REMEMBERING WHAT COMES FIRST [R, 4-30-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Watching for the Spirit

REMEMBERING WHAT COMES FIRST      [R, 4-30-20]

I wasn’t at the hospital to see Charlie. I wasn’t there as a pastor at all. I was there as a patient. But one of the nurses at the cancer center across the street had asked me to go up on a surgery floor to see a cancer patient she was worried about.

It was a floor that was new to me, and I was basically lost. I always try not to look into rooms as I go along the hall in a hospital. I’ve been a patient, and I understand how important it is to have a little privacy. But I didn’t understand the numbering system. I had basically stopped, looking at the identity signs on both sides of the hall, trying to figure out where in the hall I was, when I heard a man crying.

It wasn’t loud, but it was heart-wrenching. Tears in a hospital are pretty common, but they are hardly ever a good thing. I followed their sound and broke my rule about looking into a room.

A man was sitting on the side of his bed, his head down, not just crying, but sobbing, quietly. I thought, “I know that man. That’s Charlie. I didn’t know he was here.”

Well, of course, I didn’t. He didn’t belong to my church, so there was no reason why anyone would tell me he was in the hospital. But he belonged to my denomination. He was active in our district organization. I had seen him often at meetings, a handsome, smart, kind man, the sort preachers want more of in their churches.

Nobody else was in his room. I went in and sat down beside him. He looked at me. I’m not sure he knew who I was, but that didn’t seem to matter. Through his tears, he said, “I’m trying to pray, and I can’t remember what comes after Our Father… Do you know what comes after Our Father…” We often hear the phrase “heart broken,” and that is one of the times I felt like I really understood what that means.

I assured him that I knew what came after, and I led him, haltingly, phrase by phrase, through the prayer. I was surprised at how hard I had to think at each new phrase, to remember it when it wasn’t just rolling along as the one that came after the one before it. I was also surprised at how each phrase stood out in its meaning when it stood almost alone.

We got through it, and he said, “I’m not sure I can remember it on my own…” I knew that he was just suffering post-surgery anesthesia forgetfulness. I knew that he had prayed that prayer his whole life. It would return. But…

I said, “Don’t worry. You’ll remember. But you know the important part right now. Any time you need to pray, just go ahead with Our Father. All you really need to remember is what comes first.”

JRMcF

WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN WINTER COMES? [W, 4-29-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN WINTER COMES?   [W, 4-29-20]

Oscar Thomas Olson told this story of growing up on a farm.

He wanted a bb gun. His father said, “No, you’re too young to be responsible.”  He begged and pleaded. Finally his father relented, but said he could not shoot it around the barn. He agreed. Any agreement to get that gun.

But there were so many good targets around the barn. One day when his father was away, he went to the barn to practice with his new gun. From the loft he heard the tinkling of glass. He hurried up. Their old-fashioned storm windows--the kind that are put on from the outside of the windows, with hinges, and cover the entire window--were stored in the loft. His errant pellet had broken every window. Except one. The pellet had lost its power by the time it got to the last window in the stack.

Being a smart kid, he quickly moved the back window to the front of the stack, so that the broken ones did not show.

The problem was… winter was coming. Sooner or later his father would go up to the loft to get the windows and discover that they were broken.

He said, “My summer was ruined. All the fun I intended to have with my new gun, everything else, all I could think about was those broken windows. Finally, I could stand it no longer. I went to my father and told him what I had done.”

“I know,” his father said. “I was just waiting for you to tell me.”

“Never,” said Oscar Thomas, “did I feel closer to my father than I did at that moment.”

John Robert McFarland

TAKE WHAT THE LORD GIVES [T, 4-28-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Looking for the Spirit

TAKE WHAT THE LORD GIVES                  [T, 4-28-20]

This story has been going around again in various forms.

A big flood came. The water was up over the porch. The homeowner went up to the second story. A police car came by and offered to take him out. “No, I believe in God. The Lord will protect me.”

The water went up to the windows. A boat came by and offered to take him out. “No, I believe in God. The Lord will protect me.”

The water was up over the second story windows. The man went up to the roof. A helicopter came and lowered a rope down. “No,” he said, “I trust in God. The Lord will protect me.”

The water went over his head and he drowned. In heaven he encountered God. “God, I trusted in you. Why didn’t you save me?”

“Well, I heard you, so I sent a police car and a boat and a helicopter!”

God is sending protection now in the form of masks and distances and isolation. Those are not just mandates from the governor. They are means that God is using to protect us. Let us give thanks for those who know the ways to protect ourselves and others, and encourage us to use those ways, for they are the instruments of God’s protection.

JRMcF

After I posted this, I walked, and while walking, I thought: That “devotional” isn’t. It’s not going to lead anyone into deeper realms of the spirit. Everybody knows that story already and what I said about it is so mundane. I apologize if you have already read it… oh…

Anyway, please do me a favor and think up something more deep and spiritual to put in its place. If that doesn’t work, sing “Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus” a few times. That’s always helpful to me, and the lyrics are easy to remember. “Allelu, allelu, alleluia.”

PERSON TO PERSON-Closing the Circle [M, 4-27-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Days of Isolation

PERSON TO PERSON-Closing the Circle    [M, 4-27-20]

 Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician whose writings, more theological than medical, were especially popular in the first couple of decades of my clergy career. Helen and I heard him tell this story at Union Seminary [Presbyterian] in Richmond, Virginia. Well, we heard his voice, but we really heard the story from the young woman who was translating.

His father died just after he was born, his mother died when he was twelve. He was raised by a stern, emotionless aunt. He never learned about simple human relationships. He had no social skills, and tried to cover up his loneliness with academic achievements.

Throughout his academic education, there was only one person who treated him as another person, his Greek tutor. They met in the man’s home, and shared tea as well as Greek, but not much else, except being together as persons.

