An Open-Door Christian in a Closed-Door Church [Su, 4-30-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—An Open-Door Christian in a Closed-Door Church [Su, 4-30-23]

 

My friend, Bob, wrote to me. Mostly about a granddaughter. He knows how I feel about granddaughters. He knows I pray for his as well as mine.

He noted that his UMC had voted to leave the denomination. By one vote. He was opposed to leaving.

Bob and I were classmates and friends from the time we were ten years old. We worked the night shift in a factory together. Bob didn’t go to college. He continued to work factory jobs. But he remained in our home town, so we were able to stay in touch over the years. We’ve shared a lot of hopes and concerns. He’s outlived two wives. He worries about his granddaughter. We’ve wept tears together.

Make no mistake; we have differences. Bob is very conservative. But he is kind. And thoughtful. “As Christians” he said, “we need to stay together and work out our problems together. It’s easy to solve a problem by just walking away from it, but is the easy way the way of Christ?”

It reminds me that someone has said that Christ promised his followers only two things: You shall always be in trouble. I shall always be with you.

Bob lives in a town of 2500 people. It was 3500 when we were in high school. We were both Methodists, but I went to the little open-country Forsythe Church, three miles outside of town, near the farm where I grew up. I thought of the town church as my auxiliary home church, though. I played on their Church League baseball team, since Forsythe was too small to have a team. I had many friends who were members there. The preachers there, especially Wilbur Teasley and Bob Miller, encouraged me as I inched my way toward the ministry.

It saddens me that the open-door church that mentored me and encouraged me has decided to close its doors.

The UMC was the last open-door church in town. The Presbyterians gave up years ago. There has never been an Episcopal or Lutheran or Disciples or UCC congregation there. There are several other churches, but they are closed-door churches. Their doors are locked from the inside, intent on keeping the wrong people out. An open-door church is there to let everybody in.

Now an open-door Christian has no church in that town. Bob lives in an open-door desert. He will have to drive thirty miles to attend an open-door church, one that will accept his granddaughter. That is the plight of many open-door Methodists now, as their churches vote to leave so that they can be closed-door churches.

Except Bob will keep going to his old church. He’ll keep the doors open in his heart and mind, even if the official doors are closed.

I’ll continue to pray for him as he makes his witness. I’ll always be proud that he is my friend.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

BEYOND THE BUCKET LIST [R, 4-27-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BEYOND THE BUCKET LIST [R, 4-27-23]

 

Our local online newspaper carried a piece titled “Five Things That Should Be On Your Bucket List If You Live In Indiana.”

I live in Indiana, but didn’t read it. I’m way past having a bucket list.

Later that same day a different outlet carried the news of the death of Harry Belafonte. We once saw Harry in person. That wasn’t on my bucket list. I never had a bucket list before cancer, because I wasn’t old enough to need one. Cancer, though, changed everything. Every opportunity became its own bucket list.

We’d always liked Harry, both as a performer and as a Civil Rights activist. I think Helen also liked him for reasons that did not interest me. Kind of like my fascination with the acting ability of Sophia Loren did not interest her.

So, when I was on chemo, when Harry came to do a concert a ILSU, we went, even though we lived some hours away from Normal then, and even though managing my Groshong catheter and my other medical issues were not easy when we were away from home.

Especially when we were in a Motel 6.  

 

I say that as though we frequented the Motel 6 chain. We did not. Especially after that experience.

I suppose we chose Motel 6 just because it was cheap. We needed to be careful. Our future earnings were not assured. We didn’t know how much my treatments would end up costing. We wanted to spend our money on seeing Harry, not on sleeping upscale, like in a Motel 8.

Our motel was neither dirty nor dangerous. But it was austere. The pillows were the size of pizzas. Domino’s. The sheets were like gauze. The towels were the size of wash clothes. The wash clothes were the size of handkerchiefs. The soap bar was the size of an M&M.

But Harry was all Harry. Down to making us sing “Matilda” with him as many times as it took to get it right.

Seeing him was worth staying in a Motel 6.

