Faith Works 4-27

Faith Works 4-27-13

Jeff Gill

 

Returning to where you started (again)

___

I've warned the congregation where I serve that they need to get used to hearing an excess of sermon illustrations about journey and path and walking and trails and maps and how we are a pilgrim people, living in earthly tents, and so on.

 

My son and I are part of a backpacking trek this summer, our two crews from a local troop going to Philmont Scout Ranch in this, its 75^th anniversary of operation.

 

On one level, we've been planning this for about two years, but we just got our specific trek assignment, a route covering two of the major peaks in the vast reserve in New Mexico's northeast corner.

 

We will do 81 miles over our twelve days, starting above a mile high at Base Camp with a pinnacle at Mount Baldy of over 12,400 feet, then back touching at the Tooth of Time. We'll carry our gear, get resupplied twice along the way, but otherwise carry all our gear in thirty to fifty pound packs, water included, packing out what we pack in so the tens of thousands coming to Philmont behind us can enjoy the views, the experience, and nature (plus a few bears) the way we will, as Scouts for 75 years have done so to prepare a way for us.

 

So the training, building up over the year for this over-50 over-the-hill hiker, is reaching a peak of its own. I'm putting in the mileage that I hope will prepare me for the journey, and reflecting on the mental challenges as well. As an adult member of a Philmont crew, we let the youth navigate and plan (and carry) the main loads, and encourage them to support each other. We adults have to largely keep our mouths shut, but we also have to help the crew deal with the very idea of self-sufficiency, which can be overwhelming at times.

 

We expect the Scouts to chew up the miles and carry their packs with little or no problem, while we adults expect to consume a fair amount of ibuprofen most mornings. On the other hand, I believe I speak for my fellows when I say we're looking forward to being away from the phones and cells and computers and TV and everything for two weeks, while the Scouts are more than a little unnerved at this prospect.

 

Last week I offered some of my thoughts about a book coming out this month, "The Little Way of Ruthie Leming" by Rod Dreher, who recently moved back to his childhood hometown after his sister's untimely death from cancer. I admire the emphasis this narrative places on what Rod calls a "Benedictine value" from the "Rule of St. Benedict," one of monasticism's founders, the value of stability. He himself moved in pursuit of his career, many times, and still has a powerful hankering for Paris from time to time, and his message isn't that we all should stay in, or move back to our old hometowns (something many of us these days don't even have if your family moved often in your youth), but that there's a certain connection to place that we need to grow spiritually.

 

So what to do with the contrast between these two models, these two images of the Christian life? And in fact the same tension is in the metaphors used by other world faith traditions. Are we called to be on a journey towards God, to the Beloved Community, or is the divine call really to finding our place in the City of God, that we should enter the sheepfold and listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd?

 

The challenge of the earthly life as preparation for the heavenly is that it really has to be seen as both. We do travel through life, in time if not in distance, undergoing change even if we never move from the address we were born at. And the journey of faith is largely a going deeper, within and through the self to a place where the still, small voice can tell us how we are connected already to all and everything around us where we are.

 

And every journey, as Bilbo Baggins can tell you, is both a road that goes ever on, and is fulfilled when your travels lead you to where you began. The original title of that estimable hobbit's memoir, after all, was "There and Back Again." The journey of faith is always a journey home.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your travels, widely or close to home, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-20

Faith Works 4-20-13

Jeff Gill

 

The revelatory properties of terrorism

___

 

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love." (I John 4:18, KJV)

 

If I were to get all mathematical about matters of the heart, I might wonder if you could reverse that statement. Does perfect fear cast out love?

 

That's the theorem of terrorism. An act so horrible, so senseless in itself but done in service of a cause, that through the inconsistencies of the human heart does not attach itself to the original intention (and to be fair, most terrorism is done in service to groups of people who would disavow the act taken in their name if they could).

