SPARERIBS

My Dog Booger

2011-11-10T09:12:00.000-05:00

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      I did not grow up with friendly dogs. The dog I first remember was “Booger”. He was not any particular breed and was sort of a compilation of all the bad traits of the most ornery breeds. He was not friendly, liked to chase cars, trucks, and trains, howled when the train came by, ate “Tony” dog food, and like some people are referred to as being a “man’s man,” he was a “dog’s dog”.
      There was no way to personify this dog. He was not made for indoor living, did not exhibit personable qualities, had no great desire to get along in this world, and resisted tender touch with a vengeance. I don’t think he ever bit anyone, but he had one of the most persuasive scowls you have ever seen. He could show his side teeth, bristle up the black hairs on his back, and turn sideways to you like he intended to open up a can of “dog-bite” on you at any minute. We gave Booger a big comfort zone and only seldom and out of necessity ventured across the DMZ for a quick pat on the head, rub on the back, or quick hug. His tail did not wag.
      The story goes that Booger, in spite of his anti-social tendencies, took great interest in the children: namely me and my sister. Evidently, when we were out playing he was always watching us, staying close by, being aware of our whereabouts and safety. I have seen pictures of us playing in the sandbox with Booger about 5 feet away watching us. It was believed he was making sure nothing happened to us. He was a protector of sorts. There is another theory that he may have been trying to figure out how he would eat us if he killed us. We have no proof this second theory is true for he never acted upon it and was always the perfect “gentle-dog” when we left him alone.
      However, Booger had one thing he did well. Whenever we would return home, in the dark of night, Booger would jump up from his sleeping place with a howling excitement and run all around the yard, down into the woods, all around the car, and around us until we made our way into the house. It is not surprising that we hardly ever took notice of the great drama since it was so exaggerated and noisy, but we would usually just ignore the antics and make our way into the house leaving Booger panting in the yard, finally making his way back to his sleeping location.
      We often said, (and this is the reason for his name), that Booger was chasing the “boogers” away from the house when he conducted these religious activities upon our return on dark evenings. Booger was making sure nothing would get us. He was behaving like a protector. We took it for granted and thought little about it.
      Since that time I have often longed for something that would chase the “boogers” away from my life. What would you give to be free from those baseless fears that keep you awake when you are supposed to be sleeping, those unsubstantiated worries that haunt your quest for success, doubts that hamper your belief, anxieties that possess far too much of your life, or particular moments you would live differently if given a second chance. How valuable would it be to have these consuming issues exorcised?
      I would like to be able to tell you “Booger can do it,” but I know Booger cannot. I also know incantations, concoctions, magic words, amulets, crystals, and magic elixirs cannot. I also wish a substance in an aerosol can could do it, but it cannot. Unfortunately, and fortunately, the only answer is a humbling realization that we are broken, needy, and hurting people who do not have within ourselves the wherewithal to find peace, and that only by looking outside our little world can we find a source great enough to meet our need. Jesus Christ is the source of peace. Consider a visit to the Lord’s house on a Sabbath day.
      Booger wants to help but Booger cannot.

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

Leaves that Cling

2010-12-22T23:44:00.000-05:00

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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!

2010-10-29T08:20:00.003-04:00

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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

2010-08-13T23:13:00.000-04:00

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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

2010-07-19T22:43:00.000-04:00

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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

2010-06-28T01:44:00.004-04:00

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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

2010-06-17T23:02:00.001-04:00

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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

2010-06-09T10:16:00.002-04:00

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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

2010-06-04T04:52:00.000-04:00

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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

2010-05-12T02:17:00.000-04:00

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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

2010-05-01T03:00:00.000-04:00

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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

2010-04-16T02:58:00.002-04:00

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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

2010-03-31T23:03:00.000-04:00

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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

2010-03-23T19:43:00.002-04:00

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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

2010-03-16T15:41:00.001-04:00

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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

2010-03-12T00:43:00.012-05:00

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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

2010-03-09T18:05:00.007-05:00

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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?

2010-03-02T11:23:00.009-05:00

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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

2010-02-23T20:14:00.001-05:00

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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

2010-02-16T20:54:00.013-05:00

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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

2010-02-09T15:16:00.029-05:00

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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

A Good Day to Organize the Washers

2010-02-02T09:00:00.017-05:00

     We had a little snow up in the mountains the other day. It piled up deep, was icy, and was made hard by the cold wind of the night. It was a bad day to be out, and the cat refused to even look out of a window. Our cat often gets depressed when it snows. The cold is not a huge problem, but the limited availability of fresh ground makes the cat all jittery or lethargic, the obvious symptoms of what I have self-diagnosed as a bipolar feline. You might remember, this is the cat that has one eye. The cat is supposed to have two eyes and it has one, and one “polar,” and it has two. Of course, the cat does have four paws and one tail, and that counts for something. Cats are pretty strange creatures.
      Anyway, I digress. The yard was full of snow, the streets were covered over, there was a crisp bite to the air, and the inside of the house was warm. It was a great day to go down to the basement and count the washers. I have cans and cans of every imaginable size of bolts, nuts, washers, lag bolts, carriage bolts, lock washers, wing nuts, lock nuts, galvanized bolts, wood screws, mechanical bolts, set screws, sheet metal screws, stainless steel screws, cotter-keys, sheer pins, roofing nails, glue coat nails, rivets, pop rivets, and a Canadian penny. (I did not know about the Canadian penny until much later in the story, but I list it here just to warn you ahead of time.) Anyway, there was nothing to watch on TV, no way to get to a job, no need to go out and get anything, no need to encourage the cat to go out, since she had an indoor scratching place, and nothing to do, so I went to the basement and counted my hardware.
      For the life of me, I do not know how it is that I have so many quarter inch washers. I must have over 400 of them. (Actually, I know that I have 409, since I counted them out and put them on 13 quarter-inch bolts and secured them safe and orderly with 13 nuts). Now they are all organized and counted out. I also organized all of the other hardware I mentioned above and placed the variant group into peanut butter jars, coffee cans, coffee cups, zip-lock bags, and plastic film containers. I am not sure what to do with the Canadian penny. I probably can’t spend it around here. I will put it in a special drawer and keep it until I next go to Canada. If any of y’all are going to Canada in the near future, come by the house, and I will give you the penny.
      Some days are only good for counting washers. I had one of those days last week. I took great pride in getting my previously unorganized hardware organized. I now have nice, neat, stacked magic marker-labeled cans and containers of particular lengths, sizes, and configurations of just about any hardware I might ever need. Of course, you know that when I begin my next project, I will be short one 5-cent nut, requiring a drive to the hardware store in order to complete the project.
      There is something cathartic about organizing previously unorganized things. This must be something we have inherited from our divine Creator. The Lord has a tendency of organizing all chaotic situations and making them into an ordered creation. This is how we all came to be. Out of the blackness and formless void, the Lord made all that we know, see, and touch.
      Even now, when the days get long and all the creation is at peace, the Lord looks down and thinks about that woman who had ten coins and lost one and then looked and looked and looked until she found it. All ten were finally all stacked up nice and neat, and there was peace and order again. Then the Lord thinks about that shepherd who had 100 sheep until one traipses off to the nether regions, and that shepherd looks and looks and looks until he finds that lost sheep and takes it back to the other 99, just like it was the “onliest” sheep he had. The thought of all the sheep together again makes the Lord feel happy.
      Sometimes, the Lord thinks about that boy who fled his family with half of his daddy’s fortune, only to later squander it away on low-life friends and corn dogs. That lost boy wound up wanting to eat pig slop and finally stole back home where his father let him be a part of the family again. The Lord is happiest when lost and broken families come together again.
      On a good day, the Lord daydreams of how happiness is a good feeling, and how there is great joy when the chaos of this world is organized and everything that has lost its place is found again. We have great evidence that the Lord will do just about anything to get us back where we need to be. That is home, in God’s Kingdom, where all lost things belong.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

Trees Are for the Woods

2010-01-26T15:30:00.016-05:00

I have heard many special names for Christmas Trees over the years. Most are adjective names that precede the official name of “Christmas Tree,” a variety of colorful adjectives that I do not care to say much about in this venue. Let it suffice to say that these preceding “adjective names” mainly come from men around the first week of Advent, soon after Thanksgiving as the trees are just being bought, transported, erected, made vertical, lighted, made vertical, ornamented, made vertical, starred on top, and finally made vertical once again.

         I believe it is now far enough away from the first week of Advent to speak of the demonic conniptions that are the silent residents of the innocent looking trees. If you find that you are not far enough distant in time from the eruptions and vocal namings of this past season then stop reading now and save this to read on down the road in March or April once the memory is not so painful.
       Anne and I keep certain books on our bookshelf for no other reason than to have them handy for placing under the legs of the tree stand to make the vertical tree as plumb as a Masonic Rite. The books are various thicknesses to add or subtract in an exacting way. This past year I found that if I turned “Wesley’s Commentary on the New Testament” to page 324 and placed it under the back leg, the tree leaned a little bit too forward…but, on page 323 the tree was leaning a smidgen toward the back. I finally had to add a piece of waxed paper on top of 323 to make the exact adjustment required.
       Of course, just after this perfecting and the adjective naming ceremony the cat discovered the tree and immediately thought, “Recreation!” I finally retrieved the cat from a lofty spot way up where the star belongs, only to find that the previous fine adjustments by microns were ruined, and the next ceremony of adjusting and adjective naming was begun all over again.
       Soon, Bullwinkle, the dog, saw the tree and immediately thought, “Indoor plumbing!” Immediately following this “dog thought” is the place where I entered the advanced level of adjective naming that then preceded the generic name of “dog.”
       Then, there was the time that a nest of praying mantises decided to pack up all their children and hang them in a little kinder-sack for the final period of gestation of the recently deposited ootheca so that the little pups could learn to pray on our tree and all over our house. I like a praying mantis as much as the next gardener, but having a thousand of the little ones hanging from every lampshade or crawling across my face at night was a little more than I could tolerate. I did not take joy in sending them to the heaven where all good praying mantises go, but I at least gained some little peace at the hand of a vacuum cleaner as I sent these otherwise wonderful and prayerful critters to the aphid laden bushes in God’s Kingdom.
       Christmas tree hole drillers are funny people. They laugh a lot. They have fond dreams of patrons who have purchased a tree, who get back home and try to adjust the tree using a crooked hole that has been drilled in the bottom. Tree hole drillers do not have adjective names that precede the words “Christmas tree.” They drill straight holes for their personal tree.
I once had a tree with a split trunk which I held together with pipe clamps, that would not stand up after a complete library of books were adjusted under the legs of the tree stand. I am sorry to report that I have evidence that the Dewey Decimal System will let you down. That year I nailed the stand to the floor and held the tree straight with a wire attached to a homemade winch system and three turnbuckles, all of this system suspended through a hole in the ceiling from the attic. I hid the wire with a star.
       Oh, the ways we expect and try to orchestrate perfection and order in our lives. The natural order should be simple and wonderful, should not include imperfection, and should be as “expectable” and usual as air. But every time we assume order we will stumble over disorder within one stride. I am of the belief that the smoke rising from the temple did not always ascend to heaven in a nice straight line. Sometimes the smoke hovered inside the temple and made everyone cough and sneeze. I suspect the building of the ark was a bit more involved and problematic than the one verse given to the construction in Genesis 4. Surely, at least one board was warped and one thumb was hit with a hammer.
       All of the great things of life require extra energy and problematic efforts. No worthy thing is synonymous with ease. Even faithful and righteous living is filled with little warts and blisters. However, just like a perfect, lighted and decorated Christmas tree, all the expenditure of our purposeful ordering is worth the effort and is certainly blessed by God.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