Later, Tournier, on a ship, met a Dutch financier and his wife. They led him to Christ. It transformed his medical practice. He began to see people as persons instead of bodies. He began to treat the entire person, soul as well as body.

When he wrote the manuscript for his first book, The Meaning of Persons, he was not at all sure that it was any good. This was new territory, this idea of wholeness in persons. The only one he dared to expose it to was his old Greek tutor. [Any first-time author understands this, even if it’s not a book but just a little piece.] 

In the same room where he had sat and studied Greek, he read to his

old professor the first chapter. “Read on, Paul,” his tutor said. He read the second chapter. “Read on, Paul.” All afternoon long, as the shadows lengthened, he read, until he was hoarse and the manuscript was done.

“We must pray together, Paul,” his tutor said.

Tournier was astounded. In the few conversations they had in former days about spiritual things, his old tutor had always said that he did not believe in a personal God.

“Are you a Christian, too?” asked Tournier.

“Yes, Paul.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

John Robert McFarland

A TALE OF TWO SERVICE STATIONS [Sun, 4-26-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL—Watching for the Spirit

A TALE OF TWO SERVICE STATIONS        [Sun, 4-26-20]

I either have told, or will tell—I work on several columns at the same time, so…--about going to a continuing ed conference with Jack Newsome at Dubuque Theological Seminary, led by Ted Campbell, who had just retired as senior pastor at Riverside Church in NYC. Here’s a story Ted told…

There were two Gulf gas stations that he frequented in NYC. Two, because one was near his house, and one was near his church. He went to either one, according to which worked best at the moment with his schedule.

Christmas came, and both stations gave him the same gift, a fountain pen, with lettering on it. One said, AAA Gulf Service. The other said, Rev. Ernest T. Campbell.

He said, “I started arranging my schedule so I could patronize the same station all the time. Can you guess which one?”

There are a lot of folks in this world who want our business-financial, spiritual, social, emotional. It’s worth a little inconvenience, even a lot of inconvenience, to patronize the folks who take the trouble to know who you are.

St. Augustine said, “God loves each of us as though there were only one of us.”

JRMcF

Do Gulf stations still exist? I haven’t seen any for a long time, but they used to be a major brand. I doubt that the Gulf stations in NYC looked like the one above, but that is a really neat picture.

LIVING ON THE BYPASS [Sat, 4-25-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Days of Winter

LIVING ON THE BYPASS      [Sat, 4-25-20]

Helen and I have been living on the bypass for over six weeks now. Or maybe it’s over sixty years.

Yesterday we went out in the car. It was quite exciting, and a little anxious. It was only our third foray out in all these weeks of quarantine. But we had an extreme emergency. We were almost out of balsamic vinegar, whatever that is. We’ve done very well with deliveries of necessities, but we want to support local businesses, in this case The Olive Leaf, a strip-mall storefront “we” have patronized for many years, and Helen was able to order and pay by phone, and all we had to do was pull up in front and pop the trunk lid, and Olive came out and put the sack in the trunk and smacked the car on the rump, the way you do with a horse to get it to go, and away we went—complete social distancing, with, of course, appropriate sack disposal and bottle wiping when we got home.

In the process, we drove by our church, St. Mark’s on the Bypass, literally on the bypass, the Indiana Highway 46 bypass. It has no other name, and Bloomington has no other bypasses; when you say “the bypass” in Bloomington, everyone knows exactly what you mean.

We were the first couple married there, when it was a very new congregation. The building is much larger now, but it was then, and is now, our church. When daughter Katie was an IU student, 25 years after our college years, each time she and her friends used the bypass, she pointed out our wedding spot, so much so that they began to yell it out before she could: “Look, there’s the church where Katie’s parents got married.” On the bypass.

Yes, taking the bypass to get from our house to The Olive Leaf is unnecessary, but we drove the long way, so we could see the redbuds and dogwoods and flowering crabs and pansies and tulips on the IU campus. There is no other sight quite like it. And we got to drive by our church.

“It looks so lonely,” Helen said.

No cars. No people going in and out. No pre-school children playing in the yard. No Boy Scouts. No AA group folks. A church bypassed on the bypass.

It reminded me of the first time I attended a continuing education event for clergy, The School of The Prophets, at Depauw University, in Greencastle, IN. I was a twenty-year-old part-time college student preacher, in a company of several hundred full-time preachers. I felt important to be included in that august group. [We were meeting in August, so…]

In the morning I was in a workshop led by Webb Garrison on how to collect sermon “illustrations,” in a shoe box, because it was cheap, on 4x6 cards, because they fit the shoe box, using rubber cement rather than scotch tape because it didn’t dry out so much. At lunch I had gone downtown to buy 4x6 cards, and rubber cement, and a pair of shoes I could not afford, so I could get the cheap box.

I was late getting back, and as I hurried along the street, I could hear the voices of the assembled clergy, singing as one great choir, to start the afternoon plenary session. Standing on the curb was an old man in a black suit, shiny at the knees, a yellowed white shirt buttoned at the neck, no tie. I was dressed in the standard college student uniform of the time—Kingston Trio vertical strip shirt, chinos, argyle socks, white buck shoes. He looked at me and said, “Are you a preacher?” I was not sure of the correct answer to that question then, or even now, but it was easiest to say “Yes.”

“I was a preacher once,” he said.

I waited for a moment, but he said no more, and I started toward the assembled preachers, assuming he would come along with me, but he stayed where he was, on the curb, on the bypass, his ear cocked toward the distant voices.

Now I am the old man in the black suit, shiny at the knees, listening to the distant voices, the voices of memory, and of hope. I understand that just because you’re on the bypass, it doesn’t mean you’re lonely. Or alone.

