NOW VS ETERNITY [F, 4-10-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irascible Mutterings of a Christmas Preacher—NOW VS ETERNITY [F, 4-10-26]

 

As the old preacher story goes, a young woman cooked one of her first meals for her fiancé. After supper, she cuddled up and said, “Just think. After we’re married, we can do this forever.” He thought, “I don’t think I can take this forever.”

Now that the Easter season is over, maybe I can say that I prefer Christmas without sounding too much like a wet blanket. But, caveat lector, this is just a personal semi-screed about Easter. If it does have any positive message, it’s about Christmas. Easter has always semi-depressed me. Christmas? Well, I like Christmas. See, this is personal, not theological.

First off, the Easter message, the resurrection message, is eternal life. Forever. Alive forever. Floating around. Playing a harp, maybe. Even if we are united with that dog we loved so much, playing fetch in heaven forever will surely get boring, for both of us.

Maybe Easter depresses me because it is negative, starting with forty days of deprivation. And self-examination--finding out that I’m still the “wretch like me” again this year. How is that supposed to be uplifting?

Maybe it is because preachers have to work so much during the Lent-Easter season. I signed on for once-a-week, not all that extra stuff: Bible studies and meditation sessions and listening to the confessions of all the self-examiners. Putting up with the criticisms of trustees who are out of sorts because they’ve given up booze for Lent and they’re taking it out on the preacher, because it’s safer than taking it out on their wife/husband.

And Holy Week! Talk about work… Special worship services. Ash Wednesday. Maundy Thursday. Good Friday. Getting all the other churches to agree to a common Good Friday service, and getting Father Bertoldo to remember to come.

Easter sunrise, yet! Of course, it’s the youth who are in charge of Sunrise, of all things, Teens? At sunrise? And they are responsible for the pancakes that follow, which means it’s a bunch of disgruntled parents who are having to ride herd on the fiasco…experience. They are all on the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee, and they’re going to be mad for a year.

Extra Easter morning services because twice-a-year Christians don’t have the sense to be ashamed of showing up when they’ve not been there since Christmas eve. And just try to remember their names as they shake hands afterward, when they’ve all changed their hair styles since Dec. 24.

And trying to convince a bunch of twice-a-year-believers to believe something that is unbelievable…

Of course, religious holidays are really an excuse to get people to buy stuff, and Easter is such a pale commercial holiday when compared to the gifts of Christmas and the candy of Halloween and the gluttony of Thanksgiving and the fireworks of Independence Day. [Yes, all those are religious holidays.]

I mean, how is a puny basket with some colored eggs, that are probably past their use-by date, going to compete with a stocking full of candy oranges and peppermint sticks?

I think, though, the bottom line, of why I like Christmas more than Easter, is this: I can understand--very easily, because I watch Call The Midwife on PBS--a baby born into the physical body and having a life in a limited physical world. It’s much harder to understand a man getting out of a physical body and having a life in an eternal non-physical world.

And when you’re old and tired, “eternal” life doesn’t sound all that great.

Don’t worry. I’m still singing He Lives with my morning songs. But I’m also already humming Away in a Manger. I trust that God loves me, regardless.

That’s the true story of why I prefer Christmas to Easter—God is already here, in this life, no need to wait for resurrection--not, as some might tell you, because December is a better time for mincemeat pie.

John Robert McFarland

PLEASE DON'T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I'M GONE [W, 4-8-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Questioner—PLEASE DON'T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I'M GONE [W, 4-8-26]

“No shirt, No shoes, No service.” “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

“No service” seems to be trending these days. “At his request, there will be no service.”

“Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone.” [1]

Jesus didn’t have a funeral, so maybe the folks who demand that we not talk about them when they’re gone are just trying to be like Jesus.

Jesus knew he was going to die. Had a pretty good idea when it would be. He didn’t say anything about a funeral service, though.

He did say, however, that we should talk about him after he was gone, every time we broke bread together.

