HOW WILL THEY HEAR WITHOUT A PREACHER? [8-31-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—HOW WILL THEY HEAR WITHOUT A PREACHER? [8-31-23]

 

My theological alma mater recently stated this mission in the publication it sends to me to ask for money: “Forming courageous leaders in the way of Jesus to cultivate communities of justice, compassion, and hope.”

I like that. I hope that one of the communities for which they are forming those courageous leaders is the church congregation.

The church congregation used to be the only community for which the seminary formed courageous leaders. Now it is not even the major community for which the seminary provides leaders. Only about 40% of current seminary students are intending a career as a local church pastor.

That includes students from the Wesley Foundation where I spent many years as campus minister. I and my successors sent about 50 of our students to seminary. Almost all of them became congregation pastors. That was then…

 That WF sent me a request for money recently, and to emphasize how important their ministry is, told about all their recent grads who are seminary students now. About six, I think, maybe seven. [I can’t check the mailing because I can’t find it. There are gremlins in our house that hide anything I try to find.] Most are attending my own theological alma mater. Not a single one is looking toward a career as a congregation pastor. They want to be hospital chaplains, campus ministers, military chaplains, therapists, social workers… In other words, “courageous leaders in the way of Jesus to cultivate communities of justice, compassion, and hope.” Just not in the community of a church congregation.

When I entered my seminary, almost every student was a 22-year-old white male. In this year’s entering class, I doubt that there was even one 22-year-old white male. Students today are from every social community--every color, every gender identification, every nation, every denomination. Most are second or third career. I applaud that. Such diversity is good.

Despite their diverse differences, they have one thing in common: each comes out of a congregation. They have one other thing in common: none wants to be in a congregation, to lead a congregation. They want to be “courageous leaders in the way of Jesus to cultivate communities of compassion, justice, and hope.” Just not in the sort of compassionate, just, and hopeful congregation community that taught them about the way of Jesus.

I don’t blame them. I was a leader in that sort of community for a long time, and I know how many the rigors and how few the rewards. I think being a pastor now is even harder than when I did it.

My theological alma mater has an endowed scholarship that is named for Helen and me. Each year the recipient of that scholarship writes to tell us of their plans. A different recipient each year. None ever tells this old pastor-theologian that they want to be like him.

The church of Christ is not just the local congregation. But I think we still need congregations. And I think those congregations need pastors. And I think those pastors are better if they are educated. I just worry about how they will hear the call, and where they are going to get an education.

How will they hear without a preacher? [Romans 10:14.]

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? [8-28-23] A repeat

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter--WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? [8-28-23] A repeat

 

[I have told this story at least once before in this column, but it helps me to hear it again…]

My mother’s brothers were all handsome men. Even among them, though, Uncle Jesse stood out. Curly hair. Sparkling brown eyes. A dazzling smile.

So it must have set the hearts of all the girls at Francisco, Indiana [population 600] High School to fluttering when he ran out onto the basketball court in the tight little shorts and skimpy singlet that basketball players wore in the 1920s.

The problem was this: he wasn’t a very good basketball player. [Younger brother, Johnny, who was a real star in his day, said Jesse was the worst player in the history of basketball.] So Jesse never got into a game. Until that night when too many players had fouled out. To have five on the floor, the coach had to put Jesse in.

The score was tied, and the clock was down to the last minute.

“Don’t touch the ball,” the coach told Jesse. “Just stand there in bounds.”

Jesse did as he was told. But then the unthinkable happened. The ball went astray. It landed in his hands. What was he to do? The thing any player would do; he went for the basket.

He couldn’t dribble, but somehow he kept the ball going—one, two, three bounces toward the basket. The other players were chasing him. The crowd was yelling. He could see the clock down to its last second. He lofted the ball. It went through the net. The crowd went wild.

Then, though, Jesse realized it was the wrong crowd that was cheering him. It was on the visitors’ side of the gym. He looked at the scoreboard. He had won the game, but for the wrong team.

