FREEDOM UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS [W, 9-28-22]

 

A friend just bought a retirement house in his home town. Well, it’s not actually a town. It’s a hamlet. Well, it’s not actually a house. It’s a church. And it’s not actually a church. It’s a church building. There is a big difference between a church and a church building, although they often go together. [1]

This church building is big! Been empty for three years but in great shape. He showed us photos. Red brick. Beautiful stained-glass windows. Pleasant surroundings. Knowing we are Methodists, he showed us a photo of the corner stone: M.E. Church South. [2]

Yes, South, the slave denomination. He grew up in a swing state. Some folks there detested slavery. They were of The M.E. Church. Period. Some folks there wanted slavery. They were in the break-away M.E. Church South… of God.

At least, that’s the story Bob Matheny told me. He was a prominent Methodist preacher in Mississippi in the 1960s. Like other preachers there who started saying that it was time for black folks to have the same rights as others, Bob got run out. Richard Raines, the Indiana bishop, operated a sort of underground railroad of his own for those radical preachers, accepting them into The Indiana Conference and appointing them to Hoosier churches.

Anyway, Bob told of the ministerial association meeting in an unnamed Mississippi town. They were introducing themselves. “I’m the preacher of the Assembly of God.” “I’m the preacher at the Cleveland Tennessee Church of God.” “I’m the preacher at the Anderson, Indiana Church of God.” [3] When it came the turn of the Methodist, he didn’t want to be left out, so declared, “I’m the preacher at The Methodist Episcopal Church South of God.”

The M.E. Church South was formed in 1845 when the M.E. Church split over the issue of slavery, much as The United Methodist Church is splitting now over the issue of homosexuality. Are black folks fellow Christians even though they were born black? Are gay folks fellow Christians even though they were born gay? The new anti-Negro M.E. Church South quoted the Bible to show that black folks were unacceptable The new anti-gay Global Methodist Church quotes the Bible to show that gay folks are unacceptable. Same split. Same Bible. Just different differences.

My friend is gay. He will have a lovely retirement in a building erected by people who thought folks born different should be kept out of that building. That’s neat.

Even neater is the way the building is built. He explained to us that the sanctuary has two floors. A flat one below, and a tilted one above for the pews. My imagination immediately went into gear…

…that M.E. Church South was fooling its neighbors. It put that “South” on its corner stone as a red herring. They built those floors much farther apart than the plans called for. Secretly the people of that church were hiding run-away slaves between those floors, as part of the underground railroad.

There is no evidence of that, except my imagination, but it’s too good a story not to write. Or at least imagine…

John Robert McFarland

1] My late, great Academy of Parish Clergy colleague, Kim Egolf-Fox, always corrected me, gently, when I said “church” when I meant “church building.” I miss Kim, but his influence lives on.

2] M.E. stands for Methodist Episcopal. Episcopal simply means “with bishops,” unlike The Methodist Protestant Church denomination, which believed in Wesleyan theology and Methodist methods but did not believe in bishops. Episcopoi is the Greek word for bishop. Episcopos is the Latin.

3] Since there are two “Church of God” denominations, they are always cited according to the place of their origin and college/theological school.

 

 

HAPPY IN SECRET [Su, 9-25-22]

Young and perky Nurse Olivia asked me if I had been depressed in the last two weeks. “Every time I watch the news,” I said. “Good enough,” she answered.

I have decided to be happy. But only in secret. The secret to happiness, I think, is to be happy in secret. Don’t let anybody know.

I don’t mean to be superficial, claiming all is good when it obviously is not. That’s where the secrecy comes in, where the secret heart takes over. If the world finds out you are happy, it starts working overtime to return you to normal. Just watch the news and you’ll see what I mean.

I grew up in a family, and culture, where happiness was suspect. You were not supposed to go any further toward happiness than being satisfied, and exhausted, by hard work. Accomplishment, in the sense of doing what you have to do. Certainly not happy. That meant you were goofing off. “Happy” and “silly” were synonyms. It never occurred to me that you could work hard and be happy at the same time.

Will Rogers said, “A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.”

