Remembering the Fourth

The Fourth of July has special significance for me. Of course, I love the fireworks and the parades and the veterans in uniform, but the Fourth has a personal passion for me because my only son was nearly born on our nation's Bicentennial. Missed it just a few days, but right up until the end we thought he might be a Bicentennial baby.

I remember that Fourth like it was yesterday. It fell on Sunday that year, and being the Bicentennial of our nation's birth, the church I was pastoring at the time decided to move our services outdoors to a farm owned by one of our members, Albert Thormyer. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It was to be a great day of celebration with an old fashioned dinner on the grounds (literally!) and gospel singing and great preaching (mine, of course), and an afternoon of games and fun and food. The problem was, my wife was, in the biblical idiom, "great with child." The baby was already a month late, and Cheryl was uncomfortable to put it mildly. So, when I came home to tell her of the big Fourth of July celebration in the middle of a farm, in the middle of the summer, in the middle of the day, with no air conditioning, she just looked at me and said: "You are so dead!"

Well, when the Fourth came, I took Cheryl to the farm and parked her under THE shade tree with Margaret Harrell to look after her while I prepared to lead worship. They had placed a wagon near the front of the old farmhouse to serve as the "chancel" for our worship service. They put a piano and pulpit on it, and from there I led the service. When I got up to preach, I looked down at Cheryl and Margaret sitting under the tree. Margaret was fanning her trying to keep her from passing out in the heat. Margaret just looked up at me and mouthed the words, "You are so dead."

That was thirty-three years ago Saturday. We both survived, physically and matrimonially, and a few days later our only son was born – a Bicentennial baby…almost.

Years later, when I was teaching at Midwestern Seminary, Cheryl and I took a group of seminarians to the Windward Islands for a mission immersion course I was teaching. It was July; it was near the equator; the temperature and humidity were the same number (usually three of them!), most days. I convinced her to go with me by telling her it was going to be a Caribbean vacation. Sitting on the porch of the house where we were staying (a house with no air conditioning, of course), trying to capture what little breeze there was, Cheryl looked at me and said: "You know what today is?" I said, "Sure. It's the Fourth of July." She said: "You just never learn, do you."

God help me, I love the Fourth of July!

The church where I'm serving as Intentional Interim Pastor is having a picnic on the Fourth. Starts at 6:00 PM. Forecast calls for oppressive heat. (What genius figured that out?) If you can make it, we'd love to see you. Won't be hard to spot. Cheryl will be the one sitting under THE shade tree, fanning and muttering to herself: "He is so dead."

Me? I'll be sweating it out yet again on the Fourth of July...grateful just to be alive.

Miss Myrtle

Today is Miss Myrtle’s 101st birthday (she’s the one on the right). She was born June 24, 1908, during Roosevelt’s second term…that’s Teddy Roosevelt. We honored her in church on Sunday, sang Happy Birthday to her. She still gets around under her own horsepower, though her hearing isn’t what it once was. Four of her five children were there to celebrate with her, including her twin boys, and, of course, a gaggle of grandchildren, great grandchildren, great, great grandchildren, and nieces and nephews too numerous to name.

Miss Myrtle is remarkable both for the quantity of her life and for its quality. Raising five kids to adulthood in those days was an accomplishment in and of itself, and in their own way, each one made her proud. She survived two world wars, the Great Depression, nineteen presidents, and the 60’s! Family and faith have been the foundation and framework of her life, and it shows…still. The church where I am currently serving as interim pastor is celebrating its centennial this year. Miss Myrtle is a walking and talking centennial record of the congregation’s corporate life.

Of course, of course, everybody asks her what her secret to longevity is. She doesn’t like the question and usually won’t venture an answer, but when she does, it’s simply “the Lord,” and she means by that “the will of God.” It’s as though she and God made a deal: “I’ll give you this breath right now, and if you promise to give it back to me, I’ll give you another.” And she does!