John Robert McFarland

LORD, IN YOUR MERCY, DO NOT HEAR MY PRAYER [F, 4-24-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Listening for the Spirit

LORD, IN THY MERCY, DO NOT HEAR MY PRAYER  [F, 4-24-20]

Do not, O Lord, I beseech thee, in thy mercy, hear my prayer…

…when I implore thee to smite the unrighteous, even though we both know who they art, and know that they devoutly deservest smiting, nonetheless, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I importune thee to wreak vengeance upon mine enemies, since thou hast already promised that thou shalt wreak such vengeance, in thine own good time, and since there is no need for redundancy in wreaking, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I beseech thee to hurry up with the vengeance thing so that I mayest see it wrought in mine lifetime, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I entreat thee to deal harshly with thine stupid and intentionally ignorant children by allowing them the just consequences of their actions by giving them the corona virus because they have ignored the laws thou hast placed upon thy world, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I exhort thee to silence the tongues of the profane and darken the eyes of the lustful and shut the mouths of the gluttonous, even though we both knowest it’s only for their own good, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I beg thee to whack up side the head those who tempt the Lord their God by jumping off high places and driving like morons, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I petition thee to put a banana peel in the path of the self-righteous, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I enjoin thee to choke the throats of the hypocrites with their own words, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when certain congressmen are pulling up their big boy pants in willingness to let people die for the sake of their stock profits, and I call on Thee to pull said pants on up into a flying wedgie, Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I ask thee to create more synonyms for “ask” so that I can continuest to pray unworthily, O Lord, in thy mercy, do not hear my prayer…

…when I confess that my own knowledge is slight and my own will is weak, when I ask that thy will, not mine, be done, O Lord, in thy mercy, hear my prayer. Amen.

John Robert McFarland

THE OTHER IMPORTANT BIBLE NUMBER [R, 4-22-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

THE OTHER IMPORTANT BIBLE NUMBER    [R, 4-22-20]

It’s been forty days of quarantine now. At least, Helen & I have been in quarantine for 40. Maybe your count is a little different.

After 40 days in quarantine, strange things happen. I read in “The Indiana Daily Student” newspaper that professors are now required to report students who come to class on Zoom naked.

I wonder if 40 is some magic number for needing exposure. Did Noah have to put up with naked animals running around the ark? Did Moses tell Aaron, “Put that durn cloak back on when you strike that rock.”

Forty! Today! Shouldn’t this thing be over? I mean, 40 is the big number in the Bible for being over. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before he started his ministry. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights while Noah kept reminding everyone on the ark, “We’ll get through this together.” The Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years before God said, “You people are never going to find your way. Just go ahead and kill everybody in that place over there and claim that it’s holy.”

Forty and it’s done! Really?

Yes, I’m getting a little jaded. We’ve done everything we are supposed to do to protect ourselves and others from the corona beer… oops, I mean virus…and it looks like we’re going to keep on doing it for quite a while. It’s getting boring, even to someone who loves staying home and doing nothing.

That 40 is a very important number in the Bible, but there is another highly significant number in scripture-- the unknown number.

Jesus reminds us that the hairs of our head are numbered, but that number is known only to God. Jesus reminds us that no one knows how many days how we have to go until it’s over. “No one knows about that day or hour except the Father.” [Mt 24:36, Mk 13:32]

The most significant number is “something God alone can see,” as Natalie Sleeth puts it in her elegantly simply “Hymn of Promise.”

Sometimes forty is enough. If so, it’s because it’s the number God has chosen. Right now, God chooses not the biblical forty, but the other biblical number, the unknown number. We keep keeping on until God says it’s been long enough.

John Robert McFarland

I’VE EXERCISED AND I CAN’T GET UP [T, 4-21-20]

Christ In Winter-Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

I’VE EXERCISED AND I CAN’T GET UP     [T, 4-21-20]

Who would have guessed that 83 years of slouching would cause lower back pain? Well, only a little pain. Mostly stiffness. But enough of a problem I can’t reach over fast enough to snatch a cookie off the rug while the floor germs are still observing the five second rule. Now, that is a problem.

So I have been doing all the exercises my doctor and the internet have prescribed. Some of them, I have to lie on the floor. You know, the partial situps and the partial pushups, which are designed to make your abdomen stronger, because it’s a weak belly that causes back problems, mostly, counter-intuitively.

I have been doing a few more each day, working up to a manly number of reps. Today, I overdid it. After that last pushup, I just could not get up off the floor.

I’m glad grandson Joe wasn’t here to see that. Well, it would have been good if he’d been here, because he could have gotten me up. He’s 21 years old. But when he was three, he told his mother one day, “You know how I know Mammaw is old? ‘Cause she can’t get up off the flooorrr.” {Sounded like the Swedish Chef}

That was 17 years ago; imagine what he’d think now. About Bampaw this time, but the same observation.

But I learned two important things. First, do the job, and do it right, but save a little energy, just in case. Second, if you’re patient, and work out all the angles, your strength will return…and so will your wife, who is wondering what became of you, and she can help you get up. If you have no wife, observe only the first of these two rules.

John Robert McFarland

There is actually a third rule. I was so looking forward to being a special guest at The Royal Philosophical Society of Guys in Exile yesterday afternoon, via Zoom. A bunch of old friends that has always met in person before the quarantine, five hours from where I live now, and ten hours from where I lived before, so I never got to be with them. But with Zoom, we can meet from anywhere. I could see them, and they could see and hear me, but I got no sound. Turns out I just had to reboot my computer. That’s the third rule—restart.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR [T, 4-21-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL—Listening for the Spirit

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR     [T, 4-21-20]

Yesterday I mentioned that when I have to give my name at a restaurant, I don’t use John, because there are too many Johns. They all try to get my food when my name is called. I use Ambrose, because there aren’t any of them, I’m sure. Except at a new restaurant in Bloomington called The Hive. Must be at least one there. The chef.

