DON’T CALL ME [FIRST NAME] 9-30-23

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: DON’T CALL ME [FIRST NAME] 9-30-23

 

I recently got an email that started: “[First Name], get your subscription here…” I’m not likely to respond to anyone who calls me [First Name].

Reminds me of hearing Ted Campbell at a conference shortly after he retired as pastor of Riverside Church in NYC. He said that while at Riverside, he was a customer at two Gulf gas stations. Two, because one was close to his home, and the other close to his church. At Christmas, they both gave him fountain pens as gifts. One said “Chuck’s Gulf” on it. The other said, “Dr. Ted Campbell.” He said, “I went to only one Gulf station after that.”

About a month ago I briefly met a relative of a neighbor when she came to visit. I ran into her again yesterday as she came for another visit and greeted her by name. She started to cry and ran up and hugged me. “Thank you for remembering my name,” she said. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

When I was pastoring a large university church, the Nominating Committee suggested asking a young mother to be Chair of the Council on Ministries, a demanding and time-consuming job. I thought it was useless. She was smart and able, but she had three little children and a husband with an all-hours job. But I agreed that they could ask her. She accepted, which amazed me. Later I was talking to her husband and told him how surprised I was. He said, “She did that so she could spend time with you.”

It is true that I am handsome and charming, but I knew that was not the reason she wanted time with me. She was a serious Christian. I was her pastor. If someone is going to lead us into deep waters—and there is nothing deeper than the river of the Spirit--we want to be able to hold their hand.

I worry about those personal pastoral connections in the post-covid church. There have been many factors eroding church involvement for several years now. They ramped up to warp speed with the covid shutdown.

One of the elements that is eroding the church now started out as, and still is, a positive thing. Livestreaming. When churches were shut down completely, it was our only way of worshipping. It has given us the idea, though, that personal contact is not necessary.

Again, for a lot of reasons, including a pastor shortage, churches have gone electronic. And don’t misunderstand me, please, I love livestream worship. Sometimes it is the only way my decrepitude will allow me to worship. Livestream and Zoom and Skype allow us to be efficient, but they are impersonal. We don’t even call the church office and talk to the administrator when we want to rsvp for an event. We are supposed to sign up on something like Sign Up Genius or Survey Monkey rather than talk to an actual person.

It makes no difference how efficient the church is if nobody wants to be a part of it. We want to be a part of a personal community.

Personally, I trust neither geniuses or monkeys to call me anything but [First Name]. My name is…

John Robert McFarland

 

In Search of Lost Facts [W, 9-27-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—In Search of Lost Facts [W, 9-27-23]

 

I have always wondered why Proust named that book Remembrance of Things Past. I mean, isn’t all remembrance of things past? Well, it wasn’t his fault. In French it was A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, which is more accurately translated as In Search of Lost Time. I know that because I got 5 hours of A in French my 2^nd semester at Indiana University.

I’m sort of sorry that I told the Methodist District Superintendent about that. I had gone to see Dallas Browning because Aunt Nora said I should find out what steps I needed to take to become a preacher, in case I decided to some day in the distant future. Which is the way I always tell the story, but remembrance of things past is not always factual remembrance of things past.

In telling how I got into the ministry, I went to see Dr. Browning, and he asked me if in school [Yes, IU, I said] and then, “Do you get good grades? to which I say, the way I tell the story, “All As last semester, which was true, but I didn’t tell him about my disastrous first semester, which was over before I found out that in college you can’t get by just be being a nice boy.”

True, but not accurate. I have been going through a box of old stuff from my college days and found my transcript. That “all As” semester was 15 hours of A, the normal course load, but also 2 hours of B, in F100, “Introduction to Teaching.”

I was a journalism major, but friends said I should get a teaching certificate, too, just in case, and F100 was an easy course, wouldn’t interfere with my “real” classes, so why not get started on a backup plan? They were right. It was easy. I was wrong on only 3 test questions all semester. And I got a B!