I think that is true, which is why I have made up my mind to be happy, but only in secret. I don’t want the world to find out. But you’re welcome to join me, if you keep quiet about it. It will be our secret.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THANKS FOR NOTHING [R, 9-22-22]

I’m always surprised when people heap praise on those who do something they are supposed to do anyway.

A police spokesperson commented recently on identifying the I-65 killer, who did his deeds 40 years ago. He can’t be punished now, because he died of cancer when he was 68, but the families of his victims can get some satisfaction in knowing he was identified…

…through advances in technology, and genealogy DNA, “but especially,” the spokesman said, “because of cooperation between police forces.”

Is that a surprise? Are cops not supposed to cooperate? Is protecting their own turf and getting personal credit for solving crimes more important than catching criminals? Apparently so, except in cases where the perp is already dead.

It’s like saying “We’re giving the preacher an award because he taught us about Jesus.” You’re supposed to do that! [1]

Be a decent human being. That’s not praiseworthy. You’re supposed to do that. However, given the present climate, I’ll just go ahead and praise you for being a good person, anyway.

John Robert McFarland

1] I’ll remind you once again of the children’s’ time at church when the preacher asked them, “What has a big bushy tail?” One kid said, “Jesus!” She tried again, “What lives in a tree?” “Jesus!” “What stores up nuts for the winter?” “Jesus!” His parents on the way home said, “Why did you do that? You know she was talking about a squirrel.” He replied, “Well, she should have been talking about Jesus.”

ON BEING IMPORTANT [M, 9-19-21]

 

I was thinking this morning about the daughter of Jairus. She was twelve. She was dying. Jairus was a synagogue leader, and he begged Jesus to come to his house to heal her. So, Jesus did. Start out, at least. [1]

A whole crowd went with him. Maybe not as many as wanted to see the corpse of Queen Elizabeth, but this promised to be a pretty good show. On the way, that woman with “the issue of blood,” who had been made worse by many doctors rather than being helped [2], reached out to touch him, to receive healing power just from that touch, or so she hoped. And so she did.

It stopped Jesus in his tracks. “Who touched me?” In a crowd. Everybody was touching him. But this one was different. So he has a chat with the woman.

Can you imagine how Jairus felt? Nobody ever mentions that. He must have been beside himself. I’ve finally gotten someone to come to my house to heal my daughter and he stops to talk to this… old woman. We don’t know how old she was, but it had to be more than 12. This little girl, the one Jesus calls Tabitha--which simply meant “little girl” and surely was not her name, although I do know girls now who have that as their name—she had her whole life before her… and Jesus was wasting time…

Jesus and his entourage finally got on their way again, but as they got close, folks came from Jairus’ house to say, “Don’t bother. Too late. She’s dead.” Imagine how Jairus felt now. If he hadn’t stopped for that woman… Like Martha said to Jesus when her brother died, If you’d been here… Jesus had the potential for a lot of guilt over arriving too late. That happens when people have reason to expect a lot from you.

Jesus, however, figured, Well, I’ve come this far… When he got there, he said No problem. She’s not dead. It sounds a bit sacrilegious now, but they laughed at him. Remember, though, he wasn’t the Savior of the World then, just that guy with the messiah complex, from Nazareth, of all places.

But he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up,” and she got up. The writers point out that she walked around, to make sure we get the idea.

Everyone else went from laughing at Jesus to jumping around with joy. Probably yelling, “It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!” That’s what people do and say at such a time. But Jesus said, “Give her something to eat.”

Of course. After that time of coma, or death, or whatever, she had to be hungry. These days, he’d probably tell them to give her some orange juice or Skittles. That’s what we do when we need a quick blood sugar jolt. But basically back then what they had, without running outside to the fig tree or firing up the oven, was fish, so that’s what he told them to give her.

Everyone else was focused on the miracle. Jesus was focused on the girl. That was the real miracle.

I heard of a man who read the New Testament for the first time. The missionary asked him for his reaction. “Jesus never met an unimportant person,” he said.