After high school, Uncle Jesse went on to a distinguished career in the Navy, as a pilot and flight instructor.

My mother’s family liked to tease a lot. So whenever there was a reunion and Jesse was present, the story of the errant basket was repeated many times. I was a teen-aged basketball player then myself. I could feel the embarrassment I was sure Uncle Jesse must have felt.

“How can you stand that, hearing that story?” I asked him.

There was that dazzling smile.

“I always knew which side I was on,” he said.

In the years of winter, I’ve been around long enough to make a lot of mistakes, and sometimes they’ve helped the wrong team. Maybe even won a game or two for them. But the season isn’t over, and I still know which side I’m on.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

BOBBY BETZELBERGER’S PIG [F. 8-25-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BOBBY BETZELBERGER’S PIG [F. 8-25-23]

 

As college students return to campus, Helen and I were recalling events from my campus ministry days. She told me I should write this column just because it is so much fun to say, Bobby Betzelbereger’s pig.

[My computer keyboard is currently refusing to use quote marks, perhaps because of my past quoting abuses, so italics are the new quotes.]

She went on, I don’t know how you can get something religious out of that, but it’s too much fun to say it not to try…

I, of course, could not resist the challenge.

Bobby Betzelberger was a boy in our Wesley Foundation [Methodist campus ministry] at Il State U, when I was campus minister there. He was a farm boy who liked to tweak city kids by acting out their misconceptions about farmers. He wore overalls all the time. Went barefoot on campus. And, most importantly, in returning from spring break, he brought a pig with him, to live in his room in the dorm.

This was so interesting to the other students that no one complained, so the authorities did not get wind [pun intended] of this for some time. Of course, you can’t keep a pig quiet forever, especially since the pig’s main joy in life was showering, a luxury it did not normally enjoy on the farm. Every time it heard someone—anyone!—in the shower room, it dashed down the hall to get in on the fun.

That was probably why the pig was discovered, and expelled from college without a degree. I can only imagine what tales it told the other pigs when it got home…

They said there was slop in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t much, but it was worth it to live in the land of constant showers. Oink. Oh, and Bobby got lots of city girls, because who wouldn’t want to date a guy who brings a pig to school… Oink!

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t know what became of Bobby--if he married one of those city girls, if he took her back home to be the wife of a pig farmer—because I went off to Iowa that year to get another useless degree. I have a pretty good idea of what became of the pig, though. You can’t study theology in Iowa without knowing what happens to pigs.

Which brings us back to Helen’s challenge. It is simple to relate this pig tale to religion, for Deuteronomy 14:7 says that you’re not to eat anything with a cloven hoof that does not also chew its cud, which is why people who believe in what the Bible says cannot eat pork, because pigs have cloven hooves but do not chew their cud.

They say in the gambling ads on TV, you should gamble responsibly, and the booze ads say you should drink responsibly. So, I’m saying, you should theologize responsibly. Be careful when you proclaim, The Bible says… It may say something that will point out your pork-eating hypocrisy when you’re quoting it for some other purpose.

I’m sure that quote the Bible responsibly will do as much good in creating responsibility as the gambling and booze ads do. But it’s still a lot of fun to say Bobby Betzelberger’s pig…

John Robert McFarland

POEMS OF SUMMER [8-22-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—POEMS OF SUMMER [8-22-23]

 Some poems from my journal of the summer months…

 

THE GIRLS OF SUMMER

The girls of summer

push balky walkers

along mean corridors

at Shady Pines

and wonder

where they left

their summer hats

 

TO EACH HIS OWN

there are those much older

than I who run long

distances, play the trumpet

loudly, dance to midnight

climb tall mountains

then sail o’er the valley

below on gossamer wings

while I consider it victory

to negotiate the treacherous

path from kitchen

to living room without

spilling a drop of the cup

of coffee kindness

 

WHIMSICAL SPIRITS

As I grow older

They have revealed

Themselves to me

The whimsical spirits

In green leaves

And rain drops

They trust me now

 

