THY KINGDOM COME… [F, 8-30-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THY KINGDOM COME… [F, 8-30-24]

 

I feel a bit like my life has been shortchanged, since Kingdomtide and I were born the same year, and Kingdomtide certainly hasn’t gotten much respect. Fortunately, I did not die along with Kingdomtide in… well, it’s never been given an official death date. Indeed, much like I, Kingdomtide just sort of keeps puttering and sputtering along.

From 1937 on, all the Sundays between Trinity Sunday [usually early June] and Advent [late November] in the ecclesial calendar were designated as Kingdomtide. Well, yes and no. Denominations never agreed on whether or when to celebrate Kingdomtide. Like the temperance movement, and church support for the labor movement, Kingdomtide was mostly Methodist.

Methodism was always primarily about action rather than theology. John Wesley said, “If your heart is with my heart, then give me your hand.” We don’t have time to worry about theological differences. Let’s get on with building the Kingdom of God on earth. Let’s feed the hungry and visit the sick and do unto others as we want them to do unto us. And to be sure we don’t forget anything, let’s do it on a weekly and yearly schedule. Methodically.

That is what Kingdomtide was supposed to remind us to do—build the Kingdom of God on earth. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We were not just to pray it; we were to do it. {Build it and they will come?}

But we rarely celebrate Kingdomtide now, even in Methodist churches. The church calendar just gives us a whole lot of “The {Numbered} Sunday after Pentecost,” all the way to Advent.

The liturgical color for Kingdomtide is green, a color that symbolizes growth, at the end of a season [summer] when the world is as green as it’s likely to get. It follows Pentecost, the birth of the church, so green can be for growing the church as well as bringing in The Kingdom of God. Like Kingdomtide, itself, though, I think the church bureaucrats chose green for Kingdomtide just because it was the last color left over after the more popular church seasons got their pick.

Traditionally—if anything started in 1937 can be old enough to have a tradition--Kingdomtide started on the Sunday nearest August 31, the Festival/Feast of Christ the King, so that it had 13 Sundays before the start of Advent.

Yes, the season of Kingdomtide is much neglected, but we Kingdom-building aficionados aren’t bothered. We still get top billing in that prayer everybody prays every Sunday.

John Robert McFarland

 

WALK-UP MUSIC [W, 8-28-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—WALK-UP MUSIC [W, 8-28-24]

 

The recent Republican and Democrat political conventions, and political rallies in general, have focused attention, at least some of it, on “walk on” music, or “walk up” music, as we say in baseball.

Perhaps one of the most familiar, for old people, is “Happy Days Are Here Again,” used by FDR and Democrats in their conventions as The Great Depression ended.

I know most of the songs the Republicans currently use. They’ve been around long enough for an old man to be familiar with them. It’s different with the Democrats. They play current stuff--songs with strange names by singers with even stranger names. I have probably heard those songs, accidentally, but I don’t know their names. I have heard of singers like Megan Thee Stallion, but anyone who has not been interviewed by David Letterman is, to me, unknown.

It's always fun to see if I can recognize the chosen song as a ball player comes to bat. Joey Votto, the long-time first baseman of the Cincinnati Reds, used Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” as his walkup music. No one knows why, except that Joey does things his own way. And who doesn’t like Dolly?

One of my best baseball music experiences was with Aunt Gertrude at a Reds game back in Riverfront Stadium days. They announced that it was the umpire’s birthday, and the park organist played “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” [“He’s the baddest man in town…”] Aunt Gertrude recognized it immediately and laughed so hard.

Anyway, I got to thinking about what song I want for walk-up music as I ascend the golden stairs to the heavenly reaches.

Something funny? White and Nerdy, by Weird Al Yankovic? God does have a sense of humor, after all. I mean, look at bananas and platypuses. You want God in a good mood when you get there.

Or something placating? Amazing Grace, By John Newton? I have been a big sinner, after all, and it’s okay to remind God about forgiveness.

 Something that summarizes how I have lived my life? Take Me Out to the Ball Game, by Jack Norwith and Albert Von Tilzer? We do have a responsibility to be honest, after all. And we know baseball is the most heavenly of games, all that emphasis on getting to home and such.

Well, I’d better think a bit longer. But, while we’re at it, what’s your walk-up song?

