THE PARABLE OF THE PEA GRAVEL [M, 8-10-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Misadventures of An Old Man—THE PARABLE OF THE PEA GRAVEL [M, 8-10-26]

 

I pulled the one thousandth weed today. From the pea gravel beds on the sides of our condo. That will hold off the weed police for a little while.

The weed police are two cheerful women in a golf cart, which allows them to drive up and down hills, through grass plots, and right up to the pea gravel beds. If they find even one weed in the pea gravel, they give you a desist notice, that includes how much your fine will be for transgressing the rules against weeds. They post the notice on the wall of your unit so that all who drive by can see your shame. You can avoid a fine if you can prove to them, through time-lapse photography, that the weed has been there less than one hour.

They got me last year, posted a notice. But not this summer. Ever since I saw the first pea gravel weed in April, I have pulled ten weeds per day. So, today, the thousandth.

The HOA takes care of the yards in the Sherwood Green condo complex. The C&G yard maintenance guys love to mow. Every day if they can. They love the noise. And they don’t just mow. They trim. And they blow off, and out, any spot that might have received the indignity of a stray weed or blade of grass. Even the patios, which are otherwise the responsibility of the tenant. They use industrial strength leaf blowers. When they are done, throughout Sherwood Green, scattered on the grass plots, are lawn chairs, flower pots, and small dogs.

The pea gravel beds, though, at each unit, are the responsibility of the folks who live there. That’s where the weed police come in.

It’s sort of hard for me to pull weeds. I bend over at the waist, with my cane in my right hand. Then I pull with my left hand. If it’s been dry, the weeds resist coming out. If I pull too hard, I lose my balance and fall on my face in the pea gravel. If I bend over too long, I lose my balance and fall on my face in the pea gravel. That’s why only ten weeds per day. Every day.

Don’t worry. I have a new plan. Next year, in the place where the weed police post their shaming notices, I’m going to post a copy of Matthew 13:24-30. That’s the parable of the weeds and the flowers. 

Jesus notes that weeds are coming up among the flowers, and the weed police insist that the home owner pull them out. Jesus says he can’t do that, because he might pull out one of those pretty flowers--even a brown-eyed Susan, or a lily of the fields, flowers that are holy--so he should wait until fall when C&G can just blow them all to kingdom come together.

At least, that’s the version of Matthew 13:24-30 that I’m going to post for the weed police to see. I call it The Parable of The Pea Gravel.

Joh Robert McFarland

THE WHOLE WORD [Sat, 8-8-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Runner—THE WHOLE WORD [Sat, 8-8-26]

 

I once memorized the Gospel of Mark.

It’s not as great a feat as it might sound. At one time, candidates for the ministry in the Church of Scotland had to memorize the Psalms, all of them. I tried that. I couldn’t do it.  They were too much alike. I could memorize Mark because it had movement, a story, a beginning and a middle and an end, and another beginning…

I memorized the King James Version, because I read that the British actor, Alec McCowen, had memorized the KJV of Mark and was performing it on stage. I did a little acting at the time, in community theater, and I thought that would be a neat thing to do, to perform Mark.

I was also a long-distance runner in those days, and the long miles on back roads got lonely and boring at times. I thought memorizing Mark would give me something good to do. I bought a dozen little paperbacks of Mark, so that when one got sweated through from being carried in the waistband of my running shorts, I would always have another in reserve.

I chose Mark and the KJV for the same reasons McCowen did, because it is the shortest, and the KJV is the most dramatic, most stage-worthy version. I also chose it because Mark is the template for the other Gospels.

I did perform Mark a few times, but that turned out to be just a byproduct of the memorization. The real payoff was seeing the Gospel story as a whole.

