segregation, and many folks did want to do that. They said they were being conservative. I knew that particular conservatism was wrong.

A lot of our identity comes from what those who disagree with us call us, often in disparagement, like Methodists. That was originally a sarcastic designation for John and Charles Wesley. They were methodist [methodical] in trying to follow Jesus.

In high school, people began to call folks who believed in equal rights both nigger lover and liberal. I knew I believed in equal rights, so apparently, I was a liberal.

Especially on civil rights, equal rights, the lines were clearly drawn. You were either for or against, which meant you were either conservative or liberal. I knew which side I was on. I began to embrace being a liberal.

[I recently heard Kara Swisher, on the “We’re Back” podcast with Brian Williams, say that most liberals got that way because of the equal rights issue.]

When I was in college, I took courses in The History of Christian Thought from the most excellent Dr. D.J. Bowden, and discovered the Personalist theology of Borden Parker Bowne [1847-1910], the most liberal of liberals, even before liberalism was really a thing. I wanted to be the most liberal of liberals. Yes, I was a young contrarian.

But that did not work very well, because as the words conservative and liberal began to divide, liberal started to mean broad morally as well as theologically and socially, and I was very conservative morally.

Morality at the time was almost entirely personal habits—drinking, smoking, gambling, cheating, lying, sexual promiscuity [any sex “out of wedlock”]. Drugs, beyond alcohol, didn’t even exist in my world so were not an issue.

One reason personal morality appealed to me was that it was so clear. You knew if you “drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do.” Social morality was a lot more complicated.

I think a lot of us who were young Christians back then grew up conflicted. We were sure that the liberal stance of inclusion, especially of black folks, was right, and we wanted to be on that side. But liberal also began to mean at least accepting, if not outright practicing, alcohol, marijuana, pornography, promiscuity, profanity, etc. “Now everyone knows, anything goes.” [1] We were not comfortable with “liberal” morality; it just didn’t seem very Jesus-like. But we weren’t comfortable with conservative theology and social norms.

Now, I am older than dirt, and I remain socially liberal and personally conservative. Socially, inclusion seems to me to be the Jesus way. “Go to the highways and byways and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” [2] Personally, respect seems to me to be the Jesus way.

“Respect” in this context takes more than a sub-clause to explain. I eschew drugs and alcohol and tobacco and gluttony and lust because they alter, and thus dishonor, the body, the temple, God gave me. [3] {Yes, I know that drinking coffee makes me hypocritical. Maybe taking meds does, too.}

I eschew promiscuity and pornography for they are likewise dishonorable to the temple of the body.

“Respect” includes all temples, everybody’s bodies, not just mine.

Gambling and booze and drugs damage not just individuals but society. There really are no “victimless” sins.  

So, what does a socially liberal Christian do about including druggies and alkies and bad people, not just in the church but in society and in the heart? Don’t they need to be included, too? Don’t they need to be loved rather than judged?

Well, I already said that social morality is harder to figure out. I’ll let you know if I ever get this dilemma sorted. In the meantime, I know that I am conservative and liberal at the same time…

John Robert McFarland

1] Cole Porter’s musical was in 1934, but, even though Cole was an Indiana boy, it took Broadway morals about 30 years to get to the part of Indiana where I lived, “the Mississippi of the North.”

2] Lk 14:23, KJV

3] I Corinthians 6:19-20.

 

 

THE SADNESS OF A WORLD WITHOUT PONTIACS [7-27-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Curmudgeon—THE SADNESS OF A WORLD WITHOUT PONTIACS [7-27-26]

 

The main thing I hold against Ronald Reagan is the demise of the Pontiac automobile. Not directly, of course. He was four years dead when the last Pontiac came off the assembly line. But he was responsible for killing the Pontiac, the most important car of my life.