Our bucket list was simply one of opportunity. If someone like Harry or Roger Whitaker or Edward Villella got within driving and paying distance of us, they went onto the list. Not because they were Bing Crosby or Rosemary Clooney or Fred Astaire, someone we’d always wanted to see--but because we didn’t want to pass up the chances that did come our way while we waited for the opportunity to check off the lines on some proleptic list.

We’re so grateful now. Our radius for driving and paying is about ten—ten miles and ten dollars. No longer able to mark off items on a bucket list, but such good memories, of Harry, and The Music Man, and My Fair Lady…and Motel 6.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

AT THE END OF THE ROAD {M, 4-24-23}

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter---AT THE END OF THE ROAD {M, 4-24-23}

 

I always saw

The oaks and maples

Devil fingers and honeysuckle

Dusty sumac leaves

Wild dancing blackberry canes

in the washed-out ditches

along the deep-rutted tracks

of the narrow dirt roads

I walked in my youth

But I was always

more aware

of the faces

of the friends

who waited

at the end of the road

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ALL ALONE AT THE GRAVE [F, 4-21-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter--ALL ALONE AT THE GRAVE [F, 4-21-23]

 

I’ve probably written about this before, but I forgot about it until something prompted me to tell it in a recent EZ Club meeting.

EZ stands for Evening Zoom. That’s when Helen and I meet, every other week, with friends of yore who live too far away to see in person. Talking with them brings up stories of long ago.

Like the time I did the funeral of a homeless, nameless hobo in Bloomington, IL.

I suspect that the sheriff didn’t want to ask a real minister to do a funeral for a nameless hobo. I wasn’t real. I was a campus minister, the lowest of the low in the clergy pecking order. Especially in those days of Civil Rights and Viet Nam, when campuses were in turmoil. The sheriff was right: a homeless dead man and a campus minister received equal measures of respect.

I hadn’t always been a campus minister, though. I’d been the pastor of congregations for eight years before campus ministry. I had done plenty of funerals. But at all those funerals, there had been other people there besides me and the corpse.

I went to the cemetery at the appointed time. The sheriff and undertaker were standing beside the hearse, chatting. I had sort of assumed we would do a little procession from hearse to grave, the usual way, but the sheriff handed me a check, gestured toward the grave and went on talking to the funeral director. Didn’t even say “hello.”  

I wandered over to the grave of the man passing through our town, the man with no name, who happened to die while there. It was a sunny day. A little before noon. We were all alone, the nameless one and I. I could tell that the sheriff and funeral director were eager to get done and back to lunch. So I stood there, by the grave, and read aloud every word of the funeral service from The Book of Worship.

I think God understood.

John Robert McFarland

Profound Friends, Math, Grammar, and Oneness [T, 4-18-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Profound Friends, Math, Grammar, and Oneness [T, 4-18-23]

 

WHEN THE RIGHT FRIEND APPEARS

I had one of those really irritating dreams, where I knew I was dreaming. It was just regular everyday stuff, not like those dreams where the road disappears or elephants are flying around. The problem was, I knew I was dreaming. But I had to keep going around, doing the stuff, acting like it was real, wishing all the time that I could wake up. Wanting desperately to wake up. I was really getting anxious about whether that would ever happen.

But then my late, great friend and church member, Maury Shepherd appeared, and I thought, “Oh, whenever Maury shows up in a dream, that means the dream is over.  I can wake up.” So, I did.

I’m not sure that Maury had ever shown up in a dream before, and there was certainly nothing to make me think he was a dream-ender, but…

it makes such a difference when the right friend appears. Anyplace.

MATHEMATICAL ACCURACY

I knew a math prof who told me he had become a Christian late in life when he heard people singing the last verse of “Amazing Grace.” When we’ve been there, ten thousand years…we’ve no less days to sing God’s grace than when we first begun. “I was struck,” he said, “by how profoundly accurate that is mathematically.”

GRAMMATICAL ACCURACY

Of course, it is not profoundly accurate grammatically. But “fewer days” does not flow as well melodically as “less days.”

Which reminds me again of Helen’s problem with Les Miles, or at least his parents. When I watch sports on TV, Helen sits on her couch and orders groceries, or socks, [from different places], writes a letter, balances the checkbook, concocts a recipe, looks at pictures of grandchildren or granddog on her computer, and texts with her sister or one of our daughters. All at the same time. Makes for some interesting meals later. Also some interesting listening to what the sports commentators are saying, since they get access only to a small part of one of her ears.

