Leaves that Cling

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      I know a tree that does not want to let go of its leaves. Even late in December, this post oak tree has every leaf that was produced in the spring. Maybe a few leaves have been dislodged from the tight grasp of the bonded relationship of the stipule and the leaf sheath but these are few and scant throughout the tree. Mostly, and I mean majorly, the 125-year-old 50-foot tall post oak has every leaf it enjoyed over the summer.
      I am not sure why the leaves stay on this tree so long. Maybe the tree is timid and wants to hang on to what it has always had without voluntarily relinquishing a single leaf for fear of coming up empty. Is the post oak a timid tree with insecurities? Does the post oak have trust issues: believing that if the leaves fall off in the autumn there will be no new leaves in the spring? Does the post oak believe that “what is, is all that will ever be, and there is no hope or dream of anything else in the future”? Does the post oak lack faith in a purpose, a process, and a vision that is greater than itself? Is “fear” the true lord of the post oak tree?
      If any of the above scenarios is accurate, I feel sorry for the post oak and pray that this fearful and gripping tree will find the courage to let loose just a little, to relax the grasp in order to see the sun begin to rise from low in the south sky as the days of winter subside. I pray for healing from this sort of tight-fisted fear.
      Of course, the tree could be innocent and actually trying to get rid of the leaves. On the other hand, the leaf itself could be the clingy culprit, holding on for dear life to the leaf sheath at the lateral bud for fear of the fall, or the uncontrolled breeze, or the lack of community that is sure to result from leaving the only world that it has always known. Maybe it is the leaf that has a fatalistic grip on the tree and will not let go of the sense of security that has bonded this relationship. I have witnessed this type of behavior in other areas of society and culture, where usually symbiotic relationships are formed and both parties benefit. However, these relationships are always changing, evolving, becoming more trusting and empowering until distance is no longer synonymous with desertion.
      Maybe the post oak leaf is actually so insecure and immature in its relationship with the tree that it believes, ignoring the dead and brown reality of its existence, that it is actually better off posing as a cipher on the tree than revealing and reveling in the real plight of its existence as a purposeful fallen leaf. Somewhere, in the training of post oak leaves, these leaves forget that leaves leave.
      Clingy and grasping relationships, fatalistic as they may surely be, are false realities that end in March winds when the tight and insecure grip can no longer be maintained. Surely, the leaf must fall.
Birds must fly from the nest, children must become the true mix of a mother and father (different and unique from both) by leaving home and embracing life, ripe tomatoes must be eaten, ripe peppers must be made into hot sauce, and yearling pigs must become country ham, sausage, and bacon. This is the way life works.
      People in the pew must become servants outside of the pews; Sunday students need to, sooner or later, graduate from Sunday School; children’s church lessons must not be assumed to be sufficient for adults and should become fully mature theology of the living Jesus Christ for a world with mature and broken issues; and the church needs to cease being the place where we come to cling onto security but, instead, must be the place where we courageously let go into the servant ministry of Jesus Christ.
      Finally, in the spring, when the post oak tree is using resources and juices to bring about new leaves, the yearling leaves finally and surely lose their grip and fall. No leaf of the post oak hangs on for two years. All leaves must fall.
      Trust in the Lord, O ye clingy leaves. Jesus catches and holds all things that fall.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Snuggies Scare Me!

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      I don’t know quite how to put this. A part of me feels as though I should not be sharing this sort of information with anyone, not even my confessor. But this is the truth: Snuggies scare me. I cannot imagine that you do not know what a Snuggie is. Snuggies are the latest craze in the genre of such things as the Chia Pets, the Flo-Bee hair trimmer, the inertia chain saw, and the Genuine, Simulated, Leather, Hand-Tooled Bible Belt.
      The Snuggies are those fleece blankets with sleeves added for the arms, a strange assemblage of fabric that you can wear to stay warm while lounging at your home or venturing out to various social events. The costume blankets come in all sizes and prints, and they scare me.
      Now, there is an upgraded version that can be worn outdoors and to sporting events. The commercial has people wearing revised version Snuggies outside in the stands, watching what I suppose are football games. People are even line-dancing in them. What are people thinking?
      These Snuggies seem sinister and subversive. There is something conniving about them. I don’t trust them, nor do I like the many prints, which include tiger, various pastels, a bright red, and a camouflage pattern. Of course, the camouflage is a hoax; otherwise, we would not be able to see it, and so, since we can see it, then it must not be camouflage.
            I, who have never been cold in my life, feel that Snuggies are nothing more than a hot tomb where a person can get caught and sweat themselves to infinity. Oooooooo, the thought of having my body in a warm fleece bag that fits around my neck and arms makes me swelter to the point of a heat stroke. I have never been cold lounging in the winter, and I usually spend most of the winter barefooted inside and outside to keep from getting hot from the thermostat being set all the way up to 65 degrees in the house.
      I look at LL Bean catalogs and see all those people wearing wool pants, thick flannel shirts, long underwear, wool socks, boots and wool hats, and I swelter. I would love to be able to wear any of the above-mentioned items, but even the thought of such clothing makes me want to kick off my shoes and throw my socks away.
      I have a closet full of sweaters. These items of clothing are properly named. Occasionally I will wear one outside if I am going to be away from any additional source of heat. However, as soon as someone builds a fire or turns the heat to high in the car, I am coming out of the sweater and rolling up my sleeves.
      All of my sleeping bags have zippers at both ends so I can get my feet out of the bag when I become trapped like a turkey in an oven bag. I even take all the cinch lines out of the hood of my sleeping bag so I will not accidentally get cinched up inside from head to toe without a way to escape.
I do not need a Snuggie. I need a Cool Suit. I need a set of clothing that pumps cool liquid through tiny veins that can deliver coolness. Now that would be the ticket.
      I once thought of being an entrepreneur and invented a cooling item that I referred to as “Cool Head.” The imagination behind this item was born on a hot summer day in a tobacco field located beside a watermelon patch. At a break, we took a couple of watermelons and halved them and ate the insides out. Then, to stay cool we put the watermelon hats on our heads. Cool things on the head really cool you down. (Of course, the flies and the gnit-gnats think it is a pretty glorious thing as well.)
      But I digress. The Cool Head prototype was a zip-lock bag filled with that blue alcohol cooler ice found in reusable ice packets. I froze a zip-lock filled the blue alcohol ice over a bowl in the freezer. When it was frozen I took it out and put it on my head and put a cap on. I wore it for an hour or so and soon noticed my teeth were hurting. I soon had the worse headache you have ever imagined. Within a day I had a terrible summer cold that lasted until the next Easter. I deserted my invention and went back to wearing hollowed out half watermelon rinds.
      I guess you are wondering why I have told you all of this. Actually, no reason. I just had a desire to write a little something, and this is what came out. All I wanted to say was that Snuggies scare me, I have never been cold, and hollowed-out half watermelon rinds will keep you more appropriately cool when worn on your head than frozen blue alcohol ice in a zip-lock bag placed on your head (and will cause fewer headaches).

