Faith Works 8-3-19

Faith Works 8-3-19

Jeff Gill

 

Looking along the midway

___

 

Sometimes I worry that I've written a column before.

 

And I know for certain I've at least noted something of this sort in previous years, if not the whole reflection: I go pretty much every year to the Ohio State Fair at least once, and the Hartford Fair, our independent fair that includes Licking County, multiple times each August.

 

In fact, tomorrow I'll be helping lead an ecumenical worship service at the Hartford Fair, at 8:30 am in the Natural Resources pavilion on the northeast corner of the fairgrounds. Those with fair animals residing on the grounds for a week or more, concessioners, and even just passing visitors get a chance to stop and pray and give thanks and share community, out there north of Croton.

 

We get 4-Hers and carnies, cooks and ticket takers, parents and children and grandchildren, all glad to have a chance to include an act of worship in this week set apart, but a fair week which is one of the central parts of many people's lives.

 

That's always rewarding to help offer, and I'm looking forward to it, but there's also the whole experience of "walking the fair." You can also call it people watching, but for me as a Christian minister it has another overtone.

 

Out along the midway, whether in Columbus for the state fair or at the Hartford Fair closer to home, you see everyone. You pass by, you stand in line, sometimes you end up talking to people who are from everywhere, at least from among our everywhere. And many of them don't want a church service, aren't church goers at home, and quite a few have never seen the inside of one in person.

 

God loves them, every one. There is a divine purpose for each one to find and fulfill, or to reject and ramble away from that, in my faith, I believe causes God to simply come up with a new plan and purpose from that point forward . . . and on and on until we take ourselves into the presence of God at the end of all things, and we see and hear the greater purpose of everything, ourselves included.

 

How am I, how is the church, how might a witness to this hope and anchoring understanding be made to those I'm walking among? I don't have these thoughts as much in a mall at Christmastime, though I could. I might experience the same evangelistic tug at a football stadium or basketball arena, but it's at the state and county fairs that I always know that prayerful realization will walk along with me.

 

These are the people for whom Christ died, and many of them think no one in this life or the next care for them even enough to give up a minute of prayer for them, let alone lay down their lives for them. There are joys outside of the church, and many are celebrated at the fair, but a joy that lasts beyond the cotton candy delights of this life is something that I would argue everyone is looking for, in one form or another. How do we communicate effectively "the faith that is in us" to those looking for what it is we've been given . . . especially when that search is taking people into some pretty problematic dead ends and false corridors that will not come out where they want to go.

 

I know my limits as a preacher and a pastor. Some can hear a person like me speaking and teaching where others would give me a look and immediately dismiss what I have to say. We're each given a certain audience to which we're best suited, and we can all grow in understanding those to which we're not familiar, but few of us can, like the Apostle Paul, be all things to all people.

 

And some of my fairground reflection is not so much to seek the absolute answers for my ministry, my sharing of Good News, but to be chastened and reminded of my own limits, of how each church fellowship might just have its own unique place in God's plan.

 

In the middle of diversity and complexity and even more than a little confusion, I look for those small openings through which God can do great things.

 

And I make sure to have some fair food. God's at work along the food trucks, too.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he invites you to come to church on Sunday morning at the fair if you want! Tell him about your summer in faith and life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-27-19

Faith Works 7-27-19

Jeff Gill

 

Church meetings can be more than agendas

___

 

Even among those of us who take the clear teachings of holy scripture very seriously, it's not a highly respected passage.

 

Acts 15:6 says "The apostles and elders met to consider this question."

 

That's right, having church meetings is in the Holy Bible. And the next words in verse 7 are "After much discussion . . ."

 

By the time you read this, I'll be home from my religious tradition's "Y'all come" gathering that's held every other summer, a "General Assembly." Some denominations have very strict rules about who comes, and who votes, and may be a bigger church than my own but have many fewer in attendance.

 

We had over 3,000 people, clergy slightly in the majority but not by much, together for four worship services, two with communion, dispersed last Sunday morning across the region to different local churches (and almost always communion there), and nine hundred and seven business sessions.

