OUTLASTING THE DEMONS [T, 5-26-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… OUTLASTING THE DEMONS [T, 5-26-26]

 

I suppose there is a literature in fundamentalist circles of how the author used to be an open-minded “liberal,” tolerant Christian or Muslim, but had an encounter with the true God and now knows that the only correct way of serving God is the narrow way, that not only shuns those who are not true believers but actively works against them, either to convert them or to subvert them.

I don’t know those books/testimonies, but I suspect they are there, because I know their opposite.

Their opposite is the former fundamentalist who had an encounter with the true God and now knows the only correct way of serving God is the open way of tolerance and acceptance and love, working to allow into the fold those who are shunned and vilified by their former fundamentalist brethren. Folks like Frankie Schaeffer and Brian McLaren and Philip Yancey come to mind.

And many other people I have known personally, who have told me their personal stories. That includes one friend who is skeptical about our new pastor, because he occasionally asks for an Amen as he preaches. She shudders as she says, “It reminds me too much of the church I grew up in.”

In these cases, and in any other where a person has changed her mind [i.e., I used to be a Bears fan but now I love the Packers], the assumption, at least by the one making the testimony, and by their admirers, is that the latter position is the correct one precisely because it is the latter, the one changed TO instead of FROM. We are a future-loving people. If we have changed from something of the past, the newer position has to be better.

There is a whole culture of Christians who lived dissolute lives and then were saved so now know how important salvation is, and we should believe what they say because of the difference. Folks laughingly refer to the dissolute life part as building a testimony. “I was just doing bad stuff so I could be a witness later to how much better it is to be sober and saved.”

I appreciate folks like Anne Lamott because they write well, and because they don’t sugar-coat the present [the demons are still with them, but so are the angels], and because they help others to realize it is okay to come out of the darkness into the light, where they can get help.

I also envy people like Lamott. They are able to get such good testimonies from their dissolute pasts and ragged presents. I envy them, yea, even get angry at them at times, because I can’t get the sort of accolades they do, because I don’t have an adequately sordid past to live down.

Or maybe I’m just not willing to acknowledge my demons, the way the “I’m better now” folks do. Through sixty years of listening to people talk privately about their demons, I’ve learned that not everyone is possessed by demons, like with the life-change testimony people, but almost everyone is beset by demons. Many people would have great testimonies about their former addictions and dissolutions, but they can’t talk about them openly, because of the damage they would cause, not just to themselves, but to others.

I am sure that being open about your demons is a good and health-giving thing. I admire people who can do that. but some cannot. If you’re one of those folks, don’t worry about it overmuch. One of the great things about getting old and decrepit is that your demons are puny and feeble, too. Another thing I’ve learned from sixty years of pastoring is that demons get tired. Your demons are as fed up with you as you are with them. Just walk away. Shake the demon dust off your feet. They’re too tired to run after you.

“I bored my demons into giving up” is a good testimony, too.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WELL, IT WAS A QUIET WEEK IN… {Sun, 5-24-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Radio Listener—WELL, IT WAS A QUIET WEEK IN… {Sun, 5-24-26]

 

“Well, it was NOT a quiet week in the Bible…” That’s the way I began sermons back in the halcyon days of the Prairie Home Companion radio show [PHC].

In the 1980s, when Prairie Home Companion went national--so that folks outside the range of Minnesota Public Radio could listen--like many other people, I became fascinated with Lake Wobegon, “out there on the edge of the prairie, the little town that time forgot.” Garrison Kaillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” became must-hear radio at our house. I insisted that everyone in the house observe “radio silence.”

That happened in a lot of other houses in our church, too. PHC was on the radio on Saturday night, so it was still in our minds come Sunday morning. That’s when I began to introduce my sermons with, “Well, it was not a quiet week in the Bible…”

Not “a quiet week,” as it always was in Lake Wobegon, because the happenings in the Bible were rarely quiet.

Keillor always started his monologue with, “Well, it was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon…” Yes, it was quiet, except the happenings there were quietly hilarious.