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

I Believe in Moose Tracks

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      Methodism is not a religion. Neither is Roman Catholicism, Baptist, Lutheranism, or Presbyterianism. These are denominations: sort of like the flavors of ice cream. If you have a cone of chocolate ice cream in your hand and you are licking the long melted streams that are running toward your hand, and someone comes up and asks, “What are you eating?,” your answer would not be “chocolate.” You would more accurately reply, “ice cream.” Then, if the person asks you, “What kind of ice cream?,” you could respond by saying “chocolate.”
      This is how it works when a form, a registration, or a person asks your “religious preference”. Your answer might be Buddhist, or Hindu, or Moslem, or Jew, or Christian. And if you answered, “Christian,” then the flavor might be Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, and on and on. The denomination is the flavor. Christianity is the substance.
      Of course all of the other religions listed above have the same system of denominations. None of these religions are unified in their belief. In the Moslem world there are Sunnis and Shiites, (best known from their notoriety in Iraq), along with many other different flavors divided up over this little thing or that little thing. Denominationalism is a pariah that plagues all religions and points out how poorly we human-type people are able to reconcile our differences and interpretations. This denominationalism is a good indicator of how we can become small and trite in our religion. Christianity seems to be one of the best at dividing up and becoming an “us” and “them” set of beliefs.
      Even the Gospels reveal that in the days of Jesus there were Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Samaritans, and many cultural Jews who never really committed to any of these particular flavors.
      So, if someone asks you about your religion, please tell them you are a Christian in your religion and a Methodist as the particular flavor. If I ever invent my own denomination, which I have been prone to want to do from time to time, I am going to call it “Moose Tracks,” since that is my favorite flavor of ice cream. (I also like coffee ice cream, but it would be pretty confusing to tell people that I am a member of the Coffee Church). I digress.
      One of the most despicable movements in the Christian Church is the movement that believes that if you are born in America, then you are automatically a Christian. I might call these “Cultural Christians.” Americans are pretty bad at stating that they are a Christian while never having made a profession of faith or even entering a church. Other good Americans will state that they are Methodist or Baptist, or any other denomination, only because their grandparents were of that particular flavor, or because they were entered into that cradle role when they were born.
      The Christian Church is not the only religion that deals with this sort of cultural identity with a particular religion or denomination. Every religion deals with backsliders, posers, and cultural identifiers who state they are something due to affiliation. If I place a bowl of vanilla pudding in the middle of 25 other bowls of chocolate pudding, any seeing person would be able to tell the difference. That configuration of pudding could stay on the table for a week and besides getting a tough dried layer on top the observing person would recognize that the vanilla pudding is still vanilla pudding. That vanilla pudding may claim that it is chocolate pudding, but without taking on the flavor and color of chocolate pudding, the identity would not be the same. Being chocolate or vanilla pudding is a full commitment. Something is required. Flavor cannot be added just by affiliation.
      Being a bowl of chocolate pudding means something. Being moose tracks ice cream means something. Being a Christian means something. Being a Christian requires all that we are, every fiber of our being, and involves a full-fledged commitment that cannot be taken for granted. A dish of moose tracks ice cream will taste, look, and act like moose tracks ice cream wherever it happens to be. If a bowl of strawberry ice cream is advertised as moose tracks ice cream, even the most casual shopper will tell the difference.
Being a Christian requires something. This identity is not a casual thing that can be turned on or off at a whim. I know people who are a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and they make up their own little belief system that suits them perfectly. Besides the denominational variances, being a Christian is a buying into a system, a way, a truth that cannot be much diddled with. Many may try to take a little bit of Oprah, and a little bit of Hallmark Cards, and a little bit of Osteen, and a little bit of Buddha, and a little bit of Kahil Gibran, and a little bit of political party jargon and mix it all up and throw in some Christian words and call it Christianity. This is more common than I care to admit; however, this is not Christianity.
      Well, I guess I have said quite enough concerning Cultural Christianity. Just remember that your religion is Christian, your particular flavor is your denomination. Just being born may make you a child of God, but it does not make you a Christian.
      Tune in next week when I write about those who keep trying to legislate religion. That is a situation that is particularly distasteful, no matter what flavor we happen to try to add.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

The Academy Award for Church Drama

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      Why do golf commentators whisper? While Ernie Els is putting a 16-foot putt, the commentators will commentate in small, whispery, and airy voices, something like this: “The putt is a sharply downhill putt on this very fast green…the putt will break first to the left and then to the right. There is only one way to make this putt and anything other than a tap will land the ball in the lake. Ernie has been pushing his putts and a push will place the ball too far to the right and a miss is trouble. He has lined up wonderfullyyyyy aaaaannnnnddddd he has tapped the ball….perfectly…..as it trickles……doooowwwwnnn the greeeeen. And there it is…a perfect stoke with the sure reward of a par for his fine effort.” Soft, controlled golf-applause, sounding like a new rain on a corn patch, is heard in the background.
      You know, of course, that these commentators are hundreds of yards away from the greens where the putts are being made. They are watching the proceedings on the television monitors just like the viewers at home. The whispering, show-talking commentator could cough, yell, drive 20-penny nails, blow leaves, bark like a dog, scream like a small child, or bellow like a mule, and it would make no difference to the putter. But, the commentators choose to act as though they are standing right beside Ernie Els as he is making his putt. I find this behavior a bit melodramatic. Somehow, the drama of the putt is not enough, and the network believes extra drama must be added, thereby creating falsely elevated angst in the heart of the viewer.
      I have always loved soccer and even recorded the morning games of the World Cup, until the US Team was eliminated. Now, I pick up a review of the games from ESPN, and that suffices to give me the information I need. However, I have been surprised at the new element of drama that has been added to the game where even a casual touch, push, foot-contact, or ghost-grapple results in two players rolling on the ground, tail over tin cup, holding their heads, knees, feet, or elbows as if they had just made contact with Lizzy Borden. This commotion causes me to stand up from my chair to look closely at the slow motion close-ups of the fracas, only to find slight, (if any), real contact. The situation is all empty drama. Most of the time, the injured players are looking through little slits in their fingers as they try to outdo the rolling and dramatic outburst of the other player. Then, a minute later, after the red or yellow cards have been awarded, the injured player is back up and running with even more determination and energy than before the incident.
      This sort of action is only drama. Actually, I would be more correct if I called this melodrama. Melodrama is drama that is heaped up, exaggerated, false, and artificially sweetened to add emphasis to otherwise dramatic situations.
      I have seriously considered writing to “The Academy,” proposing that they add a new category of award this year, at the Academy Awards, entitled “The Best Melodramatic Performance of a False Soccer Injury.” From what I have observed, The Academy will have lots of footage to observe and a difficult time in making a final and definitive decision.
      I have pretty much grown tired of drama. I particularly despise melodrama. Even though “melodrama” was an accepted and approved form of drama in the 18th and 19th centuries, (usually enacted in bars or on candlelit stages), the over-dramatization of stock characters such as a hero, a villain, a damsel in distress, an aged parent, a comic man, or a theme of love and murder where the clever hero is duped by a scheming villain until fate intervenes and good finally triumphs over evil, lost interest at the beginning of the “talkies,” (movies with sound).
      Today, melodrama is enacted in the lives of over dramatic individuals who do a lot of hand-wringing, moaning, groaning, and acting-out in society. Melodrama is hardly ever accepted and approved in our modern culture.
      Melodrama is also hardly ever acceptable in the Church of Jesus Christ. There is no Academy Award for “Drama as a Disciple,” even though there would be plenty of material from which to choose. Drama and the particularly acute category of “melodrama” are false tools of usury inflicted and manipulated by members of the community of faith who wish to gain their own way by the use of pity, sensationalism, implication of evil victimizers from other well meaning disciples, and self-serving and intricate plots that leave everyone shaking their heads.
      I place church drama in the same category as church legislation. Both use ploy and technique to gain power without the much preferred gift of the Holy Spirit of “reconciliation.” Reconciliation is a word and concept that is seldom understood or appreciated by the melodramatic of the faith. Reconciliation takes too much Christian energy and too much sacred listening and too much consensual healing to hold any appeal for self-serving disciples who have to have their on way.
      When melodrama occurs in a soccer match, the game comes to a halt. Everyone puts their hands on their hips, and they meander around listlessly, wondering what to do. Eventually, someone in authority comes up and makes a definitive decision, with the outcome being that half the players disagree and with the stage being set for more confrontation down the road. Drama in sports causes the game to come to a complete stop.
      Drama in the church has the same effect and can suck the energy out of a spiritual movement, out of a vital ministry, and out of a dream of a mission. Drama in the church can cause paralysis, division, disease, and long-term listless behavior. Satan loves drama in the church. If in fact Drama is one of Satan’s best tools. “Melodrama” is the perfect form of drama. Churches operating by drama are very interesting and fun to watch, what with all the hand-wringing, chest-clutching, and conniption fits. However, these churches are hard to endure by Christians centered on the Savior.
      The only history book of the New Testament is not called “The Drama of the Apostles.” The book is called “The Acts of the Apostles,” and the actions of the Apostles were never self-serving, divisive, or motivated by the need for getting their own way. Disciples learn to live by the Good News of Jesus Christ only.
      “Drama in the Church” is not a category esteemed and rewarded by The Academy, (nor by The Church).