Hans Frei has said that our current misuse of the Bible comes from “the eclipse of biblical narrative.” [The title of his book.] One of the reasons for that eclipse is that we look at the Gospel, and the Bible in general, only one pericope, one story, one passage at a time. [1] We take a verse or story from one spot in the narrative--Exodus or Romans or John—and say that it is the Word of God. No, those might be the words of God, through the words of authors, but the Word is the whole story. [2]

The Bible is a narrative. It is continual, not continuous. The narrative is composed of many stories, but it has a red thread of meaning running through, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection at the end. The stories are not meant to be a scientific reporting of the history of the world, but a meaning-full reporting of how God deals with the universe, and with each of us. 

I can no longer recite the whole Gospel. In the winter of my years, I can’t even memorize a grocery list of three things, like bread, bread, and bread. But I know the whole story. I know that it starts with the intention of God, and ends with the intension of God. [“Intension” is about internal meaning.] In between, if we let God tell it, the whole story is about the presence of God.

John Robert McFarland

1] The MSW sphelczhek is not very knowledgeable about biblical and theological language. It changed pericope to periscope. It also changes pastored to pastured.

2] I cringe a little when a liturgist in worship reads a scripture passage and ends with “This is the Word of God.” Not quite.

CIVIL RIGHTS IN TERRE HAUTE [R, 8-6-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Ancient History of an Unintentional Activist—CIVIL RIGHTS IN TERRE HAUTE [R, 8-6-26]

 

[Caveat: Today is the anniversary of The Voting Rights Law of 1965. This column is twice as long as it is supposed to be, 1000 words instead of 500, and it is too much about me instead of about voting rights, so, read only if you have a little extra time and generosity of spirit.]

The battle for equal rights for black citizens started officially with President Lincoln’s “emancipation proclamation” of Jan. 1, 1863. It was up and down, mostly down, for 100 years, as major white supremacy forces, notably the Ku Klux Klan, won the peace even though they had lost the war, by enforcing segregation as the common law of the land in much of the nation.

The modern era of the equal rights battle culminated in the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that held that school segregation was unconstitutional. The activist era, what we call the Civil Rights Movement, started with college students sitting in at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC on Feb. 1, 1960.

One of the major shifts in the battle came at that lunch counter. Young people, especially college students, became foot soldiers in the battle.

Before Greensboro, the battle had been waged by generals, people of substance, folks like attorney Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown vs Board of Ed. Students were beginning to understand that the fight for citizenship involved more than learning about Thurgood Marshall while sitting in a social studies class room.

That was when The Wesley Foundation [WF] at Illinois State University [ILSU] hired me as campus minister.

I underlined campus minister because it identified a new role for folks who had previously known as student workers. “Student work” was essentially a college-age youth fellowship. As a student worker, you gathered up kids to sit around a campfire and sing Kum Bah Ya.

Don Ruthenberg was the Chair of The Board of Directors of the ILSU WF. He was also the Dean of Students at Illinois Wesleyan University, a mile down the street from ILSU. He was in the perfect position to see the shift taking place in students. They no longer wanted to be isolated in class rooms and camp fires. They wanted to be on the front lines of change.

 

At that time, I had the title of campus minister at The WF in Terre Haute, serving Indiana State University [INSU] and Rose Polytechnic Institute [now Rose Hulman University] and in an unofficial collaboration with St. Mary of the Woods College, Our ministry, though, was still called “student work.” I wasn’t even the head guy at The WF. That was, by bylaws, the minister of the church next door. He was paid a salary to be sure The WF, and, especially, it’s campus minister, didn’t “cause any trouble.”

He wasn’t very effective, since I caused a lot of trouble, advocating for Civil Rights, not because I wanted to be “a trouble maker,” but because the times and my students required it. The Greensboro movement had reached Terre Haute. A new breed of student was in the class rooms and in the streets and in The WF.

I became the leader of The Civil Rights movement in Terre Haute without ever intending to be, and mostly without realizing it. I just responded to the times and the opportunities.