We knew from the goings-on there that Lake Wobegon was the same town in which we had grown up, and probably where we still lived. One of my members claimed that he knew all the people in Lake Wobegon, and he had grown up in Chicago! More than one of our members would give their addresses on the Sunday morning attendance sheet simply as “Lake Wobegon.” That was the appeal of Lake Wobegon. We all belonged there.

So I began to try to get my congregation folks to see the Bible as their Lake Wobegon, the place where we all belong.

Today is Pentecost, and today’s lectionary readings are Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23, and I Corinthians 12:3-13.

So, if I were preaching today, I would start by saying, “Well, it was not a quiet week in the Bible. The disciples of Jesus were just sitting around, wondering what was going to happen next, now that Jesus has gone off to heaven, when their heads got really hot, and this big wind hit them, and they all began to preach the Gospel in languages they hadn’t even gone on Duolingo for. That started a big argument in the church about whose language was best, so Rev. Paul, of the First Methodist Church of Corinth, had to remind folks that no one’s way of talking was any better than anyone else’s…”

People liked it, but my next appointment was to a church where folks didn’t listen to the radio, at least not Public radio, and they didn’t know about Lake Wobegon, so that particular attempt at biblical interpretation faded away.

I still read the lectionary scriptures each week, though, and I always think, “Well, it was an interesting week in the Bible…” If you’d like to see what an interesting week it was in the Bible, just do a search for “common lectionary.” Or go to: https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/faq/downloads/2025-2026/Year%20A%202025-2026.pdf

John Robert McFarland

 

 

PERILOUS PROM [F, 5-22-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—PERILOUS PROM [F, 5-22-26]

 

Yes, I’ve told this story before, but it’s prom season, and, as I have also said before, this column no longer makes any pretense of being useful to anyone but me…

I think it was Mike who first told me that I was taking Judith to the prom at Ft. Branch, 20 miles from my home town of Oakland City. It was news to me. I had never heard of her.

Judith was the only child in a wealthy family. Her father was a judge. Her parents had given her a new Chrysler convertible at the start of the school year. That guaranteed that no Ft. Branch boy would date her, since no Ft. Branch boy had a car that could compete. So as prom time approached, she was dateless.

Judith’s mother was a friend of Ann’s mother. Ann was in my high school class. Judith’s mother told Ann’s mother of the prom date problem. Ann’s mother asked what Judith was interested in.

“Journalism. She’s editor of the school newspaper.

“Have I got a deal for you,” said Ann’s mother. “My daughter is in class with the editor of our school newspaper. He’s a nice boy.”

That’s the curse all the mothers always put on me: He’s a nice boy.

So Ann’s mother and Judith’s mother decided I would take Judith to the prom. The irony is that I was poorer and further out of my league than any boy in Ft. Branch. My family didn’t have a car of any kind.

Judith’s mother told her that she had a prom date with me, a boy she’d never heard of. Ann’s mother told Ann, and Ann told Mike, and Mike told me.

I had no way to get to Ft. Branch, to take Judith to the prom, so the mothers arranged for Mike and Ann to get invitations to that prom, too. How, I have no idea, but in a small town, the mother of the judge’s daughter can usually get whatever she wants.

I had nothing to wear to a prom, so my sister, who had graduated and was working fulltime, bought me a suit, and a pink and gray tie, which I still have. [You don’t outgrow ties.] Ann’s mother, of course, knew all about Judith’s dress, so she bought a corsage that would coordinate with it.

When the great night came, Mike and Ann drove down the gravel roads to our farm to pick me up, and I rode to Ft. Branch in the back seat of Mike’s two-door hardtop Pontiac. Since Ann’s mother had bought the corsage for Judith, it rode in the front seat beside Ann. When we arrived at Judith’s house, Ann scrunched up toward the dashboard so that I could push the seat down to get out…forgetting about the corsage, which got flatly crushed.

It was a big house, fronted by a high porch with a dim light. I carried the crushed corsage up the long walk and climbed the creaking steps to the shadowed front door. I knocked. The door opened. A classy blond girl in a formal stood there. I spoke one of the best opening lines in the annals of blind prom dates: “It looks like I’ve come to the right place.”