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

The Alluring and Distant Owl

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      There is an owl in our neighborhood. Owls are not bad creatures and are beneficial and elusive in our society. They fortunately eat rodents and, unfortunately eat small domesticated animals. Ah, so goes the natural order of things.
      For months I have heard a neighborhood owl in the early morning hours, all through the day, and just into the night. The call of the owl is alluring, unique, and a bit spooky. One day, a good question for God will be, “Who designed the call of the owl and why?”
      So, on a particular morning when there was nothing pressing for a few hours, I donned a pair of binoculars and a hat, and I then began to attune my ears to the direction of the “Whoooos” until I felt secure in moving ten yards in a particular direction. Then, I waited until I heard at least several more “Whoooos” before taking another ten yard move in a finer tuned direction. I repeated this process for a good 50 minutes until I felt sure I was somewhere within the general acre of the owl and was possibly within eye shot. So I began to zero in on the direction of the calls with my binoculars.
      With a few more directional yards acquired (and a pretty good idea of two trees the owl might be in), I hunkered down to do some fine looking. I looked and looked, trying to focus my looking in the direction of the calls. Only after 15 minutes did I finally find the owl, sitting a little on the back side of the tree from me but occasionally offering a little “who-who-who-woo-a." I watched the owl for as long as I could give the time, and most all of the time I was watching the owl, the owl was focused on me.
      I had only spotted the owl at the end of my journey, but I was of the impression that the owl had spotted me long before I had come near to the moment when I focused the binoculars on the owl for the first time, for at that first glance, the owl was looking right at me. And as long as I sat and watched, the owl was purposefully conscious of my presence.
      Owls are alluring, illusive, mysterious, winsome yet distant. Owls are not the same as any other creature and unique in design and purpose. Many of the attributes of an owl are the attributes of the winsome yet mysterious nature of God.
      I recognize in recent generations, we have made God so personal and available that God has, often to a fault, become a good buddy, a casual friend, and always affirming of our point of view to any question we might have. Our current culture has grown very comfortable with God and has whittled and sized God down to where we can easily handle any personal conviction, guilt, brokenness, and temptation that might affect our lives. God has become the affirming and self-gratifying deity of our personal self-centered needs.
      For one instance, the “angels” of the Holy Bible were messengers, one who brought good, or convicting, news from God. Angels were fearsome and antagonistic. They were to be feared. Jacob wrestled with an angel, shepherds cowered in fear at the angels, angels climbed ladders up and down to get the message delivered, and an angel of the Lord stood guard over the Garden of Eden, post eviction. Angels were awesome and powerful agents.
      Today, we wear angels on our lapels, get them tattooed on our arms, have guardian angels who are our best friends, and find angels to be soft and personal with a huge appeal to even a non-religious culture. Angels are almost their own religion in our personalization of everything holy and sacred.
      So when I say that “God is distant,” many might think I have gone back to the dark ages. However, God IS distant. God is not like us. Often forgotten natures of God are those of judge, sovereign Lord, powerful speaker of words that then become reality, Lord God Almighty, sitter on the great throne, the power behind the incarnation as well as being the incarnate, and tester of creation to learn of our true mettle (sp).
      A journey to God is not always clear, not always guaranteed, not easy, and not ever without our dedicated energy. A journey to a discovery of God is, however, alluring (as an owl’s “whooo”), available (for those who take the time to pursue), and is not without notice by God (since God, like the owl, is continually aware of our journey and nearness). Not only is the call of God alluring and the persona of God winsome, but the appeal of God is to our conviction that we cannot imagine any other place we would want to be, except on a journey toward and with God.
      I believe our society needs to put God back into the sovereign Kingdom, to remove God from the place of popular nearness, and to offer God as something other than our own personal whim and desire. God is to be pursued with a deep hunger where we are transformed by God more than God is to be invited into our shallow arenas of society where we transform God into our own image.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Goose Egg Big Toe

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      I have discovered something within myself that I do not like and am surprised to find. I should not be surprised to find it but still it is there. I have discovered that I am a lazy person. I have a streak of laziness in me that runs from “can see to can’t see.” This laziness is a wide streak, thick and continuous, and it usually raises its ugly head when I am faced with doing a chore, a task, or a requirement. My laziness is all about doing those things that I have to do more than it is about doing those things that produce an obvious or creative result.
      I do not like filling out forms, organizing statistics, weeding the vegetables, polishing the silver, putting things up, returning from a trip, cleaning the paint brushes, washing a pot, folding t-shirts, or trimming the edges of the lawn. I enjoy mowing the lawn, painting, cooking, eating with silver utensils, packing up and going on a trip, taking things down, making statistics, planting and harvesting vegetables, putting on clean clothes, and submitting filled-out forms. Of the former things, I am slow to act. Of the latter things, I am quick to answer the call.
      I love maps and will read one at bedtime like a novel. I do not like folding maps, and so the underneath side of the bed has a usual array of interesting yet perpetually open maps. I love organizing a backpack of goods for a three-day hike. I have no interest in unpacking a pack after having carried it and having lived out of it for three days. I love making something that I have never made before. I have no interest in sweeping up the filings, brushing up the sawdust, picking up the remnants, organizing the scraps, and would prefer to let my tools lie where they have strewn themselves. I love the way a clean car drives but have no interest in doing what is required to get one to that condition.
      I am not surprised that, when God had to think of a way to punish Adam and Eve, “toil” was the obvious answer. Adam and Eve had certainly worked long and hard before that time. They had named all the animals, gussied up the garden for afternoon walks with God, organized all the plants for advantageous growth and harvest, and altogether had a pretty jolly old time working day after day in the garden. They never griped, complained, or worried about the amount of work a day might require. Actually, labor seemed to be an OK thing to do.
      Then they go and upset the order and stand in need for the rest of us for all time as punishment. God was very conniving and clever with the result being the simple and innocent-appearing transformation of daily “labor” into “toil.” I suspect that after God explained to Adam and Eve that “toil” would be the punishment, they looked at each other with a little smile, thinking this would be an easy pill to swallow. They had privately feared God might turn sugar into vinegar, or make their big toes larger than a goose egg so they would be easily stumped, or turn their noses upside down so the rain would cause them to strangle, or take away buttermilk. Instead, God gave to them, (and to us), a punishment that we could not get around, which is the daily punishment of clothes to fold and put up, forms to fill out, pots to wash, a desire for stuff that would have to be organized, weeds in the garden, little bones in the fish, stingers on bees, and chores that would have no end. The punishment is a life of meticulous and enslaving toil.
      When God made “labor,” the resulting gift was one of the good things. When God gave us “toil,” the resulting bequeathal was the punishment. Of the former things, I am eager, willing, and able. Of the latter, I am a slug. I would have preferred a larger big toe.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Teach a Pig to Sing

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      Evidently, if you want to gather a crowd together to hear what you want to say, call your speech a “Commencement Address”. Commencement Addresses always draw a crowd. I remember my high school commencement address by a few notes I took on the back of the graduation program, which also listed all 680 of the graduates in my senior high class.
      I believe our speaker was the inventor of latex paint, and how that made him suitable to be a commencement speaker, I have yet to understand. It is my belief that he was more proficient in the use of chemicals than he was at commencement speaking. At one point I actually believed the “commencement” had only “commenced” without having an actual end, but he soon came to a good end, and we all applauded. I learned that if you want to receive applause at the end of your speech, say more than you should and lead the people to believe you are going to go longer. Applause brought on by relief is just as good as applause born in praise.
      Here is the 1971 Commencement Address from East Forsyth Senior High School graduation, (at least the parts I jotted down). These timeless truths are eternal.

      “Cross the bridge of compromise, and do not make the alligator angry until you reach the other side, for only a fool tries to butt the bull off that bridge. The wise person will just jump right on into an ocean of platitudes and with the great stroke of an Olympian swim across the channel of confidence toward the great safety of the far shore of the obvious. It was a great man who said ‘if you give a man a fish platter, with hush puppies, you will make him happy today, but if you give him a credit card with an $8,000 limit you will make him happy for about 8 months,’ and I for one believe this is the way to keep on the sunny side all the while knowing life is a bowl of cherries, and you had better pick your bowl full sooner than later. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
      Believe in yourself and don’t believe in all that glitters, for it is not gold. People who do had may as well believe that fat meat is not greasy, that wives may object to life insurance but widows never do, and that such is life, and it just gets sucher and sucher. Remember that the Prophet Grover once told us how we should not count our chickens before they hatch, should not take any wooden nickels, should not look a gift horse in the mouth, should not get our knickers in a twist, and we should not try to teach a pig to sing; we only waste our time and annoy the pig.
      Abigail, (evidently the grandmother of the speaker) once told me to not worry about the blind horse but to just go ahead and load the wagon, for if you don’t like the cut of the jib, don’t like being a bump on a pickle, don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and don’t want to offend the neighbors, then don’t put a drunkard in the drivers seat and give him the keys. Everybody likes pie, and Jesus was a lot like his father.
      Climb the stairway of success, for success is a journey and not a destination, even when a golden opportunity comes around only once in life, and your mission in life is to pay the price of success on the rocky road of life to the success that begets success. Go ugly early: don’t wait until quitting time.”

      Now THAT is a great “Commencement Address”. Pardon me as I take a moment to wipe a tear and reflect on the great truths revealed in my recollection of this great moment in my life. As I go down memory lane, I remember the great adults who were born out of that great class of students. To my right was Jigger Marion, who soon after graduation jumped off a cliff into what he thought was a lake but all too late discovered it to be a puddle. On the other side was Grady Martin, who, on the day after graduation, married Roberta Flimsy, for her daddy’s money. Grady all too late discovered Roberta was marrying him for his money, and it just goes to prove, two poor people who get married will not make a rich family, (two negatives will not make a positive).
      I believe Job 11:12 does quite well at summing up our human wisdom and Commencement Addresses. Look it up for yourself only if you can handle more truth that is far beyond my understanding. (Job is right before Psalms…in the Old Testament).

