Faith Works 7-1-17

Faith Works 7-1-17

Jeff Gill

 

Lincoln's parenthesis

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Actually, it's between em dashes.

 

And it includes a phrase not in the original draft, but shown in enough contemporary transcripts to be present in the speech as given, plus Lincoln himself added it when re-copying the manuscript later.

 

"That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom"

 

That phrase comes between these two statements: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain" and the closing affirmation "and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

 

Abraham Lincoln was reflecting on what it meant to dedicate a place of memorial for thousands of soldiers killed in the Battle of Gettysburg, which began 154 years ago today. He wanted to recruit the listeners that following November, on that great battlefield of the Civil War, to resolve with him that the nation learn something from all this, to grow in unity, to turn away from warfare to some better, less lethal way to sort out questions that divide the country.

 

Slavery would be ended, that much was clear. But Lincoln was too astute a politician not to realize that we would have future dissention that would raise voices, but should not end up raising armies. So he asked his audience to commit with him that these burial plots and soldiers' headstones not be placed here in vain.

 

If there were future civil conflicts, after the harsh example of the war of rebellion now surely heading to conclusion, if future generations would not learn from their tragedy but add more bodies to national cemeteries through armed dispute, this nation may well not survive. This was what was on the president's mind as he worked from his prepared text to the delivered speech.

 

Lincoln's drafts do not include "under God," but his re-copied texts in his own hand, and transcripts by journalists, all agree that Lincoln said those two words. They put either an anchor or a prayer into the phrase that he had hammered out in advance: "That this nation shall have a new birth of freedom." His hope was that out of the conflict and pain and sorrow we might realize where we had gone wrong, and turn in a better direction.

 

Of course, for 87 years we had managed as a nation, again and again, to sidestep those realizations, to avoid a new possibility to be born in our midst. What would it take for the United States to undergo some form of turning, or repentance, from the path we had been on, to a better way? It would take a power greater than force, more than guns, even bigger than a country already stretching from sea to shining sea.

 

Lincoln's em dash framed, parenthetical remark, was in a sense the heart of his address. His personal prayer that this nation might have a new birth of freedom once this war was concluded and when peace prevailed. He reasoned his way into the basis for that hope, and he cast a vision leading forward from that hope if fulfilled. It was what had to happen, lest our form of self-government perish from the earth.

 

So in the actual delivery, two words found themselves added to an already sublime speech. Lincoln said them, spoke them in the moment, almost as an act of grace itself, making real and possible and true the rest of what he was speaking: "That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." Two little, simple words, whose rhythm fit the pattern he was seeking, and whose meaning said what he hoped we would hear, as a nation, as citizens, as souls seeking healing after a long season of conflict.

 

Two words which offer the willing hearer a path to possibility and transformation and peace:

 

"Under God."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he loves to visit Gettysburg, but he loves a good Fourth of July parade even more! Wave at him in a passing parade, or contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

 

Drafts of the Gettysburg Address:

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm 

Faith Works 6-24-17

Faith Works 6-24-17

Jeff Gill

 

Living in the in-between

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Going past me in the intersection, I saw one hand pushing hair back across the driver's head, and the other hand holding a phone to one ear.

 

Perhaps some people drive better with their knees than I do with one hand. Or two. Who knows?

 

The stickers and window tags are common, exhorting fellow following drivers to not text and drive, or to put down the phone and drive. And the sight of impossible drivers somehow maneuvering while both hands are busy with non-steering activities are just as common.

 

I'm not writing to address traffic safety so much as the impulse, the compulsion, the general pull towards the immediate. Immediate response, immediate gratification, immediate answers. Right now has become just in time, and wait a minute is impossible, or at least implausible.

 

We can look up the greatest hit of 1967 in seconds, and realize that "To Sir With Love" did in fact beat out "Ode to Billie Joe" even as we confirm that the electoral vote totals in 1836 resulted in both the election of Martin Van Buren and the formation of the two-party system as we know it today (even if it was Democrats and Whigs back then). To research and compare print sources is a concept reserved for graduate school, where once high school sophomores knew how to navigate a card catalogue or vertical file.