 

Instead, the mechanism of terroristic acts is to provoke a counter-reaction that undermines the authority, moral and official, of the opposition to the terror group's agenda. You blow up the oppressor's guardhouse, the occupying force is, in response, harsher and more capricious towards the general population, which then drifts a little closer to being in your camp, whether they were against you to start or even just indifferent. Terror, terrorists like to say, reveals the "true nature" of the group being attacked, while is a regrettable necessity for those using it.

 

What gets complicated is when either there's no vicious response, or when the people in general turn against you for having used too much violence, or being too random, or when there are too many innocent victims.

 

Let's just say right now, whether it's Andrew Kehoe in Bath, Michigan in 1926, or the Unabomber in the 1990s, sometimes the person setting the explosive devices is simply mentally ill and horrifically disturbed, even if their stated concerns about taxes or the environment are shared by many. When you have a Jane Alpert in New York or a Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, the line between psychosis and a mad passion for a cause gets blurry.

 

And when you have a large movement, with numbers of people involved, you reach a point where sanity seems beside the point somehow. Al-Qaeda or the Weathermen, Anarchism a century ago or the Ku Klux Klan more recently, and more locally: you can't just call them crazy. They terrorized and killed with an intent to drive public policy and societal behavior in the direction they desired.

 

"Perfect love casts out fear," and we might well ask, "does perfect fear drive out love?" To look at the rest of the equation as John puts it, then "one who loves does not fear punishment, but if anxiety can do the same, love might leave." Or something like that.

 

If terror can control our thoughts, our emotions, it will certainly guide our actions as much as TSA gets to guide us in packing for an airplane trip. That's the goal fulfilled on a small scale. We fear the impact, the inflicted punishment of another plane disaster, so we let fear guide us more strongly, and it becomes hard to even imagine another way.

 

That's why, in a muddle headed but somewhat understandable way, officials said after 9-11 that we should go out and shop and visit malls "because otherwise, the terrorists win." That quickly earned some well-deserved scorn, but there was a nubbin of a point to it. And the counterpart is that line at the airport, where we shuffle in our socks to the metal detector.

 

But we are told, if we are New Testament people, that "perfect love casts out fear." It is the only real counter-terrorism that works, in the long run. It's not hearts and flowers and candy sort of love, but the Greek root "agape" that C.S. Lewis wrote so powerfully about, a love that empties self and is open to understanding and learning and listening and yes, even forgiving.

 

That sort of love casts out fear. It doesn't screen for bombs or defuse improvised explosive devices, and there's no promise in this verse that if you can use love as your lens to look at "the other" you will cast out all future harm. Jesus did say something about peacemakers and those who stand for righteousness.

 

But if you can stand with and for and IN love, even as you are attacked, I wonder if you aren't reversing the reversal. That terror, spending itself, whatever the motivation, on those who refuse to hate them in response, might well cast itself out, and leave room for something more.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him when fear was cast out for you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 4-18

Notes from my Knapsack 4-18-13

Jeff Gill

 

A monastery, of sorts

___

 

President Dale Knobel was speaking to a roomful of Denison University faculty & staff recently, about his retirement in just a few weeks, the last fifteen years, and the future of the college.

 

In talking about the role of a president in higher education, he made the observation that the job is less like a king than a mayor. Presidents don't declare or mandate, they "nudge," he observed, and they spend most of their time working with constituencies. Alumni, bill-paying parents, Granville residents, as well as the more usual groupings of students, faculty, and staff each have a vision, some sense of what the institution is or should be, and the president of a college is moving between them listening, rephrasing, and "nudging" perhaps a bit the dialogue towards their own goals for the campus community.

 

Mayor doesn't seem like a bad metaphor for that sort of role at all, but Pres. Knobel's reflections made me think about another way of looking at the occupant of Monomoy House, one deeply rooted in the history of colleges and universities even if largely forgotten today. You could consider him a sort of Abbot.

 

In the late Roman era of the Christian West, monasteries were the bastions of classical learning, the holders of ancient records, and the final defense of communities as Goths, Vandals, and Visigoths, let alone Vikings came and picked over the corpse of Empire.