There Are Also-Rans

2010-01-20T22:13:00.011-05:00

I recently watched a well-known sports drink commercial advocating that those who drink a company’s particular product will be successful, winning, and victorious people. Teams would win with this company’s drink. Individuals would perform better with this specific and amazing drink. And so, when a team drinking its drink won any competition, the performance drink company was quick to place its commercial logo in front of the cameras and all over the winning teams’ logo.

The unfortunate problem is that actually, in most instances, both teams are drinking the exact same performance-enhancing drink, resulting in only a 50/50 success rate at powering a team to victory. The ads never mention that just as many teams lose with the promoting company’s sports product as those that win.

So this is the great truth of success in the wonderful world of sports, where only 50% of the contests end with a successful victory: in individual sporting events, such as track and field, swimming, golf, and tennis, there are always many more losers than winners, making the percentage of winners much, much lower than the percentage of losers. Life is often a team event but is, most of the time, ultimately an individual event. For this reason, there are always many “also-rans” in our scope of existence. There are always many more people who have lived with defeat than the few who have been perfectly successful in life.

We live in a pressure cooker, a perfection-seeking and success-oriented world. We thrive on competition. We expect that we will reach the tape first in every race, achieve a 100% percentile in every course, and never be an “also-ran” individual in any aspect of our lives. But regardless of our expectations, we know that we are not always excellent, perfect, or winners. We easily find ourselves left behind, lagging, and wanting what we cannot have.

Unless you think that this is a despicable place to be and that you are unique in your situation, try and know that no matter how much we win in this life, how high we soar, how great the successes we amass, at the end, the increased elevation is always only slight. In the end, we usually find that we are actually on the same playing field, and the greatness and victories are of little consequence. It is pathetic when the May Queen never gets over that momentary accolade, or the sports star never remembers his or her humanity, or the big dog forgets his or her mortality. It is sorrowful when we believe in our greatness above all else.
It is said in the biography of William Randolph Hearst, that he would never allow anyone to mention the word “death” in his presence. He could not handle the idea of mortality, defeat, or tragedy. He could only believe in the lie of his greatness. Mr. Hearst, (along with a few of us, even today), found comfort, or more accurately, discomfort in, “As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. When the wind passeth over it and it is gone, the place thereof shall know it no more.” These words are as infinitely true as they are infinitely unpopular.

As Christians, our hope is not in our abilities, perfections, or successes. As Christians, hope is in the dreadfully tragic Cross of Jesus Christ. Only in our facing our mortality can we finally know that we will not be asked, “Did you win?” or “Were you successful?” The ultimate question now and always, will continue to be, “Are you faithful?”

I find comfort in knowing that I am called to “love” and not to “win”. I find great hope in knowing that “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” It goes against our grain, but a proper attitude in life would be to adopt nonchalance about our successes and perfections and a God-given serenity with regard to our tragic failures.

Lord, grant us, by your grace, the wisdom to know the differences between the eternal and the temporal, the treasures of heaven and the treasures of earth, and strengthen within us the ability to seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, so that we may learn to possess the peace that the world can neither give nor take away.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

January 13, 2010 - Who Owns Our Time?

2010-01-18T09:22:00.002-05:00

     We are a people who are connected to time. We cannot get away from time. It is a part of our biological fiber to the very core of our existence. We live in a cyclical world of days governed by the earth’s rotation on its axis, a cyclical world of years governed by the earth’s annual rotation around the sun, and a cyclical world of seasons governed by the tilt of the earth’s axis with regard to the earth's rotation around the sun. It just comes around and goes around and has always been a part of the pattern of life.
     Many dedicated and smart people have taken time to understand all of these natural activities that so order our lives and put us into patterns of living that are healthy, flowing, and sacred. It is our pattern to sleep long and quietly retreat in the dark months of winter, to anticipate and move actively into the spring as life returns, to work hard into the summer to pile up and stock pile for darker cold months, to celebrate and be festive in the fall after the harvest and to enter the dark months to fix harnesses, mend tired bones, and live on stored root vegetables with hearty stews.
     But industrious as we are, it is our continuous quest to conquer and defeat time, so it will have no effect on our daily lives and actually be owned by us, controlled by us, manipulated by us. We spend much energy and activity on trying to cheat the harvest season, both early in spring and late in fall. We dedicate our lives to industry that moves from the natural rhythm of sleeping when it is dark and working when it is light to working before the sun comes up and quitting long past the sun going down. We so fill our daily lives that to be held up 20 seconds at a “stop light” upsets the entire day and we frantically and fleetingly believe we must work extra hard to gather those 20 seconds back regardless of the stressful costs and emotional toll. We even gather up an hour in one season to give us longer light at one end of the day, so we can mold time around our organized cycles of life.
It seems natural to politicize time and to make it a commercial commodity so that people with means are able to transport quickly from one place to another, with easy and timely access, while others must use public transit with long walks and many delays, often foiling lives due to late arrivals and lack of an ability to keep a strict schedule: which this world demands. All modern conveniences, medical breakthroughs, gadgets and gimmicks are based on time control. The reward is always more free time, less time spent sick, more productivity with our time, more quality time in leisure, and therefore a quality of life that has not been known in previous time.
     Even the Church of Jesus Christ was formed, divided, and cyclically organized to tell the story of faith. Easter therefore would always fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. This date was not of a sacred nature but was a solely political decision at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. to avoid the use of a Jewish lunar calendar and the insistence that Easter never fall at the beginning of Passover. Therefore the most sacred day of the church was decided by a political criteria, rather than a sacred and holy revelation.
     But one form of time that is seldom revered or saluted, in our modern days of time control, is the holy moments known as “sacred time.” Sacred time is neither cyclical nor linear and would be considered an “anti-time” when compared with the modern ideas of time. Sacred time is time with God. This time is not based on a clock, a designed period, a beginning or an ending but is so designed to hold up God’s perfection, eternity, and timeless nature.
     Other people of faith have drawn this distinction by referring to the measured time of our life as “chronos” time and the sacred time as “kairos” time. We live the vast majority of our life in chronos time (clocks, calendars, 30-minute TV segments, and routine). Kairos time is that time that goes against everything we know and salute in decent society. Kairos time can hardly be accurately scheduled, laughs in the face of routine, and is an inbetween time when something special happens. Chronos is about quantity and kairos is about quality. Kairos is God’s time in our lives.
Too little of our lives are given over to kairos moments and our lives are otherwise afforded to the ownership of schedules, and the servitude to the system. Learn to surrender more of your time to God moments in the company of the timeless living God.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

January 6, 2010 - A Little Souvenir?

2010-01-18T09:21:00.004-05:00

     For some reason, this time of the year makes me think about Florida. Maybe it is the weather, or the warm ocean, or the Key Lime Pie, but the look of leafless trees, brown grass and cold clear skies makes me dream of the Sunshine State.
     I remember one of my favorite trips to Florida. It was the summer of 1966, when Marineland was the place to see and Sea World had not been invented. Being rather young and not knowing what I know now, I spent much of my time looking for exotic things I could bring home to show my friends. In 1966, Florida was another country from North Carolina. Any exotic artifact that would prove I had visited this tropical paradise would be just the ticket.
     I fell in love with a little alligator in Ocala, but my mom said, “No!” I had a beach bag filled with Spanish moss before my father reported that it would give me chiggers. I even had a little porcelain statue picked out until my mother whispered to my father that the inscription was actually a dirty limerick. His eyes got big, and we left it for someone whose mother was not so wise.
     I found a 35-pound piece of rubber off of a racing tire in Daytona. (I was sure it was from Curtis Turner’s car.) Dad just shook his head and said, “Not enough room.” I found a 3-pound dead barracuda in Miami. Even I decided against this souvenir, since this rotting fish smelled worse than my sister.
     Finally, I found The Souvenir. It was a Venus Fly Trap that I could grow myself. I brought it home, watered it “good,” put it in a sealed plastic bowl with the lid on and put it in the sun. I called my friends to come and gawk at this flesh-eating plant. We began rounding up flies around the neighborhood but found them to be pretty quick and evasive. We did come up with a tobacco worm, some ants, and a dead roach. We watered the fly trap again, put these critters in the mouths of the flytrap, put the lid back on, burped it, and put the whole thing back in the sun.
     For four days we kept the sealed plastic bowl containing the flytrap in the sunshine, fed it a wide selection of critters and varmints, gave it upwards of 4 gallons of water and spent most of our waking hours watching it. And on the fourth day, we officially pronounced it dead. We had successfully loved it to death. It had been smothered, drowned, overfed with bugs it had never thought about eating, and sufficiently cooked in the sun. So much for my exotic Florida souvenir.
     Such is often the plight of the Christian faith. We can hold it, love it, and keep it to ourselves until it is sufficiently a dead faith. We attend sunday school for years but never do anything with the learned knowledge. We talk about love, but we never this love outside of our church family. We are fed and nourished by the Holy Spirit, but we never use the spiritual energy. The Christian faith is nothing until we give it away, use it, and do something with it.
     I fear that the Christian faith may simply become an empty souvenir of a place we once visited.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