“The Hive” was a famous sermon by Ambrose, about how the Kingdom of God is like a bee hive. Indeed, the sports teams at St. Ambrose University, in Davenport, Iowa, are called The Bees.

I’m not sure it was that particular sermon, but Augustine of Hippo heard Ambrose preach when he went to Rome and was converted from his libertine ways and became St. Augustine.

That was not according to the plan of Monica, Augustine’s mother, though. She was a devout Christian and was dismayed that her son was such a wanton playboy, with nothing but pleasure on his mind. She prayed and prayed that he would be converted. Prayer not answered.

Instead, Augustine wanted even more decadence. He decided to go to Rome, the capital of decadence, to get it. So, Monica prayed and prayed that God would prevent Augustine from going to Rome. Prayer not answered.

Or was it? Because when Augustine went to Rome, he heard Ambrose preach, and he was converted. That was what Monica really wanted.

We should be careful about directing God as we pray. Maybe “not my will but thine be done” is enough.

JRMcF

JUST WHO’S CALLING YOUR NAME? [M, 4-20-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

JUST WHO’S CALLING YOUR NAME?      [M, 4-20-20]

 Over the last couple of weeks, I have gotten emails from three different women, saying, “Johnny, here is my personal email address…” followed by the actual address. That is so intriguing. It’s really nice to be called by name. Especially by people who have hot-babe names, themselves.

One of our pastors at St. Mark’s, Mary Beth Morgan, preached about that yesterday, April 19. She told about growing up in Chicago with Romper Room on TV. We remember Romper Room, for we lived in the Chicago area [Cedar Lake, IN] when our daughters were little.

The hostess, Miss Suzanne, had a reverse mirror, by which she would look out from the TV and “see” children, and call their names. “I see Bobby. I see Susie…” Mary Beth and her brother listened carefully, hoping for Miss Suzanne to see them and call their names. Her brother’s was called, but not hers. Maybe her name was called before she started watching, though. She is a little younger than our daughters, and our older daughter is a Mary Beth.

The thing Helen and I remember most about Romper Room was not the name calling but the previous hostess, Miss Beverly. There were commercial breaks in the program. Miss Beverly announced one. But she did not return after the commercials. There was a strange period of dead air and then some hastily grabbed other program, maybe part of a Garfield Goose, was thrown into the breach. The next day, there was a new hostess, and nothing was ever said about Miss Beverly again. There’s got to be a great story there, but…

Mary Beth Morgan--whose work I am sharing without permission, because I’m that kind of guy, from the olden days of preaching, when we stole shamelessly from one another without attribution, unless it got a bad reaction, and then we claimed we were just quoting someone else—pointed out how important it is to be called by name, how Mary did not know it was Jesus at the tomb until he called her by name, and she recognized his voice.  [John 20:16]

God knows you by name. The devil knows your name, too. But if you listen carefully, you can tell whether it is God or the devil that is calling your name.

You remember those women who are giving me their email addresses, the ones who called me Johnny? There is no Johnny here.

I tried to be a Johnny, to distinguish me from my uncle, my mother’s youngest brother, for whom I was named, and from my father, also John.

I didn’t want to be a John. John was a stodgy old man name. Still is. When I go to a restaurant-- at least in the days when restaurants were open--and they asked for my name, so they could call me when my order was ready, if I told them “John,” then when they called out my order, every old man in the place jumped up and tried to get my food. So I always have told them in those cases that my name is Ambrose. Not likely to be another one of those there.

The name “John” gets no respect. Unidentified dead bodies are John. Long underwear is John. Customers of prostitutes are John. Guys whose girlfriends dump them are John.

Baseball heroes, though, are Johnnys, not John. Like Johnny Wyrostek, and Johnny Mize, and Johnny Bench. And comic book heroes, like Johnny Dark. So I wanted to be a Johnny.

But my uncle, John Pond, was called Johnny by everyone. And my father was Johnny Mac to my mother’s family. So, to distinguish myself, I became Johney.

I tried to get my high school mates to call me Johney, but they could never quite do it. I was too old and stodgy. And the girls all wanted to pin a note to my saddle when they sent it home. They persisted in calling me John. It’s only God who calls me Johney. It’s the devil who doesn’t know, who says, “Hey, Johnny, here’s my email address...”

If you pay attention, listen and look carefully, there’s always a clue. You can tell whether it’s Christ or the devil who is calling your name.

John Robert McFarland

MY CONTRIBUTION AGAINST THE VIRUS [Sun, 4-19-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

MY CONTRIBUTION AGAINST THE VIRUS    [Sun, 4-19-20]

 I am sheltering in place. “Stuck” at home. Nothing to do. In the high-risk category=really, really, old + diabetes, cholesterol, & curmudgeonliness. The entire world is worried about me. So, the entire world is trying to entertain me. And inspire me. And comfort me. And assure me. And get me “through.” Include me in the “we.”

With concerts. Art shows. Games. Puzzles. Lists. Cartoons. Books read. Books suggested. Recipes. Paintings. Instructions. Old songs. New songs. Worship. Inspirational sayings. Poems. Prayers. Cartoons. Lists. Stories. Essays. Magazine articles. Newspaper columns. Math problems. Quizzes. Assignments. Workouts. Ceremonies. Strange musical instruments. Family bands. Photos. Memories. Funny jokes. Not very funny jokes.

I am overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with joy at the concern by others for my health and wellness. And overwhelmed with too much good stuff.

It’s like Christmas morning at our house, with a bunch of women who shop for and plan for and buy for and wrap for and cook for and freeze for it, throughout the other 364 days of the year. So many wrappings surround me and pile upon me that I can no longer see the dog, even though I know it is on my lap, unless the dog has been replaced by a new coffee pot or solar power abremelyzer of equal weight and length. [No, I don’t know what that is, either, but I’m pretty sure I got one.]