 

When the world began to re-form into semblances of nations and political structures, and safe passage became a little more certain across at landscapes, some monastic communities with a healthy population of monks having learning to spare opened schools. The "Oxbridge" tradition of higher education in England began with two islands of stability where learned clerics gathered students around them, formed colleges of shared interests, and enough of these collegial groups in Oxford and Cambridge clustered together for shared  efforts that added up to a breadth that was nearly universal in scope . . . the first English speaking universities.

 

And yes, they spoke little enough of English in their chapels and refectories and dormitories (see films of Potter, Harry, Hogwarts setting of), all elaborations on the already almost 1,000 year old traditions of monastic life in common. They spoke and wrote their charters and constitutions and diplomas in the church Latin which was on of their common stocks in trade, since work in the church was the destination for most of these scholars.

 

So we still have in academia our quads and convocations, hints of "Sic transit gloria Latinam" at least in official documents, and job titles like Provost and Chancellor and Dean, all of which came out of a roster of Priors and Cellarers and Sextons in churchly tables of organization.

 

There became many titles for the Head of such institutions, but most of them related back to the original presiding official of a monastery: the Abbot. The word goes back not just into Latin, but Greek, and before that the Aramaic that might be familiar to readers of the New Testament: Abba, Father. "Abba" as the Aramaic term for father, but a term in fact of endearment, a "Dad" or "Pops" more than a formal "Dear Father." That's why the significance of Jesus' address to God was preserved in the original to help us remember the weight of such personal relationship: Abba, Daddy.

 

When the very earliest communities of those devoted to their profession of faith were formed, this relationship, and that word was preserved, and monks called their mentor, their guide, their daddy in the family gathering, an Abbot. It's become a formal word in modern usage, but it cuts both ways.

 

So in history, in tradition, and in the vital sense of personal relationship that has marked his tenure, I think it would make a great deal of sense to call Dale Knobel a sort of secular Abbot. Pointy hat optional, but even there, academic garb holds onto some of those more peculiar prerogatives of church leadership: the leader's mace, the silk-lined hood over the simply cut preacher's robe.

 

And in all that ceremony four weeks from now, it won't be as President that I'll start to miss Dale Knobel during his last commencement in office, but as an Abbot, an Abba for our many constituencied community.

 

Thanks, Dad.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's been part of the Denison community for years, too. Tell him what you'll miss about Dale & Tina Knobel's departure at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-13-13

Faith Works 4-13-13

Jeff Gill

 

Bonds or shackles, and how to tell them apart

___

 

In Rod Dreher's new book "The Little Way of Ruthie Leming," a small town boy grows up, leaves home, goes to the big city, then does something very strange and wonderful. He goes back.

 

In fact, he states "What I once saw through the melodramatic eyes of a teenager as prison bars were in fact the pillars that held my family up when it had no strength left to stand."

 

Dreher's family needed support because his sister, who never left rural Louisiana and never wanted to, and never understood anyone who did, was about to leave this old weary world, carried off by a sudden vicious form of cancer. It is not a spoiler to tell you that she does in fact die, and it is not the author's intention to highlight that there is no grand reconciling between brother and sister, except for a mysterious sort of communion which results in the prodigal brother and his family returning home for good after her death.

 

"The Little Way" of the title, talking about a Louisiana Methodist gal in a book by her Eastern Orthodox by way of Roman Catholic brother, evokes the name of "The Little Flower," St. Thérèse of Lisieux. A Carmelite saint of the 19^th century, she wrote from her convent of a simple life of prayer, obedience, and faithfulness. Rod comes to see in his sister Ruthie's life a modern echo of this same chosen path, a "little way" that does not presume greatness as a spiritual necessity, and all the more significant in its unforced humility.