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

An Eighth of a Ton of Hope

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      I presently weigh what Anne and I weighed together when we got married. I have assumed the mass of both parts of the nuptial speakers at our wedding. I took the statement, “the two shall become as one” a bit too seriously and physically. Actually, it appears I misinterpreted the saying thinking the words were, “the one shall be as big as two.” At this rate I am headed to a mass the size of my Uncle Grover, who was the largest man in our family. I long to return to those good old days when my lone weight was less than an eighth of a ton and somewhere around a mere tenth of a ton.
      I am normally a forward-thinking person. Constant thinking of times gone by and the “way things used to be” is the sure way to misery in the present. I grew up with lots of family who referred to the “good old days” so often that, until I turned 18, I believed this was an authentic time and place being unanimously designated by all as the best time in the world to live. I found it very easy to believe that the world from 1900 through the year of my birth was life as good as it gets.
      Only as I did some study did I discover that this same 50-year period was scarred with two world wars, a major depression, a dust bowl of the whole mid-west, racism in every part of the country, the elimination of thousands of types of native wildlife and plant species for lack of care, possibly 4 influenza epidemics that killed almost 3 million people in our country (5 out of every 100), a period of time when THE country of freedom had geographic regions where only white men could vote, and when an average lifespan was only between 50 and 57 years of age for both sexes.
      Now that I have reached the golden age of sure death, according to the “good old days” standards, I also find it easy to look back to my past as the “good old days.” But as I remember those days, I have to acknowledge major wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iraq/Afghanistan, along with minor events in Granada and Panama and a huge silent Cold War. We have witnessed the assassination, or near assassination, of three presidents, an attack on our country by an outside power, environmental and natural disasters like the world has never before witnessed, periods of inflation, mortgage bubbles, crashes, black Fridays, and interest rates above 12%. Yet, I look back and find this to be a time of “good old days.”
      I actually find it easy to watch shows on Woodstock, or shows on the ‘50s, ‘60’s, ‘70s and even the ‘80s and long to return to those wonderful years. (Unfortunately, I have thrown away my platform shoes, my disco shirts and leisure suits, and I have not had a permanent in my hair for a few decades.)
      Backward-viewing is so easily optimistic as we selectively remember the good and forget the horrible. Looking backward is the easy way we respond to the unknown of what is ahead and run to the safe security of the past of which we have survived. Few of us have great vision of survival in the future.
      This is the place where the members of the Church of Jesus Christ differ from all other earth residents. We differ in that we are a forward-looking people. Nowhere in our New Testament does the early church point to the events of the past as being the time when “God lived.” Even a casual reader of the Old Testament will witness that, again and again, the old days were the time God drew near and gave powerful leadership to the faithful. But in the New Testament, we are a visionary and forward-looking people. Even at the death of Jesus, every teaching and event pointed to the resurrection that was to come. Today, we live in the hope of the return of Jesus and the joyful promise of Salvation through the grace of Jesus Christ. For the Christian, the future is a Kingdom of God, a house not made by hands, a crossing of the Jordan where we will not look back.
      The Christian believes that every day is a day with God. The Christian believes that every new day is a time of grace, healing, reconciliation, hope and promise. Every new day is an Easter-day with the resurrection the source of our hope. We believe that the Holy Spirit of God will be even more evident to us than we have experienced in the past.
      Christians who look back and believe that what was is better than what is, and what is is better than what is to come, have surrendered to the accepted temptation of our culture to be hopelessly wandering organisms of the earth, believing we alone must make our way and find our shallow pleasantries. Churches who have a larger “History Room” than their “New Converts Room” have given in to the safe temptation of becoming earth-dwellers satisfied with a good old history sufficient only for bragging rights. Churches that look to the future with dread, without a vision of God’s direction, have taken an earthly path and have stopped expecting the courageous vision of God for all that will be.
      Our citizenship is in God’s Kingdom. The Holy Spirit is always with us. Our hope is in the Lord. I will never be a tenth of a ton again, but I look to the future with great hope and joy, for the Lord is my source.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Winifred is the Example

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      In 2004, I spent two weeks working at a little Jamaican Church out of Brownstown, Jamaica. Our job was to replace the roof of the old church with a metal roof that would be more durable in the hot damp weather and better suited to endure the high winds and rain of hurricanes. We stood in the back of a flat bed truck as we made the 30-minute drive down some of the worst roads I have ever known. When we came to the church, our mouths dropped as we stood there in amazement, wondering where we should really start to make this an appropriate worship area. The roof was bad, but it was no worse than the rest of the structure. We knew we had our work cut out for us.
      Sitting just beside the front door of the church was a little lady in a wonderfully colorful dress with a bonnet on her head and a warm white smile as she greeted each one of us with two-handed handshakes from soft kind hands. “Welcome,” she said to each one of us in her beautiful Jamaican accent. She told us her name was “Winifred” and that she was a lifetime member of the church.
      As work began, we recognized that as permanently ruined as the church was, Winifred, the lifetime member, was perfectly fixed in her faith and would be permanently present for the whole two-week operation. We soon learned that the church body was not in as much decline as the church building since the parish was filled with abundant and faithful members. That is a better situation than the other way around.
      Winifred brought us water and told us stories about the wonderful worship in this church over her years of membership. When we removed the pews and altar for preservation from the risk of damage due to the work, Winifred kept all of the items wiped clean of dust, made sure they were stacked just perfectly to avoid damage, and stood guard over any attempt to disrespect the sanctuary. Winifred was as sacrificially careful as she was faithful.
      Winifred and I became good friends and on four occasions, Winifred invited me to spend the night at her home with her family; a daughter and 3 grandchildren. I was an honored guest at their home on those evenings, the meals were excellent and filling, and the night’s rest was peaceful in a hammock strung under the eves of her home where I could hear the local parrots as they cooed the night away.
      On our last day at the work site, as we finished placing the worship items back into the church, Winifred could not stop admiring the new metal roof while again and again pointing out the improved ventilation due to some of our creative engineering. She also gave us two-handed handshakes with red eyes from grateful tears as her joy and gratitude was impossible to contain.
      Just before leaving for the last time, Winifred had us sit as she spoke to us from her heart about our work and the wonderful worship for God’s Kingdom that would take place under our roof for years to come. Her Jamaican words were glorious, and the sweet flow comes to my mind even as I now write of this event 6 years later.
      Then, she came over to me and gave me a big bag of “pimento,” the Jamaican word for allspice. This spice is a mainstay in “jerk” cooking for which the Jamaicans are known. Winifred grew this spice at her home and sold it to make money for the education of her grandchildren. The huge bag was enough to provide a week of education for her three granddaughters. I was humbled to my knees. I cried openly in unworthy gratitude and embarrassment. How could I, a salaried minister from the most affluent nation in the world, accept this gift from a poor Jamaican woman whose diet consisted of what she could grow or what her few chickens could produce?
      I was being taught about giving from a poor Jamaican woman. Winifred had opened up the heavens to reveal to me how I should give. She had reordered my understanding of wealth and stewardship in a way I have never known.
On that afternoon I learned to view my tithe and gifts to the church not from my perspective but from God’s perspective. To this day, when I give, work, or serve, I ask, “What does this offering mean to God?”
In Isaiah 1 and in other writings of the prophets, it is plain that not every offering (sacrifice) is pleasing to God. In the Gospels many statements that Jesus made about tithing expressed that there gift was an abomination against the tither (Luke 11:42, and 18:9-14). However, God was overwhelmed with joy at the gift of the widow who put two small coins from her poverty into the temple offering, and God was pleased when Zacchaeus promised to give away half of all he had taken unjustly from the poor.
      Today, when I give, I always ask, “Is God pleased with my offering?” When I pledge I ask, “Is God praised by my pledge?” When I serve, I ask, “Is God served by my work?” No one can answer these questions for me. I alone must pray and discern what God would expect and then do my best to overwhelm God that God might be touched by my sacrifice. I never forget how Winifred trusted God enough to give out of her simple life without regard or fear. She gave only out of her generous heart.
      Every day, I have a living example of how to give. Winifred is my example. I owe God tearful, two-handed handshakes and gifts out of my sacrificial gratitude.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

