UNENDING STORY [Easter Sunday, 4-5-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Story Teller—UNENDING STORY [Easter Sunday, 4-5-26]

 

As a writer, I have found that the ending is hardest, whether it be a sermon, or a short story, or a novel, or even this column. I think that is because there is only one story, and it has no end.

As writers, we think there has to be a conclusion. Or, just because we’ve run out of time or pages, we go ahead and provide an ending, a conclusion, that often does not belong there.

We do that with relationships, with society, with…

One of the worst novels I ever read--an early effort by a now famous author…  It was so good for about 380 pages. There were a dozen interesting sub-plots. I was eager to see how each one got resolved. At the end, though, the narrating character is sitting on his back porch and says something like, “I realized that I would never know who killed the preacher, and what happened to the baby, and if the building burned down, and where the treasure was hidden…”

What do you mean you don’t know? You’re the author! That’s unfair. If you raise the expectation of a conclusion, you need to provide one.

The cross was not the end of the Jesus story. Neither is the resurrection. That’s why we keep saying, “Christ will come again.” There won’t be an end to the story until that happens.

But we like conclusions. We want conclusions. We don’t like this open-ended non-ending. When I get frustrated with the ending problem, I go to Natalie Sleeth’s great “Hymn of Promise,” especially the way she writes the last verse…

In our end is our beginning;

In our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing;

In our life, eternity;

In our death, a resurrection;

At the end, a victory,

Unrevealed until its season,

Something God alone can see.

 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

LOOKIN’ GOOD [Good Friday, 4-3-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Good Friday Memes of An Old Runner—LOOKIN’ GOOD [Good Friday, 4-3-26]

 

When I turned forty, I realized that I was no longer young enough to get by on good looks and personality, and my lithe and limber body. My body had suddenly, it seemed, become stiff and uncooperative.

The running boom was just beginning then. Everyone who was not running was jogging. Gurus like Dr. George Sheehan and Jim Fixx wrote books. Many running magazines were starting up, as were running clubs. Every town festival included foot races of uncertain length, since apparently in running races you had to use unknown quantities, like kilometers.

So I decided to become a runner. I laced up my old basketball shoes and went to the park to run. Very quickly, my heels and soles and tendons and knees were aching.

I went to Jim Matta, a church member and the athletic director at the high school—and father of famous basketball coach, Thad Matta, who was only ten then—and told him my woes. Long before Spike Lee and Michael Jordan did that commercial, Jim said, “It’s gotta be the shoes.”

Now, everybody wears running shoes all the time, even men in suits and ties, even women in church dresses and evening gowns. Our pastor has a wonderful array of pulpit robes and stoles, and “underneath are the everlasting running shoes.” But running shoes were just a gleam in Phil Knight’s eye then.

I went to the shoe store on Main Street. In those days, folks thought shoes were leather things you put on your feet to walk to work and school and church. Running shoes were strange new things. People didn’t even know how to pronounce Nike. But the store had a pair of running shoes in my size. I had never heard of the Patrick Shoe Company, but I bought them because they were cream and crimson, my colors.

Within five minutes of running in those magic shoes, all my pains were gone. What a difference a heel makes.

So I became a runner. I bought a red track suit to go with my shoes and I ran all over town. My teen daughters were mortified. Their friends called me “The Red Phantom,” because I was so fast that I was just a blur. Or maybe it was only because of the red suit.

But I wasn’t just a runner. I was a racer. There were 10 K races in one town or another every weekend. Many were on Sunday morning, when I was busy otherwise, but enough were on Saturday that I became a regular on the racing scene. I even joined The Kickapoo Running Club. I won little statues for coming in 2^nd in my age group. [Usually there were three runners in my age group] I still display those statues on my book case, on the shelf where I used to keep theology books.

I don’t know exactly why, but the proper protocol in those days, whenever you met another runner, you shouted out to each other, “Lookin’ good.”