GLOBAL WARMING

I know that it’s bad

Will destroy us all

But on this bright spring day

That fifty-five years ago

Was fifty-five degrees

Feeling the soft breeze

Of a summer-like day

I’m thankful for it

 

AT HOME

thoughtfulness of thunder

impatience of lightning

persistence of wind

omniscience of rain

I am always at home

in a storm

 

thoughtfulness of sorrow

impatience of sin

persistence of death

omniscience of love

I am always at home

in a storm

 

John Robert McFarland

 

THE COCK-EYED COUNSELOR [Sat, 8-19-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Fait & Life for the Years of Winter—THE COCK-EYED COUNSELOR [Sat, 8-19-23]

 

There is a difference between a pastor who counsels and a Pastoral Counselor. The latter is essentially like other psychological therapists, seeing patients one at a time, or in groups designated for a particular form of therapy, but unlike a secular therapist, the Pastoral Counselor uses spirituality/religion as a tool.

I never wanted to be a Pastoral Counselor, but any pastor is a counselor, and I wanted to be good on those occasions when people asked me to hear their problems, listen to their needs. So I did a lot of course work and continuing education in counseling.

Unlike a Pastoral Counselor, or other therapists, most of the folks I counseled were church members. I saw them in all sorts of different settings—worship services, youth group, parents of youth group members, committee members, community participants-- in addition to sitting down together in my office, or on a park bench, or in a coffee shop. [Many folks don’t want to be seen at the pastor’s office.]

It changes the relationship a lot if the counselee is not just a person with a problem but also a member of your pastor-parish relations committee, or a major financial contributor to your church, or a major pain in the patootie.

Rarely did we have opportunity to set up a time each week to dig into their issues in depth. My opportunities to help were fifteen or fifty minutes, and probably no follow-up. It was drive-by counseling. [1]

One of my main counseling as a pastor, though, was in group therapy, although it wasn’t called that. It was called Sunday morning worship. I could say things, open up possibilities, to 50 people, or 400, at one time, that I could not say to an individual.

Each person who came to see me thought of their problems as unique, but they were actually universal. If one member had that problem, then most of the rest did. I could work on that general problem from the pulpit, but I had to be careful that the member who had come to me in the first place did not think I was singling them out, betraying their trust. That could be tricky.

Because I addressed those universal problems, however, people thought I had them in mind individually even if they had not talked to me in person. Thus I had a totally undeserved reputation for reading peoples minds.

That is due in part because I have slit eyes. They just don’t open very wide. It gives me a look that is somewhere between sleepy and sinister.

Almost every optometrist I’ve ever gone to has tried to get me to have eyelid surgery to correct that slant eye problem. I never did. There is an advantage to having people think you can read their minds. Makes pastoral counseling much more efficient.

John Robert McFarland

1] Since I once pastored in a community that had a lot of Amish folk, I am reminded of: What goes clip-clop, bang-bang? An Amish drive-by shooting.

 

WHERE ARE THE FRIENDS ? [R, 8-16-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHERE ARE THE FRIENDS ? [R, 8-16-23]

 

My heroes were loners. At least solitary, alone, even if not lonely. So why did I yearn for friends? I wanted to be the solitary solider of justice, but I also wanted someone to tell about it as we sat around the camp fire.

That’s probably not unusual, that pull between loneness and friendship, especially with men. We want to be The Lone Ranger… but even The LR had Tonto. At night, over a plate of beans, he could say, “Well, Tonto, I’m never going to get a radio show. Nobody even knows who I am. Every time I leave a town, they say, ‘Who was that masked man?’”

“Isn’t that the point of the mask, Kemosabe?”

I don’t blame Tonto for being snarky. After all, Tonto means fool or village idiot.

And this poor Indian friend had put up with being called fool, while he had to call The LR “faithful friend.” At least, that’s what The LR radio show said Kemosabe meant in Tonto’s native language. But I know better.