 

Ruthie's "little way" is small town in nature, but it's small town in a way that is widely transferrable. It's the decision to accept a path and a field of service which puts personal relationships and face-to-face commitments first. You could live out, and be sustained by this humbler journey whether in a Utica or a Toboso, or on Hudson Avenue or Partridge Court. It only asks that you look at those around you and see Christ in them, Christ loving you, and Christ Jesus' own smile delighting in your offer of service.

 

It's a road which also allows for the fact that all of us sometimes end up in the ditch, and when we try to hard to get ourselves out on our own, sees us slamming up and out and over into the ditch on the other side, too.

 

Starhill, Louisiana has ditches and stuck folks and few plaster saints of any sort, even if the actual name is ridiculously perfect for a book like this one. It made me think often of my own hometown, whose name means "vale of paradise," although our administrative manager at the church recently called "Valla-walla-something." (It's Valparaiso, Indiana.)

 

Today, all four of us kids live in different places across the Midwest, and even my parents are much of the year down where snow shoveling is not on the menu. But I think of that town often, and the life it gave me. Then I recall my parents' hometowns, both under a thousand, both surrounded by fields and far from big box stores even today.

 

Those locations, and the sense of community they once held, are still part of who I am. Reading "The Little Way of Ruthie Leming" didn't make me think about moving "back" to Kansas, Illinois or Anita, Iowa (or even Thirsk, North Yorkshire), but all those communities make me look more closely at the neighborhood where I live, the village we reside in, and the unique nature of this marvelous county where my wife and I both work. How are bonds of mutual obligation and cycles of tradition a life-giving framework for our family, and for the work we believe our family is meant to be doing – not just anywhere, but right here?

 

So many stories of adulthood and escape end with a sort of wistful looking back, and mainly a sense of loss, of rueful unredeemable regret. This book shows another way, that you can go home again; not that it's easy, or necessary for everyone, but it is in truth possible. Maybe even more possible in the internet age, ironically, than it was not long ago for a wired-up person to live and work somewhere far away from the usual plugs and outlets.

 

Reading this book didn't make me think that Rod Dreher believes I should move back to MY hometown, but is a friendly guidebook to reading the signs for finding the hometown paths and connections right where you are.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's at home here. Tell him where you feel at home at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Newark Christian - April 3, 2013

The Newark Christian

Serving God's Transformation of Licking County

April 3, 2013

Volume LXXIV

Issue 7

3Church Office Hours:

Monday – Friday

7:00 am – 2:00 pm

Phone:  740-366-4961

Email:

secretary.newarkcentral@gmail.com

We're on the Web!

Visit us at:

newarkcentralchristian.com

Our mission is to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit and Scriptures from the Holy Bible.  We seek to grow in knowledge and grace of Christ to strengthen the unity of all Christians toward building the Kingdom of God.

E-mail update: next Wednesday, April 10, at 6:00 pm in Fellowship Hall, we will welcome Sam John, a missionary from India who works with his father, Dr. K.C. John, to maintain five orphanages for abandoned girls there. He is conducting a tour of congregations in Ohio and elsewhere, and has connections to us through the Thompson family. Please make a special effort to join us in hearing what God is doing in India!  If you'd like to learn a bit more about the John family and their work, you can find a pdf oral history at:

http://www.sebts.edu/cgcs/images/John-Interview.pdf

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Our Mission Field

Notes From My Knapsack

Easter morning, as the sunrise service was ending (in a gentle rain, but life's like that sometimes), as the fireplace was burning down to embers, it was a unique joy to lean out over the wall of the old CCC picnic shelter atop Horn's Hill, and see the zig-zag of headlights and taillights moving slowly down the road below us, back and forth around the hairpin curves. It was the kind of sight you might expect out West, or somewhere even more exotic, but we were looking beyond that "mountainside" vista to the lights of Deo Drive and Mt. Vernon Rd.

Even as the blue glow filled the valley from an obscured sunrise, the lights glittered over to 21^st St., and to the south as far as Heath and Hebron, carpeting the valley floor; you could see west to Cherry Valley Road and Granville even with a mist rising up out of the streambed of Raccoon Creek. If you knew where to look, from the southern crest of the hilltop, you could see both the windows of Newark Central, and then on down Rt. 13 to the Licking County Courthouse.