 

I preached equality as a Gospel imperative when no other preacher in town was doing so. [That was the start of my trouble making, according to local church leaders.] I went to Alabama to march with MLK, Jr, because the Alabama Methodist Student Movement asked us to come down and march with them. I started a tutoring program for underprivileged black kids at the dilapidated community center in the black neighborhood. [1] Over a hundred INSU students were involved. Then I formed a new board for the community center where the tutoring program took place, and built a new building. [2] I got our WF kids to staff the Vacation Bible School at Saulters Methodist Church, the church in the black community. We sent students to Albany, GA to assist with black voter registration in 1965. Later that summer, Aug. 6, today, The Voting Rights Act was signed into law. [3]

When Dr. Ruthenberg called me, and asked me to come to ILSU, he said, “There is a new student these days. They aren’t content with staying on campus. They want to be part of making the whole community better. We need a new kind of campus minister. I’ve asked a lot of church leaders and professors, asked them who they know who can deal with this new expansion of ministry. They all say that you’re the one.”

I felt complimented but said no. I told him that apparently I was already that new kind of campus minister right where I was. After all, INSU and ILSU were very similar institutions, teachers’ colleges that had just become universities.

Then he asked me what my yearly salary was. I said, “$4500.” He said, “If you come here, we’ll pay you $6500.” I heard the Lord call!

John Robert McFarland

Lest you think that I am too full of self-congratulation, I am well aware that being the civil rights point man in Terre Haute was a very minor role compared to what folks like Ed King and Bob Kochtitzky did in places like Mississippi.

1] Unofficial segregation was a reality in Indiana in those days, and much of the rest of the North.

2] I started the new board and building for Hyte Community Center, but it was really accomplished by my late, great friend, Andre’ Hammonds, the first black professor [sociology] at INSU, and the first black person to get a PhD at The University of TN.

 

3] When my good friend, Sister Mary Jean, professor of history at St. Mary of The Woods College [SMW], west of Terre Haute, found about the voter registration program, she asked if she and Sister Alma Louise and some of their students could go, too, so it was really a combined WF/SMW project.

 

 

PROFESSION: RUNNER [T, 8-4-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life by An Old Runner—PROFESSION: RUNNER [T, 8-4-26]

 

“Profession? I’m a runner.”

From the look on her face, it was clear that she was not expecting that answer.

She was the editor of the monthly magazine of my theological alma mater, back in the 1970s, when print magazines meant something. The one she edited, like those of most educational institutions, was designed to attract new donors and new students. I don’t know why, but she was doing a “puff piece” on me.

When she asked me, “How do you see your profession now?” I think she was hoping I would say that I was a social gospel preacher, specifically a civil rights activist. Or a preacher/scholar, since I was beginning to make a minor name for myself as a narrative theologian. Those were the areas she had talked about when she set up the interview with me.

I think she was hoping primarily for the civil rights identity, because the seminary had recently taken a black eye on human rights, which was unfair. They had always been progressive, accepting minority and women students. I had felt comfortable in sending girls from my campus ministries there myself. [Yes, we called college students girls and boys back then.]

But someone had found out that there were a couple of gay students enrolled there and protested. The protesters had a reasonable argument for expelling the gay students, even though their real reason, as always, was just being scared of anything homosexual.

At the time, the express charter of the seminary was to educate preachers for Methodist congregations. But also at that time, the Methodist Church refused to accept gays as preachers. The expeller advocates pointed out that the gays could never be ordained, but the Methodist church was paying for their education through the donations of those very congregations they would never serve. That money would be more fairly spent on those who would serve as preachers.

It was a cause celebre. The seminary did not handle it very well, and did not come out looking very good. I think the editor wanted to do an article about an alum who was known for being active on behalf of the unwanted, to show that the seminary had always had “open doors, open minds, and open hearts.”

I hadn’t even thought of myself as an equal rights advocate for a long time. It had been a dozen years since the Civil Rights movement. Quite a few years since all the black Methodist churches and preachers had been taken into full membership in the church, instead of being cordoned off in a segregated area called The Central Jurisdiction. I wasn’t an activist anymore; I was a runner. 