Tonto was a Potawatomi. I lived among them for several years in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, [yes, they got around] so I know that in Potawatomi, Kemosabe means “the one who knows nothing.”

Poor Tonto. He had to put up with playing second fiddle, but he got his digs in. “Friends” have to put up with a lot.

Maybe that’s why men today have so few, if any, friends. We want to be The LR, but to have friends, sometimes you have to be Tonto.

Even though my heroes were Lone Rangers, I wanted friends enough that I was glad to be a Tonto--the sidekick, the wingman, the guy who listened to the complaints and picked up the pieces, the guy who comforted the girl as she cried and said, “Who was that masked man?”

So, I have always been blessed with friends. I’ve sat around many campfires, listening to stories, eating beans.

I feel for all those men that the surveys and studies tell us have no friends, because they don’t know how to be a friend. That is apparently some sort of social trend leading to disaster. It seems strange to one who’s always had friends. Except…

…I understand better now what it means to live in a friendship desert, because I have fewer friends all the time. One of the shocks of old age is the loss of friends, especially long-time friends, people you’ve depended on for many years to be there. I recently listed all the friends I counted on to come to my funeral and say nice things about me but are now dead. Thirty-six. Might as well forget congregational singing at my send-off.  

It’s not just friends. Its doctors and plumbers and baristas, too. Those folks were young when we started paying them to keep us going, but now they use all that money we gave them in order to retire, and leave us scrambling to replace them.

Someone has said, It takes a lot of courage to be the last apple on the tree. I think it’s less a matter of courage and more having no choice.

I think I’ll start working the nursery at church so that I can make some friends who will outlive me.

John Robert McFarland

STORING UP SUMMER-poem [Sun, 8-12-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--STORING UP SUMMER-poem [Sun, 8-12-23]

 

As I walk

carefully watching

for broken concrete

slippery spots of mud

the occasional acorn

or oak burr

to turn my ankle

I sometimes see ahead

a stretch of even way

that allows me to look up

Each time, I am surprised

again by the August sky

The infant baby blue

The cotton ball whites

framed by green leaves

of the near horizon

I want to store it up

against the winter cold

put it in a jar

the way we do

with summer fruit

peaches and cherries

save it for the frigid days

But there is no way

to preserve a summer day

Sufficient for this day

is the August sky

 

john Robert McFarland

 

GIVING YOUR ALL [R, 8-10-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—GIVING YOUR ALL [R, 8-10-23]

 

“All I have now is what I gave away.”

That’s the last line, the meaning line, in a story told me by my late, great friend, Jack Newsome, after he read a book by Bishop Everett Palmer.

As Jack remembered it, as a young man, Palmer had worked for a rich rancher. His boss was a Christian. He had a brother who was a medical missionary. He was the total support of his brother in that mission. He gave generously to many other causes for those in need.

But hard times came in agriculture. The man lost all his property, everything.

Palmer went to see him. He was living in a shack at the edge of what used to be his property. As they chatted, Palmer said, “I suppose now you wish you hadn’t given away so much.” That’s when his old boss said…

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

I have loved that story ever since I first heard it. There is such deep, layered meaning in it. Now that I am living in reduced circumstances, can I apply it to myself? Not in some ways. I never had a lot of money, never gave so much away that I can’t live in a nice little condo.

Still, I think it’s true: now that I have no strength of body or mind or wallet, all that I have is what I gave away… in friendship, in time, in helping, in concern, in speaking truth—both to power and to personal disillusionment, in prayer, in being there, in showing up… in love.

The great thing about giving love away is that is never runs out. The more you give, the more you have. All that I have now is what I gave away.