December 30, 2009 - The Smell of the Very Creation

2010-01-18T09:20:00.001-05:00

     Often, I will smell a smell and it will remind me of something. Do smells do that to you, also?
     The smell of potpourri reminds me of Christmas. This is a fond and faux smell. It is not real. It is just a memory thing to set the mood of a time when such things mulled on the stove and were later drunk with great satisfaction. My father was once fooled by some potpourri on the stove and poured himself a mug only to soon find that this is not something that should be drunk. The fragrant oils and dried botanical matter only serve to give off scent and are not digestible. My father claims that one swig of that libation turned his blood type from positive to negative, made his ears ring, and took 3 years off of his life. That was the last potpourri in my parents’ home.
     A clever church member once gave me a little frankincense and myrrh kit that she thought would make a nifty children’s sermon. I announced this special children’s sermon in advance, and I believe a few extra people showed up that Sunday just for the curiosity of those fragrant botanical items. The children came to the front of the church eagerly. The adults leaned forward with anticipation of the fragrant smells of the botanical items offered as a special gift to Jesus. Everyone felt rather special and a little warm in their bellies. I read of these items from the Bible and proceeded to light them (that is what you do with these items, by the way.) The smoke rose up into the air, and with progressive unison deep breaths, as the aromas wafted to the nether regions of the church sanctuary, the posture of the anticipating congregants changed from leaning forward to lunging backwards into the back of the pew with constricted breathing and deep coughs. Many people left the church, probably going either to the ER, or to a good litigation lawyer to begin to make arrangements to sue the church. Some members later confided in me that one breath of that gift suited for a king turned their blood type from positive to negative, made their ears ring, and took 3 years off of their lives.
     When fixing collard greens, it is always advisable to add a little vinegar to the water. This unlikely ingredient cuts the stench of the cooking of the greens. Of course, many people think the cooking of collards, even with a little vinegar added to the water, should be performed from the home of an enemy who lives at least two counties away. I, on the other hand, have grown accustomed to the smell of collards boiling in a pot on the stove. The smell is a moot point to me. However, I usually keep a few messes of collards around to put on the stove in the event of situations arising when I need to encourage visitors to head home after a lengthy stay.
     The smell of collards boiling reminds me that soon I will have a good meal of greens with some cornbread and chow-chow. This combination is the perfect healthy meal for a cold night when the wind blows. (If you would like some chow-chow, please give me a call since I am down to my last 8 dozen pints after cutting back this year, only canning a total of 22 dozen pints.) However, one group of longevity visitors, who were satisfied to become homesteaders in “my” home, to this day claim that the few breaths they inhaled from the cooking of this green botanical defoliant, (before they packed up and headed back down the road to their own home) turned their blood type from positive to negative, made their ears ring, and took 3 years off of their lives.
     All during Christmas, I have been privy to well-meaning individuals, who over and over again express their deep sorrow that the sweet little Jesus boy had to be born in a barn where the smells were so bad. Good modern Christians go on and on about how the barn is a nasty place with nasty odors. It is unfortunate that good and modern Christians have, from absence of such places, grown to believe that fermentation, composting, and animal life are bad smells. People who work in these environs are quick to know that the sweet smell of a barn is not a bad smell but is really the natural smell of the earth.
     I would like to add to this belief that the smell of a barn is the very smell of the Creation of God. A barn has a godly smell where fermentation is creating the resources needed for the very firmament of God. This firm creation in which we live would soon come to an end without the active bacterial agents that work with other idle botanical materials to produce nutrients needed for agri-business. Surely, as the Lord molded the heavens and the earth, the smell throughout was that of composting and fermentation. In short, the smell of the nativity barn was the very smell of life.
     I cannot imagine the Savior of the world, the very creator of life, the Lord God almighty, being born in any other place than a barn where the rich aromas of the very creation are so pungent. That barn on that night was home to the originator of everything that is and the hope of the kingdom that was to come. The smells were the smells of the work of the “Word” where “in the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the Word was God.”
     Most every type of Holy Bible has already been published. However, the one that I would most like to have would be a “Scratch and Sniff Bible.” Much like those perfume ads in the magazines, a Bible student could scratch certain pages and get a whiff of the damp air around the Nile as Moses floated along in a pitch and bulrush bassinette; a scent of the great Cedars of Lebanon as Solomon used them to build his various condominiums around the Temple Mount: an odiferous breeze from a herd of camels as they prepare to lead the caravan back to Esau, as Jacob, (now Israel), fights with an angel at the Jabok; or the wheezy dry air of the wilderness as Moses and the Children of Israel made their way to the Promised Land
     The other day, I was sitting with a group of good church people in a wonderful worship service. A good Christian man sat down in front of me and was wearing some sort of cologne that reminded me of a combination of High Karate, Brut, Old Spice, Cargo, and the pot liquor from a collard cook-off. Everyone around me, myself included, began to gasp, breathing like a guppy in syrup. As we individually evacuated the area, upwind, I heard one individual exclaim that they felt like their blood type had turned from positive to negative, that their ears were ringing, and they felt like 3 years had been taken off of their life. I, on the other hand, was personally glad that Jesus was born in a barn with natural smells rather than being born in such an olfactory cesspool. In the beginning, before a potpourri of sticky artificial aromas, there was the Word, fermenting, organic, the very scent of Heaven wafting on the earth.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

December 16, 2009 - The True, Eternal Fraternal Order

2010-01-18T09:19:00.001-05:00

     When a person joins a fraternal club there is always a point where the inductee has to recite a statement that pretty much demands eternal, loyal, and dedicated allegiance to that organization until everyone is snug as a bug, secure in God’s post-millennial Kingdom. I have joined several clubs with such requirements and even have several antiquated membership cards somewhere in my billfold to prove it.
     My first “eternal fraternal club” was organized and founded in the woods right behind my childhood home. My elementary-aged boy cousins and I got together and swore up and down that we would do this and not do that, hate this and not hate that, believe this and not believe that, and pretty much agree to be brothers until the world came to an end, or high school graduation, whichever came first.
The main motivation behind the formation of this secretly-named, (of which I am not able to reveal here), and eternal fraternal order, was the fear of an impending attack of our country by enemy atomic bombs. We were all concerned that the bombs were “hanging out” somewhere over our heads, looking for a good opportunity to fall on us, even as we organized our club.
     What precipitated the formation of our secretly-named club was that we had talked with our parents about building fallout shelters for the families, but they seemed less than interested. So our pact was for each of us to build a shelter for our family, keeping it all top secret, so that when the bombs began to drop we could invite our families into sure safety. We secured the pact with an induction ceremony by eating a hot pepper and fashioning a pig’s tooth as an amulet on a string necklace for each member to wear. We then began to dig our shelters on obscure locations on our respective land. The obscurity was to both surprise our families and to keep unwanted people from knowing about these shelters in the time of a terrific event.
     I doubt that very many people have ever dug a fallout shelter. This was my first attempt. I had no way of knowing “what all” was required to house four people for the months required for radioactive material to half life a few times. You, also, would be surprised that the hole seemed to create dirt, roots, and rocks. The more I dug the less of a hole it appeared to be. I was also bright to recognize that my 25 cent weekly allowance was not going to go far in purchasing the required food and paraphernalia required to fully outfit the shelter. After several days of digging I was reconciled to the belief that the atomic bombs were not so imposing as a threat.
     However, our secret eternal fraternal order still met regularly to give reports on our progress. Everyone else seemed to be digging out great quantities of dirt and progressing nicely. I falsely joined in the ratchet-jawing proclaiming my great successes. Today, I still have the pigs tooth necklace, but I have no fallout shelter. My eternal fraternal great intentions soon failed me and my brothers.
     That is the trouble with our eternal and faithful plans. Most of the time we fail and fall by the wayside. Even with the greatest of intentions and with some strenuous momentum our eternal promises are dated. Our level of involvement is limited.
     On the other hand we are in the Season of Advent where soon Jesus will again make the eternal commitment of intimacy, as God becomes a human being. Christmas is God’s joining the eternal fraternal order of mortal and foiled human beings, as God becomes a man. But the true scope of this deed is not limited to a brief, one time, temporary, and terse episode. Jesus did not only make a pro tempore appearance where he lived for a time and then died.
     As well as being born of a mother in the visible form of a man, he also grew up in that body eating, drinking, and sleeping in that body. He lived, died, rose, ascended, and is seated at the right hand of the Father in that body. He will come, judge the living and the dead, rule over heaven, and is our eternal Savior in that body. What is the eternal scope of God’s commitment to us at Christmas, as God becomes a man? It is total, timeless, and perpetual. God in Jesus will not fail or fall by the wayside. The commitment of the Lord is eternal and fraternal.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

December 9, 2009 - My Personal Government

2010-01-18T09:18:00.002-05:00

     'Seems as though poor King Ahaz was having some real trouble at home with his kingdom. It was in a shambles. There was a huge threat from the north, the Assyrians; and a huge threat from within, citizens who were expecting great things; and a huge issue of a collapsing army at the very gates of Jerusalem. King Ahaz was at the point of grasping at straws, (and that was about all he had left).
You see, poor old King Ahaz had become king following his granddaddy, King Uzziah. King Ahaz had never been quite the king his granddaddy had been, and everybody knew the grandson was a bit weak when it came to spiritual matters and military matters. They also knew he was pretty good at keeping a stable of wives, enjoying fine festive parties, and taking regular ski vacations to Mt. Herman with his friends. But all ‘this aside, the king had tried to hold off Assyria all by himself, and now, he was a miserable failure all hunkered down in Jerusalem awaiting the final sword to fall.
     As a trembling mass of failed kingship, the fearful king invited Isaiah over to the “War Room” to get some assurance that God was still on his side. He wanted some big assurance in the form of a great sign, so all the people would know he was a “real” king and had some great power in an alliance between himself and God. So the prophet Isaiah gives him a sign and says: “A young woman will give birth to a child whose name will be called Immanuel, God with us.”
     King Ahaz must have scratched his head, "skewed-up" his face, twisted his neck side-ways, and responded with something like, “Huh?,” whereupon, I am sure, Isaiah repeated the "sign" to the probable response from King Ahaz of something akin to: “Baby? I don’t need 'no' stinking baby. I need some weapons, brave troops, a plan, some pestilence to fall upon the Assyrians, or a way out of Jerusalem to my house over at the Gaza Strip. I don’t need 'no' woman having 'no' baby!”
     It was then that Isaiah added gravy to the biscuits when he said: “And the government will be upon his shoulders.” This caused a thundering and great "guffaw" from King Ahaz, for even if he was trapped, defeated, weak, and woeful, the king still had sense enough to know that none of this prophetic offering was going to help him out of his corner of anxiety. He also knew that, if you placed the weight he was carrying on his shoulders onto the shoulders of a baby, the result would be “nothing," “emptiness," “futility," and “uselessness." He did not actually recognize that having a baby in charge would bring much of a different result as compared to what he was accomplishing on his own, minus the ski trips.
     King Ahaz did not see any of this prophetic word from Isaiah as being good news. This proffered Good News did not give him any wiggle room within this situation in which he found himself sorely needing to wiggle. This Good News did not give him any peace that, in fact, "it was all going to be okay." This Good News did not give him a reassurance that what he had done to this point would be overlooked, and he would be pronounced a victorious ruler. This Good News did not give him a way to save face and avoid the ridicule and shame of being a faithless leader.
     The only news this saying brought to King Ahaz is the same news it brings to all of us today. The prophetic word of Isaiah delivered the news that King Ahaz (and we), are not actually the kings of our lives after all. The good words were the news that this baby would not only be the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords but would, in reality, be the Lord of our lives in every way west of China. This Good News of a baby tells us that we are not in control, and there is no hope to be found in our good works and wisdom, and the only hope is in God.
     This Good News is that the Lord is going to take the burden of being in charge of our lives off our shoulders and put it squarely on the shoulders of the baby, called Immanuel. If we put ourselves in the place of King Ahaz, this bizarre promise makes no sense. The assuring prophecy may seem strange, sound unusual, may not appear to be an effective political solution, but nonetheless, the words foretell the work of God.
     I am personally thankful that “my personal government” is being borne on the shoulders of the Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