That was when she heard “less miles.” FEWER miles! she shouted at the TV. She believes that accurate grammar is almost as close to Godliness as is cleanliness, and being a home management specialist and teacher, she definitely believes in cleanliness. [It helps that she is a Methodist, since it was John Wesley who said, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”] 

I had to say, “But they’re talking about a coach, and his name is Les Miles.” She thought about it, not for very long, and retorted, “Well, they should have named him Fewer.”

THE GIFT OF ONENESS

Helen is slowing down. She doesn’t multi-task as much anymore. That makes for fewer listening mistakes. It’s also a gift of old age.

As we age, our bodies and brains just won’t do as much at one time as they once did. We have to concentrate more just to remember what we are doing. That is a gift, to be able to live in this one moment, “…to enjoy this big old dumb day,” as Anne Lamott puts it.

As Kierkegaard said, with a slightly different meaning, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”

Living in the moment, doing one thing…I guess that is mathematically profound, too.

John Robert McFarland

AGED OUT [sat, 4-15-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—AGED OUT [sat, 4-15-23]

 

Yesterday Clara, from Medicare Stuff, called me, to see if she could get some extra money out of me for some extra benefits.

I didn’t know it was Clara, until I answered the phone, because the caller ID said “caller unknown.” I don’t usually answer those, but it was an 812 number, and that is our home area code. Sometimes an unknown caller is actually a known friend, or a medical office, or a return call from someone I have already forgotten that I called, so I answered.

Clara was quite cheery, and was sure she could get me some extra benefits. “So, how old are you?” she asked. I told her. She hung up.

Not a word. Not “Sorry” or “Goodbye.” Just nothing. I was too old even for benefits for old people. It’s a strange feeling, knowing you’re too old.

I remember the first time that happened. I was in one of my periodic frustrations with the ministry. “Surely there is some job where I can make more money and have less aggravation,” I said to myself. So I looked at the employment classifieds in the newspaper. [Remember classified ads? Remember newspapers?] We lived near Chicago, so it was a paper with lots of job ads, either the Trib or Sun-Times. One ad said, “No one over 25.” I did not feel old at all, but I had already aged out.

These days, of course, you can’t put categorical rejections into a job posting, winnowing out folks ahead of time because of age or gender or race or religion. That’s good. Mostly folks will know anyway if they don’t qualify. I mean, I would know it’s no use to apply if the local temple is looking for a rabbi.

On the other hand, it’s not always good to have no restrictions on who can apply. I mean, if the people doing the hiring already know they won’t hire you…

I once applied for a part-time job on a seminary faculty. I was retired, so I was immediately available. I fit the qualifications more than well. I had lots of degrees, including a doctorate. I was an alum. They had a rather arduous app process, including lots of recommendations from others. I’d had a long career, so I knew lots of impressive people who wrote glowing recommendation letters for me. The seminary president called me and said, “You’ve got such a great resume, I guess we’re going to have to interview you.” He sounded resigned about my great resume instead of enthusiastic. That seemed odd. Why would they not interview me?

Because they already knew who they were going to hire, that’s why. Just like Clara, I never heard anything from them again, but I read later in the school’s publication that they had hired the wife of someone on the faculty. They had intended to hire her along. They could have saved themselves, and me, and my recommending friends, and anyone else who applied, a lot of time by just hiring her, instead of posting the job. Except they had to for… some sort of legal reasons or something…

So, maybe Clara did me a favor. She didn’t use even one more second of my time when she found out how old I was. She knew that at my age, each second is too precious to waste. At least, I hope that’s why she hung up, instead of just because she found out she couldn’t get any money out of me. I haven’t aged out on being naïve.

John Robert McFarland

DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS [W, 4-12-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS [W, 4-12-23]

 

Fortunately, the Crumble Bums met only three days after the clocks went forward an hour to accommodate DST. Thus I had to use my brain to adjust the time on my wrist watch for only 3 days. My fingers and brain are less nimble all the time. I never remember how to reset my watch when DST and EST exchange. But Charlie is a Crumble Bum. As I drank coffee, he set my wrist watch forward an hour for me.