She was taken aback by my answer, and I was surprised, too. I hadn’t been running long, but it had become my identity.

 

As I finished my doctoral studies and returned to congregation pastoring, I had read Profession: Minister, by James Glasse. One of his main ideas was that a preacher had two selves, one personal, one professional. When church members gave you trouble, it was only your professional self that they criticized. Part of the profession was taking that criticism. But your personal self remained unaffected.

It sounded so right. I decided to take that professional approach to ministry. Now I wouldn’t have to be bothered by criticism personally. I would just let them criticize my professional self. My identity would no longer be Calling: Minister--since I had never been sure that I was actually called by God to ministry--but Profession: Minister.

You know what? Some people don’t play fair. They didn’t know they were dealing only with my professional self. They wanted to criticize me personally as well as professionally.

My answer was running. If my identity couldn’t be as a professional minister, I’d just identify as a professional runner. Not for money, of course, which is usually what separates amateurs from professionals, but in terms of my self.

 

The big running boom, fueled by shoe companies, was hitting the world in a big way, especially the world of middle-aged men, like Jim Fixx and Dr. George Sheehan. It sounded like long-distance running would be a perfect identity for me. Since there were no cell phones then, nobody could criticize me when I was out on the highways and byways, unless they were pretty fast and willing to endure a lot of sweat and pain.

 

So when the seminary magazine editor asked me about my career, about my profession, I said: “Profession? I’m a runner.”

My colon cancer surgery and adjuvant chemo ended my running profession, but I think that wasn’t a bad answer then, and it isn’t now. Life is a long run, even when it’s short.

 

Running the race with perseverance, the one marked out for us by God, that is always the identity that makes the difference. [Hebrews 12:1]

John Robert McFarland

 

 

LOOSE & LONELY [Sun, 8-2-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LOOSE & LONELY [Sun, 8-2-26]

Back in the 1960s, I heard Catholic social philosopher Michael Novak say that he could tell if a house guest was Catholic or Protestant by the way they took a bath. A Catholic just went in and took a bath, because their theology was connectional. Your house is my house. A Protestant asked first if they cold take a bath, because their theology was individual. Your house is your house.

When I reported this to Helen, she said, “Theology has nothing to do with it. Catholics grow up in big families. They know that if they get a chance at the bathroom, they have to take it right now.” [1]

All the lonely people? Where do they all belong? That was Paul McCartney’s question in Eleanor Rigby on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine album back in 1966.

The answer then, and more so now, is “nowhere.” No one belongs anywhere, because we live in an era that does not want connections, because connections mean commitments. So, of course, we are lonely.

It’s always a trade-off, between individual freedom and connectional relationships. Yes, you need both, and you can have both, but it’s very difficult to get the balance right. And when the whole earth tilts toward one or the other, it takes a super-human effort to push it back into alignment.

In theological terms, it’s always a struggle between original sin and original empathy, what John Wesley called “prevenient [preventing] grace.”

When talking about sin, “original” means from the very origin. We are born with the tendency to seek our own good at the expense of others.

Original empathy means we are born with the need to live in cooperative relationships. [“Original empathy” may be a term I just created.]

Right now, and at least since the time of Eleanor Rigby, the whole earth has been tilting toward individual freedom. By earth, I mean not the physical globe, but the overspreading culture of the whole world.

The world’s culture can tilt so quickly anymore because of immediate electronic connections. Those immediate electronic connections allow us to be totally free of real human connections. So, at the same time that we think we are most connected, we are the least connected.

But we are interpreting the absence of connections as freedom, and it really isn’t.

I recall reading William Stringfellow’s Free In Obedience the year I was graduating from seminary. It wasn’t a new idea of course. It goes back at least to Jesus, and was expounded by Paul of the New Testament epistles. But that phrase resonated with me as I started my career. I knew it would be the crux of the next 60 years of my ministry and life. I wanted to be free. And I wanted to be obedient. Could I preach, and live, freedom in obedience?