December 2, 2009 - Long in the Bud

2010-01-18T09:18:00.000-05:00

     I know of a little girl who, when born, was only a smidgen over 4 pounds. This little girl was the 20th of 22 children in her family. They were from Tennessee, the mother was a domestic worker, the father picked up odd jobs, and it seemed like these children were everywhere. Our little girl spent the bulk of her childhood in bed suffering through double-pneumonia, scarlet fever, and, finally, polio. She was fitted with leg braces at the age of 6. If you had seen her as a child, you would have shaken your head, mumbling something like One of twenty-two...," "Poor thing...," or, "What will happen to that poor girl?"
     I know of a boy who was believed to have been born in North Carolina, (nobody can say for sure), who was pulled all over the place, from cabin to cabin, where he was raised helping to clear trees and expending great energy farming what little the struggling family could farm. The boy was never formally educated. At the age of 23, the largest town he had ever seen had a population of no more than 100 people. He was gangly, (some might say ugly), and had worked as a migrant farmer, printer, candle-maker, blacksmith, harness-maker, woodcutter, and tall tale storyteller. If you had met this boy in a crowd, you would have stared but quickly moved away from him, since he did not look like a decent person with whom you would want to hang around.
     I know of a boy who was thrown out of three schools, lived in a broken home where his mother and father had frequent “live-ins," where alcohol was a constant problem, and where STDs finally took the life of his father at an early age. This boy was short, overweight, had no athletic ability, had difficulty reading, had no friends, and was pestered by all of his peers. Even though his family had great means, any savings were soon squandered on pointless living. If you had met him, you would have assumed that he was destined to failure and a place of mediocrity in life.
     Everyday, we pass by young people who are poor, unattractive, limited, lackluster, misfits on the street. We see them walking the malls, hustling our groceries to the car, serving us some fast food item at a drive-thru, playing a video game, filling a desk at school, or appearing altogether mediocre in every way. These young people do not come from the right families, have no obvious talents, have no cheerleaders applauding their accomplishments, are not popular, are not members of the select clubs, and may not be able to look you in the eye when they speak.
     But there is one intangible factor of these children that cannot be noticed at a casual glance. That often invisible factor that no one knows is the formidable grit in the constitution of these young people, the dream that hides behind their shy darting glance, the promise that is growing deep roots within their soul, the determination to do something great in their life, and the gifts that no one has taken the time to see. How do I know this? I know this, because the little sickly girl mentioned above is Wilma Rudolph, who in 1960 was the fastest woman in the world, winning three gold medals at the Rome Olympics and, then, going on to do great things for the cause of equal rights, becoming a strong role model for other youth and a national treasure. The young lanky, ugly, and lackluster man from obscurity was Abraham Lincoln. The hapless and truant child of a broken family was Winston Churchill.
     These children did not rise to their greatness due to nepotism (favored treatment due to family ties), appearance, preferential treatment, coddling, or favoritism. Our obscure misfits who became heroes, after showing no obvious gifts as children, rose to their positions and places in history due to factors that we are too blind to see.
     We see a person's value on the surface. We weigh a person's potential by using insignificant factors. We value beauty and stature, letting movie or TV stars, athletes, or super fashion-models become the spokespersons for morality, greatness, and faith. We vote for candidates who have a name, wealth, and a quick wit, overlooking the unconnected leader and gifted patriot holding quiet wisdom. We call people who know how to take tests “smart” and tag those who are a little long in the bud as being “slow” or “average”. We quickly box up the culled children in categories that "label," (but in no way "define").
     How do I know all of this? I know all of this, because I worship a God who knows our gifts, our drives, our potential, and our future. I worship a God who does not play the game of nepotism and appearance, but who weighs a person by a rich spirit, a name that is recognized by righteousness, and wisdom that bows to no façade of wit and shallow popularity. I worship a God who reveres only depth of faith, truth over beauty, and hope beyond despair. Jesus Christ is the eternal source of freedom from the little labels that imprison us on earth and the freedom to our fulfillment. When the world labels and limits us, Jesus Christ frees us.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

November 18, 2009 - Turkey, Gravy and Kingdom

2010-01-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

     As a deer panteth for water, so my soul panteth after thee! Psalm 42:1

     My favorite meal of the year is Thanksgiving Day. Not the typical lunch meal of the day only, but for the whole day, from “kin see to can’t see,” Thanksgiving is a great day of non-stop food. I will not go into elaborate details of all the treats, just because such images would likely make your soul “panteth” a little too much.
     And so I take this moment to flash back to a simpler time at the huge table of my grandmother, where it seemed hundreds of kinfolk filled their lunch plates with turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, pinto beans, yeast rolls and butter and, then, sat awaiting the proper blessing of a self-designated and particularly pious uncle. The serving of the plates of food went systematically and with a lot of reaching over and under each other with the final outcome being that every individual had their perfect plate of food right in front of them, anxiously sitting with heads bowed awaiting the prayer.
     I will admit that I do not remember ever closing my eyes during the prayer, as I gave astute attention to the victuals on the plate just six inches from the end of the nose of my bowed head. This particularly pious uncle had clearly never heard Jesus talk bad about haughty and long prayers in the public places, for as much as Thanksgiving was a day of glorious flavors that melted together, for my uncle, it was a day of loquacious homily in prayer. His prayers were endless, and meanwhile, the turkey would be getting cold, the gravy would be running into the cranberry sauce, and the roll would be getting a little soggy.
     My uncle would “cross the bridge of compromise” from both directions. He would always pray for some family that traveled endlessly – a family only known as the “Mercies.” I do not know who those “traveling Mercies” were. I do not believe they ever arrived at a destination, but actually just migrated around from place to place. I always wanted to be one of them. I only hoped, wherever they were on any given Thanksgiving, that they were not looking down at a plate of food with their mouths watering, listening to an uncle go on and on about “Shadrach, Meshach and Tobedwego,” the “rose of Zion,” or the “road to heaven being so narrow with a wide gate.”
     I do not know where it is written, but I grew up believing that a Thanksgiving Day prayer had to include a prayer of thanksgiving, praise, adoration, intercession, confession, a period of pleading, a moment of silence, a slew of monster words that were reserved only for cooling off the dressing, and an all too-often insertion of the words “Lord,” “Jesus,” and “Father” wherever there was a gap in need of a word. I have always identified with Moses standing on Mount Nebo, not being able to enter the Promised Land, yet watching as the Children of Israel crossed the Jordan River at the foot of the mountain. He was right there at paradise but was prevented from entering. He could smell the cranberry sauce, but was prevented from eating due to some religious barricade.
     Then, there was a year when the “praying uncle” had arranged for an aunt, with a particularly flat sense of melody, to enter into a chorus of “The Lord’s Prayer” just after he had faithfully jumped into the dark chasm of trust, climbed to the top of the mountain of consternation, and navigated the treacherous river filled with the temptation of pride. I have never been one to think much about purgatory, but I almost became a believer as she reminded me of my need for “daily bread,” the likes of which I was pretty sure I would never get.
     I know the preacher regularly declared that we should hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake, (and I will confess that I don’t know much about this), but I do remember fully knowing what it was to hunger and thirst for a little piece of white meat, a fork full of beans, some dressing with gravy, or a little dot of cranberry sauce to alight on my tongue and slowly slide down my throat.
     Now, as an adult, I know that these lessons of longing for something that was just out of reach were a great training ground for a person who would long for God’s Kingdom and would look for signs of the Kingdom breaking forth in every little act of love, moment of hope, and episode of reconciliation. I sometimes believe that the Lord will come, and The Kingdom will be present in just the next moment, but the moment comes, and I am left wanting and waiting; unfulfilled, but having faith in fulfillment that is near.
     We are a Kingdom People, and we wait for the fulfillment. We long for light to come, for darkness to be destroyed, and for hope to fill our souls. We wait for a Messiah to order this earth and to make the roads level. Thanksgiving is the training ground of the banquet that is to come. With heads bowed, taste buds at the ready, and souls needing daily bread, we anticipate and wait.

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

November 4, 2009 - Where Can I Find a Figgy?

