One Hit Wonder?

“The Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.” Isaiah 60:2

In my hometown, the Fireman’s Carnival is undoubtedly the biggest event of the year.  It’s been held on the first week in August as long as anyone can remember.  Thousands flock to the muddy grounds outside town for the ferris wheel and the country ham sandwiches, some low stakes games of chance  and the goldfish booth that finances the junior-senior prom.

 Everyone knows that the biggest attractions are conversations with old friends and the hand-cut french fries.  But there’s always entertainment as well--a show on the stage at 7 and 10.  It’s usually country music, and in the old days, when you had to become a star the hard way, many of the greats trod our hometown boards: Patsy Cline, Conway Twitty, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, even once, Grandpap said, the great Hank Williams himself.  

All that Belongs to Him

“The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.”  St. Mark 10:39

Jesus often spoke in phrases heavy with meaning.  He used images freighted with symbolic power, ambiguous turns of phrase that force the listener to slow down and consider.  Meditation--a word that comes from the Latin for what a cow does with her cud-- is not merely a pious practice.  We must often chew long on these phrases to draw out their full meaning. 

That can be difficult for us in a world where people try to conduct national policy debates in 280 characters or less.  By and large, we long for the single-page memo, the objective facts distilled out from the spin, the bullet points drained of their adjectives. Many of us seem to be drowning in a sea of words as it is. We don’t think we have time for beautiful rhetoric or the probing syllables of poetry. 

But we can miss a great deal if we rushly too quickly to the point, especially when the words spoken to us are about those things at the core of our existence. 

The Most Natural Burden

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”  Exodus 20:12

I lost my two remaining grandparents last year.  There was nothing particularly dramatic or unexpected about their deaths.  They departed this life after extended struggles with disease and debility, looking ahead in hope.  They died holding the hands of their children.  

My mother and her siblings were alongside them through so much of the dramatic change, and it’s been moving for me to watch this from the sidelines.  For them it was a year of sitting in dozens of doctor’s offices, heating up dinner, writing out notes to guide confused minds, sorting the bills, arranging a last family picnic on a sunny July day.

Where the White Light Flickers

From The Sounds of St. Francis, March 2018.

The twentieth century English poet John Betjeman (1906-1984) is one my very favorite modern writers.  Calling him modern, though, may be a bit of a misnomer, for his verses never ranked very highly among the literary establishment.  He was far too traditional in his political and religious opinions and loathe to take himself too seriously.  He also managed to write verses that ordinary people can understand (and often they even rhyme).  He was very popular in his lifetime, and was even England’s poet laureate for the last twelve years of his life.

Most of Betjeman’s verses are about the English countryside, old buildings, social satire, and the Christian faith.  He was a faithful Anglican, a warden of his parish church.  His faith was awakened, like my own, as a young man in the pews of Pusey House, Oxford.  He had a deep devotion to the church’s liturgy and sacramental life, shaped by his time in that enchanting place.   The transforming power of the Eucharist is an oft-repeated theme in his work.  

Bearing with Us

And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."

Genesis 9:16

My uncle told me recently that he’s in the market for an alternator—or maybe it was a fuel pump or a carburetor.  I’m not so good with that sort of thing.  He’s been scanning eBay and reading collectors’ magazines, because you can’t just call up NAPA to ask them to order you one. 

He’s restoring his grandfather’s 1947 Packard, and the old one has given way.  It’s at least the second time he’s had to overhaul with that old car, and he said he’s wondering if it’s really worth all the fuss.  It’s not quite old enough to be valuable, and it really isn’t all that stunning, the chariot of a second-rate insurance salesman.  It’s never been all that reliable, and I think you can guess what the gas mileage is like. 

Mirrors of His Glory

“He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other.”  II Kings 2:14

Henry Ford didn’t the invent the car, but once he got started, no one ever made them the same way again.  Fats Domino wasn’t the first to play the jazz piano, but once you had heard him, they said, it was like something entirely new.  People had dunked a basketball before Michael Jordan stepped onto the court, but now you can’t imagine that feat without him. 

Elijah wasn’t the first prophet, either.  People had been moved to speak God’s Word before, they had stood fast for the truth when it wasn’t popular.  But the mysterious man from Tishbe changed the meaning of prophecy forever.

Elijah had called the people to spiritual renewal and denounced corrupt kings face to face.  He worked great miracles of healing and destruction.  He had summoned fire from heaven and withheld the rains for three and a half years.  God fed Elijah in the wilderness with bread delivered by ravens and revealed to him His glory on the side of Mount Sinai. 

Elijah did it all clad in a mantle. 

Review: Museum of the Bible Offers Minority Report

From The Living Church, 21 Jan. 2018

The Bible is big, according to the new Museum of the Bible. It’s also influential, easy to understand, relevant to everyday life, and very American. The museum also suggests that the Bible is not all that complex or challenging.

The museum announces its presence with a text-emblazoned portal, three stories of the first chapter of Genesis, presented as a massively resized version of the plates used by the Gutenberg Bible’s printer. The entrance hall features enormous overhead screens, on which an ever-changing rotation of evocative photographs signals the technological thrust of the museum’s displays. The building’s glass-walled, futuristic cap offers stunning views of the U.S. Capitol, just two blocks away.

Though founder Steve Green deflected attention during a press conference to the institution’s 50,000 founding donors, the Museum of the Bible is his brainchild. Green, president of Hobby Lobby, began collecting biblical artifacts in 2009, aiming to present them to the public in a format that would garner wide attention. A committed evangelical who has taken his turn in the culture wars, Green knows how to make a political statement. His museum aims to educate and to inspire, but those brassy yards of bas-relief text are also a way of claiming a permanent corner of the public square for his people, the people of the Bible.