THE LAST SERMON [10-18-16]

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

I have preached my last sermon.

There are certain unnamed people who will laugh when they read this. They have heard it before, and it wasn’t quite true. That was because it was I who had decided that I would preach no more forever. This time, it is the world that has decided I shall preach no more. That’s different.

Preaching has been a major part of my identity since I was nineteen. It felt right, because I was pretty good at it. It made me use all my abilities, to interpret the Gospel in a way that people could not only understand but feel, in a way that opened the door for folks to come into the presence of God and to live in the way of Christ. That was satisfying.

Of course, being retired, I haven’t preached on an every-Sunday basis for a long time. I have done interims, from a month to a year, but most of my preaching was a Sunday here or there, when the real preacher needed a break.

One of those occasionals was not a Sunday morning, but a Thursday night. A couple of weeks ago, Joan Tuttle Smoke, the first of my “children in the ministry,” was installed as the new priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bedford, IN. She’s officially retired, but serves part-time so that the small but active St. John’s congregation can have a pastor in residence. It was a great honor to preach at her installation.

It also is a nice closing of the circle of my preaching, from when I graduated seminary and became the campus minister at Indiana State University, where Joan was a student, to now.

It feels strange to think that I am no longer a preacher, but the world does not clamber for old preachers. Nor should it. There are plenty of young preachers who speak the language of this generation in a way that old preachers cannot. It’s okay for old preachers to sit down and listen for a change. Besides, Helen sat by herself in church for fifty years. She deserves to have someone to help her hold the hymnal.  

As I think about giving up preaching, though, I realize this giving-up has been the story of my life. I have given up many things that were important to my identity but had lived out their proper time. Degrees, for instance. I have ten years of higher education. I loved taking classes and working on degrees. Yes, I have done lots of “continuing education,” but all the schools in the world got together and said I could have no more degrees. Sports. I loved being an athlete, but I had to give up basketball and golf and long distance running and softball and pickle ball. I loved them all, but each in turn became impossible. Music. I have always thought of myself as a musician, but I have not picked up an instrument for many years.  

I suspect your life story is the same, with different particulars. It’s the way of life, and each time we have to give up some activity from which we get our identity, it reminds us that the one true lasting identity is simply that of human being, God’s child. Eventually, all doing comes to an end, but being remains. That’s good news.

I’ll see you in the pew. I’ll be holding a hymnal with a good-looking woman.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmai.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

THE GREENBRIER FIX [10-17-16]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

On the way to church yesterday, Helen and I crossed Greenbriar Ave., which made me think of the Greenbrier van that ate my comb.

As I thought about it, I could not remember: was the Greenbrier made by Chevrolet or some different car maker? So I fired up the Google machine to find out. Yes, it was a Chevy, one of those long passenger vans.

That’s the way we old people think, “firing up the Google machine,” even if we don’t talk like that, for fear they’ll put us in “the home," because we grew up and spent most of our lives in a mechanical age, before everything was electronic, digital, computerized.

The Greenbrier was definitely not electronic. It wasn’t even very mechanical. It was a denizen of DePauw University, in Greencastle, IN, and Sam Kirk, the chaplain at DePauw, and I, the campus minister at Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic in Terre Haute, were taking a Greenbrier load of students to a Methodist Student Movement conference in Cleveland.

Not very fast, though, because the transmission stopped working. We pulled off at a rest stop. A student crawled under the Greenbrier and found that a little link, like a cotter pin, had gone missing, so that the drive train was disconnected. The gear shift could not get its messages through to the back axle. We looked through everything in the van to find a replacement for that little link. The only thing that fit was a tooth from my comb.

I didn’t really need a comb. I still had hair, but this was 1965, when all guys, except violinists, had crewcuts. But I carried a lot of stuff in my pockets, just in case. Like an extra handkerchief. I started carrying it in high school, because the girls I dated cried a lot. So I had a comb. It’s a good thing, too, because those comb teeth weren’t very strong, and every few miles, the linkage would come undone again. We would pull over, and that poor boy would crawl under the van and break off another tooth from my comb and insert it into the cotter pin hole. It’s a good thing I didn’t play the violin.