Some folks sort of tried for a service for him. I mean, they used herbs and spices on his body, the customs of the day. A kindly man loaned his tomb. But that wasn’t really a funeral or burial. No crowd at the funeral home. No graveside service. No taped version of “Peace In the Valley.” Was it because Jesus knew he’d be resurrected, so a funeral was irrelevant?

My great, late friend, Jack Newsome, died during covid days. His wife said there would be a funeral later. But then she moved to California to live with a daughter. Then she died. No one to organize a funeral for Jack, which was very sad, for there were so many good stories to tell about Jack. So I decided to organize an online funeral for him, among his still-living friends. We emailed “Jack” stories back and forth. It was nice. It wasn’t adequate.

We knew Scott as a coffee shop owner, but he had once been a seminarian and student pastor. The day after Thanksgiving, a woman from his church came to see him. She told him that the day before, the whole family had gathered at her mother’s for a big Thanksgiving meal, as they always did. The food was on the table, everyone was seated, Grandma brought in the turkey, took her place at the end of the table, took a gun out of her apron pocket, put it in her mouth, and blew her brains out.

Was that a way of requesting no funeral service? Certainly no one would want to talk about it in public, the way we do at memorial services. “Remember the time that Grandma…”

Well, it was about having control, right up to the very last moment…and after, because who is going to forget a scene like that?

Most folks aren’t quite that controlling, but there are those who still want to have the last word, even when they’re dead.

Are they afraid of what people will say at a service, afraid they will be embarrassed? Or are they so humble they just want to save folks the trouble?

Anyway, Scott realized he had nothing to say to that woman. He knew right then, he said, that he was cut out to be a coffee shop guy, not a pastor.

I understand. I’ve done some funerals in those kinds of situations.

But isn’t the funeral for the survivors? Why do you even care? You won’t be there. It will make no diff to you.

And why stop there? If you are so eager to control everything that you say no service, why don’t you just go ahead and tell your loved ones that after you’re dead, no movie, no Florida vacation, no pickleball, no jalapenos?

I enjoyed thinking about my funeral when I thought I would die at 55--what songs folks would sing, what they would say. Not so much now that I’m so old that nobody will be there, since all my friends are either dead or unable to travel.

Maybe Jesus knew he would be resurrected so a funeral was irrelevant. Maybe those folks who say “no funeral for me” are just resurrection believers.

Anyway, if you’re thinking about telling folks, no services for me, think about it some more…and if you care about those you leave behind, remember why we say GOOD GRIEF! rather than NO GRIEF!

John Robert McFarland

1]. Sam H. Stept and Sydney Clare wrote it in 1930. Ethel Waters sang it first, in 1931.

 

THE 8TH DAY [M, 4-6-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Mutterings of An Old Curmudgeon—THE 8^TH DAY [M, 4-6-26]

 

I’d hate to be a Monday. Everybody hates Mondays,

Even cartoonist Jim Davis’ Garfield the cat. Especially Garfield. People ask, “Why does Garfield hate Mondays? For a cat, isn’t that day no different from any other?” But they underestimate Garfield. He is a theologian. He knows that Monday is not the first day of the week, or even the 7^th, Or the 2^nd, if you think of Sunday as the first. Or the third, if you’re a 7^th Day Adventist.

 

But there has to be a Monday. And it’s not the first day.

Garfield knows that Monday is the 8^th day, not the first. It is such a problematic day, because that’s when God let us into the mix, when the world really began after the creation, after God had rested.

Workers tell us that we should never buy a car built on a Monday. Or a house. Or potato salad. Monday is the day the line workers and the carpenters and the cooks are hung over.

I was having lunch with old friend, Bob Butts, one Monday. Our waitress brought the wrong food. He looked at our waitress and said, “Big weekend?” “I just got mixed up,” she said. Bob replied, “I taught college for 30 years. I know a hangover when I see it.”

Monday is such a bad day that preachers don’t even try to work then. What’s the use? We claim we take Monday as our day off because we are so tired from Sunday, and the week that went before it, but it’s really because nobody is going to pay attention to a preacher, or anything else, on a Monday.