I pushed the crushed corsage at her. She looked at it and was speechless. An older blond appeared over her shoulder, took the corsage away to the kitchen, where she performed voodoo on it. Judith and I stood there and tried not to look at each other. “That’s my father,” she said, indicating a man sitting in a dark corner of the living room, peeling an apple, with a butcher knife, one long peel sliding off the apple with surgical precision. He didn’t say anything.

Judith’s mother returned with the sort-of repaired corsage, and taking no chances that her daughter might get crushed, too, pinned it on Judith herself. She handed Judith a boutonniere. Judith tried to slip it through the button-hole of my new lapel. It wouldn’t go. The mother tried. “It’s not cut,” she said. [What farm boy knows you have to slit the buttonhole in a new suit yourself?]

“I’ll take care of him,” her father said, jumping up and advancing on me with the butcher knife. He grabbed my lapel and began to saw at it, the knife an inch from my throat. He was really good with that thing. The slit was perfect, and Judith slipped the flower into it.

I don’t remember much from that point. I assumed my job was to make the Ft. Branch boys jealous, since Judith must have gotten such a much better date, because she had to go out of town to get one, and out-of-town is always better, so I acted mysterious, which meant I spent the evening telling Judith stories of editing our school newspaper, while Mike and Ann danced. The only thing I remember for sure was that I mispronounced the word “intricate,” while explaining my reasons for eschewing all dances but the “bunny hop.”

I never saw or heard of Judith again.

It’s important when looking back on such experiences to find the good in an otherwise disastrous event. I have done so, and it’s this:  I’m sure Judith won the contest among the Sisters of Perpetual Responsibility for who had the best reason to become a nun.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

AFTER THE PILL [W, 5-20-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Old Optimist—AFTER THE PILL [W, 5-20-26]

 

Of all the major changes/inventions of the last 70 years, I think that the birth control pill is the most significant—yes, more than computers and the internet and nuclear bombs and toaster ovens. The birth control pill changed the very basis of society—marriage and family.

I was a campus minister when the Stonewall Uprising occurred in 1969, and gay folks began to proclaim, “We’re people, too.” It didn’t make much difference to college students. They were too busy with sex in general to care about gay sex.

Everybody got all hot and bothered in 1975 when Loretta Lynn sang her paean of praise to “The Pill,” but that was fifteen years behind the times to college students.

I began to say to anyone who would listen—and there weren’t many who wanted to—that homosexual sex wasn’t the problem. The real problem was promiscuous sex, recreational sex, meaningless sex, disrespectful sex, which was at least as prevalent among straights as gays.

Nothing wrong with sex, I said. Plenty wrong with using and dehumanizing people, including yourself. Plenty wrong with turning sex upside down, and using the quality that nature gives us to lead us to intimacy in order to avoid intimacy.

The church, I said, needed to develop a sexual ethic beyond “no sex at all except in marriage,” because that horse had left the barn, in 1960, when the FDA approved “the pill.”

Of course, the church’s response was, “Let’s ignore that issue and concentrate on gay stuff, because we can all agree on that, right?” Oh, yes, right.

I first tried preaching a sexual ethic of commitment. No, you didn’t have to be married, but you should be faithful and committed to your partner. That was much too narrow for college students, who figured they needed [wanted] time to experiment before committing, so I went through several other stages until I settled, more or less, on an ethic of respect—we should respect sex, meaning respecting ourselves [Your body is a temple, I Cors 6], respecting the temples of others, and respecting the Creator of sex.

That was too complicated. And cerebral. Sex is not a thought-centered activity. College students liked the idea of respectful sex, as long as it didn’t get in the way of casual lustful promiscuous recreational sex.

And, as I said in the column for May 14, if you want to find out what society in general is going to think and do next, look at what college students are thinking and doing now.

I’m not a campus minister anymore, but I live in a town with 48,626 college students. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I get the impression that they are starting to get bored with sexual promiscuity. Maybe they really are the brightest generation…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

COUSINS [Late in the day on M, 5-18-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Family Reminiscences of An Old Man—COUSINS [Late in the day on M, 5-18-20]

 

[We ended up staying at the reunion longer than planned, so I did not post early today because I didn’t have my computer with me.]