 

And in faith communities, the expectations for contact and follow-up have become more immediate, and mostly direct, where not long ago we had prayer chain leaders and church secretaries and "While You Were Out" slips on the desk.

 

Folks text or message or post to the pastor, and the church Facebook page had better answer queries quickly, as in within minutes or just a few hours, or see a bad comment on the up-front page. People are directly asking about more and more things, and expect quick, not to say prompt responses.

 

Some of this, to be candid, is efficient and helpful. And sometimes the direct contact makes clergy develop a second Facebook profile, just so they don't get bombarded with odd and askew questions the moment they open up a browser window, about obvious schedule matters (already posted on the church website or Twitter feed etc.) or broad issues that really require a meeting face-to-face.

 

The wider social question around social media is about what all this immediacy is doing to us. Pastors worry that people don't want to wait for Sunday, they want communion, symbolic or actual, when the need is felt; contrariwise, they don't want to have to go somewhere at 10:30 am on Sunday when their religious impulse was really more active on Saturday or last Thursday. Can I stream the sermon? Would you post a pdf of the message's main points? What's our YouTube channel, anyhow?

 

There's something about the Biblical worldview that pulls me back from trying to meet all those desires, not to say needs. In the vast arc of Biblical narrative, we see again and again how we live in the time between, our soul's progress is taking place in the middle of promise and fulfillment, that we are caught within the story that goes from "once upon a time" to "happily ever after," from already to not yet.

 

"Not yet," in fact, comes up again and again in Christian teaching. Jesus rose from the dead as the first-fruits of righteousness, as God's down payment on the eternal. The believers might still die, but not forever, and not to a resurrection that's guaranteed next week. God blesses the peacemakers, in Jesus teaching on the mount, but not "right now," because the blessing comes when "they shall be" not "as soon as possible."

 

ASAP is the modern acronym for everything, but the SOP (standard operating procedure) for the Divine is to work in terms of centuries, mostly the 14^th. We wait in faith, we remember hints and promises and indications, and we trust in a full and future fulfillment.

 

Smart phones don't promote that kind of thinking, or are not configured for those waiting for a better signal to result in tagging ourselves as "first in line" for communion, or dinner. Computer technology supports the idea that reality is what we can confirm quickly, online, with keystrokes.

 

This is where daily Bible reading and regular prayer become so important to us. To help reaffirm those ideas about "the already and the not-yet." To give us a place to stand as the outward realities change. The world around us may expect speed, but we look for truth, a concept that can be blessedly slow.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your life between the already and the not-yet at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-17-17

Faith Works 6-17-17

Jeff Gill

 

From the eternal to the immediate

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Preachers and teachers in almost any faith tradition, and certainly in my own Protestant Christian church family, wrestle with the balance of timely material versus the timeless teachings that are at the heart of our gatherings.

 

One school of thought says that our task should be focused on heaven and the here-after, with current events and local concerns having little or nothing to do with our sermons on Sunday. The opposite position stands on the need to bring the assembly into a better context for those teachings by tying together our matters of the here-and-now to the ancient and the eternal.

 

Sometimes this tension is seen, at least in modern times, as between the social gospel movement and those affirming the fundamentals. A sort of liberal-conservative split between models for being church and teaching the faith.

 

It was the very Biblically oriented Karl Barth who popularized half a century ago the idea of preaching being the practice of walking into the pulpit with the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other: the sermon bringing the two into contact, and showing how the scriptures can interpret our world to the faithful.

 

I'd agree with Dr. Barth that you have to find a balance in such matters of teaching and interpretation. There is an ongoing, ever-lasting temptation to make of public worship a community event, not primarily a gathering for divine values: this is where, if it's confused or worried you, clergy get nervous and even resistant to calls to increase how we honor fathers around Father's Day, or put patriotism front and center in the service for Fourth of July weekend, and so on.