The Thumbprint of God

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      A little piece of clay is in my desk drawer all of the time. I don’t know why I keep it, but I do. I found it in a little junk store many years ago. The proprietor of the store had collected tens of thousands of items from all over the world that were of no real value as a whole. A gear from a hospital bed, a wrench from a T-Model Ford, a bolt of cloth with sunflowers: all might be items a shopper could find while meandering through the non-distinct aisles, stepping over or walking around items that had fallen over. As a whole, this store’s merchandise was just a large collection of junk.
      However, if someone were looking for a T-Model Ford wrench or some sunflower cloth for a snazzy pair of pants, well this storehouse of odd treasures would be the right place to explore. (I doubt whether that hospital bed gear ever sold, since I am sure it lacked any suitable suitors.)
      I do not believe the proprietor paid very much for the collection of odds and ends. I have always believed these things were acquired at the end of an auction sale where the expensive items were sold individually for large sums of money. However, once the nice things were gone, the auctioneer, a bit raspy from the vicious bidding, would look at the motley collection and say, “Who will give me a bid on this box of leftovers?” I believe our junk shop proprietor was always around when these bids were offered. Probably, as the purchasers of the expensive items were exiting the bidding parlor with their treasures, our proprietor was attentive to offer a dollar for that old box of junk. I believe he purchased many, many boxes of such junk, which he transported to his home and then stored in huge piles around his property.
      Now, by the time I am shopping, the items have been brought out of their hiding places and are being displayed for sale to anyone who will make an offer. The thousands of “dollar boxes” are becoming hundreds of dollars per month to sweeten the proprietor’s retirement. Lucky, the proprietor’s dog probably also benefits with some special bones or extra treats along the way.
      As I browse, (one of my favorite activities), through the mountains and rows of items, I find little of interest. How bothersome to navigate through all of this vast collection and to find nothing of value to purchase. Surely there must be something to purchase. Guilt riddles me as I contemplate the affront of looking at all of the stuff and not offering a good affirmation to the proprietor with a purchase of anything. It would be a social disgrace and embarrassment to walk through any such repository and to not make a purchase. It would be as if you were telling the proprietor that his stuff was not worth a purchase. To enter, look, meander, or browse and to leave without a purchase would be a snub, an indignity, and an insolent act. Your grandmother would shake the mold off the tomb stone to even imagine that a scion of her lineage could act “suchly.”
      So, to keep what little decency remained in our family, I walked by a bowl filled with little trinkets, and I selected a little lump of clay. With hardly a glance, I offered a dollar for the oddity; he agreed with the overture, and the deal was set with the simple exchange of currency. I exited, being pleased to have salvaged the remnant of family seemliness, proving once again that, poor as we may have been, we did not join with the other poor who enjoy a lesser quantity of decencies and necessaries.
      Only as I exited into the sunlight was I more able to closely look at the soft-fired clay to find that I had actually bought a simple relief sculpture, the size of a nickel, created by an artisan whom I believe to have been an Aztec priest from 4,000 years ago, ... maybe. (Who is to say it was not?) The simple sculpture is of a head-dressed female with tiny holes poked where the nose, ears, and eyes are customarily found.
      However, the remarkable portion of this find was not on the relief-sculptured side but, rather, was on the thumb-pressed back side, for it was there that I found the actual unique thumbprint of the ancient sculptor. In my hand was not only a piece of purposeful artwork but also a personal and biological identification of the creator. I was holding the imprint of a child of God, who I would never meet, an ancestral fellow of sorts, who had passed along a lineage of art and heritage. In my hand I now held a piece of simple creativity that exhibited a mysterious link of humanity in the past, (from my perspective), with an unlikely and unimagined purchaser (from the perspective of the ancient priest). While holding this artifact I gained the sense of forever being tied to the unknown and unnamed creator with the clay-stained thumb. I doubt whether the artisan on the other end would have imagined me, the one with the secure and guarded decency.
      To this day, as I come across this relic harbored in my drawer, while looking for a paper clip, pair of scissors, or note card, I stop and take a minute, remembering that I, too, am the mysterious proof of a creator God who took the dirt of the earth for the elements, the divine spittle for the unction, to create me in an image that I could never imagine or fathom. The thumbprint of God is all over me and all over all of God’s creation. We are the evidence of a plan, a past, and a careful ordering. Just as we bear the thumbprint of God, God bears the remnant stains of our creation material. God is implicated with the stained hands that bear witness to the act of our creation.
      In my wildest dreams I do not believe I could imagine God. But I am the created evidence that God did and can imagine me. I am wonderfully made but commonly ordered to serve, worship, thrive, surrender, and humbly stand as a witness of the sacred act of a present God.
      From an ordered creation I am made, from a personal price upon a cross I am bought, and from a glorious promise I am marked as suitable and presentable to the feted Kingdom of God. We are evidence not only of an ancient beginning but also of an incarnate present and a promised sacred future.


Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Ordinary Lives in a Sacred Place

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      One of the things that surprised me on my first trip to Jerusalem was that real people live ordinary lives in this most sacred place. I spent much of my visit gawking with my mouth gaped open and eyes wide as I took in every olive tree, tomb, ruin, wall, and stone outcropping. I was in “The Jerusalem,” and I could not do much other than be in awe and reverence. However, all around me were people living their day-to-day lives. They were walking to school, taking a bus to work, buying groceries for the evening meal, talking about idle things, and doing things like I might do in Hendersonville.
      All along the roads were wet laundered clothes hanging from clotheslines. In back yards, little non-distinct dogs barked at lazy cats. The sounds of children crying, laughing or playing was echoed up and down the valleys. Daily house sounds from homes, where ordinary people lived, could be heard from great distances. The short-sighted views were not unlike the views from where I live.
      I said I was surprised, but that is an understatement. In reality, I was aghast that these citizens of “The City” perched on Mt. Zion could drive by this sacred ground every day and never look up at the walls built by Solomon of the Old Testament and more recently added onto by the Crusaders. How could anyone drive by the Mount of Olives, the site of Gethsemane, and not stop and pray for a while?
      As opposed to these people in Jerusalem, here I live in a rather ordinary city where ordinary things are the best a citizen can expect. But as I live in this ordinary city, I take every opportunity and make every effort to live a “sacred life.” The residents of the sacred city of Jerusalem live ordinary lives, while I, on the other hand, attempt to live a sacred life in an ordinary city.
      There is something in me that would like to live in a sacred place and do ordinary things. There is something cathartic about my feeling so much at home in a sacred place that the commonplace activities would seem natural. How would it feel to be a comfortable resident of a sacred place, so that the coming and the going would be just a part of life as much as the breaths we take or the food we eat? How is it that a person can live in the presence of the sacred in an ordinary way?
      The answer is that there has to be a transformation that takes place in the life of a person who lives a normal life in the presence of the sacred. That transformation has to include a sense of worthiness. And that sense of worthiness has to be born outside of our on sense of self-worth. Can we ever feel so self-worthy that we can live in the presence of God, feeling as though we belong?
      Feeling truly worthy to live in the presence of the sacred is a way of living that has to be grounded in an acceptance of a gift that God alone presents to us. We can never feel self-entitled, self-worthy, or self-assured on our own. We can never be good enough, successful enough, handsome enough or wealthy enough to feel at home with God on our own. Feeling comfortable in God’s presence is a blessing only God can offer to us.
      I would like to believe that God could offer to us the assurance that we could not only try to live a sacred life in an ordinary place, but that we could also live an ordinary life in a sacred place.
      I have occasionally wondered if the people in heaven feel special? Will heaven be a place where we will always feel like we are guests? Or, will heaven be a sacred place where we can take off our shoes, lounge in comfortable clothes, laugh without reserve, praise without ending and find joy without embarrassment? It is my hope that heaven will be the latter.
      Quite possibly, the only time most of us will ever live in a sacred place will be when we are in heaven. It would be a shame to have to wear Sunday clothes every day, sit on pews, and only have Sunday School teachers and evangelists on TV. Heaven will be a place where blessed people live God-assured, ordinary lives in the presence of the most sacred. Heaven will be home.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Death, Dirt, and Granite

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      I have heard of families having to walk up spooky hollers, down overgrown valleys and up into the thickets on the Saturday before Easter. They carry picks, slings, shovels, hoes, steel toothed rakes, jugs of water and little flower sets. Usually they all walk together, as one family, saying little, yet trudging along with purpose. When they reach their destination, they spend the first few minutes orienting themselves as to where everything is and how everything should appear. The first steps are to look for fallen stones and to erect them again. The second step is to locate every grave and mark it in some way. The final and most involved step, and the longest, involves the slinging of tools, the thrashing of weeds and the jerk removal of saplings, vines, and poison ivy, being careful to avoid the yellow jackets nests.
      Usually the men sling tools, the women orchestrate and make piles of refuse vegetation, the children drag the piles out of sight and into the bramble. Finally, when the sling-cutting and rake-dragging are near completion, the young girls and women go from site to site placing little sets of flowers on each grave and carefully watering each set.
      Once again the family plot has been recovered from the wilds of this world. Once again the honor and dignity of our forebears has been reclaimed. Again, the stories of who was buried here and how this one died and who said what and who did this is told to a new generation. This new generation can then believe and know that dark death and the cold ground cannot prevent a deceased relative from being known…and loved.
      I have heard of other (perhaps more decent) people spending the Saturday before Easter cooking an Easter ham, boiling eggs to devil, chopping slaw, mixing yeast with flour and letting the warm kitchen air soften cream cheese for an icing concoction. I have heard of old picture albums being brought out with creaking bindings and musty and dusty aromas. Like so many others who have slowly turned these pages of a family’s visual history, I have seen endless pictures of nameless people who look like the people I live with.
      We have heard the names, some the same as our own, variously being ascribed to a tall lanky man with a funny hat; to a proud woman with a well armed pocketbook as she stands in front of her azalea bush that is fully blooming in black and white. Then there is a photo of a small child who through the pages grows to full maturity and is later seen in the album with gray hair, stooped shoulders, and holding a small baby and you realize that this small baby is you. Then there is another infantile picture of you placed in a pose on a funny overstuffed couch which you have never seen and on a day you cannot remember.
      All too often, the guide through this dried out book has to stop and ask themselves who a certain person is, only to suddenly laugh and say, “O, that’s Uncle so and so,” or “Well, that’s Aunt whatchamajig!” Too often, the guide has to stop and wipe away a little tear, for their heart has drawn too close to the picture. The guide has fortunately, but mistakenly heard a distant voice, smelled an old ancient smell or remembered a caring touch. Once again, the family story has been told to a new generation who will understand and believe that even the fabricated celluloid and dusty dry pages of an old picture album cannot prevent a deceased relative from being known…and loved.
      I have heard of people who rise early on Easter morning and dress in dark silence to take a short trip to a graveyard where they meet other people who have followed and kept the same ritual. In the darkness, those who are gathered talk quietly as the night stars are casually overtaken by a glowing eastern sky. Their feet become wet from dew, their noses are moist and chilled, and they stand with their arms crossed, each in their own way remembering other visits to various locations in the cemetery on other days when the turf had been disturbed and dark holes awaited priceless family members. These visitors have not come in the vain hope that they will find their living relatives. They have come to claim the unending hymn of faith that “Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.” They stand on holy ground, family ground, God’s ground, on God’s terms, and in the hope of a Risen Savior.
      Once again, on one morning of this year, we gather in the belief that not even death, dirt and granite shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Once again, we humbly receive the sacred hope of salvation. Again we remember that God is the Lord of life and death, and that to God we always remain in a firm grip and warm embrace.
      Our Easter faith is the predawn, affirmed belief in a God who knows us and holds everyone that we count precious when they fall.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Jesus: This Is Your Life