John Robert McFarland

Okay, I’ll probably go with I Know the Lord Has Laid His Hand on Me. God does need reminders sometimes.

ON BEING WISE [M, 8-26-28]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—ON BEING WISE [M, 8-26-28]

 

As we gathered for Crumble Bums [1] recently, Charlie told me that I am the wisest person he knows. I was dumbfounded into silence, a very rare condition for me.

If I’m truly wise, I’ll just quit writing right now. It’s quite possible I didn’t even hear him correctly. Old ears, you know. More to the point, I don’t know what it means to be wise. But I’ll keep writing, which probably proves Charlie wrong about the level of my wisdom.

Our pastor recently preached on wisdom, using the passage in Kings about the wisdom of Solomon. In preparation for that sermon, he asked, on Facebook, for people to name the wisest person they had known. Charlie said he had not put anything on Facebook, but would have named me.

That’s humbling, because Charlie is a polymath, a student of and participant in everything—science, art, religion, politics, family, environment, baseball, health, society… He usually knows what he’s talking about.

My initial reaction, of course, was to make some smartass reply. “You need to get some better friends.” That sort of thing. But that didn’t seem appropriate. I didn’t want to insult my friend’s intelligence. I was wise enough not to say…

…oh, good grief! How can you tell if someone is wise? Especially yourself?

Well, first you have to figure out what wisdom is. There are a whole lot of definitions of wisdom, cluttering around C. H. Spurgeon’s statement that wisdom is “…the right use of knowledge.”

I have some knowledge. Lots of years of higher education. Lots of reading. Lots of thinking. But much knowledge is no guarantee of right use. Smart and wise aren’t the same thing. We talk about “The three wise men,” but is it smart to leave Orientar and take off across the desert without knowing where you’re going and only a star to guide you? And smoking a rubber cigar, yet? It wasn’t smart, but it turned out to be wise.

Joseph Goebbels was smart. He had a PhD, which he used to espouse Nazism and the eradication of Jews. Indeed, 32% of Philosophy professors in Germany joined the Nazi party. David Starr Jordan, early president of Indiana University [1885-1891], was smart. But he used his intelligence to espouse eugenics, “proving” some races, like blacks, to be inferior.

Good grief! [Again.] Shouldn’t philosophy professors and university presidents be wise?

Theological sociologist Tex Sample tells of how he grew up hearing his father say that Will Rogers was the best philosopher in the world. When Tex went to college, his advisor suggested he sign up for a philosophy course. “Sure,” said Tex. “Give me all of that you’ve got.” He was not amused when he had to deal with the esoteric theories of Aristotle and Plato instead of the pithy humorisms of Rogers. [2] But it turned out to be a wise move.

Rogers didn’t have much education. He claimed that “All I know, I read in the newspapers.” But most folks in his day would agree with Sample’s father.

So, how do you take knowledge—be it higher ed or only what you read in the newspapers—and use it rightly, become wise?

According to Reinhold Niebuhr, via his “Serenity Prayer,” you should pray for the courage to change what you can, and the serenity to accept what you cannot change. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

Well, perhaps the wisest thing is just to admit that you don’t know what wisdom is.

More importantly to me right now, what’s the wise way to react if someone calls you wise?

Perhaps the wisest thing is to accept it and say “Thank you.”

John Robert McFarland

1] Five good-looking, mature gentlemen, who gather for coffee--named for our original point of assembly, Crumble Bakery.

2] Currently relevant: “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

 

MAKING YESTERDAY’S COLUMN CLEARER [Sun, 8-25-24=

BEYOND WINTER: The Slightly Relevant Corrections of an Old Man—MAKING YESTERDAY’S COLUMN CLEARER [Sun, 8-25-24=

 

I should have made a better distinction in yesterday’s column between the ecumenical movement and the church union movement. [Might be better to read the 8-24 column first if you haven’t yet.]

“Ecumenicity” is simply being open to those with other traditions, cooperating across denominational lines. “Church union” is merging all the denominations into one. Ecumenism works wherever folks meet one another with open minds and good hearts. No one has yet figured out how to make church union work.