John Robert McFarland

SCRIPTORIUM-a poem [M, 8-7-23]

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

SCRIPTORIUM-a poem [M, 8-7-23]

 

I was once a tonsured monk

Started young and finished old

Not the type who

did the capital flourishes

but just good old common letters

as in a picture book

without the pictures

Except my mind wandered

every day

and so many of the letters

I wrote out in a hand

no one could decipher

All upside down

and downside up

Now my hell is sitting

in my narrow cell

staring down

those strange words I scratched

upon the passing breeze

 

John Robert McFarland

 

CATCHER WITH NO HANDS [F, 8-4-23] {Not exactly a repeat}

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Fait & Life for the Years of Winter—CATCHER WITH NO HANDS [F, 8-4-23] {Not exactly a repeat}

 

Even though book-banning is not new, it has reached a new sort of frenzy in this day. Nonetheless..

 

According to Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanack, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was published on 7-16-51. Keillor notes that it is one of the most banned books in history. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also one of the most read and most influential.

Despite it’s notoriety and influence, I did not hear about it until I was in seminary, and did not read it until I had graduated seminary and was in campus ministry, in 1964.

For a small school in a backward town, I had a very good high school education, but it was classic, not modern. We did not read Hemingway and learn French. We read Beowulf and did tree years of Latin. Not surprising, then, that I had not heard of Salinger. I’m sure Catcher was not in the school or public library. When I was an undergrad at IU, English majors must have studied it, but I was a history major, and preached at 3 churches. I had time only for text books for my classes and stuff that might get me a sermon illustration… [1]

…and, there, of course, is a strange story. Catcher gave me one of my best sermon stories ever. [And, thus like all my other sermon stories, I’m sure I’ve written about it here before, too.]

Catcher gets its title from a dream that 17 year-old New Yorker Holden Caulfield often had. He is in a large rye field on the edge of a precipice. Children are playing in the rye, and sometimes, without noticing, they get too close to the abyss. Holden has to run along between the rye and the edge and catch them before they can plunge over the side, and push them back to safety.

He is disillusioned by his world and the people in it. Everyone is a phony. Except for his twelve-year-old sister, Phoebe.

Holden decides to run away, to get away from the phoniness. He sends a message to Phoebe to meet him so that he can tell her goodbye.

Phoebe shows up at the appointed time and place. But not to say goodbye. She is dragging her suitcase. She intends to go with her brother.

That, of course, is the last thing Holden wants. He explains that she can’t go with him. She refuses to listen. Finally, in desperation, he just walks away. But she follows, resolutely, dragging her suitcase. He yells at her, tells her to leave him alone. She plods on. Block after block.

Finally, he gives up. He takes her to the park and buys her a ride on the carousel. As she rides, she tries each time she goes by to grab the brass ring, the almost out-of-reach token that will get her a free ride. He wants to play Catcher, to tell her to be careful, that she might fall off and get hurt. Finally, he says, “If a kid is going to grab for the brass ring, I guess you’ve just got to let ‘em grab.”

Holden wanted to be the catcher, the savior, by protecting everyone. But Phoebe is the real catcher. The real catcher, the savior, the Christ, does not say that you can’t grab for the ring, that you can’t play near the edge, that you can’t run away, but says, “Regardless of where you play, regardless of how far you reach, regardless of how far you run, even if you go over the edge, I’m going with you.”

The deeper I go into life, into old age, the more I understand the story of The Catcher in the Rye, and the more I believe in it.

Jon Robert McFarland

1] Everyone in the 1950s referred to the stories preachers told in sermons as “illustrations” of the points. I learned fairly early that the stories were actually the points and that what the preacher said about them was the illustration.

 

MIDWEST SUMMER [8-1-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—MIDWEST SUMMER  [8-1-23]

 

MIDWEST SUMMER

 

There is a high stillness

in a Midwest summer

floating slowly

on the humid air

in short pants

and a sleeveless shirt

suspended on a cloud

of aimless pollen

and the silks of burgeoning corn

humming Greg Brown’s Iowa Waltz

“Come and see, come dance with me”

slowly scanning the gentle

meanderings of butterflies

the glistening wings

of dragonflies

shaking its head at the frantic

rhythm of the hummingbirds

   so obsessed are they

   with the red of the realm

looking forth and back

upon the summer world

with timeless hope

 

John Robert McFarland