As we planned the memorial service for my “little” brother, Jim, I invited all our cousins. I realized that it would be the last time I would ever see a cousin. I’m glad that Natalie, oldest daughter of Uncle Bob McFarland, from whom I get my middle name, was the only one who was able to come.

We cousins, on both sides of the family, have always been close. Now, those of us left, we live too far apart. We can’t get on an airplane. We can’t drive. We can’t walk. We can’t remember which color is ours on the Chinese Checkers board. We shall never see each other again.

That seems so strange, for I once had 26 cousins, ten on the Pond side of the family, and sixteen McFarlands.

I said above that I invited all our cousins, but that wasn’t accurate. There are some for whom I have no address. As our adult years went along, some cousins dropped out of the family, either by death or by geography, or by choice. I mourned each time I lost a cousin, especially those who dropped out, because being part of that generation was so important to me.

We cousins were much involved with one another, from the time we were little kids. We visited in each other’s homes, stayed overnight, slept on the floor because there weren’t enough beds. We played tag and baseball. We played Parcheesi and Chinese Cheekers and never-ending games of Monopoly.

I made no distinction between Ponds and McFarlands. To me, the aunts and uncles and cousins were just one family, where I was accepted, where I was encouraged to be a good person.

That was probably aided by my status as the oldest grandson on either side. I never thought of myself more highly than I should have thought, though, because I had an older sister and four older female cousins who made sure I understood there was no primogeniture in our generation.

When my parents reached fifty years of marriage, I decided that we should celebrate by getting the whole family—both sides—together in one place. I rented a church camp in southern Indiana, the place where both families got their start, and invited all their brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews for two days of eating and talking. Almost everyone came. A lot of good relationships got started or expanded, especially among the cousins, some by Ponds who had little previous contact with McFarlands, and vice versa.

In retrospect, I realized I did that as much for me as for my parents. I never thought of myself as just part of my immediate family. Indeed, our immediate family life was so chaotic that I think I always felt a bit outside it; I felt that I was the social worker who needed to solve the family problems rather than being a part of that family. The family that gave me identity was that conglomerate of McFarlands and Ponds who played that eternal game of Chinese Checkers, who gathered that weekend at Temple Hills.

When I first started preaching, at nineteen, I was not surprised that folks in those churches, even older people, thought that I was a competent preacher, because I had so many relatives who had always treated me that way, from the time I was a child. They assumed that I was a good person—not just a good boy-- who was capable of doing good things.

I’ve had to give up almost all of those aunts and uncles. Only Edna, Uncle Mike’s widow, is left, out of that wonderful phalanx of 24 [counting spouses]. But cousins…those are young people…except, now we are not. No more cousins, but so many good memories.

I think a big extended family is a little like heaven. I wonder if they play Chinese Checkers there. I wonder if God cheats, like Grandma Mac did…

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

MY ‘LITTLE’ BROTHER [Sat, 5-16-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Grieving Remembrances of A Big Brother—MY ‘LITTLE’ BROTHER [Sat, 5-16-26]

 

All in all, my brother, Jim, was a strange man. Weird, even. I like to think that he got that from me.

He grew to be two inches taller than I, but he was nine years younger, so, my “little” brother.

He was Jimmy, until he got old enough to be called Jim. I always thought of him, though, as Jimmy. Especially since his death, at the age of 79.

In the photo above, Helen and I are on the left, Jim’s wife, Millie, in the middle, and our daughter, Mary Beth, between Millie and Jim. Notice that Jim is looking at things from a different angle. That was always the way he looked at things.

Even when very young, he showed a different face to the world. We have photos of us four siblings posing together in front of our farm house, for Aunt Dorothy’s box camera, where three of us are smiling, but Jimmy is twisting his face into some contorted mask. Even as a little guy, he didn’t want anyone to see the real him.