2010-01-18T09:16:00.001-05:00

     Everybody is talking about Christmas Traditions and how we have to have a “blown glass pickle” hidden in our tree ‘cause of some Spanish legend from the 18th century, a “Bohemian Coffee Cake” ‘cause of some legend of some Trinity angels’ encounter with a nut tree and Santa Claus’ sleigh in the 17th century, and a “yule log” smoldering in the fire place ‘cause of some pagan custom that predates Jesus Christ himself. I once helped a friend put together a yule log for his family. We soaked this oak log in water so it would burn slowly, drilled holes to stuff in herbs and spruce needles, and placed it just so in the fireplace so it would serve its purpose. 'Wound up having a wet log that would not burn, smelling for all the world like somebody had put pine tar in the cinnamon jar.
People go plum silly with Christmas traditions, which brings to mind the notion of a “sugar plum”: when was the last time you saw such a thing. Did you know that a sugar plum does not have a trace of a plum in it, but that it is really a bunch of sugar-coated seeds? And, there is a silly tradition of chestnuts roasting over an open fire. I once put some chestnuts in an open fire, only to get a burned lip and a mushy nut that tasted like a plaster dumplin’. This makes me think of “fruit cakes,” and this is most surely not a pleasant thought; or of “ginger bread," which, when topped with lemon custard, is actually one of the best Christmas traditions I can imagine. But then please tell me, from where did eggnog come? This spiced and creamy beverage tastes pretty good, but there is no mystery behind its seasonal popularity since you could put kitty litter in a mixture that was seventy-five percent cream, with lots of sugar and nutmeg, and that concoction would be a hit in any house.
     Christmas season is also the “beeswax” season. Everybody has to have beeswax: beeswax in this candle holder, in the menorah, in the figurine scene, or in the hand lotion. Beeswax measures the person. If you don’t have beeswax candles, don't you know, you just don’t measure up. Of course, all you have to do to remedy this lack of beeswax is go out and buy some beeswax candles. Having beeswax candles is as easy as pulling out a dollar. It does not mean you have bees or anything. And then there is that illusion of Christmas odor that reminds me of a Hallmark Christmas Card.           Potpourri is a bizarre mixture of organic matter and oils to make a person think you are cooking with cinnamon, apples, allspice, and other spices. Potpourri is simply a front that shamelessly tells all that we are not cooking with any of those things. The effect is to resemble the smell of mulled cider, which is a good thing, but which requires work to produce and is seldom found in any home. Potpourri points to a Christmas Tradition that we actually do not do.
     Christmas Tradition includes the hanging of artificial facsimile sleigh bells on the wall like we own a sleigh or something, or have fond memories of childhood sleigh rides we took in our snow-covered villages. The only sleigh I personally ever see is on a beer commercial. We see pictures in magazines of fire-lit toddies in beautiful glasses of “buttered rum,” which sounds good but in actuality tastes like a greasy medicine and will make you fat with a headache. We make plans for flaming brandy over figgy pudding, sadly forgetting that most of us would not know where to get a “figgy” and somehow denying the truth that flaming foods will burn our eyebrows off of our faces.
     The Moravians do Christmas Tradition better than anybody I know. Their “Love Feasts” are moments to be cherished, their music is to be relished, and their Moravian Cookies are to be eaten in great stacks with tea. But do not try to duplicate what the Moravians "have down" (to a fine art). No one else can pull off a proper “Love Feast." The Moravian Bands rehearse all year long, while other bands are just thrown together; and, if you try to make Moravian Cookies, you will have to go to the hospital for muscle strain, cartilage damage, and pulled ligaments. Visit the Moravians at Christmas, but do not believe you can "become one" for a season: you can’t, and attempting this feat will only frustrate you.
     I have never seen an elf. I will not spend time thinking about any critter that does not have a football team named after it. I will also not spend time pondering a reindeer. I would not mind eating one, but I will not have a replica of one in my front yard, since they do not live here. I will not, even for a moment, think about a partridge in a pear tree, the meaning of “lords a-leaping”, or “maids a-milking.”
     Traditions are things we do not buy at the store, believe are real because a magazine told us so, or are fed to us by a far-off country (unless that country is our country of origin). Traditions are the things we do with our families, in our communities, and in our churches, that pass down doctrine, custom, story, and belief from one generation to another. Traditions are not phony, artificial, or purchased. To have tradition, you must embrace “your” tradition.
     If you want Christmas Tradition, then consider joining a church family, attending worship regularly together, praying often, studying the Holy Bible, becoming involved in a mission, enlarging your family by including a “discarded” neighbor, and letting Christmas become more than a retail moment. Our traditions should reflect all that is good within us and all that we want our children to inherit.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

October 28, 2009 - The Kingdom Quilt

2010-01-18T09:15:00.001-05:00

     I often sleep under a quilt that was planned and orchestrated by my grandmother. It is a patchwork quilt made of small pieces of fabric that she sewed together to make a larger piece of fabric. This is the ultimate frugal act of a person who lived through the Great Depression and who had a hard time ever throwing anything away. The act of wasting a product, or any material, was always a sin worse than gossiping, the latter, actually and often acceptable, since it was explained away as sharing only out of concern for the implicated individual's soul.
     The small pieces of the quilt fabric are recognizable to me even after 50 years. The original uses of the larger pieces of fabric were to make house dresses, bonnets, or aprons. I especially remember the house dresses. Maybe you can remember the house dresses. These were dresses with collars, a button up front, and a couple of large patch pockets that always contained a mint, a kerchief, Tube Rose snuff, and a pair of scissors. I do not know why these were the things in the pockets, but they were always there and regularly in use.
     The patchwork quilt feels like family. The two outsides were pieced together from little scraps with a foot-pumped sewing machine by my grandmother in her attempt to make a warm blanket for not much money. I remember sleeping at my grandmother’s house on cold winter nights. I always slept in the front room, a room reserved for guests. On those cold and dark winter nights, after the sun disappeared, the circulating oil furnace was turned down, and the wood stove was allowed to burn down to coals, it was not long before a wise person figured out that when the house got cold, the only warm place to go was beneath the quilts on the bed. Grandmother would turn down the quilts in the front room, and I would slide underneath them. Notice I refer to “quilts.” One quilt was never enough. Grandmother would turn each quilt back up, tucking the encasement around my neck, layer by layer, until weight would be noticeable. Finally, lying under three or four quilts, a child encased beneath this remarkable weight was prevented from moving even a fraction of an inch in any direction. The resultant effect of this tucking-in was a warm feeling of security against a dark and cold night.
     I remember quilts being made. Once the two sides of small pieces of material were transformed into a large piece of cloth after miles of seams, the actual quilting began. The batting was sandwiched between both sides of patchwork fabric and then the whole thing was rolled up on a large frame, so only about 18 inches of the middle section was visible. When the framed contraption was suspended from the porch ceiling, my grandmother and aunts would gather on both sides with chalk, needles, thread, scissors, Tube Rose snuff, and finger thimbles. With deft and artistic fingers, the gathered family would work in unison, using chalk to mark out scallop arches that would then be “quilted,” to secure the batting between the sides, unrolling the completed quilt a foot or so at a time. As the women worked, they would take full advantage of the snuff and scissors in their house dress pockets, they would talk about old things in the past, new gossip of sinful souls in the present, and their quilting would be a warm hope for the times to come.
     My quilt is old and a bit frayed. I am very careful with it. One part of one edge has been damaged and repaired, causing a couple of gaps in the side. I am not sure how it was damaged, but it appears that fire may have been the culprit. I can imagine this quilt getting too close to a woodstove or a fire resulting in a little charred edge that was later repaired, since you will remember nothing was thrown away. These events all happened long before I received the quilt. These are memories only to which the quilt can witness.
     When I lie under the quilt, I can imagine the hands that constructed it. I can remember the pieces of cloth that are the material of the construction. I still, to this day, benefit from the work of unseen hands of thrifty and generous souls, who in the past provided for all the unknown sleepers in the future. Sleeping under this quilt is cathartic and comforting. I do not know of the actual work and plan, but I benefit from the physical evidence on cold nights.
     Surely this quilt is not unlike the gift of the Creator for us. This physical cloth offering is not far from the cathartic evidence of God’s unseen hand in our lives and in God’s provision in the places where we live. How could it be possible for us to ever move far from the bounty of our Savior? Where could we go to be away from God’s mercy and grace?
Psalm 139:7-12 “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, thou are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me is night,; even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee.”
Unseen hands, gracious provision, comfort and peace, and evidence of a source that is greater than our own workings: this gift is the great message today for a people who are prone to take such faithful provision for granted, and who too often believe that all that we have is due to our own wisdom and strength. Perhaps our accepting the patchwork gracious quilt of God as a true gift is the first step to knowing God’s kingdom in this life.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

October 14, 2009 - A Truth Worth Noticing

2010-01-18T09:14:00.001-05:00

     Moses was on the run. He was tending sheep for his father-in-law in a wilderness area far from the notice of any official-minded person. He was alone, finishing his second cup of coffee for the morning. The sheep were beginning to wander away from their just-eaten patch of grass to a fresh patch a little ways away. Moses had lived with this daily routine for days, weeks, and years. He had done it all, seen it all, and been by this same non-distinct valley every year for who-knows-how-many-years. There was nothing special about this day.
     Then, in Exodus 3, we learn that the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a fire in a bush, and the bush was not consumed. Out of the regular and usual day, Moses met God. It would not be their only meeting, but it was the first. However, “The” most dramatic part of the story is neither the angel nor the flame in the non-consumed bush, but that we learn that “he looked.” We must not downplay these two little words that are the pivotal movement in the history of the Judeo-Christian world.
     I have to wonder how many other bushes the angel appeared in as a fire on days when Moses did not look. How many other ways did God appear to Moses in even more evident episodes when Moses was too busy, too consumed with other things, and too rutted in the day-to-day routine to ever notice? How many years did God pursue Moses before Moses took the opportunity to look beyond the world right in front of his nose to see something of a revelatory nature just off in the distance?
We live most of our lives sequestered away in our own little tightly-fitted, organized, and routined world. We accept the day as it comes, do the cycled chores in the proper sequence, always have clean socks, know what is in every drawer, and carry the flamed torch of the new day of God with the same zest that we roll the garbage bin to the road on pick-up day.
     I am convinced that a little noticing goes further to advance the world than all the directed intelligence we can organize. I am convinced that accidentally burned coffee beans resulted in French Roast Coffee only after the errant negligence of the roaster was percolated and noticed to have a rich and full-bodied flavor. This particular event was neither the first time coffee beans had been burned nor the first time the roaster had been negligent. This episode was, rather, the first time someone stopped to notice.
     How many times do you believe the Scottish-born doctor, Sir Alexander Fleming, had seen common bread mold in his everyday life? How many times did he pick around the green spots in a sandwich or throw out a loaf due to the bacterial growth? Only when he one day “noticed” the reaction of Staphylococcus aureus when in proximity to Penicillium notatum, did he notice the health benefits of true antibacterial medication that is commonly known in today’s world. He had not arisen that morning with the directed and ordered intent to discover this world changing medication, but due to his taking the time to notice, the world was forever, for the better, changed.
     All of the great gifts in life require time and notice. Education is nothing more than hanging around until you catch on. Love is the blind belief in something greater than yourself which overcomes all trivial and trite egotism and selfishness. Faith is belief in the quiet truth that we cannot see in the face of the blaring lie that we can see. Joy is the moment of peace we stumble upon in the darkness of a forlorn day.
     All of God’s great gifts must be noticed. None of God’s gifts can be planned, organized, and orchestrated. We are simply required to stop, take the time, and notice.
     Two young men were walking along a quiet road in Palestine hours after the rumors were circulating that Jesus was alive again after being crucified. As they walked, a third man walked with them. It was evident he had not heard the great news of the day, and they went to lengths to tell him all about the gossip. They finally came to a fork in the road and turned to go to their destination. The third man did not take the fork in the road and proceeded down the original road. The two men invited him to join them in the hospitality of a comfortable evening rather than spending the night on the long lonely road alone. The third man accepted their offer. It was only later that they learned that the very “Jesus” they had been talking about was the same risen man who walked with them. They had walked with Jesus and not noticed.
     How many days does Jesus come and walk with us without our ever noticing? Take a moment to see the miracle God has for you today.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

