OPEN, ORDINARY, CHRISTIANS [Su, 12-6-20]

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

OPEN, ORDINARY, CHRISTIANS [Su, 12-6-20]

When I wrote on 11-26, about saying goodbye to our Jewish Director of Children’s Music at St. Mark’s UMC in Bloomington, I noted that Aaron didn’t know, when he moved from Chicago to Bloomington, that churches like St. Mark’s, with its eclectic staff and congregation, even existed. His knowledge of Christians and their churches came from what he saw on TV, the ones that ignore the clear teachings of Jesus while using the Bible as a cudgel and wall against anyone who is different.

Granted, St. Mark’s is a unique congregation, in a unique, university setting. I suspect, however, had he dropped into any of the 26 churches I pastored over the years, he would have said the same thing. He would have been surprised and impressed by how welcoming and open-minded the people there were. [Yes, that’s a lot of churches. There were several short multi-church appointments in the early years.]

Forsythe Methodist, the open-country church where I grew up, in Indiana’s “pocket,” between the Ohio and Wabash Rivers, the Mississippi of the North, was probably an exception in its day, because of its openness to people of color and women, even women pastors. I grew up thinking all churches were like that.

Maybe the other little rural and tiny town congregations I pastored in my early years weren’t quite as open as Forsythe, but their members were not malicious. They might not want to associate with certain peoples, but they didn’t want bad things to happen to them. Often, the rest of society around them was active in being mean to black folks and poor folks, but not those people I saw in worship on Sunday. Granted, if nice folks do nothing against injustice, it allows the ruthless to do whatever they wish, but sometimes you’re just far enough down on the power scale yourself that the best you can do with those who are lower is sympathize.

I remember one church where a woman announced during the Joys and Concerns that she had placed in the narthex a petition, sent to her by a famous “family values” organization, against gay marriage. She wanted people after worship was over to line up and sign up. Everyone looked a bit anxiously at me. I thanked her for doing that, since, I noted, it is important for Christians to be active and take a stance in the political realm, but said that I myself would not be signing, since I was a big believer in marriage.

Nobody signed. Well, in a church, how can you be against marriage? I think it was more than that, though. I think those ordinary Christians, forced by social circumstances into churches where everybody was the same, still knew that the good news of the Gospel was for everybody, if they were like us or not. The ordinary preachers and Sunday School teachers and YF leaders who had been there before me had done a good job.

John Robert McFarland

“The best way to get freedom in the pulpit is to take it.” Reinhold Niebuhr