I see the church as a primary battleground for this conflict between connection and individuality today. So many forces in the world are trying to take our freedom, so we don’t want to be part of a connectional church, have to listen to other Christians who think differently. The flourishing churches are not denominations but congregations that exist in their own little world, where the illusion is that their members are thus free. So, most Christians choose an isolated congregation, or choose to be “free” of the church entirely.

The church is The Body of Christ. It is not primarily an organization or institution. It is a state of grace.

Where are all the lonely people? Where do they belong? They belong in church, that state of grace, with all the other malcontents and misfits and sinners and idiots, free in obedience.

John Robert McFarland

1] I think this was the beginning of Helen’s famous Home Ec Theology. If she wrote a book, it would be a best seller. [And turn theology back two thousand years.]

NEW TUNES FOR OLD WORDS [F, 7-31-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Hymn Singer—NEW TUNES FOR OLD WORDS [F, 7-31-26]

 

I once attended a conference of several thousand church people that went on for several days. It was in a huge arena. I was among the least important attendees, so my place was in the second balcony, at the end farthest from the stage.

I was glad to be there, but I was quite lonely in the midst of all those good people. I was undergoing treatment for cancer, with the real expectation that I might die within a year or two.

At some point, one of the organizers decided that his son’s garage band should play for us, which seemed like a very strange choice. Half a dozen skinny teen boys in ratty wife-beater shirts and ripped pants, with drums and electric guitars. By the time they got set up, nobody was paying attention to the stage. Then they started to play and sing. Well, shout, actually. It was loud even in that arena. It was no longer “…the noise of solemn assemblies.” It was the noise of rock and roll. Well, more like heavy metal. Even in the far balcony, my seat was vibrating.

Then I realized that the “melody,” if you could call that, sounded sort of familiar. Good grief! They were screaming Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God almighty… It wasn’t morning, but… early in the morning, our song shall rise to Thee… Rise it did! All four verses! It was a Presence of God moment.

From as long as I could remember, I had sung those lyrics to the Nicaea tune of John B. Dykes. That was the standard tune even in “the brown book,” which Forsythe Church preferred to use, instead of “the blue book,” which was the official Methodist Hymnal. That was the tune that garage band was using, but it sounded so different.

I’ve always been intrigued by hearing familiar lyrics to a different tune. They always seem to have a fuller meaning that way.

I remember the first time I heard Amazing Grace to the tune of The House of the Rising Son. No, not The Blind Boys of Alabama, although that is their signature song, but another skinny teen boy.

I was in charge of our conference’s Labor Day Weekend retreat for senior highs, sort of a “last fling before school.” The whole group was gathered in the tabernacle, singing camp songs. One kid stood up and said, “My friend here sings Amazing Grace in a different way. You should hear it.”

I didn’t much want to interrupt the flow, and what if the kid couldn’t sing? It would be embarrassing. Also, the kid he pointed out looked shy and reluctant, but I asked him to sing. He didn’t come up front, just stood where he was, and in a clear but haunting voice sang the words of saving grace to that melody of dark sinfulness. It was hearing those words again for the first time. It was a Presence of God moment.

Sometimes now, our church sings an old familiar hymn to a different tune. I sit there on my sofa and scowl. How can they do that? That hymn isn’t the same with a different tune! Then I remember… no, it isn’t, and that can be a good thing.

When we’re old, it’s okay to sit back and enjoy the old lyrics and melodies of life. They have served us well. We’ve earned the right to enjoy those old ways. But it’s okay to be stirred from complacency, too.

John Robert McFarland

ON BEING A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL [W, 7-29-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—ON BEING A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL [W, 7-29-26]

 

When I was growing up, conservative and liberal were both good words, at least where I lived.

