HOW TO BE A CHRISTIAN WITHOUT BEING HUMAN [F, 7-31-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Days of Pandemic Winter

 

HOW TO BE A CHRISTIAN WITHOUT BEING HUMAN     [F, 7-31-20]

 

Early in my career, Charles Merrill Smith, one of my preacher colleagues in Bloomington-Normal, IL, had a big hit with a book entitled How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious. It was a spoof, or parody, or some such, of course, but I was a campus minister and not “a real preacher,” and as I thought about that concept—being religious without being religious—I latched onto the idea, as though it were my own--as ideas always seem to be when we are new to them--that God did not send Christ to make us Christians, to make us religious, but to make us human. I’m certainly not the first person who ever thought of that, but, apparently I was the first one who had preached it from the pulpit of First Methodist in Normal, IL…

 

…the ethic of Jesus was not confined to Christians but good for everyone, in any society. Do unto others… Turn the other cheek… Go the second mile… Don’t store up where moth and rust corrupt…

 

…you didn’t have to be a Christian to do the Jesus lifestyle. It was the quintessentially and necessary human lifestyle.

 

It seemed to me to be a bedrock idea of Christian faith, but quite a few church members were upset by it. At one point, it was reported to me that one of them had said, “The trouble with McFarland, he keeps talking about love, but he’s forgotten about Christianity.”

 

I thought that was both tragically sad and hysterically funny. I was too naïve to see it then, of course, but they were right to be upset. Yes, they were upset for wrong reasons, but for some good ones, too.

 

When we lived in Sterling, IL, our pastor was Joe Snider. His wife, Paula, was Jewish. Joe and Paula had been married for 40 years. They met at Bethel College, in TN. Paula was a NYC girl, and wanted to go to NYU, but couldn’t get in. Her parents saw an ad in the newspaper [remember them?] for Bethel College, and thought it was Jewish, Beth El. She was a frosh, in a history class, discussing WWII, in the 1950s, when the professor spoke of how the Nazis made lamp shades out of the skin of Jews and the only problem was that they hadn’t done more of it.

Can you imagine how that must have made her feel, an 18 year old girl from the big city, already feeling out of place in McKenzie, TN?

 

Joe, a pre-theological student who had grown up in the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, Bethel’s denomination, met her as she sat crying on the steps in front of the classroom building after that class.

 

When we met them, they’d been married for 40 years. Paula was supportive of Joe’s ministry. She brought dishes to the potlucks. She dressed up for Trunk or Treat for Halloween. But she was still Jewish. She once told Helen, “Good grief, I’ve been to church three weeks in a row. I’ve got to skip one or people will think I’ve converted.”

 

But as a Christian preacher, Joe used more Christ language than anyone I’ve ever known. If he mentioned Jesus, even casually, it was almost always the full load, “Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.”

 

I asked him about that. He said, “He is OUR Lord and Savior, we who profess Christ.”

 

It’s possible to be a human without being part of the Christian story, but you have to be part of some story that is human. I’m not sure I understand this theologically in my old age, the way I thought I did in my younger days, but I feel that it is true—the Jesus story is the human story, but not everyone must claim the Jesus story as their own in order to be human. But everyone needs to be human.

 

John Robert McFarland