 

Okay, I may be a little high on the number of business sessions. There were over a hundred workshops across three afternoons, and I took two in as an attendee, and did two long afternoons as a workshop leader myself, on my tradition's history and polity.

 

Trust me, I have been and can be jaded about stuff like banquets at conference centers, and tech complications in meeting rooms. I feel a stiff smile fading on my face after a couple of fourteen hour days and long walks through seemingly endless corridors.

 

But I come home from Des Moines having heard inspiring preaching, from getting the Bible opened up for me in new ways (I have to look up some information on the Sheep Gate when I get home!), and from having had communion and also communed with people I just would not have met had I just stayed put in Newark, Ohio.

 

Though I did keep running into people who were from Licking County, who grew up in Newark, who had been past the giant basket building, who had connections to me and us and ours in ways I wouldn't have known unless I went to Iowa to find it out.

 

It really was inspiring, for me as a Christian, to experience my unity with Haitian preachers in Miami and pastors who lead Hispanic congregations on the Mexican border, with women and men new to ministry and those who have been mentors to me since before I even was ordained thirty years ago. I also got to travel with my dad, as we've done for three other General Assemblies (I think this is my ninth or tenth); he just turned 85 and through his eyes I'm learning something about the challenges of accessibility in a convention center and sports arena – oh, the stairs! The endless, ubiquitous stairs . . .

 

My faith tradition stretches across the United States and Canada; while they are Americans, the Christian Church in Puerto Rico has been an "autonomous national church" for many years (a long interesting story of polity and history). Miguel Morales, the leader of that church, came to express in many different settings and meetings within our assembly, the appreciation and stories of the faith at work in that island nation.

 

Miguel explained that Hurricane Maria was unique not because it was a hurricane, but because normally a hurricane hit the north side of their large island, and the southern side would keep electric and open roads, and help the other half with recovery; in the past a bad, big hurricane might strike the east end, while the west would remain intact and be the engine of recovery for the whole.

 

Hurricane Maria, as we saw in a striking projected satellite radar image, ran right over the center of Puerto Rico, and took its time passing over. The entire island took damage, severe damage. And as you have probably heard in the news, they've had their own problems with governance.

 

Rev. Morales said again and again that our relief and support agencies of our shared church fellowship called him BEFORE the hurricane struck, and got aid to him and his churches BEFORE any governmental assistance arrived. I knew a little of this story, but I heard the whole narrative in full, and it made my assembly.

 

Not just that we helped each other, but to hear about the resilience and renewal felt in so many congregations which lost everything, and realized that in their faith they still had everything necessary. The generators rushed there by our Pension Fund and Week of Compassion agencies were incredibly important, but it was a kind of communion, then and felt again now, that gave them hope.

 

Attending this meeting gave me hope, too. I hope to bring some back to Newark with me.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he is really ready to go home. Tell him how you experience fellowship at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-18-19

Notes from my Knapsack 7-18-19

Jeff Gill

 

Looking at the Moon

___

 

July 20, 1969, I was on my great-aunts' porch in Chicago.

 

They had an enclosed area, surrounded by windows, a former porch that was more of a cold room in winter and a very hot one mostly in the summer, except long after the sun went down and especially when the wind was in the east, and blew in off of Lake Michigan, just a block and a half away.

 

As little kids we were not quite understanding what was going on, but picking up from the adults how important it really was. I was seven, nearly eight, and besotted by America's space program, so I might have had a little more direct investment in it, but I'll admit the small black and white TV with a loop and rabbit ears on the back, blurry even without switching to the lunar images, kept the majesty at arm's length. I kept watching, though, because my beloved great-aunts, a pair of never married schoolteachers back when that was a thing, were riveted to the story, and so was I.

 

We switched back and forth from Walter Cronkite to Frank Reynolds, and honestly I'm not sure which we were on when Neil Armstrong finally came out and made his cautious journey down the last steps into history.

 

What I do recall that Sunday night was leaning out a window and looking at the Moon overhead, and thinking "there are people up there." It made the lunar surface closer, somehow.