Teenage grandson Joe said a couple of years ago, “I wish I lived in an age when a guy could fix his own stuff.”

I’m sorry he did not get that chance, because it was a good age. I used to rotate the tires on my cars, and lubricate them, and change the transmission fluid and engine oil and filters and fan belts. I even removed the engine and ground the valves, with my father, on a 1950 Chevy. It was cheaper, and it was satisfying.

I think the change from machine to computer is producing and requiring a spiritual change we have not even begun to recognize or understand. I think the task for each of us is to connect those two, and I hope I still have a few teeth left in my comb.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

My latest novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor. It is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $12.99 for paperback, and $3.99 for ebook. Free if you can get your library to buy one.

OPEN DOORS 10-16-16

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

I was up late last night, because we went to a Carrie Newcomer concert. So I got up late this morning, too late to get ready to go to church, because it takes my surgically altered semi-colon a long time to get ready to go some place. But I’m going anyway, even though it’s risky, because I need to “enter his gates with praise,” and because my church has open doors, to the restroom as well as to the sanctuary.

Carrie said that when she tells people she’s a Hoosier, it opens doors. The banjo player questioned, because banjo players are like that, if the doors that were opened to her when folks learned she was a Hoosier were so she could come in or so that she would leave. This obviously had not been rehearsed, and the usually unflappable Carrie was flapped. She had no answer. She is a Quaker, and assumes the best in people, and apparently had not considered that people might be opening the doors to her in both directions.

We went to the concert with folks who have been pleased, although a bit embarrassed at their pleasure, because a certain woman in their open-door church finally used the open church doors to leave.

There is almost always someone in a church who claims God speaks directly to them [Yes, I know, the singular “they” grates on me, too.] and so they know what the whole church must do, about anything and everything, even if everyone else in the church thinks differently. God finally got disgusted with her congregation’s refusal to acknowledge her direct line and told her leave. It appears that she is becoming Pentecostal, which is probably a good choice, because Pentecostals know how to handle folks like that better than Methodists do.

I think it was Lyle Schaller I heard say that at any given time, there are some folks who are just in the wrong church. If you are in the wrong church, it’s no sin to leave.

I once pastored a large church with open doors. It was in a town that had a large number of meat-grinder churches. When you walk through their doors, they put you through their grinder until you look and think exactly like everyone else. That works with some, but some get badly damaged in the grinding. That was when they came through our doors to find healing.

Sooner or later, though, they would rather shame-facedly say to me, “We appreciate so much that your doors were open when we were hurting. But your doors are too open. We are okay now, and we feel more comfortable in a church where the doors are not so wide, so we’re using the open doors to leave.”

That always hurt me, because we had become friends, and because it was a little bit hypocritical, and because pastors hate to “lose” people for our own selfish reasons, but it always pleased me, too. Doors are open to come in OR to go out.

This morning, I’ll use the open doors of our church to enter for healing for my distracted soul, and then I’ll use them to go out to “work for the night is coming.”

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

FIRE IN THE BELLY 10-15-16

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

Art Poovey was the grayest man I ever knew. Every day, he wore a gray suit, gray shirt, gray tie, gray sox, gray shoes. He was a Lutheran theology professor at Wartburg Seminary.

We were at the same lunch table one day, chili day. On the table was a rather large bowl of chili powder. Art took the spoon out of the communal bowl of chili powder and upended said bowl over his own bowl of chili, until the chili was covered by a mound of chili powder.

He saw the rest of us staring at him.

“Oh, this is nothing,” he said. “I pastored a church in San Anotnio when I was young and learned to eat it this way.”

Never assume that just because a man is old and gray, that there is no fire in his belly.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

WORD WITHOUT WORDS

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

Yesterday I mentioned that one spiritual growth thing I am trying to do is to grow closer to God, experience God, without writing about it.

There is nothing wrong with writing about encounters with God. I myself have profited much by reading the musings of others on this topic. I remember especially how important it was to me to read Rudolph Otto’s The Idea of the Holy in philosophy class in college, how it opened up my mind as well as my spirit to possibilities of the divine, of “the other,” that I would not have otherwise considered.