Her family will tell you that she rarely, if ever, gets uptight or flustered or agitated. “She just takes it all in stride,” one of them told me Sunday. Though she loves everybody and enjoys most everybody, she is not, nor has she ever been, driven by a need to please everybody, even her own family. She seems inner, rather than outer, motivated. She operates out of some internal set of orders that can’t be co-opted, won’t be manipulated, and refuses to be exploited merely as an extension of someone else’s will. She may be the freest and most secure person I’ve ever met.

It was she, I think, of whom Paul was speaking in Galatians when he said: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” By freedom, Paul did not mean the kind of me-first-ism with which our culture is consumed – autonomy (self-directed). Nor did he mean the kind of addictive need to please everybody that degenerates into the codependent pathology of the “popularity junkies” – heteronomy (other-directed). By freedom he meant theonomy – the kind of God-directed security and liberation that comes from somewhere both inner and Other. It is submitting to the yoke that fits; it is finding the “part” for which you were made and playing it with all you’ve got; it is listening to the Voice that calls you by name. “For freedom Christ has set us free.”

For 101 years Miss Myrtle has worn the yoke, played the part, listened to that Voice. She reminds me of the story attributed to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel says that he dreamt one night that he died and stood before the Great Judge of all and was called to the Dock to give an account of what he had done with the great gift of life he had been given. Heschel says that, to his amazement, he was not asked about what he had done on such and such a day, or any other specific thing. He was not asked why he hadn’t done more with his gift…why, for example, he hadn’t been more like Moses or Maimonides, or David or Einstein. Instead, he was asked one and only one question: “Were you or were you not Abraham Joshua Heschel?” And Heschel says: “Then the Holy One, Blessed Be He, leaning forward to hear my response, said to me words that haunt me still. He said: “It’s important to me, you see, because you’re the only one of him I made!”

Happy Birthday, Miss Myrtle. You’re one of a kind.

May I Drop a Footnote?

I’ve been grading papers in my masters degree program classes, and I constantly run up against a recurring problem: students don’t know when and how to document their sources. The academic world insists on honesty and integrity in writing and, therefore, has come up with a system for vouchsafing it. It’s called the footnote. The footnote tells the reader that what follows is not his own, that he’s borrowed an idea from someone else, but in the interest of honesty and fairness, he’s acknowledging that fact.

With the move toward casualness (and irresponsibility) ubiquitous in our society, footnoting has become a lost art. Students now think that if they lift a line from someone else’s work without appropriate attribution, it’s quite all right. But in the academic world, it’s not “quite all right.” It’s plagiarism, which is "education speak" for stealing.

But move that same dishonesty into the pulpit, and it’s no longer deemed plagiarism; it’s just preaching. I’ve actually heard preachers say: “When a better sermon is preached, I’ll steal it!”

I know; it happened to me. It happened when a story I told in a sermon at First Baptist Church in Raleigh got lifted and used by someone else as though it had happened to them.

Years ago, when I was pastor of First Baptist Church of Raleigh, an incident happened to me that shook me to my soles. I came home and told Cheryl about it, it bothered me so. Some weeks later, looking for an illustration for a sermon that drove home the point that everything we do matters, I remembered the incident and told it in a sermon. The incident was this.

I went to the Save-A-Center near our home in Raleigh one night to pick up a few things for Cheryl – some coffee and breakfast cereal, stuff like that. I don’t know why, but it seems that they always wait until there are eleven people standing in every check out line to send the checkers out on their breaks. And so there we all were, standing in the check out line that wound its way down the aisle, round the frozen foods, past the breakfast cereals, to the paper towels.

At the front of the line was this woman with two little boys, looked like twin boys, about four or five years old. She looked tired. Watching those boys in the check out line, I got tired. They were into everything. “You boys leave that candy alone!” “Did you hear me?” “You better leave that gum alone!” I felt sorry for her.