Addicts know the 8^th day is dangerous. You’ve made it through a week and so you think you deserve a reward. No, not a sobriety pin. You think you deserve a drink, or snort, or bet. Everybody else celebrates that way. Why can’t I? If you can get through that 8^th day, well, that’s not just another day of staying clean. That’s an 8^th day of staying clean, regardless of where you are in the sobriety count you keep for your sponsor and your support group.

The eighth day is dangerous. Little chicks of pastel coloring to do something with. Same with a bunch of non-resurrected eggs. Chocolate smears everywhere. Bonnets and baskets to find a storage place. Trying to make sense of the gibberish the preacher used to try to explain resurrection… It’s enough to make a person say, “I’m not going back there until the end of the year…maybe the week before the end of the year…”

So, be extra careful today, this day after Easter, this Monday, this 8^th day. We’re riding high on sugar and ham and resurrection. A lot can go wrong in that condition. Just be patient with this 8^th day. There will be a first day tomorrow.

John Robert McFarland

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.

 

 

 

HOLY WEEK BIBLE BLUES [M, 3-30-26]

 

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Blues of An Old Man—HOLY WEEK BIBLE BLUES [M, 3-30-26]

 

“When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” (Mk 14:26, Mt 26:30, NRSV)

One of my favorite vocalists is the marvelous Kate Campbell. I think her “10,000 Lures” (with Mark Narmore) is the best musical presentation of the Gospel I’ve ever heard. And “The Last Song” (with Walt Aldridge) evokes Jesus’ last moments with his disciples in a haunting and memorable way. It’s hard not to imagine yourself sitting there at that last supper…

“After the supper was over and the table had been cleared away

When the last bottle was empty, there wasn’t much left to say

Jesus started humming an old tune, everybody fell right in

They sang the last song, the last song”

I would love to hear that song Jesus and the twelve sang. What were the words? Kate says:

“I reckon it was some kind of soul song, maybe kind of sad and slow

All about how we get weary, all about holding on

Only Jesus knew what was coming; still he never said a thing

He sang the last song, the last song”

What did Jesus’ voice sound like? Did he sing out, or did he sing harmony? You can learn a lot about a person by listening to them sing.

Singing is natural. Everyone does it. Until we learn the rules. That’s strange, isn’t it, rules for singing? Singing is as natural as breathing, but we don’t have rules for breathing.

I’m not talking about the rules for being sensitive and civil. In John Wesley’s “Directions for Singing,” he says: “Sing modestly. Do not bawl…” That’s a good rule, but it’s not really about singing; it’s about being respectful of others.

I’m talking about the rules for singing that are really rules for not singing, like “Don’t sing at the table.” Singing would be a lot better than most of what goes on at tables. Maybe Jesus started that last song because he was tired of hearing the disciples argue about which was going to be first in the kingdom.

Wouldn’t a rule like “Always sing at the table” be better? But no solos. The rule would be: If someone starts “Down in the Valley or “Jailhouse Rock,” everybody joins in. Oh, but there you run into those pesky rules again.

There are definite rules about singing the Blues. They include: 1.) Most Blues begin with: “Woke up this morning…” 2.) “I got a good woman” is a good way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.” 4.) The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch… ain’t no way out.

The Blues rules started me thinking about Bible Blues. Quite a few Bible folks had reason to sing the Blues. Samson, for instance.

I got a good woman but she cut off all my hair

She took the razor to it and finished up with Nair

I went to slay some Philistines, for laughing at the Lord

But when they saw my hairless head they all just looked real bored

I’m gonna shake these pillars, all so nice and round

I’m fixin for to die, but I’ll bring this building down

Or take Jonah:

Woke up this morning, and there weren’t no mail

Looked around, O Lord, I’m in the belly of a whale

I tell you boy, when God tells you to set sail

Whether it comes by phone or fax or by that new email

You go where the message says; don’t fail

Or you’ll end up in the belly of a big old whale

Well, maybe the first rule should be: Don’t do your own Bible blues…

John Robert McFarland

Don’t worry; the rest of the Holy Week meditations will be better.