Please don’t get me wrong. If I had children at home, I would want all the help I could get in dealing with them. If I had other folks to care for, folks who need inspiration and entertainment, I would be thankful for the songs and sayings. So, I am totally fine with all those good things running around in the e-sphere, on Twitter and YouTube and all the other e-places, because I know other people need them. You go, Facebook! But don’t worry about me.

I recognize the hypocrisy. After all, I write something every day and offer it to others. But it’s really for myself, to find out what I’m thinking. And it could hardly be called inspirational or educational or entertaining.

I say all this because I feel guilty about not taking advantage of all this delightful and free entertainment and learning and inspiration. I mean, it’s there. We should be grateful. People are working hard to share. God bless them. It seems wrong just to scroll on by.

But it’s okay to leave me out. Everyone has a contribution to make as we try to ride this out together. My contribution at this point is to be sure that there is one person you don’t have to worry about entertaining or inspiring or educating. I’ve got all I need. I’m quite content with “A pot of coffee, a dozen cookies, and Thou beside me, singing in the wilderness.” [1]

John Robert McFarland

1] Please forgive me, Omar Khayyam.  

CLOSING REMARKS [Sat, 4-18-20]

Christ In Winter-Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

CLOSING REMARKS             [Sat, 4-18-20]

 Old clergy friend John Shaffer and I have been exchanging lists, like ten famous people I knew, but one is false—guess which? Those sorts of quarantine games. John is a good list sharer, for we spent the same years in ministry, so we know, or fail to know, the same people, books, bands, etc.

We have not shared this list yet, and I’m not sure I want to, for it’s a bit sad—the churches I pastored that no longer exist. Half of them, and I pastored a lot of different churches. Eighteen.

I pastored so many, and so many are closed now, because in the early days I had two and three church circuits. Usually one or two of those was in an area where the population was already declining, and the church was struggling to stay above water. [In the case of Koleen, that was a literal struggle. The first Sunday, they told me, “If the water is over the road, turn around and go home.”]

But I never actually closed one. In fact, I never served a church that did not have more members when I left than when I came. But in those rural communities, that was often a difference of four or five.

I feel bad not only that so many of my churches are closed, but that I never got to close one myself. I have several friends who closed churches, and they say it was a spiritually satisfying experience. They got to pull together all the threads of witness and ministry that that particular church had woven into its community and the world through many years, pull them together into a seamless garment, a garment that allowed the church and the world to see what had always been there, but was impossible to grasp in a moment, because it was always on the move. When it stopped moving, it could be appreciated for its beauty and usefulness.

But someday I’m going to get to close part of the Body of Christ, my own body, my own life, and closing a life is much like closing a church. It is finally whole. All the loose ends are pulled together.

I don’t mean this in a macabre way, or for immediate use, but I’m looking forward to that.

I don’t want anyone to eulogize me. We do that in a service to close a church, and in a funeral service for a person, but that’s not what I mean for myself. I just want people, when they hear that I have transferred from the church militant to the church triumphant, to realize that all those loose threads are in their proper place in my particular plaid now, and thus to say, “Hot damn, he finally got it all together.”

John Robert McFarland

FIVE MINUTES LONGER [F, 4-17-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTION-Listening for the Spirit

FIVE MINUTES LONGER     [F, 4-17-20]

In discussing the battle of Waterloo, in which The Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon, and changed the course of history, a lady said to the duke, “Your soldiers must have been so much braver than Napoleon’s soldiers.”

“No,” said the duke. “The French were just as brave. But our soldiers were brave five minutes longer.”

Stay home. Wash your hands. Stay firm. Just five minutes longer than the virus.

JRMcF

My oncologist said about chemotherapy, “It’s the last drop on the last day that cures you.”

THE OTHER PANDEMIC [R, 4-16-20]

Christ In Winter-Reflections on Faith & Life for the Days of Winter

THE OTHER PANDEMIC   [R, 4-16-20]

The Covid19 pandemic understandably gets all our attention right now, but there is another pandemic that will have longer lasting and more disastrous results if we don’t control it. It is the domination system.

The dominators see the chaos and distraction of the corona virus not as an opportunity to be helpful, or to pull us together, to “get us through,” but as an even greater opportunity to extend their domination.

At one end are the super dominators, the economic and government power brokers who want to corrupt permanently the political and economic structures so that they are always in power and the only ones who profit from politics and the economy.

At the other end are the domination wannabes and the domination enablers. The wannabes want so badly to be on the winning side, the power side, that they consistently go against their own interests to be able to think of themselves as dominators. They are dominators by proxy.

In between are the smalltime dominators, the domestic abusers and the clergy abusers and officious administrators.

The wannabes and small-time dominators—those in family and congregation and school--are the willing servants of the super dominators, because they believe in the same system of domination. They must be on the “winning” side. It’s the only way they feel their lives have meaning.

Those are the ones who willingly pushed little children into the gas chambers in Nazi Germany. Or the ones who willingly snatch little children out of the arms of their mothers at the American border and push them into wire cages. Yes, there are plenty of small-time dominators among our neighbors who would gladly respond to a chance to expand their domination circle, all in the name of religion and patriotism.

Dominators don’t always use violence. As the ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd notes, “Some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.” The result is the same.

What predators at all levels—economy, government, community, church, family—have in common is that they not only want to have everything—all the power, all the money—but they want you to have none. It’s not about the winning, it’s about the dominating.

