CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
Our worship service Sunday morning was about friendship, pretty much about being friends with Jesus. We missed a really good chance to sing “What a Friend We Have In Jesus.” Those old hymns with familiar, singable tunes are especially helpful to those of us who have to stay home and worship via livestream.
That means almost all of us, even now, although the last couple of Sundays we’ve let 25 people come to church in person. But we’ve gotten used to going to church in our pajamas while reclining on the sofa drinking coffee and eating muffins. As one of our women friends said, “I’m not going to get dressed for 25 people!”
Our sanctuary holds about 200 people, or more if we set up some extra chairs. I’ll not think about getting dressed and going in person until I have to fight some little old lady for the last seat. [She always wins, anyway.]
So, I sang “What a Friend” as I walked outdoors after the service. With livestream, you can always add in anything you want on your own. Which is good because in the regular worship service, we only sing modern psychobabble social justice hymns. Don’t get me wrong. I know that we got most of our theology through hymns, and I’m all in favor of social justice, but considering the academic/non-poetic lyrics sung to unmelodic non-tunes, anybody coming in from the highways and byways would say, “These people think that social justice is really boring.”
Also, we have only one theology point in our worship: everyone is included. But included in what? If it’s sailing on the Titanic, I’ll be happy to be excluded. We also need a little theology about just what we’re being included in. [Yeah, but “that in which we are being included” is back to boring!]
Am I sounding like an old guy, or what? [Also, while you’re at it, get off my lawn.] But… wait for it… there’s a bit more… about friendship.
We have a new men’s basketball coach at Indiana University. Mike Woodson, who was a star on the great Bob Knight teams of the mid-1970s. The first thing he did was to persuade our star player, Trayce Jackson-Davis, to come back for another year instead of going pro. “I stayed,” Trayce said, “because he told me the things I didn’t want to hear.”
Isn’t that neat? Trayce is only 20 years old, but he’s smart enough to know that a friend will tell you the truth, even if you don’t want to hear it. Mike Woodson has had a long career in the pros. He knows that world. He told Trayce the truth, that even though he’s so very good at basketball in college, he’s not yet ready for the pros. And when a friend tells you the truth, you need to listen.
Which brings me to a woman I won’t name. She is one of a surprisingly large number of people, starting with my ministerial and writing colleague, Fred Skaggs, who have objected to me ending this column. I stopped writing because I was afraid my columns were just self-absorbed falderal that were not useful to anyone else, and my absorption in my own words was keeping me from hearing God’s Word.
This unnamed woman said in an email, “I understand that you want to hear the Word of God clearly in your last years, but God has already spoken clearly to you and said, ‘You’re a story teller.’ So shut up and tell stories.”
She said it much more gently, of course, and less illogically [it’s hard to shut up and tell stories at the same time]. But God speaks truth through friends. When a friend speaks, it’s probably the truth, because that is what friends are for, and you need to listen.
John Robert McFarland
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