October 7, 2009 - You Can Smell the Old Testament

2010-01-18T09:13:00.000-05:00

     The fall of the year is an Old Testament time of the year. Fall is a time of remembering, conjuring up memories of past experiences, a time when musty old stories can be as easily smelled in their telling as they can be heard in their telling. Fall is when the past comes to life again.
     Just recently I was in a store where I happened by a bunch of plastic-covered cardboard notebooks. The new plastic was doing what new plastic does by giving off the pungent smell of new plastic. In that moment, I was caught by surprise and taken back to Miss Grogan’s third grade classroom. The classroom was a linear room with high ceilings, radiator heat, wood and metal desks in five straight rows of six chairs each, and two extra desks on each end of the teacher's desk for her two lowest students, 32 children per class, and huge slate blackboards right up in front. In that store on that day I had a “Nifty” notebook remembrance. Those new plastic notebooks in the store took me back some 50 years with only a casual smell.
     While driving near the foot of the Appalachians last week, I drove through a little valley where I was suddenly transported back to tobacco fields, flue-cured tobacco barns, and the dusty smell of thousands of strung-up leaves hanging in the heat. The wafting aroma was the smell of a flue-cured tobacco barn that someone had fired up. This sweet and thick smell is a smell that is only seldom smelled today, but is a long ago memory evidenced by early morning patches of low-lying smoke in calm-air valleys. Flue-curing was a process whereby the bright green leaves filled with moisture would be gently dried til' they turned a bright gold and hung brittle in the barn.
     The fall of the year is a time to remember, and remembering is what the Old Testament is all about. We too often read the Old Testament stories as a history book of how a group of people, back there, “lived” with their God, how their God “lived” with them. We make a mistake and read the Old Testament history as if it were written like a textbook, a term paper, or a dissertation for a degree. To us, it is possible that the Old Testament writings can become stagnant, in their black and white and recorded format.
     We think of history in the third person, as recollections occurred to “them.” When we think of history, we say things like, “’they’ lived in Canaan,” or “the enemy attacked ‘them.’” For us, history is a thing of the past. But for the Jew and the Old Testament, history exists in the present. A proper reading of the Old Testament should say, “Moses delivered ‘us’ from Egypt,” or “’we’ wandered in the wilderness,” for each Jew, and Christian, bears within herself or himself the results of the past. The books we call the Old Testament are living books of faith.
     Historians hate this kind of living history. Historians want events recorded in a pristine fashion, once and for all, with all current or popular interpretations stripped away. Historians like their history as dry and matter-of-fact like a valley of dried and scattered bones.
     But the Old Testament is not that kind of history. The Old Testament books are a history and wisdom of “us,” a compilation of memories that are continually inviting “us” to live in "them," to smell the smells, to walk the walk, to feel the presence of God, and to remember our generational walk through time with God.
      If, when you read a portion of the Old Testament, you find yourself being pulled into the story, feel free to go there. Our spiritual ancestors are continually inviting us back to experience the redemption, grace, deliverance, and creation of a God who remembers our covenants even if we refuse to do so. The Old Testament does not as much teach us, as the recollections call us to remember.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

September 30, 2009 - Truths of a Confirmation Class

2010-01-18T09:12:00.000-05:00

     I would like to report some of the things I have learned in Confirmation Classes over the years. I don’t mean things I learned when I was “in” Confirmation Class. I am referring to the things I have learned while “teaching” Confirmation Class. I mostly believe “I” am the student, and “they” are the teachers.
     I have learned that if you use the letters in “Presbyterians” you can spell the name “Britney Spears.” This is obviously a Sunday-at-11 a.m. discovery made by a group of girls in a balcony, during some long and boring sermon, who after making the discovery, giggled out loud with their inspired and revelatory discovery and were soon punished by their parents. Aren’t all great and inspired revelations greeted with scorn and misunderstanding?
This revelation somehow seems to give the “Presbyterians” an advantage over the “Methodists” with the 8-to-14 aged girls sect. I can only make out the name “Theo D. Smit” from the letters of “Methodist.” I doubt "Theo" will ever become as popular as Britney Spears, whoever he is.
     I had one sage student who pointed out that William Shakespeare wrote the King James Version of the Bible. He told the story of how King James liked Shakespeare, and they were great friends, and when it came time to translate his Bible, old KJ asked his friend, Shakespeare, if he could help out. Shakespeare said "Yes," and in “one fell swoop” (Macbeth) the rest is history. I was not convinced by this account until he showed me the proof in the Bible. He had found that Psalm 46 is the middle chapter in the Bible (if you equally work your way in from both ends), and the 46th word, from the beginning of the reading of Psalm 46, is the word “shake," and the 46th word into the reading from the end of Psalm 46 is “speare”. Are you convinced?
     This discovery is obviously a discovery made by an 11 a.m. Sunday group of boys sitting in a balcony during a boring sermon, close to some giggling girls, at some church where the KJV is the only Bible allowed.
     I even had one cosmological confirmation student who had discovered where hell was located. Supposedly, while waiting in a boring checkout line in the grocery store, the grandmother of this young confirmand looked up at one of the “reputable” newspapers that had the heading, “Researchers record the screams of the damned.” She bought the paper and, sure enough, there in black and white, with a picture of the drilling squad, was a story by Dr. Assacov who, while drilling a 14.4 kilometer hole in the Russian frozen north, broke through to hell, where he and his crew heard the screams of the damned. The story goes on to reveal that, unfortunately, the “microphone” located on the end of the drilling rig – fortunately and for some reason, the Russians seem to think it is important to place microphones at the end of their drilling rigs – only recorded 17 seconds of the screams before it melted in the 2,000 degree heat. The team is still trying to find a non-melting microphone that will allow some conversations with the “damned.”
     When I sloughed this off as nothing more than a myth, two other confirmands spoke up and said they had seen it documented on a local “Christian Broadcasting Network.” I soon lost control of that class session as the confirmation class got all excited and began planning to take a field trip to Russia where they could look down the hole. I offered them the exciting alternative of meeting the Bishop in the place of going to Hell in Russia, but it was too little too late. They were consumed with the joy of looking into hell rather than meeting a great leader of the church. (I have to admit that I kind of wanted to go with them.)
     I believe, if I continue to teach Confirmation Class, I will eventually become the most knowledgeable person in church. I have begun to believe that there is more revelation, even if it is skeptical and meaningless, that comes more from boredom than from instruction.
     I am a little upset that we think finding “Britney Spears” in an obscure letter shuffle is more important than finding “Jesus” spelled correctly, that we worry about who translated the Bible rather than receiving the message it brings, and that we are enthralled by a discovery of hell more than we are excited about a way to heaven. But take heart: these confirmands will grow up and become the adults of the church tomorrow and will be God’s inspired teachers and evangelists to pass on the faith to the next generation. “Inquiring minds want to know.”
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

September 23, 2009 - Ree-Aah-Ree-Aah

2010-01-18T09:11:00.001-05:00

     Some people believe, and I am one of them, that the State Bird of North Carolina should be the cicada. I have no dislike for the Cardinal and I certainly believe they are nice enough birds but the Cicada is more prevalent, has more of a song, is present for long periods of time even before you see or hear it, and when it is out and about is one of the most “in your face” critters I have ever known.
Cicadas are pretty common. You can find them in Greece, Australia, China, Korea, in desserts, tropical paradises, and the north woods. Cicadas are everywhere and they are everywhere loud. They are remarkable as possibly the longest living insect (out lived only by the termite queen) and they are the loudest animal, per pound, in the world.
     The Robin may be a harbinger of spring and when we see the Robin we know warm weather is coming. But when we see and hear the cicada we know that we had better grab all the summer we can, for autumn is just around the bend. One common variety of cicada is the “Dogday Harvestfly,” since they appear during the dog days of summer (when it is so hot you want to crawl under the car for some shade) and just at the beginning of harvest time (when farm life becomes the busiest).
And did I say they were loud. The chirp of the male cicada looking for a female mate has been described as a 12-inch chain saw cutting through a 24-inch dried oak stump Their squawk is a whine that rises and falls in pitch, a synchronized buzzing, and the model for the European police siren (reee-aaah-reee-aaah). Their abdominal cacophony of sounds repel birds, their natural enemies, and has caused a few humans to go insane. The cicadas’ constant chorus is the “boom, boom, boom car” of the insect world. Their whir is nothing more than a loud muffler on the car of an available young male. It takes the cicada most of their lifetime to get their songs all in tune and harmonized just in time for them to die after being an adult for no more than 14 days.
     Some call the cicadas the 14-year locust since some types live as an adolescent for 14 years while nursing underground on tree sap. Other species live in the ground for only a few years. But whether we agree or not, the cicada mimics the human being by acting like an adolescent the great majority of their life (up to 14 years) and becoming an adult only for a few moments (no more than 2 weeks).
     You hardly ever see a cicada, unless one is found dead on the ground. The adult cicadas spend most of their life atop trees, but you find evidence of them in the “pork rind”-like nymphal skins they leave affixed to the sides of trees as they emerge from adolescence to adults.
     I like cicadas. I cannot remember late summer life without them. They are a part of my seasonal ritual. But for all of us, the cicada reminds us of some pretty important lessons. They remind us that life is short and we had better be up and about while in it. They remind us that being a novice adolescent most of your life is OK and that it is all a learning episode with juvenile mistakes being expected. They remind us that making noise to get what you want is a part of life and we should speak up when we have something to say. Most of all the cicada reminds us that it is time to get up, get busy, and do whatever it is that we think is so important to do. Life is short. We get only one chance. Winter is coming. This is our time and our opportunity.
     The cicada reminds me that I must immediately prepare, order my life, take inventory of my failings, and weaknesses, stand up for causes I believe are important, and as Mark the Gospel writer would say “straightway” remember that there is more to life than what I can see and know now. The Cicada is John the Baptist singing a song declaring, “Prepare,” for the time is short!
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

September 16, 2009 - The Heat of Church

2010-01-18T08:53:00.001-05:00

It was the longest hour of the week. The vents of the stained glass windows were opened as far as they would swing in, which made an air hole about the size of a fourth of a sheet of newspaper. There were eight such holes in the whole sanctuary. That was the only outside air that God could use to bring a little relief to the faithful who were visiting God’s house. It was obvious we had not given God enough to work with.