 

In the last thirty years, I've done many tours of the Newark Earthworks, and had more than my share of opportunities to simply enjoy and reflect for myself on the grounds, the lines the earthen walls inscribe towards the horizon, and the arcs of Moon and Sun from their rising to their setting. Somehow, two thousand years ago, Native Americans living here were able to record and project and plan those movements so that they could encode into their walls and alignments the movements of the heavenly bodies.

 

And I've wondered often: did they wonder, those Native American scientists and leaders and everyday people, if other humans could ever stand on the surface of that circle? Did they envision it as a sphere; how clearly did they project its orbits?

 

The comparison of the only other octagon and circle connected earthwork in all of North America, just sixty miles southwest of us in Chillicothe, offer a tantalizing hint that, in their adjustment of the geometry of the octagonal figure, they understood enough about latitude that they may well have known they stood on a sphere. Two thousand years ago, not far off of when Egyptian and Greek scholars first calculated the same reality from solar geometry across a comparable stretch of landscape.

 

And if the Earth was a sphere, it wasn't that big a leap to infer that the disk of the Moon was in fact the face of a sphere in the skies. They might well have known that here in Newark back then: but to somehow travel across the heavens, and stand on it and look back at us?

 

Yet it's still hard even for me, a youthful space program fanatic, to imagine that we did it, and the living memories of those who did are passing us by. It's amazing, incredible, and perhaps will again become unbelievable.

 

My hope out of these fiftieth anniversary observances is that we find out how important it is for us to believe not only in the reality of the moon landings then, but the importance for the human spirit in landing there again, and learning more about the neighborhood in which we live.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he was not quite eight when he watched Walter Cronkite explain the blurry pictures on a black and white TV. Tell him how you remember that night, if you do, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

 

Faith Works 7-13-19 & 7-20-19

Faith Works 7-13-19

Jeff Gill

Strangers, sojourners, spacemen

___

Last December this fifty-something space geek managed to work into the Christmas Eve service a reference to the Apollo 8 circumnavigation of the Moon, and the reading by the astronauts of passages from Genesis 1, the creation narrative, on that same evening fifty years before.

Now we're coming up on the next step half a century ago in our journey up from the Earth, out into space: the lunar landing achieved by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Neil Armstrong, no longer with us, set foot on the Moon's surface with the words "One small step for a man," but he went on to make a point about the greater humanity that made his step possible.

Michael Collins, up as all alone as any human being had ever been in all of history, kept the home fires burning in the Command Module, "Columbia" as the "Eagle" lunar lander rested on the Moon. His "Carrying the Fire" is still perhaps the best book written by any of the American astronauts, a worthy counterpart to Thomas Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" from journalism's point of view.

And the indispensible and irrepressible Buzz Aldrin was the second man down the "Eagle" lander ladder, but he did have an interesting first for himself. The first meal, the very first eating and drinking done by humanity on another planet, was Buzz quietly and privately, but with Mission Control's permission "off microphone" opening up a small packet of bread and wine blessed by his Presbyterian pastor back in Texas. Communion was the first meal on the Moon.

All of the astronauts did the same thing at some point, from Armstrong to Aldrin to Collins, Lovell and Borman already a few months before on Apollo 8, and Lovell again famously (seen in the person of Tom Hanks) on Apollo 13 perilously relying on their Lunar Module as a lifeboat to preserve a crippled spacecraft around the back of the Moon, looking out their windows or visors back into space, at the Earth.

Right on down to Harrison Schmitt some three and a half years later on the last moon walk, almost every Apollo astronaut commented on the experience of looking back at the "big blue marble" in the sky, and realizing that every hope, every dream, every person they loved was on that dot they could cover with an outstretched finger . . . and they could see no borders, no human lines or distinctions, but the simple essentially fragile reality of all of life as they knew it wrapped around that one terribly special place.

Coming up to the Apollo 11 anniversary, which will and must be celebrated by all of us, whatever faith, whatever spiritual orientation you carry, whichever country you call your own, we all on this planet have again a chance to reflect on the point and purpose of life. Are we here as a cosmic infestation, a mistake of chemistry and biology, or is life and particularly human life here for a reason?