There were about a hundred students in the course. Our grades were based totally on multiple-choice, machine-graded exams. About 300 questions in the course of the semester. The grading was on a curve. So many of those other students got all the questions right, or missed only one or two, that we three-miss people didn’t make the cut for an A. I hate to think about what happened to the four-miss people.

Anyway, when I told Dallas Browning that I had made all As the most recent semester, in my thinking, it was true.

Unfortunately, he thought it was a sign, to a man desperate to get all his pulpits filled, that I was so smart that I could start preaching the very next Sunday, on a 3-church circuit. I should have told him about F100. It might have saved me from having to go to bed early every Saturday night for 50 years.

John Robert McFarland

Friends Are Like Computers [9-24-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Friends Are Like Computers [9-24-23]

 

I was deep into chemotherapy and very much under the cloud of the pale oncologist’s prediction of “a year or two.” So I was delighted when I read in the newspaper [remember those] that Ed had been called as the pastor of a large church in the city where I had my chemo treatments.

We had been good friends while doing PhD work. We were pastors in different denominations, but we had a lot in common. We were among the older students in the School of Religion-- mid 30s, married, two grade school daughters. We hung around together, visited in each other’s homes for meals, so our daughters could play with one another. Helen and Nancy liked each other. When Ed had to have a surgery, I went to see him the in the hospital the night before. He said, ‘I was hoping you’d come.” It was that kind of relationship.

When we left Iowa City, though, we went to different states. No email or cell phones then. Our letters dwindled down to Christmas cards. Then I learned that he was only thirty miles away. He had been called to a pastorate in my chemo city.

I called him up to see if we could have lunch together some day after one of my chemo treatments. He was very distant. Very busy, he said. But I really wanted to see him. I kept suggesting other dates. He finally agreed to one.

I didn’t want to lay too much on him too quickly, and I didn’t have the chance. He started the conversation with complaints about the president of his new congregation. And continued that way. When I got a turn, I told him that I had cancer and the oncologist had said I might die soon, which was going to leave Helen and my girls…

He hardly acknowledged. Something like, “That’s too bad.” Then right back to his problems in his congregation.

He stayed in that congregation for a long time, so I guess he worked out something with his president. But I never heard from him again.

Friends are like computers. My first computer guru, Ben Friedman, always said, “It’s not if your computer will crash; it’s only when.” The same is true with friends. It’s not if they will disappoint you, only when.

I’ve written about Ed before, but I spent some time with him again this morning, because I knew that in my heart, I had not really forgiven him for ignoring my pain when I needed his friendship. I assume it wasn’t personal, just the kind of distraction that leads to self-absorption.

But we’re all like that as friends. We never measure up to the expectations of friends because we don’t know what they are. We have to be the best friend we can be, and accept the reality that no friend, including us, is perfect, and accept the forgiveness that comes when we fail, even if we don’t know about it.

John Robert McFarland

LOOKING YOUR AGE [R, 9-21-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LOOKING YOUR AGE [R, 9-21-23]

 

It’s important when we are old to look decrepit, so that no one gets fooled. Let the wrinkles in the bod, and the coffee spills on the clothes, show. If an old person does not look old, run away fast. Or what passes for fast when we’re old.

Old men are especially susceptible to old women who do not look old. I have seen several of those marriages, old widows and widowers hooking up. Even officiated at a couple of them. “Oh, she is so beautiful. You’d never know she’s as old as I am.” Bad mistake, old man. She looks good because she spends all her time and money on herself. Now she’ll spend all your time and money on herself.

I think especially of two such marriages that went sour quickly, the fathers of friends when I was younger. Bill’s father ended up so afraid of his classy new wife that he locked himself in his room and refused to come out. Bill helped his father get a divorce, in which her children got all of Bill’s mother’s stuff, like her fancy china, which they sold. Bill had to buy it back. Polly’s father refused chemo because he preferred to die than to live with his majestic new wife.

And the number of women who thought they were getting a catch and ended up getting an invalid to care for is out of sight.