That’s the point of the resurrection, I think. The spirit that indwelt Jesus, the Christ spirit, the Holy Spirit, is no longer confined to the time and body of Jesus. That Spirit is available to all people, at all times. That Spirit that says, “Get up. Walk around. Eat something. You have a life to get on with… You’re important to me.”

John Robert McFarland

The painting is by Gabriel Von Max, 1881.

1] Matthew 5, Mark 9, Luke 8. Each one a bit different in details.

2] Medical historians estimate that it was along about 1900 when doctors began to do more good than harm.

 

MUSIC AND FRIENDS [F, 9-16-22]

[This is just a piece of personal history, and I have written about much of it before, so…don’t bother if you have other things to do… but it is about two of life’s most important gifts…]

I think one reason I wanted to join the band so much when I was in 6^th grade was that Darrel Guimond was in the band. He was my first best friend. We rode the school bus together. I liked being with him. It was such a different feeling, having a friend. There were things I could talk about with a friend that didn’t fit anywhere else. Until Darrel, I didn’t even know those things were waiting in my brain, waiting for someone to hear them.

He was a semester ahead of me, though. When we moved to Oakland City from Indianapolis, I was in first semester of 5^th grade. Darrel was in 2^nd sem. So we were not in the same classroom.

Then in the fall, Darrel was in 6^th grade, while I was still in 5^th. 6^th was when band started, when kids first got instruments. Darrel got a cornet. He carried it back and forth on the school bus, in a black case. That was neat. It was a sign of belonging to something important, belonging to the band. But it created a gap between us. He was in the band, and I was not.

When I started 6^th grade myself, I so much wanted to be in the band, but we had no money for an instrument. My sister, Mary V, remembered that Grandma Mac had bought a war bond for each of us. I cashed in my bond. It was enough to pay for a used metal clarinet. It was in a black case. Battered, but I got to carry it on the bus, the way Darrel carried his cornet.

When I got to high school, the band director didn’t want an old metal clarinet in the band. Clarinets were all black ebonite by then. So he assigned me to the vacant second bassoon chair. Bassoons were so expensive that the school bought and owned them. Because I could afford only the least expensive instrument, I got to play the most expensive one. It was in a really big black case that took up a lot of space on the bus.

I always wanted to… not so much be like Darrel, but to be with him. He was my friend. I’d never had a friend before. As a kid in Indianapolis, I played with Jimmy Mencin, from across the street, but we were playmates, not friends.

I wanted to belong, in general. To everything. Band was my first chance to start belonging. But I think Darrel was a reason, too. If we both belonged to band, we could spend time together.

We did that a lot. When he was editor of Oak Barks, the school newspaper, as a sr, I was asst ed as a jr. We played a lot of baseball and basketball and ping-pong at his house. We went to Forsythe church together and sang too loudly together. We tried to make sense of the strange words and the line drawings in the sex ed manual together. We ran around together, going to parties, just driving around and talking together. I was best man at his wedding.

He was always so confident. He just assumed he would be good at whatever he tried, and he was--sports and grades and girls--and especially playing the trumpet. I always assumed I would be bad at whatever I tried, and I was—sports and grades and girls—and especially playing the bassoon. It was nice to have a confident friend.

Then we lost touch. We stayed aware of each other, through mutual friends, but we didn’t see each other, even at class reunions, for we had been in different graduating classes. But I knew that he continued to be in the band, although he was an engineer by profession, playing in the famous Purdue Salty Dogs when he was in college, and in bands all over the world until he died.

The last time I saw him in person was at Mother’s visitation, 1998, at Corn Funeral Home in Oakland City. He had come from his home in Lancaster, PA to Ft. Branch, 15 miles from OC, to visit his mother, Kate, where she had moved to live with her sister after his father, Linus, died. He saw the notice of Mother’s visitation in the paper, so he came over. He had gained a lot of weight. I didn’t recognize him. This chubby older man started talking to me, though, like an old friend who would know who he was. It was both startling and relieving when I figured it out. He died ten years later.

At my 60 year class reunion, Butch Corn, younger brother of my classmate, Bobby Joe, gave me a CD of Darrel playing “Precious Lord…” on his trumpet. I play it whenever I need good memories. That is when my first best friend and I are together again. I think I’ll put it on right now. It’s always a good time to remember a friend.