 

Those are what we call "contingent" matters. I have to admit that when I'm thinking about suggestions or even my own ideas for adding to the worship service, I ask myself if my friends and colleagues whose circumstances I know something about, who serve in ministry in Africa, in Central America: how would this fit into their service? And truth be told, if it would make no sense or even bring confusion into the worship space there, I'm going to hesitate here.

 

But when it comes to preaching, I do struggle with just how closely and contemporaneously I should be speaking to events in my hearer's world. And there's a question of balance both in the teaching of faith versus relevancy, and also in my ability to speak clearly and usefully to matters outside of my competence.

 

Ask me to speak about the role of religious belief and practice in first century Capernaum, and I can go on for hours, with a fair amount of confidence. Ask me to speak about public policy and court protective orders and how they should be managed, and I stutter. I stammer. I know some things, as a pastor; I know families who have had to ask for them, I know all too well how little they solve problems for those families, and I know some persons who have had them taken out on them.

 

The Gospel, the good news I preach, is meant to bring safety and security to those who seek it; I do believe that the gospel when taught starts to bring together community, and that community has a witness and something to share with the wider community around us. We serve in mission and ministry in ways that are most often practical and direct; can we address wider social questions such as why so many hundreds of CPO's are needed in our county, even among our own? Is there a way the wider community, even the Christian community, can co-operate and serve together to help make the pressures which bring those orders into being less conflict-ridden, less confrontational? And with people on either side of these issues in our membership, in our pews, how does faith speak to these matters?

 

And I don't even want to get started on child support.

 

Would Barth nod his head if I said a preacher should enter the pulpit with the Bible in one hand and the jail inmate list in the other? The Bible in one hand and the recent indictments list in the other? The Bible in one hand and a print-out of squad runs and opiate overdoses in the other?

 

Let us pray over these questions for sure, and pray for preachers seeking wisdom on how to preach to them.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him about sermons that you've heard which moved you at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 6-22-17

Notes From My Knapsack 6-22-17

Jeff Gill

 

Traffic concerns have simple solutions

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Recent village council meetings have featured questions and concerns and public statements about traffic.

 

Traffic studies, traffic flow, and that necessary counterpart to traffic, parking. Talk of traffic moving too fast, and worries about having to go too slow and even stop just to travel a few traffic-calming blocks. Declarations about fairness and justice and the rights of older drivers and the safety of children all have been made, sometimes to contradictory points.

 

Sitting at one of these meetings and hearing out our fellow citizens as they speak with great passion and intensity on their particular issues around traffic, it occurred to me that I have seen a solution to these complicated problems, and an opportunity for our fair village.

 

Mackinac Island.

 

Yes, I've written about this before, and good for you remembering because it was a long, long time ago . . . so maybe it's time to explain myself again. Have you ever been to Mackinac Island? If not, you should put down your newspaper or laptop or tablet and get going. I'll wait.

 

You've been there? Great, then you know what I mean. Mackinac Island, at the Straits of Mackinac between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the lower bulk of that state up north, just east of the the Mighty Mac bridge, has many things to commend it to the visitor, and one thing it does without.

 

Cars.

 

Motor vehicles are entirely banned on the island. That's not strictly true, as there are a few trucks that operate at night to move some heavy freight around the island, but in general, even trash hauling and baggage let alone passengers have basically two options: horses or bicycles.

 

Let's just do that in the village core of Granville. Let's go "Somewhere in Time" and eliminate motor vehicles between 6 am to midnight. Trucks passing through and deliveries can be made overnight, but we just shut down all the streets to anything that's not pulled by horses or pedaled to the doorstep.

 

We could put parking lots at either entrance to the village; actually, I hear the high school lots may have plenty of excess space next year, so we could just use that, and along River Road. We could add to the "Mackinac Island" experience by having people leave the parking area and enter Granville on the southern side by having them take a ferryboat across Lake Hudson. From the high school lots, it could be a natural gas shuttle as many National Parks are using for access from a gateway to the center.