So, old women, if you’re single, let those wrinkles and gray hairs show. You don’t want to get stuck with some old man who is stupid enough to want you because you don’t look like who you are.

Old men, if you’re single, leave that same shirt on another day. Or week. You don’t want some old woman who wants you for your looks instead of your money.

If you’re not single… well, that person you’re living with knows what they’ve got already, so no point in dying your hair or changing your shirt.

If you are still young, like under 80, well, just remember the important advice above when you have matured.

Whatever age you are, that’s the age you’re supposed to be right now. So let it show.

John Robert McFarland

WHY I GAVE UP SERMON MANUSCRIPTS [M, 9-18-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHY I GAVE UP SERMON MANUSCRIPTS [M, 9-18-23]

 

It was Sept. 13, 1956, my first Sunday preaching on The Chrisney, IN Circuit. I was a nineteen-year-old university sophomore. It was a hot Sunday morning. All the windows of Crossroads Methodist Church, the first of my 3 preaching stops that morning, were open.  A wasp, curious to learn what a nineteen-year-old university sophomore could know about faith--enough to preach about it, in his very first sermon--came through a window and settled down on my sermon notes to read. I was a farm boy before I was a preacher. Farm boys don’t pamper wasps. I snatched up the song book, lying on the lower side part of the pulpit top, beside the lectern part, and promptly smashed wasp guts all over my sermon outline. It got an approving laugh from the congregation, but made the rest of the sermon a bit uncertain.

That should have been enough, to know that I should be a noteless preacher. But I took Speech 101 in my freshman year. I knew all about using Roman numerals and Capital Letters and Arabic numbers just right to create a beautiful form on the page. Should one not use a college education?

 

I

  A  

    1

      a

      b

II

   Etc.

I did become more streamlined as time went by, but I still used an outline, often just a list of words, in order, as reminders.

Until I graduated and preached full-time on the Sosberry Circuit while my new wife finished up at IU. I would be matriculating at Perkins School of Theology, at Southern Methodist U, after that year, so I thought I should learn to preach from a manuscript. Solsberry was my second preaching stop on Sunday morning, with Walkers Chapel third. First to get the benefit of my new preaching style was Greene Couty Chapel. I even typed my sermon on expensive onion skin paper, just to show God that I was serious.

It was June. A hot day. The windows were open. No, not a wasp this time. A bird flew in. And up. Flew around in circles. Too high to escape through the open windows at a lower level, because it was a birdbrain that did not know enough to come down to window level. The heads of the entire congregation went round and round in unison. Until the bird, in apparent disgust at my simplistic theology, shat nosily and mightily all over my onionskin sermon.

I was recalling these events with Helen, and she said, “If you had another story like those, you could write them as a column for CIW.”

[Obviously she has listened to sermons long enough to know such things should have 3 points.] I can’t think of another manuscript-fouling episode of my own, so I’ll tell one that is part of The Great American Sermon Illustration Book…

The young preacher wrote out a sermon on Adam and Eve. The windows were open—they always are in these stories—and a wind blew in and whisked a page off the pulpit and out an open window on the other side. [Air conditioned sanctuaries are obviating an entire genre of sermon mishaps.] The young preacher had glanced up—one of those bird-pecking-at-seeds glances that manuscript readers do--so didn’t notice. He looked back down and continued to read. “Then Adam said to Eve…” but the next page was missing… “Adam said to Eve…” He was desperately looking through his manuscript… “Adam said to Eve…” and he muttered, “There seems to be a leaf missing…”

Anyway, I gave up using even notes to preach.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

FOR THIS CAUSE CAME I… [F, 9-15-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—FOR THIS CAUSE CAME I… [F, 9-15-23]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy [1] recently asked me for the details on Will McLoughlin and the Iroquois Theater Fire. From the time I first heard it, from Merrill Abbey, Garrett Theological Seminary preaching prof, this has been a favorite sermon illustration, because it is such a total living of the Gospel of Christ.

The 1903 Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago killed 602 people, including Will McLaughlin. This was the fire that changed the fire codes, so that doors opened out and not in, the way the jammed Iroquois doors opened, or more importantly, did not open.