In a way, it was Charlie’s own fault, that he had to adjust my wristwatch to DST. Katie invited us to the Matson family Thanksgiving dinner, which was only about 3 weeks after we had changed from DST to EST. That became a topic of conversation with the 12 people there. Thus it became known that I had not been able to adjust my wrist watch and was just setting the time back an hour in my brain when I looked at it. So Charlie made my watch read right.

Younger people will say, “Why are you using a wrist watch, anyway? Just look at your phone.”

Well, I do have a phone, but it’s like using a pocket watch. I have to pull it out of a shirt pocket or pants pocket to look at it. Not so with a wrist watch. It is always, immediately, in view. More importantly, it shows that I am one of the cool kids.

When I was thirteen, getting a wrist watch for a Methodist boy was almost like a bar mitzvah for a Jewish boy, although I had no idea then what a bar mitzvah was. A clock on your wrist was a rite of passage, a statement that you were grown up enough that you had to care about what time it was.

It also meant that you had saved enough money from the dollar bills relatives sent for birthdays and Christmas that you could afford a gold, rectangular watch, with gold hands, and a discreet gold “Elgin” on the face, and a band that was leathery. Enough to drive the girls wild. If they bothered to look at you.

There were no digital watches then. Nothing with a battery. Watches weren’t tiny calculators. They just showed you the time… if you wound them up

We teens certainly did not forget to wind our watches, because that was part of the mystique. We didn’t wind at the logical times of the day, bedtime or rising, for no one would see. Watch winding was a public event. We wound at lunch time, arm held high.

The kids who did not have wrist watches made fun of us by looking at their own bare wrists and saying, “What time is it? Oh, three freckles after a hair.” We didn’t care. We knew they were just jealous because we were so cool.

Now I am old. I don’t need a wrist watch to show that I’m cool. I have wrinkles for that. Or even to know what time it is, for I have no place I have to be “on time.” Although old people do have to check the watch often, to see if it is time to eat again.

But being old I am forgetful. It’s likely that if my wrist watch is not set to the correct time zone and DST or EST, I’ll be off by an hour end up eating at the wrong time. Thanks to Charlie, I shall not starve.

John Robert McFarland

 

BELIEVING BACKWARDS [sun, 4-9-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BELIEVING BACKWARDS [sun, 4-9-23]

 

I had been the preacher at her church for seven years when Jane said to me, “I just can’t believe in the resurrection.”

Jane was one of the best Christians I ever knew. Sunday School teacher. Lay Leader of our congregation. But not just a good church member, which we often equate with being a good Christian. She was deeply committed to growing spiritually and acting ethically  

I thought, “I am a complete failure. Jane has heard me preach for seven Easters, and I haven’t preached well enough for her to believe.”

Part of the problem, of course, is what we mean by believe. Jane was using it in its intellectual credence meaning. As in, “I believe in gravity.”

Reminds me of the old woodsman who was asked if he believed in infant baptism. “Believe in it?” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve seen it done.”

Jane hadn’t seen resurrection done, so she didn’t believe.

But as I thought about the ineffectiveness of my preaching, I realized that the problem was that I started at the beginning, “a very good place to start,” as the song “Do Re Me” puts it. A good place to start a song, but not the best place to start with God.

I had always started theologically at Christmas. And who wouldn’t? After all, the Easter bunny can’t hold a marshmallow peep to Santa Claus.

More importantly, my favorite book as a child was Cornelia Meigs’ Mother Makes Christmas, about a poor family where the mother manages to create the joy of Christmas out of nothing. That’s what I wanted to do for the world. My starting point was Christmas.

Jane caused me to rethink my starting point. She had help from philosophical theologian Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, since I was reading him at the time.

Rosenstock-Huessy says that to understand the Gospel, the good news of God in Christ, you have to start at the end, with the resurrection. You have to “understand backward.”

I’m not sure if Jane ever became a “believer” in resurrection, the way she believed in gravity and infant baptism and the church, but it doesn’t matter. She knows all about it, now that she is where all her days start with resurrection. Where sermons and preachers aren’t necessary… maybe not even tolerated…

We understand Christ, and God, by understanding backward, by starting at the end, which is the real beginning.