John Robert McFarland

 

SEPTEMBER GIFTS [M, 9-12-22]

 

As I sat on our patio this morning, I watched the leaves rustle above our roof. This morning there were so many yellow leaves among the green. It made me happy.

I think moving to the farm in the Forsythe Methodist neighborhood, four miles from Oakland City, when I was ten, was what gave me my love of baseball and of school. And why I’m happy when I see the leaves turn from summer to autumn. They mean the World Series, the fulfillment of the baseball season, and school, the end of a long hot boring summer.

 

It would seem that autumn would not be the best season for a baseball fan, since that is when the season ends, but…

Until age ten I had been a city boy in the near-east working-class inner-city of Indianapolis, running from bullies, walking to the store to do errands for Mother or Mrs. Dickerson, who lived next door, the only black person for blocks around, and riding the street car downtown to Cadel Tabernacle with my sister to see some religious vaudeville act.

When we moved to the farm, older sister Mary V and I walked the half mile down our little gravel road to the main gravel road to catch Jimmy Bigham’s school bus. On that bus was an eternal baseball conversation among the boys, eternal in the sense that it had no beginning and no end. I knew I was a Cincinnati Reds fan, because Grandma Mac was a Reds fan, and I gladly waved the pennant [virtual] for my team. We eagerly shared any information we had about our teams, and asked the older boys for guidance if we needed to judge whether Don Newcombe or Preacher Roe was the better “hurler.” [We learned that true fans never used a normal term, like “pitcher,” if a reasonable facsimile could be found.]

Summer on the farm basically meant three months of unrelenting heat, humidity, and isolation. We had no car. We had no money. So we didn’t go anyplace. We hoed weeds and picked tomatoes and put up hay and chopped kindling and made jelly and plucked chickens, all by hand.

Many people, old people in particular, miss the joy of autumn, because they know that winter follows. They spend autumn dreading winter. To me, the joy of autumn was so great that I knew it would carry me through the winter. Because autumn wasn’t just about baseball and school. Baseball and school meant…friends!

 

Friends. The true eternal gift. The gift of baseball and school.

Baseball and school, yes, they are gifts in themselves, but it is friendship that has been the true gift of autumn for so many years. Thank you.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

YOU MIGHT BE STUPID, BUT GOD LOVES YOU [M, 9-8-22]

 

Even as a young child, I was aware of Evil, although I referred to evil as “The Devil” As a young preacher and university student, I became aware of Original Sin, the built-in tendency in all humans to seek their own good at the expense of others. In other words, free enterprise.

I believed, though, that Evil could be conquered, and Original Sin could be erased, if we just got folks to see how good life would be if we were all nice to one another, and how hate and prejudice and violence and greed were useless and unnecessary and self-defeating.

I continued to believe that most of my life, even through the Great Depression and World War II and Viet Nam and Iraqistan.

Then we elected Donald Trump, and claimed he was Christian, and smart, and good for America, and that he won every election, regardless.

That’s when I became aware of Stupidity. Not ignorance, where you just don’t have the information, or simple-mindedness, where you just don’t have adequate brain compacity to understand, but Stupidity, where you just make all kinds of world-destruction and soul-destruction decisions and actions even though you are perfectly capable of knowing better.

I now believe that people are not  basically evil, or basically good, but we are basically Stupid, and that most people enjoy being Stupid enough that they will not change.

I could avoid thinking we were Stupid, and hopeless, during the Holocaust, and the jungles, and weapons of mass destruction that did not really exist, because they were somehow foreign, wars and lies perpetrated by Nazis and CEOs. We could blame Evil and Original Sin.

But it’s my friends and family members and neighbors who elected Trump, and proclaim him above reproach and above the law, and who believe any lies he and his minions proclaim. I’m getting a look at Stupidity that is up close and personal.

We can point out hypocrisy and Stupidity until the cows come home. We can point out how self-defeating it is to destroy our own environment for a few short-term dollars, and how there is no such thing as “alternate facts,” because facts are facts, and how violence and greed have in their very being the seeds of our destruction.

