SECOND COMING WAS LONG AGO, AND NOW [M, 8-24-20]

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

I’ve been reading things men write about their wives. “Other wives are not nearly as interesting as you are,” I told Helen.

“Their writers aren’t as good,” she said.

She has a point. A person’s story is more interesting if the storyteller is good. I used to serve on a committee of The Academy of Parish Clergy to pick The Parish Pastor of the Year. I quickly learned that we were not picking the PPY so much as we were picking the BNW of the Year. [Best Nomination Writer]

It makes me wonder how many times God sent Christ but nobody knew about it because that particular embodiment of Christ didn’t have good writers. Then god sent Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, and he had really good writers.

It would have been better if Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul et al had gotten at it earlier, so we’d have a more complete story, but they did well enough.

In fact, they did it so well that early Christians called what they wrote “the good story.” We usually translate it as “good news,” and that’s most excellent, but it was first called the good “story.”

That’s in part because it was not a writing to begin with. It’s like when comedians “write” a joke. Henny Youngman never wrote, “Take my wife… please,” like on a piece of paper. When a comedian “writes” a joke, it just means they think it up.

Stories first have tellers, and if they tell the story well enough, someone wants to write it down. Novelists simply write down stories they have already told in their heads.

We talk a lot about how Jesus is coming again. Maybe he has, lots of times, but just didn’t have good writers, so nobody knows about it.

My guess is that God is getting tired of this and is even now accepting resumes for folks to tell the good story of how Jesus has come again. Go ahead; apply. No experience necessary. You may be better than you know.

John Robert McFarland