The easiest example of this to see is when a football coach or player is being interviewed. Often, he says, “We don’t just want to beat the other team, we want to dominate them.” That’s it, in one convenient sentence. [1]

The more chaotic the time, the more our attention is diverted away from them, the more the predators can get away with, not just for the moment, but in changing the whole system to give them more, lasting power. Changing the system so that it can’t be changed back from a domination system to a cooperation system.

Right now, every minute of the day, the dominators are using the chaos and confusion and secrecy of the Covid19 virus to extend their power, their domination--from subverting the constitution to hitting a wife--while we are all distracted with just trying to stay alive.

We were already in a pandemic—a pandemic of arrogance and selfishness and hate and greed and stupidity and Trumped-up fears, when the Covid19 pandemic hit. That is the pandemic “we” need to get through. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine against hatred and bigotry and greed and stupidity.

Christ does not save us from being dominated. Christ himself was put to death because he threatened the domination system. But Christ does save us from being part of the domination system. We can’t get by with some “Everything will be okay” bumper sticker approach. We have to be realistic, not naïve. Yes, we are to be as gentle as doves, but also as wise as serpents. [Mt. 10:16.] But, in the words of the church membership vows, we are to “Accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” The salvation of Christ does not save us from the domination system, but it saves us from acquiescence to its evil, saves us for resistance to its evil.

John Robert McFarland

1] I have written before of what I call the NFLization of society, the NFL lauding the mantra of Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t the most important thing; it’s the only thing.”

NEITHER WOULD I [W, 4-15-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Listening for the Spirit

NEITHER WOULD I    [W, 4-15-20]

This is an old preacher story that I heard early in my career. I loved it and have repeated it often. Especially in bare form, it has the sound of an apocryphal tale, but it has the ring and depth of truth, too.

A rich old lady got bored. [Probably been stuck in stay-at-home quarantine.] She decided to take a trip around the world. In a backward third-world nation, her plane had some problems. She had to stay there as repairs were made. She wandered over to a fence. When she got there, she realized it was a leper compound. Inside, a young nurse was bathing a badly deformed leper.

“My God, girl,” the rich woman said, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.”

The nurse smiled and said, “Neither would I.”

That is the Christ story, the story of sacrifice for others.

I think about all the nurses and doctors and EMTs and others who are taking care of Covid19 patients now as I hear again that story. Regardless of their religion or absence of it, they are repeating the Christ story, for what gives the Christ story power is that it is the human story. They are all saying, one way or another, “Neither would I.”

John Robert McFarland

“Love is the only rational act.” Morrie Schwartz

I rarely see anyone on my morning walks. We have a quiet neighborhood. Yesterday, though, I saw two dogs walking their people, each a block or so away, and a young mother, pushing a little blond boy, about a year old, in a stroller. We passed on opposite sides of the street. Mom was busy with her phone, but the little boy stared at me until I waved at him. Then he broke into the most glorious big smile. I think the afterglow of that smile can get me through another week or two. So if you do happen to see someone, smile. Even if you’re wearing a mask.

The Lone Ranger was way ahead of his time, except he had his mask in the wrong place.

SURREAL LIVING [T, 4-14-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

SURREAL LIVING   [T, 4-14-20]

This pandemic time is not just unreal, it is surreal. By definition, it is marked by “the intense irrationality of a dream.”

When I walk in the morning, that is when I am hit with the surreality of this time. Everything now is just as it always was—same streets, houses, trees, flowers. Except there are no people. There is no movement. It is like an impressionist painting, a still life, a dream.

I get this intense feeling that I am only imagining that we are in a pandemic period, that people are not confined to their houses, that the daily Covid19 updates on the TV are just a “reality” show. My non- rational brain has betrayed my rational brain into thinking this pandemic is real when it is not. 

I have had one other time when life turned surreal, when I was not sure about reality. My secretary had quit in a huff, because her husband was mad at me. He was a big band booster, and the ministerial association, including me, had objected to the band director scheduling a required band practice on Christmas day. We weren’t opposed to a Christmas rehearsal in general, but “required” meant that if you did not come, you didn’t get to play in the spring concert. The clergy association felt that a family should be able to go out of town to visit Grandma on Christmas day without a child losing a place in the band. It seems a no-brainer to me, but I learned that band directors and band boosters can be very no-brain about this sort of thing.

On New Year’s day, thirteen months later, the sheriff called me. “Arlyn was out cutting trees with a friend, and a tree fell on him and killed him. You need to go tell Evelyn before someone picks it up on the scanner and tells her. I’ll bring my wife over as soon as possible.” And he hung up. He did not know that she was no longer my secretary.

So I went to their house. Evelyn acted like there was nothing strange at all about a preacher she didn’t like, whom she hadn’t seen in a year, coming to pay a visit on New Year’s Day. Her method of dealing with anything or anyone was to deny and sugar-coat. [I’m not criticizing. We learn methods that are not really good for us, but they are hard to get out of.]

I figured the best thing to do was face it head on. I sat her down and told her that the sheriff had called me, and what he had said.

“Oh,” she said. “I always get up and fix Arlyn’s breakfast, and kiss him goodbye, but this was a holiday, and he wanted to leave early, and so I stayed in bed. I didn’t even kiss him goodbye…”

As I saw the look on her face, heard the anguish in her words, I felt the enormity of it crash down upon me. I felt something else, too. Unreality. Suddenly my brain was saying, “What if you just imagined this? What if the sheriff didn’t call you? What if that wasn’t what he said?” Definitely “the intense irrationality of a dream.”

I held Evelyn’s hand, and listened to her talk and moan and cry for a very long time, which really was a very long time. When the sheriff arrived, with his wife, thank goodness, he apologized to me for taking so long. “Stuff comes up in this job,” he said. I though, was never so happy to see someone, and especially his wife, who took over with Evelyn. Their presence meant that I wasn’t crazy.