It makes no diff, because we are not basically good people who get caught up in the ways of Evil sometimes. We are basically Stupid people who are quite willing for the boat to sink as long as WE are the ones who get to make the holes. You can’t get any more Stupid, or stupid, than that.

Evil? Original Sin? Those are minor league. It’s Stupidity that will do us in.

But have you ever heard a sermon about Stupidity? Are there liturgies and litanies imploring God to save us from Stupidity? Are there any hymns about “don’t be Stupid?” Camp songs? “I shall not be, I shall not be stupid.” “Someone’s being stupid, Lord, kum ba yah.” No.

We haven’t even put in a volume, not even a chapter, on Stupidity in Systematic Theology [although Reinhold Niebuhr came close]. It’s like the gravity field in quantum mechanics. No one has ever been able to develop a unified theory, not even Einstein, because no one knows how to fit the gravity field in with the other fields. Same as Stupidity in Systematic Theology. So, like the physicists do with gravity, theologians just ignore Stupidity and act like they are still covering the world of reality.

The whole church has really missed the main problem. How Stupid is that? Well, actually, there are churches that embrace Stupidity and its ionic narcissists as Messianic. That’s even more Stupid, in a theological sense. Just plain stupid, without a capital, in common sense.

We’re all going to hell in a handbasket. In the meantime, it might be good to remember that Christ died for you, the Holy Spirit is with us through the Resurrection, and God loves you.

John Robert McFarland

 

WORK IN WINTER: A Reflection for Labor Day [M, 9-5-22]

 

Many years ago I was browsing through the Illinois Wesleyan University library. I think I was doing it just because it was a new library, and I like libraries.

I pulled a book off the shelf about Lyman Beecher and his thirteen remarkable children, by two different wives. I suppose Harriet Beecher Stowe is the most famous, but Henry Ward Beecher is a close second.

My favorite, though, is Arthur, for three reasons that I learned from that book.

First, he was hired by the Presbyterian Church in Elyria, NY for a one-month trial. He stayed 40 years, on one-month calls. Can you imagine being voted on by your bosses every month for 40 years?

Second, the first month he was in Elyria, he was thrown out of the ministerial association, for heresy. He never missed a meeting of that group, for forty years, although he was never readmitted to membership. That’s being true to your heresy! It’s also a good way to avoid having to serve as an officer or pay dues.

Most importantly, once he was invited to come down to Brooklyn to fill the pulpit for his famous brother, Henry. The place was packed to hear the great orator. When it was announced that Henry was not there and his brother would preach, people started to leave. Arthur leaped into the pulpit and proclaimed, “Those who have come to hear Henry Ward Beecher may leave. Those who have come to hear the Word of God may stay.”

Not as well known, but perhaps most important, was Isabella Beecher Hooker, who was so important in the fight for women’s rights. When she was nearing the end of her life, she said to her granddaughter that she felt so unnecessary, that she was doing nothing to make the world better.

“But you have the satisfaction of knowing you did so much in the past,” her granddaughter said. “All that does,” replied Isabella, “is remind me that I am unable to do anything now”

That’s a dilemma for old people. Today is Labor Day, and we are reminded that work gives us a worth and dignity that we do not have without it. but there comes a time when you simply can’t work, even as a volunteer. Your health and energy are not sufficient. Caring for yourself alone is a fulltime job. Does that count as labor? Do we get to celebrate this day, just because we worked in the past? What gives us dignity and worth now?

I think the final answer is trust.

Yesterday in church, Sheri and Ann had with them the most recent of the babies they care for as emergency foster parents. The social people call up and say, “We’ve got this parentless new-born…” and Ann and Sheri are out the door to the hospital or police station to get that baby. This one they call Maddy. She is tiny and so beautiful.

Her temporary moms sit up front on the left. Sheri and Ann sit there because it’s convenient to a door to the rest of the building in case they need to take Maddy out quickly to change a diaper. It’s convenient to the rest of us because we can watch the baby side-eye and make the preacher think we’re paying attention to what’s going on up front.