The races were often on an out-and-back course. That meant that we pack runners would still be going out and meet the front runners after they had made the turn and started back. They were running hard, all-out. they were sweating and puffing and beginning to lose smoothness. We called out to them, “Lookin’ good,” which was the exact opposite of how they really looked. But they looked the way they were supposed to, for people who were running all out, trying “…to run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” [Hebrews 12:1-2]

One of my favorite anecdotes/illustrations/points comes from Lin Yutang’s A Leaf in the Storm, enough so that I have used it many times. It is revolutionary times in China. The storm in the title is political upheaval and war. The leaf is a young woman named Malin who has always taken pride in her beauty, who has always lived in luxury and pleasure, but is reduced to the status of a refugee, fleeing the war on foot along muddy roads. Her fine clothes and shoes change from being status symbols to a hindrance.

Along the way, she sees peasant women who are ignoring the war. They’ve seen it all before. They are working in their rice fields, as they always have, for once the storm has passed, people will need the rice again. They are stocky and lumpy and have no comeliness of face or figure. They are standing almost up to their knees in mud. Their legs are not shapely to look at. But Malin has an epiphany. The legs of those peasant women are beautiful, because they are doing what they are meant to do. They were lookin’ good.

Today, on Good Friday, seeing Jesus there on the cross, those who understand look at that broken body and whisper, “Lookin’ good. Lookin’ good.”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

THE WATER OF MAUNDY [R, 4-2-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Maundy Thursday Mutterings of An Old Preacher—THE WATER OF MAUNDY [R, 4-2-26]

 

I have always been fascinated by Jesus’ references to water. He lived in a land where water was important because there was so little of it. So did I.

When I grew up on the farm, we had no indoor plumbing. Clean water had to be carried in in buckets and dirty water had to be carried out in other buckets.

The water came from a cistern and a well. The cistern caught water off the roof of the house. It was covered by boards. We dipped a bucket in to get the water that we used for washing clothes and other household chores. The well had a pump with a long handle. We kept a jar of water beside it to “prime” it so that it would produce.

It was a deep well and so the water was good. We used it for drinking and cooking. During long summers, though, it would go dry. So did the cistern. It was then that I had to go to the Heathman’s house to carry water in a bucket. Their house was up a hill on our little gravel road, about the distance equivalent of two city blocks, maybe three. A family of six needed a lot of water. That made for a lot of trips up and down the hill.

My right shoulder is lower than my left. I think that was from carrying water with my right arm from age ten, before I had stopped growing. When my wife made my first pulpit robe, she had to allow for that low shoulder.

I never took a shower or a bath until I went to college. We always washed out of a shallow basin on a wash stand. In college I lived in a decrepit old leftover BOQ building from WWII. It had a very ugly and dank shower room. But it had plenty of water. I thought it was wonderful.

I am careful with water. I don’t waste it, even now, when it comes out of a faucet or a shower head. I know what it’s like not to have water.

Jesus knew that, too. Which is why foot washing was such an important part of a host’s responsibilities toward guests. Guests had been walking, on dirt roads, in sandals. It wasn’t just that their feet were dirty, they were uncomfortable. But it was a servant’s job to wash feet. If the host did it, that was a mark of ultimate respect for the guest. And foot washing took water…you didn’t waste precious water on just anybody.

When Jesus and his disciples came in for supper that Thursday night before crucifixion, they’d been walking the dirt roads. Their feet were dirty. Somebody needed to wash them. So Jesus did.

We call that Thursday “Maundy” as a form of the Latin “Mandatum,” meaning a command. Jesus gave a new command to his disciples on that night, that they were to be servants, and he showed them how, by doing the foot washing himself. [John 13]

Foot washing has long been a part of our Maundy Thursday rituals as we prepare for Easter, sometimes literally, usually figuratively, often just as a homily subject. We rarely use actual water.

Several years ago, a CNN producer telephoned me. She was working on a special in which she was saying that the next big crisis in the Middle East would be water instead of oil, and she wanted to check some theological points with me. In the midst of an oil crisis, it’s hard to believe water is important, but everyone needs water to live. No one needs oil to live.

If, however, any of us are to live for long, we need to learn how to be servants, not of the oil, but of the water.

John Robert McFarland

I usually post every other day, but there will be extra posts—meaning almost every day—during the Easter weekend. I’ll be posting on April 3, 5, 6, and 8.