    There were no air conditioners or electric fans, since that would take away from the full effect of church being a moist experience and clothes becoming increasingly ringing wet.
    Women wore hats and, in many cases, gloves. Men wore dark suits with short-sleeved shirts underneath. Some young men wore poplin or seersucker suits, (which was a mistake, since both choices of fabric wicked moisture showing growing rings of sweat under their arms, across their backs, and down their legs). Children wore the same clothes as the adults, only smaller. The preacher wore a heavy velvet robe. The choir members wore satin robes. Everyone was similarly dressed in order to collectively ignore the myth that it was 95 degrees outside, (and quickly rising), and that the humidity was at total saturation
    Men wiped their brow with a bandana. Women dotted their cheeks with a “kerchief.” Children slept with their hot heads on their mamas' laps.
    Hand-powered fans were stuck in the hymnal racks for the unprepared, men and children. These bent-eared and floppy cardboard on a tongue depressor fans had wonderful scenes of Jesus with the children, or Moses holding up the tablets, or David playing a harp with the sheep, or Vogler’s Funeral Home. The regular women had their “whip it out” fans in their purses with scenes of Niagara Falls and Rock City on the outspread sides. The rhythmically-moving fans were the only signs of life in the church, since any movement meant the burning of calories, which resulted in increased thermal units that would add degrees to the smothering and humid experience of worship. I remember wondering if this was what it must be like to have malaria.
    We never had enough hymnals. We had to share, which brought us closer together during hymn time and reading time, (such times were always preceded by the sound of the backs of little girls’ legs barking squelches as they scooted to the edge of the lacquered pews to stand with the adults.)
The only congregants who never seemed to mind the weather were the boys and girls who sat in the balcony, with minds on other things than worship, side by side, almost touching, writing notes to each other in the margins of the bulletin, while carving their names in the pews.
    Any wisp of air that found its way into the rectangular portals of the stained glass windows fell on the faithful like the cool springs of Gihon, the stormy winds of the Sea of Geneserat, or the snow capped peak of Mount Herman.
    We were the lost Children of Israel in the purposeful but makeshift temple in the parched wilderness of Sinai. We were the wandering Bedouin Arameans traveling with their goats, sheep, and families to where the grass was green. We were Ishmael lying on the hot sand with a searing stone for a pillow, dreaming of a cool place where he could be joined to a family. We were Jonah sitting on the hillside above Nineveh waiting for the broom tree to grow some shade. We knew what it was like to be a deer panting for water. We knew what it was to thirst for righteousness sake, and we hoped this "righteousness" was cool and refreshing.
    I do not remember what the preacher ever talked about, but I remember the back of the pew in front of our pew and every grain in the wood, nail hole in the offering envelope holder, page number in the Cokesbury Hymnal, pattern in the linoleum tile under my feet, and the joy I received at coloring in, with the provided little red putt-putt pencil, all the closed loops in the “Os,” “Ps,” “Ds,” “Bs,” “Rs,” “Qs,” and “As” in the bulletin.
    And when I was done checking out all the nuances of the pew in front of us and coloring in the loops, I would sit there with my hymnal opened to the last hymn, ready, willing, and able to get on with it as soon as the preacher gave the organist a chance to play it.
    This was called “church," and the activity was “worship,” and it was the longest hour of the week. No one ever complained. No one ever stayed home because of the weather. The sanctuary was always full. No one was ever embarrassed by the wet rings on their clothes, and it seemed like the wind always blew cool when we were past the preacher and out the door, with our coats off and hanging over our shoulder, talking with our worship family outside in the grass and parking lot.
This was just the way it was, and it was worth it, for it is always worth it when God’s family comes together to worship. It is the way a child is supposed to be raised – the way a community comes together. It is the way a family is made. It is how God knows we care. All of the most important things should also be the longest things.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

September 9, 2009 - The Inheritance of a Bunion

2010-01-18T08:52:00.001-05:00

Receiving an inheritance is a great thing. The Bible is full of individuals who received a great inheritance. The Prodigal Son comes to mind as the principle New Testament character who received, albeit before his time, a great inheritance. The Old Testament characters were often known as to whom their father was and what they received as an inheritance. A great inheritance is passed from Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob, who later became Israel, (who had 12 sons and was the father of the 12 Tribes of Israel, even though his son, Joseph, was sold into slavery by his brothers, causing Joseph to miss out on his inheritance; yet, Joseph then saved his family from starving while being a government official in Egypt, causing Israel to adopt Joseph’s two sons Manessah and Ephraim, who later inherited two shares of his father’s inheritance, and minus Levi’s family who never inherited any land since they were the priests and would live off of the various offerings in the temple, with no inheritance to the rightful heir, Esau). I guess you can see how complicated this whole inheritance thing can get.

     I have a genetic inheritance that has come to me from more generations than I care to remember. This inheritance is with me every day, and I never go anywhere without it. My great inheritance is my feet (are my feet?, is my dogs? Well, you get the picture.). I get my feet from a long line of genetic and orthopedic catastrophes. My feet are big, twisted, hoofed, gnarled, callused, and a little bit more than ugly. I once saw a set of 4,000 year-old-feet on a mummy that I envied. My feet have been stepped on by horses, broken by sports, and made flat by whatever it is that makes feet flat.
     My uncle has hobbled around barefooted for years. He ruined his knees trying to walk on feet that were not made for shoes. He has a closet full of shoes that were supposed to be comfortable. All attempts at finding a comfortable pair of shoes have resulted in a piled higher and deeper floor covering of unused leather, canvas, and rubber configurations mounding up close to his hanging shirt-tails. Recently, he accidently put a pair of shoes on the wrong feet, only to find them to be much more comfortable than when they were placed on the appropriate feet. Now he wears his shoes on the wrong feet and has shown such a recovery, that he is preparing to run in a marathon in October.
I recently visited a Nike store that boasted 24,000 pairs of shoes in inventory. I had looked for two years for a pair of shoes that would fit, and I told the Nike sales boys this fact when I entered and then exclaimed, “I am not leaving until I am able to find a pair of shoes that fit.” The salesmen smirked a haughty, condescending, and overconfident little “Hhhmmhhhhhm” and glanced at each other as if I was an unknowing bumpkin. Then I pulled off my shoes and showed them my feet, and you should have seen them run for cover. One brave soul, the little guy with the least seniority, gently ushered me to the loading dock by the dumpster while trying to convince me that this was some form of private fitting room with a scenic location. I know in my heart that they believed my feet would be a sales and marketing nightmare within a line of sight of the other patrons.
     Box after box of shoes came through that loading dock door, only to be sent back to inventory. Finally, an old dusty box was brought out. The shoes inside were a hideous color with duct tape for laces, no arch support, inserts that felt like delta mud, a heel cup that was cut from a plastic milk jug, and with adjustable bunion pads made out of gopher fur. The shoes were perfect. The little shoe salesperson was relieved. I bought them. They may look like a 1975 American Motor’s “Gremlin” after a demolition derby, dyed the color of old meat loaf, with ketchup, but the fit is heaven.
     Which brings me to the point of this story. Heaven is our inheritance from God. Heaven is what we get by being faithful and living as Jesus lived. Heaven may be called Kingdom, Mansion, Banquet, Glory Land, Zion, or New Jerusalem. Whatever you call it, the promise is that we will be with God and that we will be home. The one joy that means so much to me is that finally, and truthfully, I believe that “one size fits all.” It is a clean and sweet gift that God offers to everyone.
     Hebrews 9:15 refers to our inheritance as an “eternal promise” filled with “redemption.” Earthly inheritances are a mixed blessing. But God’s inheritance is a gift that is free and waiting for you. The fit is heavenly!
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

September 2, 2009 - Here Come the Freshpersons

2010-01-18T08:51:00.001-05:00

It is almost the time of the year when we will receive our annual dose of freshperson wisdom as our 18- and 19-year-old college students come home for their first visits after having spent a good two weeks getting all wise and profound. I cannot wait to hear all the important information they will have amassed in a few short hours under the tutelage of the masters. They left us with just enough wisdom to get themselves into a school, and they will come back with “like, you know, to us with, like, every problem in the, you know, world solved, having, like, met the most, you know, influential people in the, like, universe.”