The people in the Christian student movement always wanted to be, rightly, on the cutting edge of moving Christianity forward. That’s why the National Student Christian Federation [NSCF] was created, to unite the denominational student movements. The theory was that we would be a stronger force for good if we were united in one organization, speaking with one voice. And that we would be a witness to the old people [anyone over 22] in the churches, leading the way, teaching them how to do real Christian ecumenicity by uniting organizationally.

We did not understand that we could be united in mission without being united in organization. We definitely did not understand that organizational union might actually be a detriment to mission.

It was, though. The NSCF took in the Methodist Student Movement along with the student movement organizations of all the major denominations, and several of the smaller denominations. But it didn’ t work, for the reasons I listed yesterday. It lasted only 8 years. When it folded, there were no denominational student movements left. In the attempt to be together, we killed the whole student movement. The student generation was finished.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t campus ministry units left at various universities. But they were no longer part of a movement.

The church in general, though, the Body of Christ, learned from that. We learned that we can be ecumenical in spirit without being united in organization.

Ecumenicity has gathered strength in the last several years, denominations agreeing to recognize the baptism of others, sharing in communion.

Yes, the church is waning in attendance and participation and influence. But we are gaining in identity. Perhaps the hymn of Peter Scholtes will yet sing true, that “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ECUMENICAL MISTAKE & THE STUDENT MOVEMENT [Sat, 8-24-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—ECUMENICAL MISTAKE & THE STUDENT MOVEMENT [Sat, 8-24-24]

 

I have tried for some time to find a name for my generation in the church. In sociology, we were “the silent generation,” in politics “The Eisenhower generation.” Both of those designations suggest that we were not very important, did not make much of a difference. But that is not true in the church. In the church, we were the student movement generation. For Methodists, we were the Methodist Student Movement [MSM] generation. The student movement made a difference.

It’s time for college classes to start again. I’m thinking about campus days, both as a student and as a campus minister, part of the MSM.

The MSM grew out of and included the Wesley Foundations [WF]. The first WF was started by James Baker at the U of IL in 1913. Wesley Foundations were the start of Methodist campus ministry at the burgeoning public [state] universities.

Today, the name Wesley Foundation doesn’t carry the meaning Bishop Baker meant for it. “Wesley” was not just because John Wesley created Methodism and began its spread throughout the world. [1] Methodism started as a student movement, with John & Charles Wesley and their friends at Oxford. “Foundation” now usually means some money-raising, capital investment arm of an institution. To Baker, it meant “open,” available to all students, regardless of denomination.

WFs were the Methodist presence at public universities. Methodist colleges had chaplains and were automatically part of an unofficial Methodist student movement. Along with the WFs, in 1938, they officially became The MSM. 

The MSM was created in 1938, in anticipation of the 1939 merger of The Methodist Protestant Church, The Methodist Episcopal Church, and The Methodist Episcopal Church South. Because of The Great Depression and the lead-up to another world war, especially the appeal of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a new kind of college student was emerging. Needed was a new kind of witness to students, and new possibility of witness by students.

My college and early WF ministry days [1955-1974] were during the apex of the MSM. We had the acclaimed “motive” magazine. [Yes, it was lower case.] We had state and regional organizations. We had quadrennial conferences that brought thousands of students together from all over the world, to hear Christian leaders like D.T. Niles and Martin Luther King, Jr., and to plan together how we could change the world for the better.

But then came the well-intentioned but unrealistic “ecumenical movement.”

In 1969, the MSM disbanded in favor of ecumenicity, giving way to the NSCF, National Student Christian Foundation, a part of The World Student Council Foundation [WSCF]. The NSCF existed only from 1959 to 1967, because ecumenism was a non-starter. Everybody gave it theological lip service, but nobody wanted it, and nobody could say they didn’t want it.

We all had the mistaken notion that ecumenicity meant organizational union.

Ecumenicity was the watchword of the time. Eugene Carson Blake, who was General Secretary of The World Council of Churches, made a serious effort, starting in 1960, actually to reunite Protestant Christianity. His efforts resulted in The Consultation on Church Union, which tried for 40 years to effect the merger of ten mainline denominations, the Methodists and Presbyterians being the largest. Not a chance.

Ecumenism was a wonderful theological idea. It was a stupid sociological idea. People who have power don’t let it go, and any kind of merger—school, business, government, organization, family--means that some folks who have power will have to give it up. We merge only if forced, or if we see the chance for more power for ourselves.