He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE HELL OF HOLY SATURDAY [Sat, 4-8-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE HELL OF HOLY SATURDAY [Sat, 4-8-23]

 

There are two traditional ideas about Holy Saturday that I find quite appealing, even though they are in conflict with each other: Jesus preached in hell on that day, and Jesus got bored as hell on that day.

There’s no evidence for either idea, biblical or otherwise [1], but they are intriguing answers to the question: What did Jesus do between the cross and resurrection? What did he do on Saturday? I mean, it seems like such a waste for him to be doing nothing at all. Naturally, folks thought up…

He must have gone to hell to preach the gospel there for the folks who died before Jesus and so had no chance of salvation.

Isn’t it neat to think about the look on the devil’s face when folks started shouting, “Thank you, Jesus” and walked out of hell.

It’s a bit problematic, because it continues the idea that the reason for trusting Christ is to stay/get out of hell in the afterlife, instead of just leading a good life while we have life, but that’s a small caveat. It’s very satisfying to think about Jesus using his “dead time” in such a productive way.

The other approach, and one I preached on sometimes, is that if Jesus did not go to hell to preach there, then he got bored as hell.

I preached that because it seems to me that we normal mortals spend most of our time on Saturday—neither the excitement and drama and intensity of Good Friday or the joy and exultation of Easter Sunday. We are just in the dark in the cave, unholy Saturday, wondering what will happen, wondering if there is a God, wondering if “He’s” forgotten about us.

If we’re patient, though, resurrection happens.

Okay. Two different approaches to Holy Saturday. Take your pick.

John Robert McFarland

1] The Roman Catholic version of The Apostles Creed includes e descended into hell, but that’s just a guess, the one thing in the creed that is not historical.

 

GOOD FRIDAY & THE TWO WOLVES [F, 4-7-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—GOOD FRIDAY & THE TWO WOLVES [F, 4-7-23]

 

On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, I told you about how then grad school daughter Katie was asked if she were saved. When she replied “Yes,” her interlocutor was surprised and said, “When?” She replied, “On Good Friday.” That, of course, is the correct answer. It is God’s work in Christ that saves us…saves us from original sin, that built-in desire to get what we want regardless of what happens to other people. But is such salvation really necessary?

After all, there is a counter weight to original sin: prevenient grace. That’s what John Wesley called it. “Preventing” grace, that tries to prevent us from doing evil, and is built into us just as original sin is. In common practice, it’s called “conscience.” The apostle, Paul, talks about it in Romans 2:15.

In life, original sin [“original” meaning there from the beginning] and prevenient grace are the two wolves in the shaman story: Two wolves fight within the shaman. ‘Which is winning?” he is asked. “Whichever one I feed,” he answers.

So, is the conquering of sin--that saves us from brokenness and makes us whole—our work, by feeding the grace wolf instead of the selfishness wolf, or the work of God in Jesus Christ?

I’ve read just about every smart person who has tried to answer that and never gotten a satisfactory answer. It’s usually along the lines of “God saves us through the atonement and sacrifice of Jesus, and then we respond to that by doing good stuff.”

Well, can’t you just do good stuff anyway? And there is plenty of evidence that people who are “saved” don’t do better stuff than the unsaved. In fact, they often do worse stuff!

There were three early interpretations of Good Friday: the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman.

Hebrew: The earliest Christians were Jews, of course, so they saw Good Friday as a sacrifice. Jews went to the temple on the high holy days and made a sacrifice to God, preferably an unblemished lamb. So Jesus, who was crucified on the Temple mount during the holy days, became the “lamb of God,” and we are “saved by the blood of the lamb.” A life, a sacrifice had to be given to satisfy the Almighty, and even though “He” was the one doing it, in Christ, there was no salvation—getting right with God—without a sacrifice.

Greek: The Greek influence was both philosophical and artistic. Philosophy gave us Gnosticism, the idea that Good Friday is understood only by the intuition of the elite, who know things that nobody else does. [gnosis in Greek is knowledge] The Greek [and Roman] plays gave us the Trinity. In those plays, actors played many roles by coming on stage wearing different masks. The masks were called personae. In the Trinity, God is an actor who wears three different masks, three personae. That’s how God manages to sacrifice to Himself.