A few months ago, I bought a picture from a photographer two blocks over on Fairfield Ave. that's hanging just outside my office door. It's a reverse of that Horn's Hill vista, from an open field atop the ridge south of downtown Newark, the perspective pulling together the courthouse cupola, the old firehouse tower where R&M Bakery serves our neighborhood, and our steeple, with the Chestnut Hills north of Dry Creek across the top.

On the wall below, with the help of a little shop in The Arcade downtown, it now says "Our Mission Field." It's a reminder to me each day and anyone else in to see me (or use the church library next door!) that we're a congregation with a mission to proclaim Christ's good news and serve in his name. This county, this community is our mission field.

And in that same spirit, we're going to consider in the wake of Easter, during the Sunday services, "The Rest of Life," a look at the Christian life based on a book by Dr. Ben Witherington III, a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary. How is "the rest of" our lives part of Christ's mission for each of us, and all of us together, to proclaim & serve?

In grace and peace, Pastor Jeff

Youth McDonald's tour and SURPRISE

On Sunday, April 7, from 1:30-4:00 pm, all youth will meet at the church. We will travel to McDonalds located by Texas Roadhouse. Please bring money for a treat and dress for the weather. A surprise will come after our tour to another destination. Until then get ready to learn the ins and outs of McDonalds! Samantha (call church office)

God and Stuff

On Sunday, April 7 all youth in grades 6-12 will meet after the 10:30 service. Please bring your bible and money for lunch. Get ready for an invigorating conversation with Pastor Jeff.

Youth Christian Skate Night

On Monday, April 15 all youth ages 5 and up will meet from 6:15-8:15 pm at the church. We will be roller skating at the Rollaway Rink. The cost is free thanks to Betty Lou and Larry Iden. Please bring money for refreshments and $1.00 for inline or speed skates. There will be devotions at 7:30 pm. Until then get ready to play the number game.

Thank you…

…for having us all over for lunch after my mother's service. This is truly a ministry to those in time of grief. We were able to share many memories together. Please pass on our gratitude to Cynthia Rarick and her team. Mike Keaser (Marie Sunkle's son).

Thanks for Flowers of Tomorrow

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today. Thank you, you have planted seeds of hope, encouragement and healing by your prayers in my recent health concerns. Expressions of love and concern are wonderful blessings to all who are experiencing health issues. Blessings and thanks to all, Carol Van Winkle.

Granville Youth Event

On Sunday, April 14 all youth ages 5 and up will meet from 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm. We will tour the Robbins Hunter Museum and then have ice cream at Whit's. Please bring money for the ice cream. Until then get ready to wear your cultural hat and learn and explore at the Robbins Hunter Museum.

Spaghetti Dinner

As most of you know, Leukemia and Lymphoma have both deeply touched our family. We lost Mom 5 weeks after her diagnosis. Katie, on the other hand, has shown everyone that it is possible to fight the fight and beat the odds. She is now healthy with a beautiful family.

Our daughter in law, Melissa Schmitt, has taken on the battle head on to help find a cure. Being a research nurse helps her see the possibilities that are on the horizon. Melissa is training with Team in Training to run 2 half marathons (13.3 miles each). She will run the first in Washington DC in April and the second three weeks later in Cleveland. To be a part of the team she had to commit to raise a considerable amount of money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. This is where you come in……..

We will be serving a spaghetti dinner after church on April 14. The cost will be donation only and we will provide you with a receipt for the L/L Society at the time if you so choose. It is a tax right off donation. Thank you in advance for your support, you have to eat lunch somewhere, you might as well join us for a good cause!!!!! Thanks, Judy Schmitt

Summer 2013 Camp Information

Please consider sending your child to camp so he or she can grow in their spiritual faith, enjoy fellowship, and experience a life changing week. Application forms are available at the Welcome Center. The cost is $160.00 per child for each week. Please see me if your child will need a monetary sponsor for camp. I need to have all applications turned in no later than April 21 to make the early bird deadline. You can give me the fee money as your family is able. Please see me for any questions and further details. Prayerfully consider having your child embark on this week long journey of faith and fun.