I hope that wasn’t why I refused to let my WF join the Ecumenical Campus Ministry at IL State U, but it probably had something to do with it.

 The campus ministers of other denominations at ILSU had small, struggling student groups. They thought merging those groups, along with The WF--which was a large, very active group--would result in a big, vibrant campus ministry.

I knew enough group psychology to understand that the merger of a bunch of small, struggling groups results in one small, struggling group. There is a psychological limit to group size. So I refused the invitation to join, which resulted in quite a bit of calumny. I was called the worst name you could possibly have in those days, “anti-ecumenical.”

The other groups merged. Five small, struggling groups became one small struggling group. They don’t exist at all anymore. The WF, on the other hand, which goes now by the name of Merge--because that speaks more to current students, with WF in the small print on their publicity—is still going strong. [2]

Christian “unity” is not a matter of organizational union. It is simply accepting one another as Christians, even though we have different polities and traditions. Yes, even if we have different theologies. There is no reason—except human sinfulness—that we can’t share communion and accept the baptism of one another.

There is one true ecumenism: “They’ll know we are Christians by our love…”

John Robert McFarland

1] Wesley’s famous statement, “The world is my parish.”

2] They do, though, need some new electronic equipment, [the current lingua franca of students] so if you’d like to make a contribution, send it to Merge, 211 N. School St, Normal, IL 61761.

            While I’m at it, if you were a part of The WF at Indiana U and would like to make a contribution to Jubilee, which is the only Methodist campus ministry at IU now, you can make out a check to First UMC, 219 E. 4^th St, Bloomington, IN 47408 and mark it for Jubilee.

 

BC = BEFORE CHARLES [R, 8-22-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—BC = BEFORE CHARLES [R, 8-22-24]

 

Yes, I’ve written about this before. It was pivotal for me and Helen and our friends and generation. But I just saw the obit for Charles Morris in the Bloomington, IL newspaper…

Charles was a math professor at IL State U. When hired, he had just completed his PhD in math at U of IL. A prestigious achievement. Not surprising, though. He had graduated as valedictorian of his high school class when he was only sixteen.

What was surprising, though, was his hire by IL State, a former “normal” school—meaning a teachers’ college—and hence the name of its town, Normal, Illinois, which is about as flat a name as you can get, almost as flat as the prairie it sits on. Normal was a totally white town. No blacks were allowed to live in town. Charles and Jeanne were black.

His obit says that he and Jeanne were part of a team that bought housing in Normal for black students, but it doesn’t mention that they were the first black family that got to buy a house in Normal themselves. Up to then, blacks had to live in the twin city of Bloomington.

Yes, the exceptionally bright Professor Morris could teach students at ILSU, with his fancy PhD, but could Charles and Jeanne walk the same streets those students used? The town council said that the answer was “no.”

Some of us Normal people disagreed. We said the normal practice should be “open housing.” We set out to make Normal normal.

We signed petitions. We talked on radio shows. We made signs. We gave lectures. Helen and numerous other church ladies had coffees in their homes for neighborhood women. One of us even preached a sermon advocating open housing, through the strange mechanism of claiming it was good to keep black people out. “What will happen,” I asked, “if we let PhDs from the U of Illinois live here? Why, then we’d have to let Purdue people in, too.” Nobody else thought that was nearly as funny as this IU grad did, but it had the desired effect, of stirring people up, and giving Methodists permission to favor open housing, since one of their preachers advocated it, however backwardly.

The problem, though, was that I was just one of the Methodist preachers involved, and “the least of these,” to make it worse. I was just a campus minister, which hardly qualified as clergy, since I worked with students, always the most despised and disregarded group in a city where the residents make their money off of them.

The really important Methodist minister was Bill Hammit, Sr. He was the Director of The Baby Fold, our child care/orphanage ministry in central Illinois, and, much more importantly, an elected member of the Town Council.

Through many interviews, the members of the Council had made their views known. One was a realtor, a neighbor where we lived, who espoused the trite and popular excuse that black people would lower the values of Normal homes. The result of those known views was that the Council was evenly divided. But there was one more member.

All the Council members had made their views known, that is, except for Bill Hammit. It had become clear that when he made his decision, it would be the deciding vote.

