Writings
The pink card by the kitchen sink, addressed to my wife, announced a meeting of the Landscape Committee at 1:00 this coming Wednesday. Note that the card was not addressed to me. Nobody lets me anywhere near the Landscape Committee….or the landscape, for that matter.
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Matthew 26:26-29
I have a friend who was once invited to a little rural church to speak. Because of a terrible rainstorm, they cancelled the service, notifying everybody by telephone. But because my friend wasn’t reachable by phone, the notification missed him. So he drove out into the boondocks of Oklahoma, slipping and sliding along the muddy roads. Two of the men thought about the fact that the guest preacher might not know they wouldn’t be “having church,” so they went to the sanctuary to wait for him, just in case he showed up. Which he did, finding them seated at the table down front….the one that had the words “In Remembrance of Me” carved into the facing….and they were playing cards.
“What in the world are you doing?” my friend asked.
They said: “We’re just playing a little poker, waiting for you to come.”
“On that table?” my friend said.
“Well,” said one of them, “the way I look at it, a table’s a table’s a table.”
To which my friend said: “No it isn’t. No it isn’t. At least, not for me.”
Some tables have an importance, far beyond their size, shape or construction. I’ll bet a lot of you can still remember the dining room table in the home of your childhood….and may still have the dining room table from the home of your childhood. Or your grandmother’s table. Or the first kitchen table you bought because, if you were going to be married and start sleeping over, you had to have some place to eat breakfast.
My 27-year-old, single, male nephew recently extracted his grandmother’s table from our basement. I’m not sure why he wanted it. It’s not a young man’s table. It’s not mod or stylish, sleek or trim. It’s not a Friday night, gather your buddies, drink beer and play poker till 3:00 a.m. table. And it’s not like my nephew can’t afford a table. He can afford any table he wants. So why his grandmother’s table? You know the answer as well as I do.
As I said last Maundy Thursday, tables are symbols of our civility. More than any other piece of furniture, they suggest how far we have come as a culture, a people or a family. Listen to the phrase: “If we can just get everyone to the table.” Do you hear the hope in that? Sure you do….whether the issue be carving a turkey or signing a treaty.
This is Table Day in the life of Christendom. Second only to Maundy Thursday, this is the penultimate Table Day in the life of the Christian church. Because, on this day, we break the bread and lift the cup together….all across the world….in solidarity, if not perfect unity. Broken though we may be….by everything from time zones to ideologies….on this one day, the table (and the cloth that covers it) are seamless.
Holy Communion! Why do we do it? Lots of reasons….some of which we, in the Christian church, still fight over. How do we do it? Lots of ways….some of which we, in the Christian church, still fight over. Does it always lead to a powerful religious experience? Probably not. On those perfunctory, mechanical, how-long-is-this-going-to-take (and how-soon-can-I-get-out-of- here) days, I suppose the most that might be said is that, upon rising from the table, we will have remembered Jesus. But on those days when the membrane that separates things temporal from things eternal, things seen from things unseen, is stretched a little thinner than usual….or maybe even splits for just a crack….the best that might be said is that, upon rising from the table, we have experienced Jesus.
“Do this and I’ll be there,” he said. Which is sometimes called “the Doctrine of Real Presence.” And while most of us don’t go as far down that road as the Roman Catholics do (literal body, literal blood, in a holy and mystical form of cannibalism), I have yet to meet a Christian who professes a “Doctrine of Real Absence.” Which is to say that Jesus is here somehow, some way, somewhere….in this moment….at this table….through this act. We do this with him.
And with each other. “Drink ye all of this,” was the way the preacher put it when I was a boy. Which did not mean “all of the liquid” but “all of the people.” I got it backwards in those days. When I was a child, I equated the preacher with my mother: “Finish your juice. Drink it all. Don’t leave any in the bottom of the glass….the bottom of the cup….the bottom of the chalice.”
But the preacher was not my mother. And Jesus is not my mother. The words “drink ye all” relate to the people around, not the contents within. I am talking about people I can’t necessarily name, but people I must try to visualize.
There was once a preacher who went back to his boyhood church….a little congregation, scarcely bigger than the proverbial church in the wildwood….where he was surprised to discover that they had acquired a sanctuary full of beautiful new windows. They were stained glass.… leaded…. brilliantly colored. He couldn’t figure how they could afford it. But that wasn’t all he couldn’t figure. He began reading the names (the dedications in the windows), failing to recognize a single name. And he was reared there. So he asked the pastor if the dedications represented people who joined up since he left.
“No,” said the pastor. “A church in St. Louis ordered these windows from Italy, and when they got them, they didn’t fit. So they put an advertisement in a church paper saying they would sell them cheap to any church willing to give them a home.”