Samantha (call church office)

Grandparents Camp - For Children in grades 1 & 2 and a Grandparent
Held at Camp Christian, May 31 - June 1

Otter Junior Camp - For youth in grades 3, 4, & 5
Held at Camp Christian, June 16 - 22

Chi Rho Camps - For youth in grades 6, 7, & 8
All Chi Rho Camps are held at Camp Christian

Hocking June 9 - 15

Portahoga July 7 - 13

Maumee July 14 - 20

Miami August 4 - 10

CYF Conferences - For youth in grades 9, 10, 11, & 12
All CYF Conferences are held at Camp Christian

Hiram June 23 - 29

Phyo June 30  - July 6

Lakeside July 21 - 27

Wilmington July 28 - August 3

Adult Ministries - For adults of all ages
Held at Northwest Christian Church, Columbus, June 17 – 21

Adventure Camp - For adults of all ages and high school age youth
Location TBA, June 28 – 31

Advance Ministries Summer Conference - For young adults ages 19 - 29
(at least one year out of high school)
Held at Camp Christian, August 11 - 18

http://www.ccinoh.com/media/68505/camp_christian_is_2013.pdf

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Looking Ahead…….

Sunday, April 7 –

"The Rest of Life: Rest"

                    Hebrews 4:1-11

Sunday, April 14 –

"The Rest of Life: Play"

                    Isaiah 61:1-2

Sunday, April 21 –

"The Rest of Life: Food"

                    Matthew 11:16-19

Sunday, April 28 –

"The Rest of Life: Fasting"

                    Matthew 6:16-18

Sunday, May 5 –

"The Rest of Life: Study"

                    II Timothy 2:14-16

         

Sunday, May 12 –

"The Rest of Life: Sex"

                    I Corinthians 7:1-7, 16

Sunday, May 19 –

"The Rest of Life: Aging"

                    Ecclesiastes 3

           

Joys and Concerns

• For Bob recovering at home, waiting for his new knee (again!)
• Welcoming new members, Mark & Pamela Roth and their daughters Brenda & Pam, who joined on Easter Sunday
• Celebrating the baptism of Jenna Marie, congratulations to parents Michael and Kelly and grandparents Bill and Sandy

Daily Scripture Readings

Apr    3       Matthew 28:1-15

         4       2 Timothy 1:3-10

         5       Luke 24:13-31

         6       I John 3:18-22

         7       I Timothy 6:17-19

         8       Matt. 13:1-8, 18-23

         9       Luke 15:11-24

         10      Proverbs 15:1-4

         11      Matthew 25:31-40

         12      I Corin. 10:31-11:1

         13      Psalm 32:1-7

         14      Acts 17:16-34

         15      I Corin. 12:14-26

         16      John 10:11-16, 27-29

         17      Colossians 3:12-17

         18      Isaiah 43:1-4

         19      Ephesians 4:31-5:2

         20      I Corin. 15:1-8, 20

 (Taken from The Upper Room)

Inserted into this week's newsletter:

Stewardship Committee Report

Year End Report 2012

Ed Taylor, a Disciples of Christ pastor who serves as head of the Ecumenical Stewardship Center, points out that "Stewardship is the receiving, caring, and giving that knows God and shapes Christian discipleship".  Stewardship is not just about giving but about where we focus our priorities.

As a congregation, we place priorities in three areas – 1) our General Fund for the ongoing church budget, or "Current Expense" on our offering envelopes; 2) Mission giving through your envelope designations and other allocations of the board from the General Fund budget; and 3) in Building Maintenance, to care for the ministry tools of our property and structures here and at the church lodge. The Stewardship Committee primarily manages the General Fund expenses, with the Missions Committee overseeing Mission outlays, the Property Committee our Building Maintenance costs, and our Memorials have their own committee along with the investment oversight of the Trustees, who are the legal agents of the congregation under Ohio law.