That question is the muscle and bone underneath the skin of any religious tradition worth considering. Why are we were, where are we from, and where are we going – and thinking about that from a completely different heavenly body really does put a great deal of such reflection into a kind of sharp contrast, as distinct as the space walkers said the shadows on the Moon appeared to their eyes.

And yes, how we handle the lines we have drawn on our maps, and the barriers to movement we establish as countries and ethnicities: how do they look from a heavenly perspective? What does fifty years of awareness of our necessary community on a single planet with oxygen and water and life tell us about how we should love one another?

I think we all, whatever our church home or religious inclination, can put some thought and even prayer into those questions as we celebrate what American ingenuity achieved on July 20, 1969.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he was not quite eight when he watched Walter Cronkite explain the blurry pictures on a black and white TV. Tell him how you remember that night, if you do, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

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Faith Works 7-20-19

Jeff Gill

Beyond the Moon

___

This night, fifty years ago, I was on my great-aunts’ porch in Chicago.

They had an enclosed area, surrounded by windows, a former porch that was more of a cold room in winter and a very hot one mostly in the summer, except long after the sun went down and especially when the wind was in the east, and blew in off of Lake Michigan, just a block and a half away.

As little kids we were not quite understanding what was going on, but picking up from the adults how important it really was. I was seven, nearly eight, and besotted by America’s space program, so I might have had a little more direct investment in it, but I’ll admit the small black and white TV with a loop and rabbit ears on the back, blurry even without switching to the lunar images, kept the majesty at arm’s length. I kept watching, though, because my beloved great-aunts, a pair of never married schoolteachers back when that was a thing, were riveted to the story, and so was I.

We switched back and forth from Walter Cronkite to Frank Reynolds, and honestly I’m not sure which we were on when Neil Armstrong finally came out and made his cautious journey down the last steps into history.

What I do recall that Sunday night was leaning out a window and looking at the Moon overhead, and thinking “there are people up there.” It made the lunar surface closer, somehow.

In the last thirty years, I’ve done many tours of the Newark Earthworks, and had more than my share of opportunities to simply enjoy and reflect for myself on the grounds, the lines the earthen walls inscribe towards the horizon, and the arcs of Moon and Sun from their rising to their setting. Somehow, two thousand years ago, Native Americans living here were able to record and project and plan those movements so that they could encode into their walls and alignments the movements of the heavenly bodies.

And I’ve wondered often: did they wonder, those Native American scientists and leaders and everyday people, if other humans could ever stand on the surface of that circle? Did they envision it as a sphere; how clearly did they project its orbits?

The comparison of the only other octagon and circle connected earthwork in all of North America, just sixty miles southwest of us in Chillicothe, offer a tantalizing hint that, in their adjustment of the geometry of the octagonal figure, they understood enough about latitude that they may well have known they stood on a sphere. Two thousand years ago, not far off of when Egyptian and Greek scholars first calculated the same reality from solar geometry across a comparable stretch of landscape.

And if the Earth was a sphere, it wasn’t that big a leap to infer that the disk of the Moon was in fact the face of a sphere in the skies. They might well have known that here in Newark back then: but to somehow travel across the heavens, and stand on it and look back at us?

Yet it’s still hard even for me, a youthful space program fanatic, to imagine that we did it, and the living memories of those who did are passing us by. It’s amazing, incredible, and perhaps will again become unbelievable.

So too is the nearly unbelievable idea that somehow after we die our memories, our essential selves, our souls have a place to go. Some religious teachers railed against the lunar landings, feeling that the establishment of footprints in the sky like that would undermine our belief in a heaven.

It does tend to change our sense of direction, somewhat. Heaven after Apollo 11 is less simply “up there” than it is . . . well, Jesus did say that the Kingdom of Heaven, the Realm of God itself is within you. Not “out there,” not “beyond space,” not “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Within you.

God’s promises are both infinitely within, and immeasurably beyond our human understanding. Earthly achievements may help us put them in perspective, like the view of Earth from the Moon does, but they can’t overshadow ideas that shine in the immense darkness, like “love one another.” That’s true for anyone looking up at the Moon, wondering how it looks to another in a different place, or even a different time.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he still likes to go out and look at the Moon from time to time, and imagine walking on its surface. Tell him how you think of the Moon at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.