The Romans were legalists. They were as fixated on Law as the Hebrews, but theirs was secular. Nonetheless, this gave us the “substitutionary atonement” theory. The legal case: People, in Adam, sinned against God, by trying to take the place of God, and the righteousness of God requires that someone must be punished, just as someone had to be punished if you committed a crime against the Roman Empire. God, in the person of Christ, takes the necessary punishment, substituting himself for us.

These days, it’s hard to believe in salvation through esoteric knowledge shared by only a few, or that God has to be placated through blood sacrifice, or that every misdemeanor requires capital punishment. Where does that leave us?

I never liked Good Friday much, because I can’t get the two wolves to settle down long enough to figure out what’s going on. I think, though, that we come closer to the meaning of the cross by singing about it than philosophizing about it.

That cross is old and rugged, yes

but also stainless steel

timeless

meaning everything

meaning nothing

In frustration I throw up my hands

and cry in confusion

But I also throw up my hands

and cry in affirmation

He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart…

 

If nothing else, and maybe this is the totality, the cross says that God loves us to the max, and the empty tomb says that love isn’t a one-and-done but continues every day, forever…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

YES, THIS COMMANDMENT IS NEW [R, 4-6-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—YES, THIS COMMANDMENT IS NEW [R, 4-6-23]

 

Today is Maundy Thursday, and the lectionary reading is John 13, the story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. That’s a great passage. So many openings into the mind of God. But I’m especially drawn to the bottom line, verses 34 and 35, where Jesus says that he giving us a new commandment, that we love one another.

To those of us steeped in Christian faith, that does not sound new at all, but in Jesus’ time, commandments were about believing creeds and doing rituals. Love requires no creeds or rituals.

He goes on to say, “This is how people will know you are my disciples, because you love one another.” That is a new and radical idea for Christians right now! Especially if those fellow Christians are Republicans. Or Democrats.

But Peter Scholtheis got it when he wrote…

We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord

We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord

And we pray that all unity will one day be restored

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,

Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love

May your Thursday be Maundy

John Robert McFarland

You can hear the full “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love” on YouTube.

Nebuchadnezzar in a Small Town [T, 4-4-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Nebuchadnezzar in a Small Town [T, 4-4-23]

 

The East Gibson School District board [Gibson County, Indiana] just voted to close the Francisco elementary school. Budget reasons, of course. Not enough kids to justify a school there. Cheaper to bus everybody to Oakland City, five miles away.

My mother graduated from Francisco when they had not only a grade school but a high school. She learned good grammar there. She sang in musicals there. A good school. A progressive school. In fact, she was the first woman in the state of Indiana to graduate high school with her married name on her diploma. That was almost 100 years ago, 1928.

When we moved in 1947 from Indianapolis to the Forsythe community, between Oakland City and Frisco but in the OC school district, Mother mourned the deterioration of her home town. It still had the same population, about 600 people, but only 3 grocery stores, including that of Ted, her oldest brother. No doctors, although there had been 2 when she grew up there. No hotels, but there had been 2 in her youth, basically for salesmen who rode the trains. Only 3 service stations. Only 2 restaurants. Only one barber shop. Only one blacksmith. Only one bank. One hardware store, owned by her youngest brother, John. No passenger trains stopped there anymore.

Then around 1960 the school burned. There was talk of not replacing it, but my uncles, Ted and Johnny, knew that would be the death of the town, so they pitched in and literally built a new one. But even before Uncle Johnny’s own children were through high school, the school was reduced to elementary only. Now it’s not even that.

Many small towns maintain their population, if they are in driving distance of bigger places, because houses are cheap. Frisco still has 600 people, just as it did 100 years ago. But there are no grocery stores. No hardware store. No barber shops or restaurants or service stations.  Now no school.

This is the story of almost every little town in America over the past 100 years. Gone from a community to just a bunch of people who happen to live in the same area. Blame the automobile. Now everyone in a small down drives five miles or thirty miles to the grocery, the doctor, the bank, the barber…to places where there are services, but no community, not for the people who don’t live there. They are just customers, not neighbors.