 

Those worried about children trying to cross at intersections, or who find navigating the slalom of College Street; for people who honk when you don't turn right on red when pedestrians are crossing (or dart inside your lane when you hesitate too long for a mother and child just stepping off the curb, true story) – everyone wins.

 

For many years, when I smell fresh horse manure, I think of Mackinac Island and the pleasant visits I've made there. I think it's time that when we smell manure, we think of Granville as well.

 

You're welcome!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; no, he does not own a livery stable. Yet. Tell him what you think our traffic answers are for the village at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-10-17

Faith Works 6-10-17

Jeff Gill

 

Cash on hand, in pocket, in the cloud

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Money and churches.

 

Yeah, it does bring out some of our least favorite human qualities. Some might even refer to "sin" in that context . . .

 

Keep in mind that James tells us in his letter that "the love of money is the root of all evil," not necessarily money itself. But money bears watching.

 

The Bible is emphatic about this. Overall, there are around 500 passages about faith, some 500 on prayer, but more than 2,000 verses about money and possessions. Jesus tells us more about how to justly handle money than he does about heaven or hell, with 16 out of 38 parables being specifically about money and possessions.

 

So it's important. I suspect I'm not alone among clergy in usually spending some time after Pentecost and as summer begins looking at stewardship information and education. If you wait until after Labor Day, you'll be playing catch-up, just as our minister of music and I are usually solidifying our plans for Advent and Christmas as August begins.

 

I was in a conversation with a clergy colleague who was expressing some frustration about lay leadership and board meetings and church financial matters, and I off-handedly said something that he said I should put in my column. Now, I get told that about a wide variety of subjects, but that may be the first time anyone told me to say here something I said myself! But as we talked through the subject, I realized it might be a useful observation.

 

My thought, or question, or in some settings my concern is that in many congregations, our board meetings (or session, or church council, or whathaveyou) tend to be really more of a "finance committee of the whole." What I mean by that is the tendency – and I say this having served in leadership with seven congregations, consulted for a dozen and a half more at least, and a few wider or "regional" church bodies – for us to act when we meet for general leadership purposes as just a big fiscal review committee. We comb the statements for specific issues and concerns, and spend more time on the financial reports than almost everything else put together.

 

Yet when I'm on the boards of non-profits and other organizations, often with large and complex holdings and plenty to fuss over, there's usually a finance committee or development team or some specific oversight group that has done the fine details, and submits a report. The balance sheet and profit-and-loss and investment statements are available, but the whole board doesn't try to go through and second-guess or retroactively review individual expenditures. That's the finance team's job. The board is looking at the goals, the vision, and measuring their progress with benchmarks that include, but don't heavily emphasize, the financial numbers.

 

There are plenty of reasons for boards to get that way. One is size, and another is the complex set of relationships, functional and dysfunctional, that tend to crop up with questions of leadership in a small to medium size, long-standing organization. We know each other (or think we do!) and to be perfectly blunt, church leadership meetings do tend to have a fair amount of second-guessing going on.

 

And on the other hand, I'm working with my denominational structure through a series of problems right now, challenges that have their roots in financial information held so closely, so tightly, that years of leadership have found it easier to just skim over the details and avoid hard discussions about sustainability and support.

 

So there's a happy balance, a golden mean for such earthly matters. If your faith community spends more time on money than any other subject, that's probably not a good sign - and if you never discuss it, or see the actual figures of income and outgo clearly put, you've just got a different sort of trouble.

 

"The love of money" is at the root of many of our problems in community. We love controlling it, and knowing how it gets used: donor designation is the big growing thing in non-profit as well as church circles, where those giving have more and more say in how their gifts are used.

 

Meanwhile, finance or stewardship teams have their hands full with the trend growing for people to not have money, and for currency and checks continuing to give way to cards and electronic transfers. Stay tuned! It might have to be a full board discussion…

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about how you give to your faith community at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.