In some ways, I was sorry. If I had just imagined it, Arlyn would still be alive. Evelyn would still have a husband. Kevin and Lori would still have a father. But it was very comforting to feel real instead of surreal.

Now, when my surreal brain says, “Surely this pandemic thing isn’t real,” I still have enough non-crazy brain to pull back and go wash my hands.

Just like with Arlyn, in some ways, I’m sorry. It would be nice if there really were not a pandemic, if it were just my imagination. If I could just be locked away in the basement, the way a civilized society deals with its crazy people. Come to think of it, that’s sort of the way life is.

John Robert McFarland

SHE HASN’T TOLD ME YET R, 4-12-20

“DAILY” DEVOTIONAL-Listening for the Spirit

SHE HASN’T TOLD ME YET            R, 4-12-20

I came home one day when our daughters were college students. In the living room was a heart-wrenching scene. They were sitting on the sofa, their arms around each other, crying as hard as I had ever seen them cry.

I tried to get into the group, put my arms around them. Over Mary Beth’s head, I whispered to Katie, “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “She hasn’t told me yet.”

This is a time when all we need to know is that people are hurting. It’s time to hug, even if we can’t do it the traditional way. We don’t need explanations. We just need love. We can find out why later.

JRMcF

THREE THOUGHTS AT EASTER [Su, 4-12-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Days of Winter

THREE THOUGHTS AT EASTER     [Su, 4-12-20]

FIRST

We understand the story of Easter--the story of life, the story of the world—from the end backward. I must start the story of Jesus, the story of life, at the conclusion of the empty tomb, rather than at the birth in Bethlehem, if I am to understand what Jesus’ life is all about, what my life is all about. [1]

SECOND

The season of Lent in the church year isn’t just for “practicing holy habits.” It is to prepare us for Easter, to allow us an opportunity to straighten up our spiritual house so that we are ready to welcome the truth of God in Christ, the truth of Easter, into our lives. If religious habits, holy or otherwise, become an end in themselves, they get in the way of the empty tomb. They become the stone that has to be rolled away.

THIRD

We are not bodies that have souls, we are souls that have bodies. Death does not conquer life.

“…we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, for I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor corona virus nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [2]

Okay, I added that part about corona virus, but it surely fits into the “anything else in all creation” category.

Happy—yes, Happy!—Easter.

John Robert McFarland

1] I get this from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. Of course, I get all my ideas from others, but this one, I know exactly from whom it comes

[2] Romans 8:38-39, NRSV.

THE QUARANTINED JESUS [Sat, 4-11-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

THE QUARANTINED JESUS    [Sat, 4-11-20]

Saturday. The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It’s usually called “Holy Saturday” in the church calendar, but for Jesus, it must have been a good deal less than holy. It probably should be called “Quarantine Saturday.”

It must have been like a quarantine. In the tomb. No light. No disciples. No adoring crowds. Nothing… a long boring stretch, waiting… for what? Did he know about the resurrection? Maybe. Even so… we know there will be a resurrection of the world after this corona virus has run its course, but that does not lessen the boredom and frustration and the anxiety of the waiting.

I think this is the main point of this day between Good Friday and Easter this year: Jesus is with us in this time of boring anxiety, this time of fearful waiting. He’s been there, done that.

The Christ story is not just about God being with us in the pathos of sacrifice and the exultation of resurrection. It’s about God being with us in the everyday getting-by, too.

John Robert McFarland

WHEN WERE YOU SAVED? [Good Friday, 4-10-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

WHEN WERE YOU SAVED?  [Good Friday, 4-10-20]

It was almost the start of the school year when the U of IL history dept told younger daughter Katie that if she would go there for her PhD, they would give her a free ride. She had planned to return to IU for grad work, but you just don’t turn down a full scholarship, so she changed her plans. That meant that she got a late start looking for housing in Champaign-Urbana. But there was a room available in a nice big old house, very near the history department building, and it was all grad students, and run by a church, so what could go wrong?

Well, it was a fundamentalist church, and the other 21 grad students were very conservative. Which meant the other 21 were badly outnumbered.

Katie grew up in a personally conservative but socially and theologically liberal home. Went to liberal churches. At least, they were when her father pastored there. She was taught to be open-minded and respectful of others. She was taught more to look for the questions than to look for the answers, because an answer shuts the search down, while a question takes it further. Or maybe she just picked up those qualities on her own. Anyway, I think that approach has been why she is such a great teacher and author and researcher and mother and…

Her new housemates looked at her with skepticism. She went to church, claimed to be a Christian, but she didn’t talk like a Christian, someone who had the answers. One day a young man asked her, rather doubtfully, “Katie, are you saved?”

“Yes,” she said, quite confidently. He was surprised that she was even willing to respond to such a question.

With doubt in his voice, he asked, “When were you saved?”

“On Good Friday,” she answered.

John Robert McFarland

Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  [Hebrews 12:1b-2.]

THAT FINAL EXAM DREAM [Maundy Thursday, 4-9-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

THAT FINAL EXAM DREAM  [Maundy Thursday, 4-9-20]

For several years now I’ve had this dream: I realize that this is the day for the final exam, and I didn’t even know I was enrolled in the course. To make it worse, the professor is an old friend, Wally Mead. It’s embarrassing to tell a friend that you thought so little of his course that not only did you fail to come to class the whole semester, or read any of the assignments, but you didn’t even know you were enrolled!

The dream itself is easy enough to understand, especially in an old guy who is about to face the final exam for real. What has always puzzled me was why Wally was the teacher.

He was a professor of political science at Illinois State University when I was the Methodist campus minister there. We had a lot in common and were good friends. He was also an ordained Methodist minister. But I never would have been enrolled in a course with him.

Then suddenly, this morning, in the dark with coffee, I understood: In my dream, Wally is God, for he was the embodiment of the God I knew growing up, and remains in my psyche.