I have lived through that decline of small-town community. When I went to school in Oakland City, the town had 3200 people. Now only 2249 by census count. The Oakland City schools alone had around 1200 students, with 300 in high school. Today the East Gibson schools—Oakland City, Francisco, and Mackey, which also had a high school in my day--have only 796 students, kindergarten through high school.

Which leaves the church. Small towns still have churches. They are the only possibility for community. Unfortunately, the word “community” requires the word “unity,” and that small town churches do not have. They are divided by secular politics rather than united by sacred mission.

That is sad, but I recall something one of my professors, the famous church historian, Albert Outler, said: “The church has never done the right thing except under pressure from the world.”

In other words, God is at work on the church through the world. That’s a significant Old Testament theme, God using foreign forces like Nebuchadnezzar, to force Israel to be true to its mission.

Maybe God will use the loneliness of small-town Christians to force us back into community. Watch for it…

John Robert McFarland

 

MUSTARD SEED MINISTRIES—THEN AND NOW [Sat, 4-1-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter— MUSTARD SEED MINISTRIES—THEN AND NOW [Sat, 4-1-23]

 

 [A continuation and expansion of the last two CIW columns, about the HELP/PATH organization in Normal-Bloomington, IL.]

The 1960s were a turbulent time on college campuses—civil rights, voting rights, abortion rights, the draft, the war in Viet Nam... Those of us in campus ministry scrambled to find ways to be helpful to our constituencies, especially students.

At ILSU, in the town of Normal--so named because ILSU was originally a normal school, meaning a teacher’s college--Presbyterian campus minister, Jim Pruyne, and I started a problem pregnancy counseling center. Then Jim put a 24-hour suicide-help phone line into his campus ministry center and called it PATH [Personal Assistance Telephone Help.] Then I started a town/gown organization called HELP, to serve as a center for information and referral on any kind of help needed, and direct service where the existing social service agencies had gaps. Jim offered to let HELP use the PATH telephone number. Sometime after I had left Normal for other ministries, HELP and PATH became one organization, using the name of PATH since that was the telephone number. Their current logo incorporates both names: “The Path to Help.”

Today, PATH has gone far beyond the ILSU campus. It is not only the social service referral and action center for all of McLean County, but it is the crisis/suicide answering center for the entire state of Illinois, with more than 300 calls per day.

But at the beginning, it was just a mustard seed.

That, of course, is one of Jesus’ most famous parables, recorded in Mark 4:30-32. The mustard seed is the tiniest seed, but it grows into a plant so big that birds can roost in it. That’s what the Kingdom of God is like.

Jim Pruyne and I didn’t think that we were planting mustard seeds. We were just trying to meet a need.

That’s what the church has always done. We tried to meet health care needs, and huge hospitals resulted. We tried to meet higher education needs, and huge universities resulted. We tried to meet old-age needs, and huge retirement complexes resulted.

Once those mustard seeds have grown into full plants, the society at large says, “Oh, yes, that really is a need, so great that it should not be left to the church; we’ll take it over.” An institution might retain a churchly name, like Methodist Hospital, but it’s no longer of the church.

That’s okay. Jesus didn’t think of the Kingdom of God as something to be just of the church, apart from the rest of the world. He wanted the whole world to be the Kingdom of God.

So the question now is: What new mustard seeds need to be planted by the church? Not to create more church-stuff, but to meet a current need?

 

Old people are mostly too feeble to work in the fields all day. As the old song says, “He’s getting too old, he’s done got too old, he’s too old to cut the mustard anymore.” But we can still plant those little seeds. Think about it… then tell somebody what seed you think needs to be planted…

John Robert McFarland

Bill Carlisle wrote “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.” It was released as a single in 1951. The Ernest Tubb and Red Foley versions were probably best known and most played. Our high school marching band was working up a half-time show for a football game. Our director asked for suggestions for a song we might play to honor Coach Delbert Disler. Dainty flautist Carol Hardy suggested “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.” I’ve forgotten what we ended up playing for Coach Disler, but that wasn’t it.