She just had a few items to check through – a package of hot dogs, a few cans of something (I think it was green beans), a loaf of bread, and two cucumbers. When she got ready to pay, the checker said: “That’s $6.50 please.” The lady looked into her purse and took out two food stamp coupons, one in a five-dollar denomination and the other a one-dollar denomination. “I’ve only got six dollars.” she said. It was awkward. The checker was obviously embarrassed for her – we all were – and finally she said: “Uh…Ma’am, what do you want to do?” The boys were still picking at the candy and chewing gum and taking all the magazines off the shelf. This lady was so embarrassed and now she was panicked, desperate to do anything to get out of there. I was standing right behind her in line, watching all this, trying to keep out of those little boys’ line of fire, jingling a pocket full of change nervously.

I started to reach into my pocket and take out 50 cents for the cucumbers and offer to pay for them myself: “Ma'am, would you let me buy those cucumbers for you?” I almost had the words out too, when I started thinking: “You know, what if she’s. . . ? I mean, she doesn’t know me. What if she thinks I’m patronizing her? ‘Yeah right. The busy businessman condescends to help the poor woman. Thanks, but no thanks. I can do just fine all by myself, thank you very much.’ I mean, I didn’t want to be offensive. Besides, she’s a woman; I’m a man. What if she thinks I’m hitting on her! Yeah, wouldn’t that look great in the Raleigh News & Observer: ‘First Baptist Pastor Soliciting in Supermarket!’ Besides, it wasn’t any of my business. You can’t just lose control like that, can you?”

Finally, the woman said to the checker: “Put the cucumbers back." I thought: “Oh no, lady. Don’t do that.”

It was only a minute or two, but it seemed like an hour! I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. My God, I didn’t say anything!

I felt real bad. I felt real bad about it.

Well, I put my coffee and cereal on the counter and threw down a twenty-dollar bill. The checker sacked my stuff, looked at me and said: “I’m sorry you had to wait.” I muttered, “That’s all right.” Then, I gathered my sack and walked out into the night air. But as the doors opened in front of me, I had this…this feeling that somewhere, Someone was watching.

That was the story. I’ve used that story repeatedly through the years to illustrate the point that there are no “blow off moments;” that everything matters; that somehow, somewhere, Someone is watching…keeping score.

And then, some years ago, a former colleague at the college where I was a dean (you know who you are!) heard me tell that story and decided to tell it in a sermon as though it had happened to him. What he didn’t know was that I was preaching at the same church the following week! When I got to the point in the sermon where I started telling that story, I noticed a stunned look on the congregation’s face. Then, when the service was over, the associate pastor dropped the other shoe. He told me how my colleague had preached at that church the week before and had told the same story as though it was his! Fred Craddock, to whom this happens a lot, quips: “There’s a Greek word for this kind of thing. It’s hard to bring it over into English. But roughly translated, it means “lying!”

And it’s so unnecessary! All you have to do is to drop a footnote in the sermon. Just say, “A friend of mine tells this story…” and you’re off and running without anyone believing that you’re talking about you. The story is just as effective, and you haven’t violated the eighth commandment.

Footnotes in sermons. In the interest of honesty; in the interest of integrity; in the interest of not shaming the Gospel we preach…I recommend them.

Three Little Words

Today is our 39th wedding anniversary. Thirty-nine years is a long time to live at close range with another human being. We’ve had our ups and downs. But what’s made it work all these years is, I think, three little words we learned to say to each other early on in our married life. No, not those; another three. But I jump ahead.

Years ago now, when I was a graduate student at Southern Seminary, I was invited one Sunday morning to be the “supply preacher,” that’s what they called it, at a rural church south of Louisville. The gentleman who made the invitation had given me directions to the church over the telephone. The church was located in a small farming community about a hundred miles from Louisville, about 25 miles off the interstate. When I told him that I wasn’t from these parts and that I hoped we’d have no trouble finding the church, he said: “Oh don’t worry. It’s real easy to find.” Yeah, right. Famous last words.