Wally was male, not just male, but masculine, tall, six-six, and broad-shouldered. He was good looking, but in a universal way, neither rugged nor pretty-boy. He was white. He was smart. He was theological. He was ordained. He was Methodist. He was single. [He finally married at 80, but this dream started earlier.] He had disciples—not only students, but Kleid, his dog, who followed him across campus to his classroom each day.

And, best of all… wait for it… he was the first person of the trinity! Yes, born a triplet, three boys from one womb at the same time, in what I’m sure their mother thought was a big bang. The famous—at the time—Cedar Rapids Triplets, their growing exploits followed in newspapers all over the land.

As befits the confusion of the trinity, it’s not easy to know when God is being God and when he [yes, I know, but this is my dream] is being Christ. So it was with Wally…

After he got his theology degree at Yale and pastored a while, Wally went to Duke to get his PhD in political science. While there, he participated in a sit-in for racial integration. He was arrested, thrown into a labor camp, beaten, make to work all day in broiling sun, was denied water, and almost died. He had his particular stigmata from that experience.

On one of those research trips that faculty people take in summer, he went to Algiers. On the ship he met a woman. They decided to have dinner at a waterfront café. Bad choice. When they got ready to leave, the owners demanded much more money than the menu specified. Wally and his companion pooled all their money but it wasn’t enough. They held the woman as hostage while Wally had to make his way through a dark and dangerous city to find some way after the banks and embassies and such were closed to get a lot of money and get back to the restaurant. It took a while. The woman probably thought he had just taken off, the way a lot of guys would. But not Wally. In fiction, that would be the start of a romance, but he never saw her again, just paid the ransom and set her free.

As the dream ends, I am walking across campus, on the way to take the exam, I am embarrassed to face Wally, having blown off his course the whole semester, not even knowing I was enrolled. But I am surprised that I am not much worried. I know that I have a much better chance of passing because he is a friend, a friend who is known to be kind and reliable. I also know that I’m not quite as unprepared as it looks. I talked with him enough through the years to have a fairly good idea what he thinks is important. I’ve even read his book [1], which is very difficult to understand, but at least I have an idea of what questions he might ask…

John Robert McFarland

1] Extremism and Cognition

WHAT HE GAVE AWAY [W, 4-8-20]

“DAILY” DEVOTION-Listening for the Spirit: WHAT HE GAVE AWAY   [W, 4-8-20]

[Jack Newsome told me this story, and he was a bit uncertain about its details. Forgive us, please, if Jack and I got some details wrong.]

As a young man, long before he was a Methodist bishop, Everett Palmer worked on a ranch in the west.

It was a vast and very successful ranch. Its owner was a good man, who used his great wealth for good causes, including supporting his brother, who was a missionary doctor.

But the agricultural economy went bad. Ranching crashed. The man lost everything. When Palmer went back to visit him, many years after he had worked for him, he found him reduced to living in a line shack on what used to be his wonderful ranch.

As they talked, Palmer ventured, “I suppose now maybe you’re sorry you gave so much away.”

His old mentor looked thoroughly surprised and amazed.

“Oh, no, Everett,” he said. “All I have now is what I gave away.”

JRMcF

“WE” SHALL GET THROUGH THIS… WHO IS THIS “WE?” [T, 4-7-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter-- “WE” SHALL GET THROUGH THIS… WHO IS THIS “WE?” [T, 4-7-20]

Who is this “we” of “We shall get through this?”

I think I understand what people are trying to say. I appreciate the attempt to be positive. But it is simplistic. It dishonors the “we” who do not get through.

There are a lot of “we” who won’t get through this because they die, in isolation, their only consolation, if she’s not busy with another patient, the rubber-gloved hand of a nurse who is faceless behind her mask. A lot of “we” won’t get through this because they sacrifice their lives for others. They put themselves in harm’s way even for those who are so selfish they will not take the simplest precautions to keep the virus from spreading.

Like most states, ours is on total lockdown. Only essential personnel can leave their homes. A few days ago, the police here arrested a man for disobeying the order. That was the aftermath, though. They arrested him first for driving drunk and running his pickup into a tree. They asked him why he was out. Turns out he thought it was essential to gather with a bunch of friends to drink beer. It’s hard to believe that if you can’t keep six feet away from a tree when you’re driving, that you will keep six feet away from people when you’re drinking. Yet, he is probably part of the “we” that will get through this.

Just because the same buildings are there, and business starts up “as usual” on the other side of this pandemic, just because most of us are still alive, that does not mean that “we” got through it.

Most Christians and Jews and just decent human beings believe that every life is worth living, that every life has the same worth as every other life. That is not true of those who believe in a domination system.

The vocal pro-lifers oppose abortion and euthanasia. But now some of them are saying that it’s okay for old people to die, that old people should volunteer to die, even, for the sake of the economy. That has nothing to do with being pro-life. It has everything to do with being part of the domination system. And make no mistake, the dominators are even now, especially now, taking advantage of the current chaos to tighten their stranglehold on the reins of power—in world, in nation, in the economy, in the church, in the home. [1]

I shall write next week about how the domination system is trying to solidify power now, and what a Christian response to it might be, but for the moment, in this week called “holy,” let’s remember that each life is precious. Some of “we” will not get “through.” Let’s not allow any life to be just a statistic, someone discarded along the way, someone sacrificed on the coronic altar of the economy, because they did not get “through.” Even though we cannot gather for memorial services, it is important to mourn.

We can grieve each life and wash our hands at the same time. Perhaps in that way, as we pray, we shall get through.

John Robert McFarland

1] I suggest that you follow IU history professor Rebecca Spang on Twitter. She is an expert on revolutions, and she points out that we are not just in a pandemic, we are in a revolution.