Will was studying in the Northwestern U. Law building, located next to the theater. He looked out the upstairs window and saw desperate people in the theater balcony looking for a way out. Some jumped, but they were dead on arrival on the street below.

He looked around and found an old plank. He stretched it over the alley that separated the library and the theater. It barely reached. People were afraid to try to cross. He was 18, an athlete, in peak condition, so he went across, time after time, to lead people across the plank to safety. Until the plank itself caught fire and burned through and he fell to the pavement below.

It was clear that he would die soon. They asked him if there were anyone nearby that they could get. He said that his uncle, Frank Gunsaulus, was pastor at First Congregational. When his uncle arrived, Will said, “I’ve been thinking about your sermon last Sunday, how Jesus said for this cause came I into the world. Those people up there today needed me. I guess this was the cause for which came I into the world.” His last words.

Each of us has a different world in each moment, each stage. And God gives us a cause for that world at that time.

For this cause, you came into the world.

John Robert McFarland

 

1] Her next non-fiction book is The Presidents Decoded, a companion to The Constitution Decoded, and her next fiction book is Heart on Ice. Both will be out soon.

 

BE CAREFUL; THEY MIGHT FIND SOMETHING [T, 9-12-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—BE CAREFUL; THEY MIGHT FIND SOMETHING [T, 9-12-22]

 

We have known several old people through the years who refused to see the doctor because they might find something.

When we were younger, we said, How silly. Isn’t that the point? You go see the doctor in case there is something to find. Then it can be treated.

That’s fine, when you are a young person, like 25, or 45, or 75. Especially if you catch it early, and get it treated, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Well, yes, mostly.

But I remember what Polly, my physical therapist, said about her father when he went to the doctor and they said, You have cancer. He’s at that awkward age, she said. 86.

There are several awkward ages along the way. The first is 12. The last, apparently, is 86. I’m at that awkward age. No, not 12.

Polly went on to say that her father was in generally good shape. He could still drive. He had a new wife. He liked going out for meals and events. But if he did a year of chemotherapy, or even just a few months, how much time would that get him on the other side of 86? What quality of life would he have? Could he still drive? Could he still take his wife places? Decisions are difficult at that awkward age, whichever age it may be, because of what can transpire, or not, after.

 

The one accurate thing that social philosopher Garrett Hardin said is, You cannot do one thing. Because the thing you do always causes something else to happen.

I’ve always resisted doing things, anything, because of what would follow. Like recently I resisted taking down the curtains on the window behind the TV, and washing them and the venetian blinds there, because I felt there was too much possibility of something going wrong with the TV when it got moved. Sure enough, even after telephone consultations with Experience Technology, our TV people, we had to get Alex to come out in person to get the TV sorted out. [He didn’t charge us. We bought the TV from them, and, also, he knows we are at that awkward age.] But if everybody in our house could just learn to accept that life is a little dirty sometimes, we wouldn’t have these problems.

My advice for whatever awkward age you might be in: Be careful; they might find something.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

YOU NEVER KNOW… [Sa, 9-9-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--YOU NEVER KNOW… [Sa, 9-9-23]

 

Jack Newsome and I used to go together to continuing ed conferences for preachers. We kept thinking that there was someone, somewhere, who could tell us how to do a decent job. We didn’t want others to know that we had no idea what we were doing, so we kept quiet about going to those conferences. On the way home, we would debrief and learn that while it had been a good experience, we still didn’t know how to be decent preacher-pastors. Until Ted Campbell.

Campbell had recently retired from the pastorate at Riverside Church in NYC. He came to Dubuque Theological Seminary for a conference. He told good stories. But more importantly, one day he said, “We clergy always tell one another… well, you never know how much good you’re doing… the problem is, you never know how much harm you’re doing, either.”

Ah, ha! That was the key. I was half-way through a 50 year career, and I found the key to good pastoring. Well, I didn’t find it, I heard it: Do no harm.