Well, Cheryl and I started out early Sunday morning heading for that little church. It was a beautiful fall morning and the drive down Interstate 65 was delightful. We took the exit the man had told us to take and already our problems started. He had told us to get off the exit and turn left, but he had neglected to tell us that this exit ramp accessed not one but two parallel roads, one a state road and one a county road. Cheryl thought we should take the state highway, but I was sure that the county road sounded more like the road he'd described to me. It was 10:00 and he had said that when we exited the Interstate, we were about a 30-minute drive from the church. Cheryl and I had only been married a few years at the time, but already I had noticed and documented that her sense of direction was hopelessly flawed. “We’ll take the county road,” I said.

She said: “I’m sure you told me that he said to take the state highway.”

I said: “When you drive, do I tell you which way to go?”

She said: “So what’s your point?”

We took the county road. After about fifteen minutes, the pavement began to run out and we found we were traveling on gravel. I have to admit that that concerned me, but then he’d said it was a rural community.

Cheryl said: “This doesn’t look right.”

I said: “Sure it’s right. Just wait. The town will be right around this next bend.”

She said: “If we turn around now, we’ll have enough time to get back to the interstate and take the other road. You know the other road, don’t you? It’s the one I told you to take in the first place.”

You know, I was beginning to see a whole new side to my young bride. She was so sweet and kind when I married her.

Then we passed a filling station. Cheryl said: “Hey, I’ve got a novel idea. Why don’t you stop and ask directions!”

You know, now that I think back on it, the whole time we dated she never once used sarcasm when she spoke to me.

I said: “Ask directions? Ask directions? This is Kentucky, woman! Dan’el Boone’s home state! You don’t ask directions here! You just keep the sun over your shoulder and your jaw set!”

About a quarter to eleven, we were deep into pastureland. The only thing living and moving other than us was the livestock out grazing in the fields.

She said: “Well Dan’el, don’t look now but I think you’re lost!” Smart Alec.

I was fuming. We passed a donkey out in one of the fields. Never looking at her I said: “One of your relatives?”

She said: “Yeah, on my husband’s side.”

It was 11:15 when I finally turned the car around and, spewing gravel in my wake, I headed back. They were just coming out of the church to go home when we pulled up. A man walked over to the car. I got out more red faced than any farmer there. The man whose voice I recognized said: “Purdes called us about quarter to eleven (Purdes, he runs the Sinclair station way out on the county road) and said some folk with Louisville plates just drove past his station and that we’d better go on with the service because the preacher was gonna be late.”

It was a quiet ride home…very quiet. The air was so thick you could trowel it. Finally, breaking the silence, I said to my bride the three hardest words one person ever has to say to another: “I was wrong.”

Three little words.

We’ve said them a lot to each other in the intervening years, more than either of us wishes we had had to. But they’re good words nonetheless…strong words…words you can build a marriage…and a life…around. I oughta know; I’m an expert.

Third Time's a Charm*: Thoughts on the Trinity

Sunday is Trinity Sunday, a time when the Christian church gives un-divided (pun intended), albeit brief, attention to a doctrine whose unpopularity is rivaled only by the Seventh Commandment. There are two reasons, chiefly. It’s a difficult idea to contemplate. Most of us want our religion, like our instruction manuals, simple. And that leads to the second reason the Trinity is not a very popular doctrine among Christians; namely, it’s just not regarded as being very “practical.” It fails the “so what?” test for most people.

With regard to the first of those (it’s complex), about the only help I can give you is: “Get over it.” We’re talking Trinity here. If you want simple, join the “Flat Earth Society.”

Now, I admit that most of the “helpful analogies” I’ve heard to “explain” the Trinity aren’t really very helpful. For example, you’ve heard the one about water being solid, liquid, and gas, and yet still H2O. True, but not at the same time! And therein lies the most common misconception about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity – modalism, the belief that God cannot exist in more than one “mode” at a time. This error smuggles in the notion that because you and I live in time, God does too.