For some folks, writing itself is the process of opening to God.

I find, though, that when I am meditating, trying to be open to God, experience the numinous, if I am thinking about how I might write about it, how to express it so others might understand, I forget about God and concentrate on the writing.

Of course, it’s possible to write only for one’s own understanding, but I have been writing for others for so long that it just seems impossible for me to write without wanting to do it in a way that communicates to others.

One of the tasks of old age is finally to understand ourselves. That’s a point of self-understanding for me, that I need to learn to experience God without writing about it.

So, I’m sorry to say it, but, too bad. Don’t expect any help from me. When it comes to experiencing God, you’re on your own. Except, of course, for God.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

NEARER MY GOD, TO THEE… OR NOT

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

I am trying to do two spiritual growth things as I age. One is to learn to come into the presence of God, experience God, without writing about it. The other is to learn to use interruptions as a way of experiencing God, even interruptions in my spiritual growth time.

Early is a good spiritual growth time, a time to work on experiencing God, before interruptions from the world, and I’m up early, before anyone else in the whole world, except the garbage guys.

Just as I was “getting in sync with the universe,” something I try to do as I lie in bed in that interregnum between sleeping and waking, I noticed some red numerals staring at me from the table beside the bed, trying to notify me that I had stayed up too late last night and so was in bed almost two hours later than usual and that it was time for the garbage guys. Way before the universe was in harmony, I had to jump up, get dressed, not even taking the time to mismatch my plaids, and take the bag of garbage and the five containers of recycling, neatly separated by category, out to the curb. I did not get closer to God in that process, even though it’s in the early morning hours that I try to get closer to God, and I am working on using the interruptions for spiritual growth, because interruptions… well, they are interruptive.

So, after repeated visits to the curb, on an unseasonably chilly morning, I did last night’s dishes as I perked coffee and mixed a bowl of cereal and fruit and folk medicines [turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, flax seed, locally-grown honey]. Not closer to God.

Finally, I am ensconced on my sofa, with my breakfast, and I have to go to the bathroom…

…and then I have a sneezing fit…

…and then there is a strange noise in the wall…

…and then I get a text ding…

…and I figure, “I can write about this,” about how I am using the interruptions to come closer to God, except I am not, and then remember that I am supposed to be using this time to come closer to God without writing about it…

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

A PRAYER FOR RUNNERS

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

Bless, O God, we pray, those who run this day.

Bless those who run for fun, bless those who run because they must.

Bless those who run in races, bless those who run the bases.

Bless those who run for office.

Bless those who run from home   Bless those who run back to home.

Bless those who run long distances in loneliness.

Bless those who run off… at the mouth.

Bless those who run around. Especially Sue. [1]

Bless those who run silent and run deep. [2]

Bless those who run wild. Bless those who run in circles. Bless those who run “like a chicken with its head cut off.” [3]

Bless those who run so fast, who make such good time as they run, but who have no idea of where their running will take them.

Bless those who run from war.  Bless those who run from danger. Bless those who run toward danger. Bless those who run from bullies. Bless those who run to help  

Bless those who run from temptation and addiction. Bless those who run from happiness. 

Bless those who cannot run with legs, but run in hope and memory

Especially bless those of us who run from you. Post, we pray, someone along the way, with a sign, a sign written so large and well that those who run may read it [4], a sign that says, TURN AROUND AND RETURN TO WHERE YOU BELONG. Give us eyes to see the sign, and feet to make the turn. And someone to cheer for us as we go.

Bless, O God, we pray, those who run this day.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Occasionally I am asked to do the pastoral prayer at St. Mark’s UMC, where we live now, in Bloomington, IN. I wrote this originally for that purpose, but it’s the kind of prayer, I’m afraid, that makes folks wander instead of wonder, so it’s more appropriate here.

1] Dion and the Belmonts

2] Edward L. Beach, Jr.

3] Grandma “Maggie May” Pond

4] Habakkuk 2:2.