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      I have always imagined that on the first day of the week, (a Monday, so to speak), when Jesus entered Jerusalem for the triumphant visit, this event was witnessed by thousands of people and relations who had been touched by Jesus. I have always imagined the time as a reunion of sorts. I have pictured Jesus meeting up with the ascribed donkey somewhere by the Pool of Siloam down in the far southeastern corner of the old city and, from there, beginning the uphill jaunt toward the Temple.
      I cannot say how the word would have ever gotten out or how people could have made the journey to Jerusalem, but, I can find each of them there that day: I can visualize the woman from the Samaritan well sitting by the spring-fed waters of Siloam at the beginning of the climb. I can visualize the Gerasene demoniac wearing usual clothes, not shouldering the frenzy of his former life but actually blending into the crowd unnoticed. I can see the son of the widow of Nain leaning against a wall, or Lazarus with his skin still healing from the three day encounter with death in a tomb, or various lepers scattered throughout the crowd all having nice and usual relations with “normal” people.
      Can’t you, too, see Nicodemus, joyfully and in the light of day, interacting with individuals like he is newly born with every sunrise, even while there is a rich young ruler hiding in a shadow all the while wanting to find life in the new day? I see him bent and huddling there, still saddled with such wealth that has become his god, with his eyes lowered from the demonic nature of his personal burden and a fearful belief that poverty is a dreadful sin. Over there is a woman in full relationship with her neighbors after years of the lonely existence of constant bleeding and exclusion. Now she seems to be just like everyone else, mingling and conversing as one of the crowd.
      Just around the corner is a smiling teenager, who, even though once objectionable and paralyzed, is now running up Zion to keep up with the pace of the sturdy donkey. Keeping his eyes on Jesus, he now runs along with his four friends who had once toted him to the house and lowered him through the roof to the very lap of healing grace in Jesus Christ. Throughout the remainder of the cheering crowd are the 5,000 individuals who were fed, and the throngs from Jericho who had known Zacchaeus, and the “white for harvest” residents who had first heard of Jesus from that “woman” who now sat down by the Pool of Siloam.
      All of these people had been the beneficiaries of the gift of “normal” life in this world after having lived without choice or power in obscurity, pain, loss, near-death, delusion, frenzy, and sin. They had been delivered from their demons. They had returned to be the full residents of all creation, as broken as it still might be. But now they had come to receive what had been longed for. That which previously had not known the right time now was about to become fully incarnate. The very creation that had been returned to them would soon writhe with convulsions, darkness, blood, earthquake, torn best efforts, and sorrow at the birth of grace.
      For any of us, our own little climb, our own riding on a donkey would have been an ascension of the steps to receive a plaque of honor, to have our name etched on a trophy, to have our portrait positioned on a wall of honor, or to receive an inscribed watch to commemorate good deeds to needy people. Jesus was being received as the Man of the Year. For any of us, this would have been enough of a reward for a job well done. But on that day, the accolades were hollow and lauded in vanity. Jesus had not come to make us normal. His touch was not to let us blend in and be accepted. Jesus had come to save the world, and now, more was required. The cheers and “hallelujahs” were empty words, the best utterances of praise that we earthly, bent-reed and feet-of-clay creatures could offer: a witness to our limits in worship.
      All of the life and ministry to this point had not been enough. Now, the passion, emotion, dread, pain, and death are required; otherwise, this sacrificial life would only have been known as a good life of a good and caring person. Grace is almost ready to be wholly known, fully embodied even by those who had been touched. We were soon going to do the “undeserved” part as God climbed upon the Cross to do the “grace-filled and loving” part.
      Lord, hear our prayers!

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

A Heritage Is Not All It Is Cracked Up To Be

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      I have a friend who was raised in a family of “real money.” His mother and father were the toast of the town. My friend always drove great cars that he did not have to pay for, on gas he did not work for, and on tires and insurance that he used up like they were as free as acorns to the squirrels. This friend always assumed that, because of his family name, he would be blessed above and beyond the standard of common laborers. His life would always be as sweet as a peach soda and an oatmeal cookie. He and I continue to be friends, but today he works (hard) for what he has. Somehow, the great amount of money was used up and all-too-soon gone, lost to poor investments and a free and happy style of life. My friend’s presumed great inheritance from his deceased parents was, as it came to pass, merely a piddly share of not much. The heritage he had assumed would continue forever had come to a screeching halt.
      The hard realities of my friend’s life teach important truths for young people who are proud of the lifestyle they live on the coattails of their parents. Most youth erroneously assume that the way they are living is the way life will always be, simply because their family name and heritage have made it so. These youth tragically miss one of the great truths of life: just because a person’s family may hold great treasures of honor, integrity, wealth, prosperity, prestige, and influence, there are no guarantees of the same attributes extending to the next generation. So little of what makes a parent great can be passed along, free of charge, to the next generation. Any child who is oblivious to the truth of his or her treasure can, in short order, work through an inheritance, good name, and heritage from his or her parents and have nothing left of it. All these people are ultimately left with is a great story of where they came from.
      I encourage youth to mindfully work to become who they will be, whether they work in spite of their parents or instead of their parents. The great name, integrity, and inheritance of parents say so little about who their children are or will be. Each new generation has to establish who they will become as a great family, nation, church, or individual by the course they take and the set of their sail, given the winds that blow in their time.
      Now I have told you all of this in order to get at something else. I have come to believe that heritage is not all it is cracked up to be. So often, heritage is a story of who our ancestors were. We can be proud of their story that we, hold it, cherish it, and reenact it, but this story ultimately says so little about who we really are. A person, church, family, or community can have a rich and glorious heritage and, yet, be as dysfunctional as a cat living on concrete, (a lot of business to take care of and no place to scratch).
      Every church you see is the realized dream of a people who were faithfully and boldly led by God to establish a church home for people to meet God. Every church came at great cost and required great sacrifice and faithfulness. Every church began with a great heritage extended to a group of disciples.
      The great sin of many churches, like the sin of many young people relying on the prosperity and honor of their parents, is that their buildings have outlived their movement. The great heritage that “got them there” was not taken up and passed on, and the church life of making disciples, teaching good news by word and deed, and witnessing of the saving grace of Jesus Christ has been replaced with stories of who we were, how we got here, and “Oh, what a great heritage we have.”
      The death knell of any great church is very surely ringing when the leaders in a church begin to say, “We have to get some young people in here or we will die.” This is an attitude that screams of self-preservation and of feeding the “heritage” to keep it alive. Churches that only operate to self-preserve and maintain a heritage have forgotten that their mission is to make new Disciples of Jesus Christ and not to only exist.
      I never forget the pivotal point in the life of the Church when Jesus had died: the disciples were afraid; some wanted to go back home and fish or do whatever it was they were doing before Jesus called them. It was a dark day in the Body of Christ, the disciples were accused of being only drunk. The church was ready to fall totally apart. Some were ready to just rock on the porch and remember who they had been. But in Acts 2:14, something amazing happened. It was at this moment in time that Peter “stood up among the brethren” and delivered a speech that would set the course of the Church even to this day. Peter’s sermon said in no uncertain terms, “If you think what has happened with the living Jesus is something, just wait until you see what is going to happen with the risen Jesus!”
      The stunning faith declared by Peter’s speech conveys the stature of a living church. If you think our past is great, just wait ‘til you see what we will do in Jesus’ name in the future. Faithful, bold, and courageous disciples are what make a church heritage great and are what will transform a building with people into the Church.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Modest Creation