If I were a physician, I would have already known that, of course. It’s the first rule of medical practice: First, do no harm. The body wants to heal. Be patient. Yes, there are times for intervention—medicines, surgeries. Some have to be immediate. But your first goal is to be sure you don’t make things worse.

Damaged souls want to heal, too. Soul doctors need to be patient with them. Slapping on a Bible verse or two, or telling a person what to do, might cover up a wound so that it can’t heal. That’s doing harm.

I’ve never been a very good listener. I always wanted to jump in and give advice. I mean, I worked hard and long, got many degrees, so I could learn how to deal with almost anything, and I wanted to get some good out of all that work. Or at least, I wanted to say, since I also learned that I was supposed to be honest, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!”

If not totally patient, I learned to be more patient, with individuals. It’s harder to be patient with a group, like a committee, but I tried to be more patient even in those settings. I was always a bottom-line kind of guy: we know we need a new typewriter, so let’s just go ahead and get the dumb thing bought. But I learned that others take a while to get to that bottom line. Everyone in the meeting wants to tell about the time they bought a typewriter. So I tried to listen even to that.

Sheesh, I have only 79 more words to resolve this [I try to stay within 500 words], and I don’t know how. Should we do nothing, to be sure we do no harm? That’s not possible.

I guess the main point is: Don’t use “You never know how much good you’re doing” as an excuse for wearing your heavy boots in a flower pot, because the reverse is also true—you never know how much harm you’re doing.

 

It is not necessary to evaluate everything you do. Do no harm, and let God sort out the rest.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF CHILDREN [W, 9-6-23]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF CHILDREN [W, 9-6-23]

 

In my final sermon a couple of months ago, I told the story of how I got into the ministry racket. It wasn’t just for the big bucks and short hours [only one hour per week], the way most people suspect.

When I was 14, my older sister became deathly ill. I told God that if He [No question about God’s gender in southern Indiana in 1950.] would save her life, I’d become a preacher. It was my only bargaining chip. God kept his part of the bargain; she’s even now the healthiest old lady you’ll ever meet. With fear and trembling, I kept mine.

As I preached, friends were sitting behind a new family at St. Marks UMC—an appropriate venue for my final sermon, since Helen and I  were the first couple married there 64 years ago--that has a couple of boys. They heard the older one, probably about 14, mutter, “Is this a true story?” It does sound made-up, but it is true.

There is more than one kind of truth in stories, though…

Ray Bradbury is known primarily for science fiction works, like The Martian Chronicles, and Fahrenheit 451. My favorite book of his, though, is Dandelion Wine.

It is written as fiction, but it is based very closely on his growing-up years in Waukegan, IL.

There is one story about a neighborhood woman named Mrs. Rogers. [My name for her; I can’t remember Bradbury’s, and it’s important to the story that she have a name.] The neighborhood children loved to go to her house on long summer afternoons just to hang out with her, and enjoy the refreshments she served. She liked it because she could tell them stories of her childhood. She was a widow with no children or grandchildren, so her only stories were about herself.

She would even show them artifacts of her childhood—dolls and toys. She told of how her childhood name was Topsie. [again, a reasonable facsimile]

But they did not think her stories were true. They had no stories of childhood because they were still in it. So, they refused to believe her and insisted that she stop telling those tales and live in their world. She was never a little girl, they insisted. She was always an old lady. They made her admit it out loud before they would sit on her porch.

My name is Mrs. Wilson. It was never Topsie. It has always been Mrs. Wilson. I have no first name. I have always been an old lady with gray hair. I never played with dolls and toys. I always just made lemonade and baked cookies…

Obviously, Bradbury is not opposed to remembering and enjoying the past. That is what Dandelion Wine is all about. But those kids gave Mrs. Wilson a great present, the gift of the present, the real now. Mrs. Wilsons own reality was being lost in her memories. Those children brought her into the present.

