The Christmas Cow

“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”  Isaiah 1:3

My mother’s nativity set is porcelain.  It was a rather optimistic choice for a family of three curious boys, and the figures received their share of battering over the years.  None of them so much as the cow.  The cow in the Michael family nativity set is missing at least one horn.  The glaze is scuffed off in a few places, and the hindquarter has a long brown seam, carefully mended with adhesive after a precipitous fall.

That was my fault.  When I was four or five I went through a cow stage.  Some boys memorize the starting lineup for their favorite baseball team or the Air Force fighter plane fleet.  But growing up in the country, with two farmers for grandfathers, my obsession was cows.  I knew all the breeds, where they had originated, which local farmers raised which kinds.  I could tell you the strong points of Guernsey milk and Angus steaks, and I knew all about those “hairy coos” in the Scottish highlands.   

And Christmas is the perfect holiday for a little boy drawn to cattle.

Ponder: God's word through the lips of man

"He who insists on hearing God himself shows that what he really desires is not to believe, but to know; not to obey, but to react to his own experience.  It is entirely fitting and proper that man hear his God through his fellow men, for all lives are inextricably interwoven into the one great community of human existence.  No one life is self-sufficient.  My existence draws on the core of my being but simultaneously on others in order to exist.  Plantlike, we sprout from our own seed, but we grow by feeding upon other growth.  In the same way, we arrive at truth through personal recognition; the 'ingredients' which go into that recognition, however, are brought us by others.  Man is humanity's way to God, and it befits us that God's word personally penetrate each of our hearts, but that it be brought to us by others.  God's word through the lips of man: that is the law of our religious life."

Romano Guardini, The Lord (1954), 251.

The Frog Hollow of Palestine

“When the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word.”  St. John 4:40-41

I’ve seen the sign on the left-hand side of the Harper’s Ferry Road: “Frog Hollow, the Moonshine Capitol of the World.”  I think it’s a bit tamer down in the Hollow these days than it was during the height of Prohibition, when a man would sit watch on the bridge on a summer’s night in case a revenue agent came creeping down the road with an axe and an ultimatum from the IRS. 

Until it burned down a few years ago, though, the center of community life in the hollow was the Mad Dog Saloon.  They say the floors were dirt and they traded in canned beer out of a Coleman cooler, when the locally produced wares weren’t being passed around.  Saturday nights were punctuated with ambulance calls, when one of the hollow boys was wont to get a bit dramatic with the cue stick.  I lived for two years in Sharpsburg, just five miles away. But I never had the guts to cross the threshold of the Mad Dog and see if all the stories were really true.

The Spirituality of Financial Management

From the September 2016 issue of The WORD of Saint Timothy's, Herndon.

“Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, that we may appoint to this duty.”  Acts 6:3

This summer, Rick Wilson resigned after twelve years as the treasurer of Saint Timothy’ Church.  We all owe him a great deal of thanks for the way in which he has discharged his responsibilities with steadfast patience, integrity and care.  For twelve years Rick has been a careful and diligent steward of the resources entrusted to us to God’s work. 

One almost never hears of someone committing to such a demanding (and often thankless) role in these days when so many responsibilities and social activities fill people’s calendars.  Maybe he didn’t think he would be at the task for so long when he first took it up.  But Rick has been faithful, pressing on to complete tasks week by week, and carefully training those people (two of them) who will continue in his stead.

Rick has been the classic “behind the scenes” worker, coming in on weekends and burning the midnight oil to keep up with the demands of our large and complicated organization.  A highly skilled professional, his generous donation of time and talent has saved our congregation tens of thousands of dollars in accountants’ fees.  Most importantly, Rick has maintained the trust that is absolutely essential for the management of church finances.

It’s interesting that the early church’s first major conflict centered around financial management. 

For Meditation: "trust God's present power"

"Trust. We often use “trust” as a synonym for “faith”, but it isn’t really. “Trust” is a strange English word, originating from words meaning encouragement and the cheering of others. Then the word “trust” came to connote a kind of intimacy and sharing, and only last did it come to connote a certain reliance. In a way, the word “trust” combines all three of the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love together. Trust is bound up with the One who comes close, holds on to us, fills us with cheer.

Ministers who trust, as I charge you to be — who trust God, and trust God’s life in Christ, and trust God’s present power in Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension — such trusters are precisely those who can know that the Church is God’s, and who can be obedient: Who can stop counting. Who can just follow. Who do not lose hope. Who can “let goodness happen” amid the lies of the occupiers. Because only God is good, as Jesus says (Mark 10:18), goodness is therefore sovereign — utterly, sheerly, magnificently."

Ephraim Radner, Ministry in Enemy-Occupied Territory, Covenant 2 June 2016,

For Meditation: Unity is Not Achieved Without Mutual Sacrifice

"The agreement forged required mutual submission to the conscience of the other within the mixed-economy of the Jewish-Gentile church. Jewish Christians had to trust that the Gentiles were living according to the standards of the community in which they were inaugurated by baptism, and they had to forego their strict standards of absolute assurance regarding kosher purity. Gentiles, on the other hand, had to forego a freedom that was available in Christ, but was not conducive to united fellowship. Paul’s command that Spirit-filled members of a mixed-economy church would “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21) served as an ongoing reminder that ecclesial unity is not achieved without mutual sacrifice.
Paul Wheatley, Boundaries, Blessings and Hope for the Future.

"A Wider Perspective"--A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD sitting upon a throne,

high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.”  Isaiah 6:1

            Erik Mebust and I had coffee together last weekend, and we talked about all his exciting plans for the next several months.  Erik will be studying literature for a term at Kings’ College in London, and I was able to give him some advice about museums, historical sites and churches.  He also has two or three weeks after his term finishes to do some travelling around the rest of Europe, and a big list of places he’s dying to see.  There’s Paris, of course, and the Rhine Valley in Germany, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the Alps, and he has a friend spending a term in Montpelier, down on the Mediterranean Coast.  And I was trying to slow him down a bit.  You don’t want to spend half of your time on trains, after all, and you might well be able to go back again later in life and try some of what you will need to miss this time. 

But of course, by American standards, all these places are really quite close.  This is part of the wonder of Europe to an American.  In a few hours you can travel between places whose languages, histories, foods, music, and architecture are completely different.  New York State really isn’t all that different from Minnesota.  But Spain and Poland are a world apart, and the distance is really about the same.