Our General Fund started 2012 with a balance of $19,111.93 and closed with a balance at the end of December of $6,744.81.  Income to the General Fund through the end of December 2012 was $222,478.37.  The income to the General Fund has been holding steady over the last couple of years even during these difficult economic times.  Income to the General Fund also includes undesignated or "loose" collection offerings, and property rental.

Expenses paid from the General Fund through the end of December 2012 were $234,845.49. This compares to projected expenses calculated in the 2012 Stewardship Campaign of $273,736.38. The reduced expense level results from the functional committees holding down expenses and eliminating the cost of health insurance for our pastor.

           

Our best estimates of projected giving versus anticipated expenses show a likely deficit in the coming year. We are reviewing options for a new Stewardship campaign approach in the Fall of this year for our planning and projections into 2014. Meanwhile, each one of us needs to prayerfully examine our personal level of Stewardship to see how much we can increase our giving to help reduce the expected deficit between the estimated income and expenses to the General Fund for 2013.

Harry Cline

Stewardship Committee Chairman

Faith Works 4-6-13

Faith Works 4-6-13

Jeff Gill

 

Pictures worth a thousand words, or Word

___

 

Have you ever heard of Harry Anderson?

 

No, not the magician/comedian who used to be on "Night Court" (loved that show), but the artist.

 

You may not know the name, but if you attend church you probably know his work. Not as well-known as Warner Sallman, the painter of "Head of Christ" (1941) which is so common your church almost certainly has one hanging somewhere, he was inspired by Sallman's example and took it a step further.

 

In 1945, Anderson painted "What happened to your hand?" which shows a group of modern-day children sitting with Jesus in a garden. The boy down on the grass is holding an airplane toy, just to make sure that you get the contemporary setting along with their 1945 kids' clothes.

 

And on the knee of Jesus, who's wearing a robe of timeless vintage, a little girl is holding his open-palmed hand and looking up quizzically at him. The caption is not on the painting, nor does it need to be. It's quite clear, and I think quite affecting.

 

Oddly enough today, the controversy both within Anderson's own Seventh-Day Adventist community, and more generally, was whether it was appropriate to show Christ in a contemporary setting. The controversy didn't hurt Anderson's career, and he continued working for decades, doing religious art for the Latter Day Saints' display at the New York World Fair, and for a variety of Protestant venues.

 

If you've not seen "What happened to your hand?" (but look around in your Sunday school rooms, it's probably somewhere), you may have seen where Anderson made Christ 500 feet tall, so to speak, and shows him knocking on the United Nations' building in New York as if it were a door.

 

I'm partial to another painting of his which ought to show up in a Mad Men episode, where Anderson puts a robed Jesus in a 1960s living room, earnestly speaking to a man with his back to the viewer, looking out the picture window across the lawn. From behind, you could swear it was Don Draper. (I'll post a link on Twitter to a page where you can see all these.)

 

Visual depictions of the Bible and of Jesus himself have a long history, with murals and mosaics and stained glass helping tell the old, old story in an era before literacy and printing. Illuminated manuscripts even in medieval times added images to the verbiage, with stock representations making small pictures understandable to anyone (the beard on Jesus, the wild hair on John the Baptist, a bald and short Paul, etc.).

 

Harry Anderson more than Warner Sallman opened the door to pictures of Jesus and tales of faith in a new context, even as movies in the 50s & 60s were emphasizing a sort of authenticity that was more a stock image than a historical study. Sunday school and VBS material has tended to stick with the safer approach, with a visual palette that isn't much different from those medieval manuscripts or the German Romantic era paintings that inspired most of our 20^th century American stained glass.