I hold many things against Reagan, even though I also have respect for him. He wasn’t a very good actor, and he wasn’t a very good president, but he was a good enough actor to act like a good president, and that’s really all that American voters require. I don’t think he was ill-intentioned. Like so many young people, he just got in with the wrong people. He wanted to be part of the “in crowd,” and the “in crowd” always makes you think you’re in, so that they can use you to their own ends. [1]

I first started riding in Pontiacs when we lived in Indianapolis, because Aunt Dorothy lived there, and she always drove Pontiacs. Whenever we got to go someplace neat, it was in Aunt Dorothy’s Pontiac. When it came time for me to take my driver’s license exam, after we had moved to the farm near Oakland City, my family had no car, so Aunt Dorothy took me in her Pontiac to get my license. When I started to college, it was Aunt Dorothy’s Pontiac that I went back to IU after weekends at home, as she drove back to Indianapolis after her weekend at home to care for her mother.

 

My high school friend, Mike Dickey, always drove Pontiacs, because his father was a Pontiac dealer. All through high school, all my double dates--which was most of my dates, since I did not have a car—were in a Pontiac.

Also, one of my main run-around friends in high school, Bob Keeton, always drove a Pontiac. I was best man at his wedding. I rode with his parents all the way from Oakland City, Indiana to Rochester, MN, for the wedding, in a Pontiac.

 

Most importantly, I went to my own wedding in a Pontiac. My roommate, Tom Cone, had a Pontiac at school our senior year, because his father was a Pontiac salesman. I had a very unreliable lemon-yellow Anglia [English Ford], and when it didn’t want to go to church on a Sunday, so that I could preach, I borrowed Tom’s Pontiac.

On the afternoon of my wedding, though, I did not borrow it. I just ran to Tom and yelled, “My car won’t start. Give me your keys.” I didn’t worry about Tom. I knew he’d find some other way to get there. He did. I never thought to ask how. Without a Pontiac, I would never have gotten married.

Oh, wait. Maybe it’s Barack Obama instead of Ronald Reagan that I should blame. When General Motors was about to go belly-up, Obama agreed to bail them out with government loans as long as they stopped making cars they couldn’t sell. They kept the Chevy and Cadillac and GMC lines and dropped Oldsmobile and Pontiac.

 

Maybe it’s just as well that the Pontiac automobile closed out. All those Pontiacs, so important to me, looked like real cars, distinctive, not like these current cars that all look alike, regardless of maker, like they are all produced on the same mimeograph machine. Chief Pontiac would be embarrassed by those final 2008 cars.

 

Well, at least I am sure that the demise of Pontiac is the fault of somebody else, even though I never bought one.

John Robert McFarland

1] I’ve told many times how I had the very last word on Reagan. When he died, the last of his several funeral services was in Tampico, IL, where he was born. I was preaching at the Tampico UMC then, a part-time appointment in retirement, and I was asked to give the benediction at that service.

EXTREME LOVE [7-25-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Poverty of An Old Reverse Snob—EXTREME LOVE [7-25-26]

 

Some friends have a twenty-something son who drives the van for his church. They go to the homeless encampments to take folks sandwiches and socks. One day, after distributing those helpful items, the van wouldn’t start, and they had to get a homeless guy, living in his car, to give them a jump start. That’s so neat. Despite wealth and poverty, love—if it’s really love--always goes both ways.

A few years ago, when I could walk long distances, I was walking home from downtown and cut through the parking lot of a city park. I saw a couple, probably in their thirties, getting dressed, rather awkwardly, in the front seat of their car. She was putting on a dress. He was struggling into what looked like mechanic’s overalls. At first I thought they had spent an illicit night together and were in the midst of a “Wake up, little Susie” moment. [An Everly Brothers song] But the back seat of the car was piled high with clothes and household items. I realized that they were living in the car. They were homeless. But also they were getting dressed to go to work, or at least go look for work.

They were homeless. But their poverty was not extreme. They had a car to live in, and jobs to go to. Yes, there is a surprisingly large part of the homeless population that works regularly.

Our city has a large homeless population. Like most of America, we also have an affordable housing crisis.

I used to think that I grew up in extreme poverty. Not so. To be able to claim extreme poverty for your backstory, to show that you have achieved in spite of your background, you have to be homeless, at least part of the time, and be hungry, hungry enough that you eat at a soup kitchen or ask for handouts on the street. It also helps if you had to steal stuff to keep from going hungry.