C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity (“Time and Beyond Time”) does the best job of which I know at dispelling the notion of modalism when thinking about the Trinity.

Most people fall prey to this idea because, he writes, they are “…assuming that Christ’s life as God was in time, and that His life as the man Jesus in Palestine was a shorter period taken out of that time – just as my service in the army was a shorter period taken out of my total life. And that is how most of us perhaps tend to think about it. We picture God living through a period when His human life was still in the future: then coming to a period when it was present: then going on to a period when He could look back on it as something in the past. But probably these ideas correspond to nothing in the actual facts. You cannot fit Christ’s earthly life in Palestine into any time-relations with His life as God beyond all space and time. It is really, I suggest, a timeless truth about God that human nature, and the human experience of weakness and sleep and ignorance, are somehow included in His whole divine life. This human life in God is from our point of view a particular period in the history of our world (from the year AD one till the Crucifixion). We therefore imagine it is also a period in the history of God’s own existence. But God has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one. For, of course, to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it has already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak about it. God forbid we should think God was like that. Even we may hope not to be always rationed in that way.”

But perhaps the most compelling reason the Trinity has fallen on hard times in the Christian church is due to the fact that it’s simply not regarded as being very “relevant” anymore. My friend, Tom Long, documents the shift from modernity to post-modernity in terms of the central question on the minds of most listeners when they come to hear a sermon. In modernity, the listener came with one central question for the preacher: “Is it true?” Today, the question has changed. Nobody today wants to know whether or not what the preacher says is true; rather, what they want to know is, “Does it work?” Relevance has replaced truth – utility has replaced veracity – as the central value of life and the supreme subject of the sermon. In such a culture and context, Trinity seems like so much “playing in theological sandboxes.”

But let me say a word about it. At the heart of the Christian idea of Trinity is the notion that diversity is better than uniformity. C. S. Lewis says: “Even within the Holy One Himself, it is not sufficient that the Word should be God, it must also be with God…deity introduces distinction within itself so that the union of reciprocal loves may transcend mere arithmetical unity or self identity.” There is a “Holy Community” within God that expresses itself not in spartan singularity but in rich complexity. There is something about this Creator that values diversity over uniformity. Indeed, nothing in Creation ever happens “again.” Everything is, in its own way and from the Creator’s perspective, unique.

And that may be the best portal we have into the nature of the Trinity – this quality or characteristic of the Divine that prefers complexity over simplicity, diversity over singularity. Rather than the H2O analogy, Lewis suggests this one. When you move in just one dimension, the simplest reality is a single straight line. It has length but neither width nor depth. But when you add the second dimension, the simplest reality is not, as we might have expected, two lines. Rather, it is four lines – a square or rectangle. Add a third dimension and the simplest reality becomes - wait for it! – six squares – a cube. That is, the deeper you move into reality, the more complex it becomes, and the complexity increases geometrically and exponentially, not just arithmetically. Logic dictates, assuming that creation reflects something of the character and nature of the Creator, that the same must be true of God. The deeper you move into the reality of God, the more complex He becomes. On one level, He is Creator. Move deeper and you will find that He is both Creator and creature (God the Son). Move deeper still and you will discover that He is not only outside His creation but inside it as well (God the Spirit). Trinity – God the Father, Son, and Spirit.

And in a world where the forces of conformity and “group think” and coercion (both from the Right and the Left) are working night and day to turn the marvelous uniqueness that is you and I into mindless, cookie-cutter automata, I can’t think of a more important doctrine for the Christian preacher to preach this Sunday than the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. As Lewis says, “Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently?”

One thing more. Does Trinity exhaust the complexity and diversity of God? If we could move deeper still into the Reality that is God, would we yet find infinitely more richness and complexity? God only knows.

*The origin of the phrase is, as they say, "shrouded in obscurity;" however, at least some linguistic etiologists suggest that its origins may lie in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.