 

So it was with delight that I've learned about how the platform of the graphic novel as been used recently to re-tell that old, old story with some current insight. I'll admit to a small flinch when I first heard about the "Manga Bible," using the Japanese form of animation best known in the Pokemon or Speed Racer worlds, but Tyndale's "Manga Messiah" of the Gospels and "Manga Metamorphosis" of Acts are a surprisingly complete telling of the text. There are three Old Testament volumes I've not yet seen.

 

"The Action Bible" from David C. Cook comes as the full Scriptures, or just a New Testament version, but is a good read for middle school and high school students not exactly loving a text-based experience (but there's much of the text right there in the margins and speech balloons). And I am truly in awe of Zondervan's "The Book of Revelation." It's that last book of the Bible, all the text present and fully accounted for and brilliantly realized; I couldn't have imagined this approach until I saw this work, but entirely rooted in the words as they are present. You will be moved, and moved to reflect deeply on Revelation through this graphic novel.

 

I'm a reader myself, but I will be recommending these formats for reading and envisioning the Bible for years to come. They are missionary efforts of their own type, reaching out in new ways with the timeless Story of Stories.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him your preferred translation or rendition of the Bible at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

[for the editor, if they're curious - http://www.harryandersonart.com/religious-art-i.html - and I will post this to my Twitter account on Saturday morning. Pax, JBG]

Knapsack 4-4-13

Notes From My Knapsack 4-4-13

Jeff Gill

 

Something to celebrate & understand

___

 

 

One of my favorite nature immersion activities with a group of people, children or adults, is to hand out a bunch of two-foot-long pieces of red string, and tell them to go and create a nature trail with it, having at least five stations along it.

 

Then everyone pairs up, and in turn takes the other person for a "hike" on the nature trail they've designed.

 

You can do it yourself, of course. It's an exercise that makes you slow down, and refocus your inner viewfinder onto a smaller scale. Even when you're sitting on grass in a circle outside and away from buildings, your mind might still be going 60 mph and seeing the ground and trees and shrubbery around you through plate glass. You have to learn how to recognize your default mode for what it is – through the car window – and find your way into nature, on nature's terms.

 

So some of these 18 to 24 inch hikes meander along the bark of a tree, from lichens to an insect borehole, out to a final scenic overlook at a bud on a twig's end. Others stay close to the ground, from a discreet point adjoining an ant hill along a crack in the dry earth to where a leaf from last fall is slowly decaying into soil, leaving a fantastic filigree of veins and panels.

 

You might travel from the unwanted weed sprouting in your old mulch to the edge of the lawn grass forest, a safe loop in through the swelling roots and back to the sharp edge between planting beds and the turf.

 

Along a low branch of oak, soon the small infant hands of leaf balls will uncurl into a not-yet green banner; your nature trail could stroll from bud to bud to that first opening hint of the canopy to come.

 

Richard Louv famously wrote some years ago of "nature deficit disorder." Like any good idea, it's been done over and over emphasized to where it gets blamed for all manner of socially complex ills, but I will still affirm the therapeutic value of nature, on natural terms.

 

Slowing down and focusing in to see what is going on this spring – yes, I believe spring will come, despite all evidence to the contrary! – is good for the heart, the joints, the mind & spirit. You find your "notice-a-fier" working differently when you check out the details, up close, of a bud on a tree or bush; not just of nature, you notice things about people and processes and yes, maybe even stuff on TV or your laptop in a sharper way.

 

On the vernal equinox, just a couple of weeks ago, the air was chill, but there's no denying that the days are longer, and the sun higher in the sky. It might yet snow again (helloooo, forsythia!) but even a heavy fall won't stick when the radiant heat trapped in the soil and pavement has soaked so deeply beneath the surface.

 

That penetration of warmth is sending inexorable signals to life lying dormant within the soil, and the responses are everywhere. And on that cool March afternoon, I saw what at first looked like a wisp of smoke, then coming closer recognized as a whirl of small white insects, the first of this new year.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him your signs of spring at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.