Conservative meant honoring the past. Biblically, it meant keeping the fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and mother.” We sang “Faith of our fathers, holy faith…” It meant hanging on to what was good, not “…throwing the baby out with the bath water” as we made “progess.”

Liberal meant generous, as in a liberal giver. It meant broad, as in a liberal education, covering all the arts and sciences. It meant progress, which was always touted as a good thing, especially by business people.

When I was in high school, in the early 1950s, those words began to pull apart, primarily because of the issue of racial integration. Brown v Board of Ed was decided in 1954: separate but equal was neither equal nor Constitutional. Honoring the past meant hanging on to racial segregation, and many folks did want to do that. They said they were being conservative. I knew that particular conservatism was wrong.

A lot of our identity comes from what those who disagree with us call us, often in disparagement, like Methodists. That was originally a sarcastic designation for John and Charles Wesley. They were methodist [methodical] in trying to follow Jesus.

In high school, people began to call folks who believed in equal rights both nigger lover and liberal. I knew I believed in equal rights, so apparently, I was a liberal.

Especially on civil rights, equal rights, the lines were clearly drawn. You were either for or against, which meant you were either conservative or liberal. I knew which side I was on. I began to embrace being a liberal.

[I recently heard Kara Swisher, on the “We’re Back” podcast with Brian Williams, say that most liberals got that way because of the equal rights issue.]

When I was in college, I took courses in The History of Christian Thought from the most excellent Dr. D.J. Bowden, and discovered the Personalist theology of Borden Parker Bowne [1847-1910], the most liberal of liberals, even before liberalism was really a thing. I wanted to be the most liberal of liberals. Yes, I was a young contrarian.

But that did not work very well, because as the words conservative and liberal began to divide, liberal started to mean broad morally as well as theologically and socially, and I was very conservative morally.

Morality at the time was almost entirely personal habits—drinking, smoking, gambling, cheating, lying, sexual promiscuity [any sex “out of wedlock”]. Drugs, beyond alcohol, didn’t even exist in my world so were not an issue.

One reason personal morality appealed to me was that it was so clear. You knew if you “drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do.” Social morality was a lot more complicated.

I think a lot of us who were young Christians back then grew up conflicted. We were sure that the liberal stance of inclusion, especially of black folks, was right, and we wanted to be on that side. But liberal also began to mean at least accepting, if not outright practicing, alcohol, marijuana, pornography, promiscuity, profanity, etc. “Now everyone knows, anything goes.” [1] We were not comfortable with “liberal” morality; it just didn’t seem very Jesus-like. But we weren’t comfortable with conservative theology and social norms.

Now, I am older than dirt, and I remain socially liberal and personally conservative. Socially, inclusion seems to me to be the Jesus way. “Go to the highways and byways and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” [2] Personally, respect seems to me to be the Jesus way.

“Respect” in this context takes more than a sub-clause to explain. I eschew drugs and alcohol and tobacco and gluttony and lust because they alter, and thus dishonor, the body, the temple, God gave me. [3] {Yes, I know that drinking coffee makes me hypocritical. Maybe taking meds does, too.}

I eschew promiscuity and pornography for they are likewise dishonorable to the temple of the body.

“Respect” includes all temples, everybody’s bodies, not just mine.

Gambling and booze and drugs damage not just individuals but society. There really are no “victimless” sins.  

So, what does a socially liberal Christian do about including druggies and alkies and bad people, not just in the church but in society and in the heart? Don’t they need to be included, too? Don’t they need to be loved rather than judged?

Well, I already said that social morality is harder to figure out. I’ll let you know if I ever get this dilemma sorted. In the meantime, I know that I am conservative and liberal at the same time…

John Robert McFarland

1] Cole Porter’s musical was in 1934, but, even though Cole was an Indiana boy, it took Broadway morals about 30 years to get to the part of Indiana where I lived, “the Mississippi of the North.”

2] Lk 14:23, KJV

3] I Corinthians 6:19-20.