When asked about the unfamiliar names etched into the windows, the pastor said: “Well, the Board discussed that and decided against coloring them out”….adding that, “It’s good for our little church to realize there are some Christian people besides us.”
Well, it’s good for all of us….even here, where there’s a lot of us. Could I but scan the table this morning, I’d see people I’ve supped with from the Upper Room in Jerusalem to a jungle room in Costa Rica. And that’s just for starters. I’ve got family breaking bread this morning in Prague, in London, all over Israel, all over Great Britain, down South, up North, in tens of towns and hundreds of churches.
As many of you know, I am not terribly domestic. But one of my jobs at the parsonage is to put the extra leaves in the dining room table at holiday time. We store them behind the winter coats in the first floor closet. But my whole house….which is a wonderful house.…wouldn’t be able to hold all the leaves required, were all of my friends in Christ to show up on the same day. And those are only the friends I know.
One of them wrote me Friday from a little town on the Sussex coast of England. I haven’t seen her for over 20 years. I served her church for a summer once. She has sent me a Christmas card every year since. This letter, occasioned by something other than Christmas, begins:
Following the travesty in your country on September 11, I just wanted to tell you that you are all being held in our prayers….mine personally….and those of my church, my prayer cell, and my house group.
And the rest of the page is filled with handwritten prayers. The last concludes with her personal reflection on Psalm 46. You know Psalm 46. At least you know the following lines:
God is our hope and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth be moved.
To which she adds: “The earth has moved. Please, God, help us.” Isn’t it amazing how endearing we Americans have become to the rest of the world in the face of our suffering?
We come to this table with him. We come to this table with each other. And, in ways I can’t begin to explain, we come to this table with those who have taken an earlier bus to Glory. They are not here, some of them. They should be. They were here once. They are not here now. And there are days when their absence speaks as eloquently as did their presence. But just as there are empty places at our table (where they have been, but are not now), I think there are empty places at their table (where we are going, but are not yet).
While raising the cup, Jesus said to his disciples: “This is the last time I shall drink with you here. But the day shall come when I shall drink with you there” (the operative words in that sentence being “with you”). Meaning that the Sacrament is given by Jesus to tide us over, to see us through, to keep us keeping on….until we shall be one with Jesus….one with each other…. and one with those who, as the poet says, “we have loved long since, yet lost a while.” Or, as we shall soon sing:
Feast after feast thus comes and passes by,
And passing, points to the glad feast above.
They were one with us in life. They remain one with us in death. And quite apart from the fact that their future may one day be ours, our fight (in the present moment) continues to be theirs. As Colin Morris loves to say: “We must not, in assessing our strength, ignore those regiments camped over the hill.” For as we shall soon hear in the Great Thanksgiving, we are joined with “all the company of heaven.” My friends, we are incredibly well supported.
Do me a favor as we close. Picture, in your mind’s eye, a piece of paper. Picture also a pen. Now picture yourself making a list….a list of names. It is a list you are going to add to from time to time and keep with you over time….even if you have to leave everything else behind (car, boat, books, furniture, computer, whatever). In fact, when your life is ended and you have to leave the earth, take it with you (your list, I mean).
Now I know, I know, I know. When you get to the gate, Peter’s going to say: “Look, you know the rules. You went into the world with nothing, you’ve got to come out of it with nothing. So what’s that in your hand?”
And you’ll say: “Well, it’s just a list.”
“A list?”
“Yes, just a list with some names.”
“So let me see it.”
“Well, it’s just the names of folks who helped me….people who, if it weren’t for them, I’d have never made it.”
To which Peter will say (again): “I want to see it.”
So you’ll give it to him. And he’ll smile and say: “I know ‘em all. In fact, on my way to the gate, it seems like I passed ‘em all. They were painting a great, big sign to hang over the street. I didn’t see it real close, but it looked (for all the world) like they were fixin’ to write WELCOME HOME.”
My friends, what if you could see even a fraction of all those people at the table? And what if you could see Jesus at the table? Would it make your life any easier….your road any smoother…. your landings any softer? Maybe. Maybe not. But I guarantee you this. You would not be lonely. Or hungry.
Note: In preparing this meditation for World Communion Sunday, I hauled out no small number of “heavy hitters” in my dugout of supporters. They include Colin Morris, Barbara Brown Taylor, Fred Craddock and William Barclay. The letter from England came from Frances Nightingale who is a member of the Rustington Methodist Church on the West Sussex coast. I served the Rustington church on a pastoral exchange in 1975 and later hosted a youth orchestra conducted by her husband, Peter, in 1980.
The entire summer before I went away to college, my mother made me go to the basement and practice ironing my shirts. This was back in the day when mothers….at least my mother….ironed everything including tee shirts and shorts.