We shall Zoom with our grandchildren soon, as we do on a regular basis. One is two states away, and the other lives on the Pacific coast. They are working adults in their 20s, and we are so grateful that they want to spend time with us. But I will start to tell them stories of how I played with them when they were little… and that’s okay… except too much remembering says that I don’t recognize who they are now…

It is important not only to live in the present moment, but to allow others to live here, too.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

HIDDEN GIFTS [Su, 9-3-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter—HIDDEN GIFTS [Su, 9-3-23]

 

[I have written about marching with King before, and about our friend, Phyllis, but there is a new eureka moment below…]

 

We commemorate meaningful episodes in our own histories and the history of larger groups, like churches and nations, not only because they remind us of old memories, but because they create new memories. The 60^th anniversary of the March on Washington stirred up memories at our house.

 

I heard MLK speak at that March on Washington only on TV, but I heard him in person 3 times. The first was Dec. 12, 1958. He had become the preeminent civil rights leader because of the Montgomery bus boycott. He spoke in Indianapolis, at the invitation of the YMCA. They knew their building was not large enough, so the meeting was held in the Cadle Tabernacle, where I had gone a couple of times as a grade schooler, before we moved to the farm near Oakland City, for Christian programs for children, riding the street car, the precursor of buses, that ran on rails in the middle of the street, requiring us to cross on foot the stream of car and truck traffic, to get on board, sure of my safety because I was holding the hand of my twelve-year-old sister.

 

In 1958, though, I was appointed as the preacher on a 3-church circuit, so, unlike other IU students, I had a car. [Cars were forbidden to students unless needed for work.] So it wasn’t a street car but a Detroit car [Chevrolet] that I used to transport a group of Wesley Foundation students to learn about the Civil Rights movement from its main spokesman. We were 5 among 4,000 who heard King that day.

 

The 2^nd time was the Quadrennial Methodist Student Movement conference, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Dec. 20, 1964. By that time I was the Wesley Foundation minister in Terre Haute, serving IN State U and Rose Poly Institute [now Rose-Hulman U]. I took five students to the conference. We were 5 among 5,000 who heard King that day.

 

The 3^rd time was at the State House in Montgomery, Alabama. I have written about this before, so won’t go into details, except to point out that the Alabama Methodist Student Movement asked folks from the IN Methodist Student Movement to come march with them on the last leg of the Selma march for civil rights. Prof Andre Hammonds and student Bob Mullins went with me. We were 3 among 30,000 who heard King that day.

 

The morning that I was in Alabama, marching into Montgomery, Helen was home with two little girls, one and tree years old, trying to keep them entertained while also watching our small black and white television set, to see if I had been murdered yet. That was a real possibility, that marchers would be attacked, and the police would not only fail to protect us, but be among those who assaulted us.

 

There was a knock on the door. It was Phyllis Graham, my old high school biology classmate [1], now a new math PhD from Indiana U, and new math prof at IN State U, and a favored aunt of our girls. I thought you might like some company today, she said. She spent the day taking turns, helping with our daughters, watching the TV.

 

I told this story when I spoke at her funeral. Afterwards, one of her friends said, I know how important that must have been to Phyllis, to be with Helen that day, and by extension to be with you, because she NEVER cancelled classes.

 

As Helen and I recalled Phyllis, I mentioned what her friend had told me. Helen said, This is the first time, almost 60 years after that day, that I realized she, of course, had to cancel classes. I was just so glad to see her, it never even occurred to me she was skipping classes…

 

Sometimes, even major parts of the gifts we give, and the sacrifices we make to give them, don’t show…until much later…or, perhaps, never.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

1] Because I was a mid-year student with a convoluted class schedule, I had to take freshman biology with the girls instead of the boys, from the home ec teacher. I sat across one of those big sewing tables from Phyllis. As I said at her funeral, She was both pretty and smart, so I could look at her or her test paper and expect edification in either instance. When it came time for the class on human reproduction, I was sent to the principal’s office to be sure I would not see or hear anything unfit for someone of my ilk. The next day I asked Phyllis if I had missed much. I think you’ll still be able to have children, she said. She was pleased to see I had those two little girls when we reconnected in Terre Haute a dozen years later.