There goes my achievement story. I grew up in primitive conditions—no water in the house, etc, but I was never homeless. I wasn’t even hungry, except once in a while. Occasionally we had only rice soup, that was mostly water, maybe with a carrot or two chopped up in it, but sometimes we ate better than most folks, things we raised ourselves-fried chicken and sweet corn. Besides I could not have eaten at a soup kitchen because we lived in the country without a car. And I never stole stuff to eat. Living in the country without a car is a good way to avoid a life of a crime.

Please understand. I am not disrespecting homeless folks. Even in college, I sent money to a lighthouse mission place in Chicago. I thought the folks in extreme poverty were in the big cities, homeless and hungry.

Yes, I know there’s a double narrative going on here. I’m able to brag about achieving, despite growing up poor, by pointing out that my extreme poverty was not really extreme.

It bothers me that I’m in a growing group of reverse-snobs. There is way too much “I’m better than you because I started out poor. Even better, I was homeless.” Throw in “Also, I was a drunk and an addict and…” Well, then you’ve got the winning trifecta.

We think we are better than folks who started out with privileged lives because we started out with limited lives and still achieved… what?

Nobody chooses the life they have as children. The only worthwhile achievement is being a kind and merciful and loving person, regardless of whether you start out poor or rich. Anybody can be hateful, and anyone can be lovefull.

You are poor and homeless only if you are without love, and that can be whether you are rich or poor. You are wealthy only if you love.

John Robert McFarland

 

HIT BY A BUS [R, 7-23-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Original Sayings of An Old Man—HIT BY A BUS [R, 7-23-26]

 

Well, I said it first. “I could get hit by a bus.”

Comedian Ryan Hamilton actually did get hit by a bus. In 2025. So it was reasonable for him to say it in his recent Netflix appearance.

 

Then he went on: “I know everybody anymore says that you ought to enjoy life right now, because you could get hit by a bus…”

Hold on there! What do you mean, “Everybody says it?”

So I looked it up on Google. Yes, several people have said it. Even wrote songs about it. But every reference for someone else saying it is in the 21^st century. I said it way back in 1990. And again in 1995, when Now That I have Cance I Am Whole was published. So I have to assume all these 21^st century people who are assuming they might get hit by buses got the idea from me and are ignoring my copyright!

It came about this way…

The pale oncologist didn’t actually say I was going to die in a year or two, but he certainly implied it. I was 53 years old. At the time, I figured that was old enough to die. Barely. But after a brief flirtation with the idea that death would clear my schedule so neatly, I had decided I didn’t want to die, even though continuing with life meant I would still have to go to committee meetings.

So, I was in the midst of trying to recover from surgery, and undergoing a year of debilitating chemotherapy, and working fulltime, with a congregation that was not universally cooperative, and feeling sorry for myself, when I looked out our front window and saw one of those huge tour buses bumping along on our brick street.

 

Tour buses were a regular sight in Arcola, IL. We were in Amish country. People with cameras got on big buses and rode for miles so they could take photos of people who don’t know what a camera is. Then they went downtown, right past our house, to get lunch at The Dutch Kitchen.

Our parsonage was across the street from the church building. I made my way across the street several times each day, right in the pathway of that bus. I was barely able to move in those days. If that bus didn’t see me…

I was thinking I would die soon from cancer. Then I realized: I might not die from cancer at all; I could get hit by that bus!

It was such a great feeling of relief. There were so many ways I could die. Death from cancer was not inevitable. Saved by getting hit by the bus!

So, if you are down in the dumps one day, and worried that you might die from some dread disease, just remind yourself: I could get hit by a bus.

And remember who to thank for the idea…and it’s not Ryan Hamilton.

 

John Robert McFarland

A reminder in case you think I stay up too late or get up too early: The posting time listed on these columns is California time, because that is where Blogspot, my gracious host, is located. I live in the Eastern time zone, so if Blogspot says I’m posting at 2:30 in the morning, it’s 5:30 where I am.