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Luke 2: 21-35
While I am far from young, let the record show that I am not so old so as to have fought in any of the wars my elders call “The Big Ones”….namely, World Wars I and II, and that regional skirmish (nearly a century-and-a-half back) known as the Civil War. I am not even a great student of the Civil War, although I have walked the battlefields at Gettysburg, Harper’s Ferry and Antietam.
But Bruce Catton knew the Civil War and, in marvelous books like Stillness at Appomattox, wrote so vividly that one could read about it in one’s armchair and (yet) be there at the same time. Some day I shall take the time to read those books and refight that war. But that time is not now.
Truth be told, I have read only one of Bruce Catton’s books all the way through and that book had little, if anything, to do with armed conflict. What it had to do with was growing up….his growing up….in Benzie County in northern Michigan. Bruce’s father started a private school, Benzonia Academy, early in the twentieth century. Benzonia, the town, sat on top of a hill. Beulah, its sister town, sat at the bottom of the hill. Kissing up to the edges of Beulah was Crystal Lake, which (if you swam the length of it, east to west) would take you eight miles to Frankfort. Still will, for that matter. And there are those who say there is no more beautiful body of water in Michigan than Crystal Lake. I don’t know about that. I don’t want to start a fight with the Walloon people. But what I do know is that, in size and shape, there is no lake anywhere that more closely resembles the Sea of Galilee than Crystal Lake. Which, as information goes, might be worth something to you in the event that you never make it to the Middle East.
My purpose in placing you at Crystal Lake is because that is where Bruce Catton’s two stories take place….the two stories I am going to tell you this morning….after which I shall append a comment or two and sit down. If that sounds like a lazy way to go on my part, at least listen to the stories before rendering judgment. Ready or not, here we go.
Story Number One
It concerns the morning that Lewis Stoneman and I went sailing on skates. I do not know whether anyone does that nowadays, but it was quite the thing at the time and we had read about it in some magazine. You took thin strips of wood and made an oblong frame about four feet long and three feet wide and added an old, discarded bed sheet, cut to size and tacked to the frame. Then you put on your skates, held the frame out in front of you, and let the wind take charge.
So one day, frames erected, we went down to Crystal Lake which, as luck would have it, was as clear and smooth as a pane of glass. Skating conditions were perfect. The sun was bright. The bare ice was as polished steel and there was a brisk wind to the east. The wind soon filled our sails and took us down the lake from east to west at what seemed like a fabulous speed. We had never moved so fast on skates before. In fact, we had not even imagined that it was possible to move so fast. And it was all so completely effortless. It was like being a hawk, soaring above the ridge on a great updraft of air.
Neither of us knew anything about sailing. To tack or even to go on a broad reach was entirely foreign to us. We simply had to go where the wind went. And, if I had thought about it, the realization that I would have to walk back into the face of it would have sobered me a bit. But there would be time to worry about that later.
For the moment, it seemed as if the whole world had been made for our enjoyment. The hills that rimmed the lake were white with snow, cut in places by bare tree trunks standing like sentinels observing our passing….while the sun beat down as a friendly weight upon our shoulders. Save for the creasing of our blades upon the ice, there was hardly a sound anywhere. I do not believe that I have ever felt so completely in tune with the universe than I felt that morning on Crystal Lake. It was friendly. And all of its secrets were good.
Then, suddenly, came the awakening. We had ridden the wind for about six miles or so and were within two miles of the western end of the lake. When we realized that not far ahead of us was a broad stretch of sparkling, dazzling blue….running from shore to shore, flecked with picturesque whitecaps. Open water….beautiful, but carrying with it the threat of sudden death. The lake was not entirely frozen after all, and we would reach its open end in no time. The lake was a good 100 feet deep there, and the temperature of the water scarcely one degree warmer than the ice itself.
Suddenly we looked down. There was also a change in the ice beneath us. It was transparent…. and the water below was as black as a starless midnight. Moreover, it was now sagging under our weight, giving out ominous creaking and cracking sounds. We dropped our sails and made a grotesque race for safety….half skating….half running….until we clumsily reached the beach and collapsed on a log to catch our breath.
Yet the whole business cut a hard groove in my mind. I found I did not want to talk about it. I did not even want to think about it. For what I had seen through the transparent, bending ice seemed to be nothing less than the heart of darkness. It was not just my own death that lie down there….it was the ultimate horror lying below all life….a horror held at bay by something so fragile it could break at any moment.
Although it does not happen the same way to every kid….or at the same age to every kid….no one makes it all the way through high school without some experience where, after surviving it, one is led to say: “Whew, that was a close one.” Which means “I could have died there.…been badly hurt there….been crippled or maimed there….been caught and arrested there….or gotten myself in a lot of trouble and lost a whole big chunk of my future there.” Life is full of near misses. More than once, you and I have skated on some very thin ice.
But I promised you a second story. Same kid. Same town. Same December. So here it is.