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      All of Creation is modest, even shy, to
sight and touch. The summer foliage keeps the sky eyes from penetrating to the earth’s nakedness. The fall leaves float to a close covering that blankets the timid earth. Winter is a quiet time begging for a gentle and bashful snow.
      Spring is nothing more than a shamefaced and squeamish creation sprouting prim and Victorian shoots and flowers to quickly and finally cover the coy and bleak creation.
      We are made to not know nakedness.
In the days post-Eden we learned of our nakedness and were quick to pull the blinds
      Post-Eden is where we learned words like bashful, pretense, squeamish, timidity, shamefaced, prim, and skittish.
      Post-Eden is where we learned words like beauty, hideous, ugly, scar, popular, ostracize, clique, and exclusive.
      Post-Eden is where we learned words like calories, cholesterol, diabetes, herpes, and psoriasis. Sin was a huge growth of vocabulary of words to define our being.
      The Eden Creation was not modest but was blooming and open in every way, unashamed creation. There was no reason to cover, hide, or be coy. Creation was luxurious, fabulous, lavish, and delicious.
      "Innocence" was the only attribute ~ and when innocence was stolen ~ we had no words. We were speechless. We had no words to describe the new order.
      Language grew by volumes post-Eden.
At creation we became modest, timid, and shy. God became distant...we lost our image.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Little Decisions ~ Big Results

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      For three days the victor of the 1908 National League Pennant was unknown. New York’s Bennett Park, the home of the Giants and the location of the 7th game of the series, was empty, the last fan had gone home, and the headlines had run the news that the New York Giants were the Champions. But behind the scenes, involving a Commissioner, team owners, coaches, players, and lawyers (a volatile mix), the 1908 National League Pennant race continued.
      The 7th game of the 1908 pennant race began with the Cubs and the Giants tied with three wins each. The teams had fought to a 1 to 1 tie after eight-and-one-half innings. In the bottom of the ninth, the Giants began to come to life, as they were able to place runners on base. Finally, with two outs, the Giants had Moose McCormick on third base as the possible winning run, and Fred Merkle was on first base after hitting a single to right field.
      The hometown Giant fans were up and rowdy with anticipation of a National League Pennant for their team. This was particularly exciting since the Cubs had won the pennant race against the Giants in 1907, and the Cubs had gone on to win the World Series outright. The roar of the fans was more than heard as the very ground trembled with the excitement of the closing moments of the game. Fights were already breaking out in the stands, and some intoxicated fans began to throw trash onto the field.
      Al Bridwell was at bat for the Giants. The entire season came down to the next series of few pitches. Some who were there said the fans standing around the outfield were already beginning, in anticipation, to collapse in on the field. Bridwell came through with a single up the middle to center field. McCormick trotted home, Merkle ran in leaps, and with his arms flailing, toward second base. Bridwell joyfully loped to first, and the fans burst onto the field in a riotous celebration. With no crowd control and the player exit from the field being in center field, it was a mad dash for both the Cubbies and the Giants, racing against the flow of the Giant outfield doggery. Most made it safely to the clubhouse believing that the game was over.
      But one attentive Chicago Cub, Johnny Evers, the second baseman, noticed that in an attempt to put safety before the game at hand, Fred Merkle had never touched second base and had actually, for safety’s sake, run like the wind from first base toward the center field exit. Evers recovered what was supposed to be the game ball, even though there was no proof that it was the actual ball, and tagged second base, ending the inning, nullifying the run supposedly scored by McCormick and leaving the game alive at the top of the 10, tied at one to one.
      Evers and the Cubs Manager, Frank Chance, found an umpire, and Merkle was called “out”. But since the field was full of Giant Fans and there was a need for good judgment and much talk between various officials, three days passed before it was finally ruled that the Giants and the Cubs had ended the National League season in a “tie”. The playoff game was played, the Cubs won the 1908 National League Pennant, and the Giants lost due to the errant fear of one player who chose safety over frugality.
      What if Joshua had marched around Jericho for six days and, since his feet were tired, slept in on the seventh? What if Moses had said, “I have a headache. It ‘ain’t’ so bad here. Let’s just stay in Egypt!” What if Peter had responded to the call to be a disciple by saying, “Naw, I think I will just keep on fishin’.”
      It has been said, and I think it is true, that the course of history is governed by the small sacrificial decisions we make in hard times more than the large, easy decisions we make in good times. It is the overcoming of our fears, our shortsightedness and our weaknesses that will ultimately govern how faithfully we can serve as disciples and witnesses.
      We cannot forget that there was a garden outside Jerusalem where our “Lord,” in a dark, fearful night, chose to be our “Savior”. Such a decision has changed, and still changes, individuals and the world.

The 1908 World Series is notable in several areas. The Cubs beat the Detroit Tigers in 5 games for the second time in as many years. Ty Cobb had a great showing for the Tigers but his teammates let him down. This was the first Series where 4 umpires were used and featured the lowest attendance (just over 6,000 for the 5th game) of any Series game before or since. “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was a brand new song. To the present day, this was also the last time the have Cubs won the World Series.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Where Is God When I Want To Throw A Rock?

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      In Exodus 17 Moses and the Children of Israel truly show their pitiful and self-serving intentions when they worry, gripe, complain, quarrel and test the Lord over whether they have enough water to drink or not. They plead with Moses to give them some water since they are about to “thirst to death”. We’ve all said words like these that declare our great, deprived condition when in reality, we were far from death and only stressing our point for emphasis.
      This thirsting-to-death mob immediately jumped to exclaiming how they were better off as slaves. "Were we brought here to die in this dried up ditch?" They probably even said something about how the Nile River had plenty of water back in “Good Old Egypt”.
      God is an easy target for all of our griping and complaining. Any time something goes wrong, we are quick to jump on God for the hard ride with disobedient behavior and wailing. “O God, why have you caused this to happen to me?” we exclaim. But as much as God is an “easy” target, God is not a “good” or particularly satisfying target, since there is little we can do to hurt or “get at” God, we think. And so, this is the reason the Children of Israel were ready to pick up some rocks to throw at Moses. They could not hit God with a rock, and Moses seemed to be the next best option.
      I will tell you, these Children of Israel were truly acting like spoiled children in their behavior, and, of course, we find their childish and selfish actions abhorrent. One would think that they would have been better “God followers” and would have learned more from their Saturday School teachers than they are revealing here.
      Then we ask the great question, “Do you think God can handle it if we are angry at God?” Behind the question is the belief that God expects us to always be cheery, complacent, decent and agreeable, and we wonder how God deals with us when we are angry, upset, and questioning.
      We point out those Israelites and how they seemed to be poor examples of human beings. Here they were being offered the land of plenty and blessing with all the provisions needed to get there, and all they could do was complain.
      How does God handle us when we throw a tantrum, stomp the ground, scream and yell like a child “wollarin’ around” in the floor of the grocery story in the checkout lane before the great altar of candy? How does God deal with us when we pick up rocks and get ready to hurl them with the intent of harm? How does God handle our anger?
      God handles our anger by “taking it”. Maybe the thirsty and peeved Children of Israel in Exodus 17 had no target at which to throw their rocks when they wanted to hurt God, but there was a time when humanity HAD a target. God was with us, physically, in Jesus, as a real target. Jesus was available to receive our rocks, to hear our complaints, to witness to our selfish conceit.
      Can God handle our anger?” you ask. The answer is “Yes.” God handles all anger by taking it, receiving it, bearing it, being a victim to it, and being defeated by it. Can we “get at” God? We can, we did, and we will. How does God deal with our anger? God deals with it by understanding, forgiveness, and love. Can we hurt God? Yes we can, yes we have, and yes we will, again.
      God is available, present, approachable, imminent, intimate, and touchable. If we are self-serving, conceited, vicious, unruly, and abhorrent, God can take it on the chin, suffer wounds, die a little death, and at the same time be quick to forgive our sin.
      Where is God when I want to throw a rock? God is on the Cross as the available victim of my sin.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Living In the Void