Midway through the service yesterday, Sheri got up, cradling Maddy in one arm, the way running backs carry a football, and came over to Leanna and Gene, sitting right in front of Helen and daughter Mary Beth, who is visiting for the weekend, and me, and just put the baby into Leanna’s arms. When Leanna held her on her shoulder, she was able to look me right in the face, and we had the best time making googly eyes at each other!

But this little parentless football baby did not know who I was. or who was holding her. Sheri and Leanna are different colors and different generations. That made not a whit of diff to Maddy. That baby did not know where she came from, or what would become of her. Labor Day was the very next day, but she was not going to do any work at all, to care for herself or to make the world a better place.  She was just trusting the moment, trusting those who held her, regardless of where they sat, to care for her.

At the beginning of life, or at its end, our labor is trust.

The indefatigable John Wesley’s last words were: “The best thing is, God is with us.”

John Robert McFarland

 

DO CALL HER SHIRLEY [F, 9-2-22]

 

“Wow!” Uncle Harvey said. “You say that girl lives across the alley behind you? What a deal. She’s a knockout!”

Well, yes, although I had seen her only a couple of times before, and then she was just in jeans and a blouse, in Opal’s backyard. She looked like all the girls at IU. When Uncle Harvey and I encountered her on the sidewalk in downtown Evansville, she was dressed in the standard secretary garb of the day—skin tight sweater and skirt, and four-inch heels, with hair style and makeup to match. Shirley was definitely a knockout.

In the house across the alley from the Methodist parsonage in Chrisney, Indiana, though, she was one of a line of girls “who got into trouble,” Thinking back on it now, I suspect that although they were the ones who had to be taken out of their homes and given to Opal to care for, the girls were not the source of the trouble. Whatever, they needed somewhere to go, and, one after another, Opal took them in.

I was nineteen, a college sophomore, an accidental preacher on the Chrisney circuit, living in the parsonage from Friday evening, when I drove the 100 miles from Bloomington to Chrisney, and spent the weekends in the parsonage, with only a metal folding chair and a thin mattress on a metal springs camp bed for my furniture, before preaching at the three churches on the circuit on Sunday morning, then driving back to IU on Sunday afternoon. 

Uncle Harvey was the husband of my father’s only sister, Helen. He was VP of Southern Indiana Gas & Electric, having worked his way up from the guy just out of school who shoveled coal into the boiler. He was complimentary about my preaching efforts. And he recognized a pretty girl when he saw one; he had secretaries in his office who dressed like Shirley.

I was intrigued by Shirley already, of course, just because she was female and within a hundred-mile radius. My friends and relatives had quite different interpretations of what pretty girls meant for me. My dorm buddies were like, “Oh, no, Preacher John, you’ll never get to have sex.” My older relatives and church-going neighbors were like, “Now you need to find a wife right away…” They didn’t add, “…or else you’ll never get to have sex,” but that’s what they meant. “Better to marry than burn,” as the Apostle, Paul, said. [I Corinthians 7]

I had been in the ministry only 6 weeks, but apparently I was supposed to be looking for a wife already. When my grandson was about five or six years old, he told his mother what was necessary for him when he married: “She has to be pretty, and she needs to know how to cook.” He’s definitely my grandson, except I never worried much about the cooking.

I assessed every girl by the rule of whether she would be a good preacher’s wife, meaning, “Is she pretty?” Shirley certainly would have been okay.

But I was “stolen” from Chrisney, according to the Evansville District Superintendent, Dallas Browning, by Bloomington DS, FT Johnson, to serve the Solsberry Circuit, 85 miles closer to my dorm. So I never got around to asking Shirley if she had any other attributes for being a wife, beyond being pretty.

Thirty-five years later, though, in my first and only visit back to Chrisney, I asked Catherine Adams, perceptive church lady and my mentor during my brief career there, about Shirley.

“You know,” she said, “Opal took care of so many girls through the years. I can’t remember them all. But I do remember Shirley, because she’s the one, many years later, when Opal got sick, who came back to take care of her.”

John Robert McFarland

The title is a take-off on the movie, “Airplane!” where, when one of the male characters says to another, “Surely you can’t be serious…” the retort is “Don’t call me Shirley.”