That was understandable. He had four “parents,” including a sister 14 years older [Mary Virginia] and a brother 9 years older, telling him what to do, and a sister [Margaret Ann] 18 months older, whose cuteness factor was off the charts. She was hard to compete with for attention. His only chance for individual identity was to draw into himself. He did that his whole life.

His humor was sardonic, a little sarcastic, a little silly, always a bit sideways. He wanted to be different from everyone else, but he didn’t want to be noticed, sort of like a sideline commentator who is off-camera, as is Jim Day on the Cincinnati Reds broadcasts.

He had the great, good fortune to find one of the two women in the world—Milicent Ellard & Helen Karr--who were able to put up with the strange ways of the McFarland brothers, even think those ways were endearing and attractive. Or maybe they thought it was a duty beyond the ability of other women. As the old saying goes, “It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.”

Jim died last Nov. 1. Tomorrow, Millie, and Helen and our children and grandchildren, and Margey’s children and grandchildren, will gather for a memorial service, along with the few friends and cousins and nieces and nephews who are still alive and able to travel.

I’ll wear the little wooden cross necklace that I bought at Jim’s health food store. He had a friend who made them. I don’t think Jim believed much about the cross, but he tried to help his friend by selling them at the store.

I’ll read the funeral service from the same Book of Worship that I used when I officiated at the marriage service for Jim and Millie, some 60 years ago. Then we’ll share our memories of a man who never wanted to be noticed, who wanted to hide behind a funny face. We’ll honor that.

John Robert McFarland

 

BEYOND THE HALLS OF IVY [R, 5-14-26]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Old Trouble Maker—BEYOND THE HALLS OF IVY [R, 5-14-26]

 

Methodist annual conferences will soon meet. The pastoral appointments for the next year will be read out. When I started going to Conference, in 1957, no pastor knew until that reading where they would be the next year. I assumed, though, that my appointment would always be to some congregation.

I never intended to become a campus minister, even though I held campus ministry in high regard. After all, I met Helen at The Wesley Foundation at IU. And I liked universities in general. I loved learning. I loved songs like The Halls of Ivy and Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.

While I was a college student, though, in my sophomore year, I became a parish preacher. Church was as important to me as campus. I assumed that life as a local church pastor would be my career.

Campus ministers were not respected much back then. They were called “student workers.” They were trouble makers who preached about social justice and were always wanting “change.” They were guys [all men, then] who didn’t fit in local churches, so they weren’t real preachers. Many times during my campus ministry years, colleagues would ask me, “When are you going to come back to the ministry?”

Their question was not criticism, but concern, because as a campus minister, you lost your place on the appointment ladder. The “ladder” meant that, as long as you didn’t cause any trouble, each time you were moved to a different church, it would be a little larger and more prestigious. Campus ministry years didn’t count on the ladder. If you “came back to the ministry,” you had to start over at the bottom of the ladder.

Because no one wanted to lose his place on the ladder, the bishop had trouble finding someone willing to be a campus minister.

But I owed Bishop Richard Raines, for getting me out of trouble numerous times, and he knew that I owed him, so when he asked/told me to be the campus minister in Terre Haute [Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic], I figured I should do that, for a year or two, as payment to him. Also, I was never very smart about anticipating the consequences of my choices.

Campus ministry, though, turned out to be a more significant ministry than I would have had as a local church pastor, for two primary reasons.

First, my influence was much wider than it would have been as a parish pastor. Every year some of my students graduated and scattered to various jobs and towns and churches. They took with them the ideas they had gotten on campus. Even while they were still in school, they went home on the weekends and vacations and enjoyed upsetting their parents and pastors with all the radical stuff they got through their time on campus—stuff about civil rights and voting rights and women’s rights and gay rights and saving the planet and Viet Nam and situational ethics and “contemporary” worship and prayer and faith and Bible interpretation and sacrificial service and the church as the place to have a really good time.

Second, I learned before anyone else what was going to happen next. Whatever society was going to do next, college students were already doing it.

So, if you want to know what’s coming up, look on campus. Strangely, the social observers say that students are going to church more and drinking less. That doesn’t sound right…

John Robert McFarland