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      The winners of the Olympic contests may be revealed after a quick and jagged ski run down a mountain, after a long and stylish jump off of a long ramp, or after a two-minute figure skating performance in an ice rink, but the fact remains clear that the contests are won in those long and grueling hours of physical workouts and mental periods of quiet preparation. The ecstasy of stepping up onto the "medals platform" for the winners is only the culmination and the end result of all the time and distance between the beginning place and the end result. All participants in the great sports of life know that preparations for a competitive life are a long period of dry wilderness with much purposeful time of training spent between the beginning place and the ending place.
      The hardest rock and the densest matter of the universe are in essence similar to the sparse distancing of the planets in the outer space of our universe. After all, we call it “space,” not “clutter”. We might imagine that the sub-atomic particles of a piece of lead would be dense and close together when, in reality, this is actually filled with space and distance more than substance. We would imagine that a sub-atomic visit to the make-up of the hardest piece of obsidian would reveal a massive and dense core when, in reality, the real substance of this stone is particles distant and remote held together in space by a weak form of gravity. We imagine our life to be so dense, but in reality we actually exist in a state of being that is more with space than with substance.
      We modern and prosperous people find it hard to imagine life without dense and abundant plenty. Our days are filled with excitement provided for us by local media that taps into human interest and cataclysmic stories from round the world. We have no lack of excitement at our fingertips in our day-to-day lives. And when media cannot provide real accounts of drama, then the sitcoms and “reality” TV fill in the void. We moderns do not like having distance and space between our emotional, excitable, and entertaining moments. We like noise, activity, sports conquests, unbelievable stories revealed in real time slathered onto our lives, so that we cannot know and hear the distant call to quiet and peace.
      Even our diet, shopping habits, desire for stuff, addiction to euphoria, and symptomatic repulsion to down-time all point to this falsely expectant fantasy, our poverty and death of realization of what makes up a proper life. We have to be entertained, filled, and immersed in excitement every moment of our spacious lives, or we feel left out and depressed.
      Moses wandered around for years behind the little animals before he turned and witnessed a burning bush that was not consumed. Our scripture writers give little space to the wilderness experience but give great attention and climactic energy at the crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land. Forty years of wandering around in the wilderness by a massive tribe of faithful people is just as long as forty years of searching would be today. Jesus is in the wilderness for forty days, a painful heaviness of time where he is tempted, only to have the events of this grueling time in temptation summed up in one verse in the Gospels. Real life in the Lord is filled with lots of preparation, huge amounts of space, and great volumes of emotionally void time when absolutely nothing of excitement and notable mention takes place and where clear sight of the next moment of ecstasy is so distant that we are unable to see our next rendezvous.
      We are created for times of quiet, spaces of distant wilderness journeying, casual periods when nothing notable occurs, and life that is not filled to capacity every minute of the day and into troublesome dreams of the night. We are created as creatures who need down time, silence, bland diets, and periods of fasting. We do not do well in arenas of endless excitement and in a life filled with plenty.
      The Lord’s Kingdom may be the place where our reward is revealed, but real and sacred life is lived in the miniscule moments of every day where we are called to be responsive to the words of the Lord in faithful obedience, general contrition, quiet prayer, generous time to someone who needs a listener, or in an acknowledgment of our real presence in the distances between ecstasy and plenty.
      A Holy Lent is a life being lived in the barren wilderness and between distant horizons, a sort of existence where faithful dependence on the Lord orders our lives in a holy piety neither orchestrated nor planned by man and our world. Only in the chaste barrenness of a holy time can we bounce off of our otherwise perplexing and way too busy lives. During a Holy Lent we are given permission to exercise large periods of our time so that we can find the Creator and Savior who owns and transcends all distance, space, and time.

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

The Back Yard Glacier

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      I am going to put in a bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics to take place in Hendersonville. The Winter Olympics are being held in Vancouver, and Vancouver is experiencing a lack of snow. Well, come on over here, and we will take care of the snow business. I have just filled one of those USPS single-priced boxes with snow and shipped it to Vancouver to help with their deficit.
      We have the beginnings of a glacier forming in our back yard. There are several small animals that seem to have disappeared from our yard, and we are fairly sure they have fallen down a crevice, permanently preserved until the great thaw comes at some unknown time in the future. When the thaw does come, I will miss the adventure of Anne walking the dog in the morning equipped with an ice ax, crampons, a rescue helmet, and a survival kit, all the while being belayed back to me and my figure 8 descender, in case she winds up falling into the darkness of a monster crevice.
      We could have the premier 2018 Olympic contest of ice dancing, hockey, and short track racing right out in front of my house. Orleans Avenue would be a great place for the ski jump. The halfpipe could be performed on most any street with the snow piled up on both sides. I would also like to introduce a new sport called “ice demolition derby,” since we have been playing this very game on our streets for much of the past two months.
      I am not sure, but I believe I saw some icebergs in the French Broad River the other day, probably broken off from a similar glacier as the one that is forming in my back yard. And I have spent the last five Saturdays in the office trying to decide whether to cancel, cancel partially, or not cancel at all, church services. Every decision comes with other decisions involving plowing, shoveling, phone calling, car pooling, substituting, e-news blasting, TV and radio station contacting, message-machine changing, First News changing, and muffin considerations for the Gettman Room. Probably of all the decisions to be made, the homemade hot and fresh muffins that are supplied in the Gettman Room are the most important Sunday decision to make. I believe muffins should be the outcome of almost every decision that is ultimately made.
      Decisions, decisions! Can we ever get away from having to make so many decisions? And how do we even know which decisions are correct? Is it better to be on this side or on that side? The snows of doubt fall and fall, and there seems to be no end to choices amid drifts, treacherous icebergs, or hidden crevices. We wonder where we are to come down on the important issues that are perplexing to our doctrinal faith.
      When the Christian faith was first getting off the ground, it was considered a non-religion. The Romans considered Christians “atheists.” This opinion was somewhat justified, since whenever the early Christians were asked, “Where is your temple?,” the Christians would shrug and proclaim that they did not have temples, since they met in houses. “Well where are your priests?,” the neighbors would ask, and the Christians would shrug and say, “We do not have any.” Then the neighbors would ask, “Well, where are your sacrificial animals that are smoked to appease the gods?,” and the Christians would double-shrug and say, “We don’t have any.”
      The early Christians began as the most un-religious people ever known. All they could say was, “Jesus is our Temple, and Jesus is the only High Priest, and Jesus is the only sacrifice we need!” Who in the world would want to become a Christian if this is the way it was going? After all, good prospect followers would wonder “where will my daughter get married if you don’t have a sanctuary,” and “who will perform the service if you have no priests?”
      The early church had some very snowy days of doubt that caused people to wonder if it might not be better to simply go along with the Roman culture and embrace the Roman religious ways. There were few clear-cut, tried and true paths that had been worked out by the forebears. All situations and every new day brought unexplored wilderness to be overcome and new paths to blaze.
      With Ash Wednesday past and Lent squarely in our focus, it is time for the Church of Jesus Christ to spend a season exploring the wilderness of our soul while making hard decisions toward the Kingdom of God. Lent is our time to shake off the snows of indecision and to move to a pious and contrite relationship with our Savior.
      This is the season to thaw the glaciers that are forming in the backyard of our soul.  

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

John Wayne Rides a Giraffe

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     I grew up in a town with a very small movie theater. The theater did not have a wide screen, and the screen was flat. When “Panavision” became the norm, it became architecturally impossible for the theater to get the whole picture on the screen. The owners were aware of this problem and tried many ways to solve the problem. They did their best to develop lenses for the projector that would squash the movie together to fit on the screen. This did not work since the visual effect “squished” up the edges of the movie so that horses suddenly looked like giraffes, (imagine John Wayne riding off into the sunset on a giraffe), and round planets were suddenly shaped like surfboards.
      The next corrective effort was to move the projector closer to the screen. However, the projector wound up in the middle of the theater, taking away some of the seats, and made so much noise that you could not hear the buffaloes snort nor the laser cannon as they would “schping” Godzilla. Also, even though the outer edges of the projected image were finally all on the screen, the movie was extremely small, and everyone got headaches from squinting to see the detail.
      Finally, the owners and patrons just reconciled themselves to the fact that only the middle portion of the film was to be seen in this theater. Therefore, I will always remember going to this under-sized theater to see the great hit “ITANI”. This is a movie about a ship that hits an iceberg, (I hope I don’t ruin the plot with this spoiler information), and sinks. At the climactic moments of the film, I kept seeing people fall off the ship into the orchestra pit. I hope there was some water down there.
      “ITANI” is only one of the movies I have seen in this antiquated theater. I also saw that great Civil War Classic, “ONE WITH THE WIN”. The burning of Atlanta pretty much extended down the side wall all the way to row 9 and included much of the ceiling. We had an IMAX experience in a rectangular room.
      I was awe-inspired in Sherwood Forest when I saw “OBIN HOO,” and I will always love that classic movie about Dorothy from Kansas entitled the “IZARD OF O”. Somehow, putting the big screen productions on the small screen tends to underwhelm me.
      We have all heard the parable of putting new wine into old wineskins. If a person tries to accomplish this feat, the skins will burst and both the wine and the skins will be lost. Too often, we try to live the radical, splendid, and transforming Good News of Jesus Christ while wearing the vision-limiting blinders of the Old Testament. We, like the Pharisees, find it convenient to legalize, compartmentalize, or ritualize the free flowing living water of the faith of Jesus Christ or the freedom that is found in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we only get part of the picture. We get the rules and not the glory. We experience the dream, but we never wake up to the reality. We remain indebted to the distant Lord and are never embraced by the graceful sacrifice of a risen Savior.
      Jesus challenges us to take off the blinders, free up the mechanism, and open the doors, letting life be the ritual and letting love be the power. Jesus is the panoramic movie that, if we are not careful, only gets shown on the small flat screen. So be careful. God may be showing us wonderful news, but we may only see “I om ha o a av if n av it or bundantl!”John 10:10b.
       
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com