One day, he came to First Methodist and called into session Gordon White, Senior Minister, and Clarence Young, Associate Minister, and the rabble-rousing John Robert McFarland, Campus Minister.

“You are my pastors,” he said. “Tell me how I should vote.” With one voice, we replied, “You have to vote for open housing.”

“But you’re preachers,” Bill replied. “People will say it’s easy for you to take that approach because you live in parsonages, so you don’t have to worry about the values of your homes going down.”

“Not me,” said Gordon. “I own my own home.” “Not me,” said Clarence. “I’m building my own home right now.” “Not me,” I said. “The Wesley Foundation doesn’t have a parsonage, so I have a twenty-year mortgage.”

“Well,” said Bill, “I guess I have to vote for open housing.”

I felt very good about being part of the start of open housing in Normal, but it still rankles me that I did not push back against Bill’s reasoning. As Christians, as clergy, it was our responsibility to do the right thing, without the smoke screen of “Well, it will ruin our house values, too.”

Charles Morris bought a house in Normal. He lived in it until a few years before his death, when he moved to a retirement center. He had a significant and useful career, rising to be VP of ILSU.

No one even thought to put into his obit, though, that there was a time before Charles and Jeanne that black folks could not live in Normal.

That's normal now.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

OPEN HEARTS [T, 8-20-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of an Old Man—OPEN HEARTS [T, 8-20-24]

 

Our neighbor brought us banana bread yesterday. She is going to have heart surgery, so she needs to stay busy. They are going to cut it open and replace some stuff. She is understandably anxious about it.

She need not be, though. Heart surgery is so routine anymore. It will be at the drive-thru window at the hospital. Or maybe they’ll give her a home kit so she can do it herself, if the surgeon wants to play golf that day. Heart surgery is so ho-hum now.

Not when they dug into the heart of Jack Lamb, the funeral director in my home town. They were going to do the first open-heart surgery ever. In Boston. They had interviewed several people who were desperate for heart help, but they didn’t find anyone with the right personality. For this unknown territory, they needed somebody who was either not afraid or didn’t care or felt that he could beat anything at its own game.

“Old Doc Ropp,” as distinct from “Young” Doc Ropp, heard about it and called them up and said, “Have I got the right guy for you. His heart is terrible, but he’s not afraid, he doesn’t care, and he figures he can beat anybody at anything. I can get him to Boston.”

Despite his profession, Jack was no Digger O’Dell. [1] Jack was a cockeyed optimist, with the confidence of a banty rooster. The folks in Boston interviewed him and judged that he had the right sort of heart in his head. [2]

I got to know Jack, as much as you ever get to know the parents of your friends. Dave Lamb was a year behind me in school, but we worked on the school newspaper together, topping out when I was Editor and Dave was Art Editor and drew the “Super Snooper” comic strip for the paper, which was not easy, since it had to be done with a stylus on a stencil for a mimeograph machine. We were newspaper friends who became hanging out friends, so I was sometimes at their house, which was part of the funeral home, as was the usual in those days. Jack liked to entertain us by sitting down at the funeral organ and playing current hits, like “Mr. Sandman,” by ear. [3]

Our neighbor owes a lot to the surgeons who have pioneered heart surgery, and made so much of it seem so simple now, almost like treating a cold. But she owes a lot to Jack Lamb, too.

Jack wasn’t just an optimist. He was a man of faith. He believed in life, and he believed that God was at work in this life. That’s why he had no fear, and didn’t care, and believed he could beat down any bad deal life threw at him.

His heart was bad, but his heart was just right.

John Robert McFarland

1] We would laugh so hard when Digger would say, mournfully, “Well, I’d better be shoveling off,” on “The Life of Riley” radio show back in the 1940s.

2] You won’t find this on the internet. But Jack’s surgery was in 1950, before the instances that are recounted on the sites Google brings up. You can’t trust historians fully. They claim that Paul Molitor’s 37 consecutive game hit streak was the longest since Joe DiMaggio’s 56. Not so; Pete Rose had 44.

3] When Dave married Maggie Jepson at the end of their college days, he asked me to officiate at their wedding. Fifty years later, they made the trip all the way from Barrington, IL to Iron Mountain, MI just so we could celebrate together.

Even though heart surgery is routine now, it's okay to pray for our neighbor. Her name is Stacy.