Story Number Two
Shortly after the experience on the lake came Christmas. By the time I was 16, the old excitement of Christmas gifts had, of course, worn thin. And I was about ready to admit that the intense emotion centering about the tree in the living room was primarily for small children (whose ranks I was certain I had left). Yet, in some ways, Christmas that year had an impact it had never had before. It seemed to come out of what I had always considered a routine observance….the Christmas Eve service in our little village church.
Every year in the week before Christmas, the tallest balsam which could be cut and gotten into the church was erected on the raised platform where the choir ordinarily sat, and it was covered with homemade decorations….looped chains out of colored paper….white popcorn threaded on long strings….silver stars….and metal clips holding lighted candles. We had no electric lights in those days. And the fire hazard represented by open candle flame must have been enormous. But nothing ever seemed to happen.
Anyway, the church was filled with people, and just to be in it on Christmas Eve seemed as to be partaking in a mystery. The service was extremely simple. There were carols….prayers, I suspect….the reading of the Gospel story….a few quiet remarks by the minister….the distribution of candy canes and popcorn balls to the youngest children….and a final hymn.
And when the wheezy organ, pumped vigorously by a sweating young man behind the pulpit screen, gave forth with “Joy to the World,” and the doors swung open to let us out into the winter night, it was as if we heard the sound of far-off trumpets.
Walking home afterward….the frozen snow creaking under our boots….and the silent air still echoing the carols we had sung….there seemed to be an endless host of stars whose clear flames denied the darkness. The message was unmistakable. Life was leading us somewhere… somehow….miraculously….to a transfiguration.
It stayed with me. I felt that I had caught a glimpse behind the veil. I had seen the ultimate truth. And the truth was good (or so it seemed to me at the time).
And then I remembered that, under the ice on my wind-driven cruise across Crystal Lake, I had seen something entirely different. For under that ice lay an outright denial of everything I had seen in the stars on Christmas Eve. In the space of but a few days, I had seen two visions….one of horror….and one of transfiguration….and they seemed equally authentic. They spoke with equal force. And I could not accept one and discard the other.
* * * * *
Nearly every one of you I have talked to….along with all you Christmas letter writers out there….have told me the same four things.
1. That this Christmas is different.
2. That this Christmas is more painful and perilous than those previous.
3. That this Christmas is also more precious than those previous.
4. And that the song is right….that we “need a little Christmas, right this very minute”….even though some of you went so far as to replace “a little” with “a lot.”
I don’t need to belabor the point. Bruce Catton’s stories have already made it. Life is not without its horror….or its glory.
Eight days after Jesus was born, they brought him into the Temple for three very ancient and very Jewish ceremonies. The first….circumcision. The second….the redemption of the first born. The third….the purification of Mary. All of which are interesting. But they do not concern me here. What concerns me is this old man….this very old man….this one Luke calls Simeon, who is hanging around the Temple on the day Jesus is brought to it.
As you know, every Jew waited for a Messiah. And most Jews waited with expectations that included political dominance and military might. The argument went as follows: The Messiah will come over and we will overcome….anybody and everybody….those who got in our way once…. those who get in our way now…..and those who could ever conceivably get in our way in the future.
But not everybody waited thusly. There were some who were known as “the quiet in the land,” who had no thoughts of violence and no dreams of power. By contrast, they practiced a life of gentle watchfulness and constant prayer against the day of God’s coming. Simeon was one of “the quiet in the land.”
Upon seeing the baby, he breathed a sigh of relief….smiled a very deep smile….and then said (prayerfully) to God: “Thanks for the vision. Having seen it….having seen him….I can die now.” But before he did, he said to Mary: “This is only the beginning. Because of your baby, some will rise…some will fall….and before this mothering business of yours is finished, your heart will be broken.”
Which it was, of course. As will all of ours….be broken, I mean (at some time or another). But, as Simeon suggests, we can bear the worst because we have seen the best.
It could not have been much lovelier than it was here on Christmas Eve. Then, about 2:45 p.m. on Christmas day, something in me said: “Ritter, you’ve got a few minutes. Go over to Beaumont and see Pat Work.” Which I did. And, upon walking into her room, found her dead. It had just happened a couple of minutes earlier. Although it was hardly a surprise.
We shall remember her at 2:00 this afternoon. At which time I shall respond to someone’s suggestion that the death of a loved one on December 25 could (conceivably) spoil Christmas forever. To which I will say:
No, you mustn’t look at Christmas through what has happened.
You must look at what has happened through Christmas.
Note: Bruce Catton’s boyhood memoirs were published under the title Waiting for the Morning Train and, to my knowledge, are still very much in circulation. The wonderful quote that closes the sermon was passed along to me by Carl Price. And it is Carl’s recollection that he heard it from our former ecclesiastic leader, Bishop Dwight Loder