     These freshpersons will come home all smug and sophisticated, reporting that their roommate’s father has a patent on latex paint, or their new best friend has a trust fund worth billions and is going to give our freshperson a few million just for being alive, (meaning that the freshperson does not need to find summer employment), and the person who sits beside them in freshman English has a third cousin, whose old boyfriend used to be a part-time hair stylist for Johnny Depp. In their high-nosed sort of way, they will look down at all of us common people as if we are only “ordinary” and know nothing of the sophisticated world of the elite.
     Freshpersons have discovered that all of those lessons in hard work, loyalty, careful lifestyle, and dues-paying, were just words in the wind. In a short time, our wise freshperson has bridged all the major gaps in personal finance, (even though they have bounced three checks in so many months); lifestyle, (using fake IDs); career, (a slight commitment that pays loads); and family values, (“Like, I want to, like, live in, like, Manhattan, and, like, have 5 children and, like, live in a big house with, like, a wrap-around porch, like, you know.”).
     A mother and father of a freshperson can expect irregular sleeping habits, (up at 11:30 a.m. and to bed at 2:30 a.m.), wise words on politics, morality, personal hygiene, and etiquette all learned from a fraternity brother named “Barfy," sorority sister named “Cotton Mouth,” or a suite-mate named “Buffy” or “Gnute.”
     Every now and then, a freshperson will come home in total admiration of the great wisdom and work ethic of their parents, but more times than not, the freshperson will bemoan any career that requires more than four hours a day (three days a week), any occasional weekend work, or any night worries of the upcoming day. After all, they have heard from good sources that the world suddenly needs thousands of video game inventors, who can work for five years at home while wearing PJs and eating “Fruity Pebbles, retiring at the age of 27 to play golf and shop the rest of their life. They have also heard that the burgeoning “car pimping” industry is just waiting for them to get two years of college, so they can quit and bring their expertise to California where they will make millions detailing the cars of the rich and famous, “Peace Out.”
     But the scariest scenario of all are those who have looked at all the careers in the world and have decided to become a “politician.” I was thinking just the other day, “We sure do need a few more ‘politicians’ in this world.”
     After their educated examination of more than a few decades of our living, learning, and paying our way in this world, a college freshperson, in just a few weeks, has discovered all the loopholes, fallacies, prejudices, inconsistencies, “isms,” and shallow futility of every chore and job we can imagine. Then, on top of our great fortune at their sudden clear vision, most have figured out the solutions to all the world’s great problems and every domestic issue.
We know how our freshperson will be at that first Fall break, because most of us can remember how it felt to officially come home for that first time. We remember our great freedom at having stretched our wings, making our first flight as an “adult.” We also remember reality setting in as, after a few years, we learned more of the world to add to our first brief glimpse.
     Through time, we came to know that some of the ideals we learned as freshpersons were worth holding on to, other ideals were worth building on, but many premature dreams were escape plans to avoid real life due to fear. Living independently as an adult in this big old place can be a scary thought. Freshpersons have just caught their first real view of the vast and deep pool where they are expected to swim. Many were raised to be big fish in a small pond, where everything from community and home was orchestrated with their well-being in mind, only to discover they have become a diatom in an ocean, where few care whether a person sinks or swims. This dawning realization is a rude awakening to real first-time fear.
     And even though they will never admit it, a freshperson has just learned exactly how much they do not know, and how it feels to seem like the most lonely and insignificant person in this big old world.
Our job is to listen to their “wisdom," nod our heads approvingly, and see in them the valuable and mature person they will become. Our job is to see the Child of God who has learned the value of taking risks and facing their fears head-on. It was freshperson Abraham, who claimed his wife was his sister; freshperson Moses, who misused his powers for the sake of a dare; freshperson Martin Luther, who worked himself into a gastronomical frenzy over the Pope; freshperson John Wesley, who came close to being tarred and feathered for the sake of a broken love interest; and a freshman future-preacher I know, who almost got caught in a few despicable behaviors due to what he assumed was great wisdom, but in reality was nothing more than childish idiocies.
     Freshpersons are so fresh, that they are like a persimmon hanging on a tree in early September, having no immediate use, but holding the promise of a great pudding in the near future.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

August 26, 2009 - The Dog Done Licked My Pork Chop

2010-01-18T08:50:00.001-05:00

I have just finished doing an extensive study of Albert King, the blues musician, with an iPod, during an eight-hour drive. I can still hear the bass line run in my soul: Bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba bom. For eight hours, this strand of melancholy ran through my ears, the blues making me so depressed that I began to view the world as a hopeless place where my dog is gonna leave me and my wife is gonna bite me on the heel; where the credit union is gonna cut me off, and my boss is gonna marry my mama. “Oh, good Lord, have mercy on me,” is the plea.

     Keep that “bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba bom” bass rhythm in your head as you hear some of the blues I have learned. “Can’t you see what you are doing to me baby? They say you are going to leave darlin’, bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba bom. I ain’t got no time to play. Everybody wants to laugh, ain’t nobody want to cry, bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba bom, everybody want to hear the truth, but everybody just want to lie, bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba bom, everybody want to go to heaven, ain’t no body want to die.
     Albert taught me about “distrust” in a rainy night song, “Layin’ around home alone…on a rainy night like this…starving for your lovin’…longin’ for one kiss.” Or when Albert sang, “The sky is cryin’ baby…look at the tears roll down the street…I been looking for my baby…and I wonder where can she be…I saw my baby early one morning…and she was walking on down the street… You done hurt me so bad…it made my poor heart skip a beat.”
     Albert taught me about "bad fortune" with, “I went to work this morning…my foreman looked me in the eye…he said fellow I don’t know what is wrong with you…but you look sick enough to die. He sent me to the company doctor…and he examined me from head to toe…he said whatever is wrong with you young man…my x-rays just ain’t gonna show. Angel of mercy…won’t you look down on me…a little mercy is all I need. The finance company…they just garnered my check. They said they want a payment by Friday…or they just want all my money back. I went to the credit union to get myself a loan…they say I would let you have it young man but it says here you won’t be working here for long. Angel of mercy…won’t you please look down on me…a little mercy is all I need.”
     Are you inserting some of those “bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba boms” into some of these lyrics?
     I learned that I could feel so low that, “I’m going down baby…my nose is in the sand…
a cloud of dust just came over me…and I think I am drowning on dry land.”
     I love the blues, for they tell about the pains of this life. Blues singers would be nothing if it weren’t for bad luck, betraying women, lost jobs, broken hearts, and rainy nights. They surely frame life in this world as if there is no hope.
     It is for this reason that I have never heard a blues song about our relationship with God. Somehow, a blues song and a godly life just don’t go together. God is not a part of betrayal, bad fortune, bad blood, deals made with the devil at the crossroads, or broken hearts. If God were in a blues song, the song would be about glory, joy, peace, healing, deep hearts, and righteousness. A godly blues song would suddenly become a godly gospel song. A godly blues song would deal with the cure and not the wallowing around in the miry clay of despair. And so we sing for joy because God has brought joy to our broken hearts.
     So here is my godly joy song, “Bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba bom, My dog done licked my pork chop, ba bom ba ba bom, my sorry tails been a draggin’ all day, ba bom ba ba bom, I ain’t nothing but a hound dog, ba bom ba ba bom, and I don’t know the meaning of ‘stay.’ Bom…ba bom…ba bom…ba bom ba ba bom, Then Jesus laid his hands upon me, ba bom ba ba bom, and the nighttime turned to day, ba bom ba ba bom, it’s raining outside in buckets, ba bom ba ba bom, but the sun shines on me all the way.”
     The blues “don’t” have a chance when faced with the truth of the day.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

August 19, 2009 - The Great South Carolina Wedding

2010-01-18T08:49:00.001-05:00

      He had proposed to her in a romantic way, she had said, “Yes!,” and they were in my office to prepare for their upcoming wedding. This was a new experience for both of them, and both had waited past the marriage of their friends in order to “find the right person.” She was 31, and he was 29, and her father had asked only one question of his daughter at the announcement of their engagement, “Is THIS what you have been waiting for?” In our premarital session, “she” did all the talking. She had made all the plans. She had taken notes through all her friend's weddings. She had music picked out anywhere from Handel to Hootie and the Blowfish. She would wear lace and leather, her flowers were a combination of daffodils and diazanon, it was to be an outdoor wedding in July in South Carolina, and she wanted them to write their own vows. His contribution to the premarital counseling was to hold her hand and to smile a lot. He had no idea of what he was in store for.
     At one point in the conversation, “she” excused herself to the rest room, giving me the chance to express to him in an earnest way, “Run, Forrest, Run!.” He just smiled and said nothing. Fear or ecstasy, I cannot rightly decide which it was, was the emotion behind the expression on his “big ole head.” He was in for the long haul, and there was no counseling him out of it.
It was hot the day of the wedding, which is an understatement for describing the uplands of South Carolina in July. South Carolina has less shade per square inch than any other state in the Union. There is no shade tree worth getting under in all the state, and if you do somehow manage to find a possible candidate, you will be discouraged to find that the leaves have holes. Just before the keyboardist played “We’ve Only Just Begun," by Karen Carpenter, as the accompaniment for the procession of the bride, I turned to shake his hand and to offer him my pity, which he took as a blessing. I suppose “blessing” and “pity” look the same. His hand was already unnaturally wet and clammy, feeling like a frozen cow's tongue with aloe. His face looked unusually distant. I feared we were in trouble.
     The bride wore something borrowed, blue, and new, along with many other pieces of flair she had seen other brides wear in their wedding. She was a one woman band of wedding attire jangling to the beat of the Karen Carpenter imitator who sang, “we’ll find a place where there's room to groooow," which I hoped was not a dismal prophetic statement for their already out-of shape physical proportions . Her make-up had already begun to run through the sweat courses of her face and to disappear beneath the neckline of her dress. I feared we were in trouble.
The service moved along handily, and the diazanon seemed to keep the bees and chicken flies at bay, but THEN we came to the vows. I looked at the groom to find a head that was dripping with sweat, looking for “all the world” like a cantaloupe with dew after an attack of the slime snails. I asked him to repeat after me, but his lips just curled above and below his gum line and froze with what I assume was either a stuck smile, or a frozen appeal for help. No sound, in the way of vows, issued forth from his lips. I tried several more times with the no visible change. The expression on his face may have been one of happiness like that of a gopher in soft dirt, but his mind was somewhere else.
     I altered this service in two ways. First, as opposed to his repeating vows, which he could not do, I read them all to him and simply asked him to paw twice if he agreed. His big old slimy cantaloupe of a head managed an affirming nod. Second, I point blank asked the bride if she loved this man. I know this statement is located in the service amongst other questions, but I did not want her to play the “congress and president game” by loading up a popular proposal with a bunch of other conditions that would never pass on their own. She said she loved this man. Her father just shook his head as he very quietly expressed his fear under his breath, “I feel like I am giving a Stradivarius violin to a gorilla.”
     The couple “was hitched," we all asked for God’s blessings on them, and the bride drove them away in her pick-up to a honeymoon at some undisclosed, but close, destination.
     To this day, when I stand before an altar, and remember this couple. They probably had the appropriate demeanor for any of us who stand before God. The awesome presence of God, our requesting God’s blessing, and our covenant-making before the God of all covenants is an emotional time referred to in the Bible as that of fire, smoke, lightening, thunder and great peace. We laugh at this couple, because they look like us as we have found ourselves standing at God’s altar: unworthy yet requesting. And just like them, we have had our unworthy requests blessed by the gracious God of many children.
     Like our covenant-making with God, the wedding vows of this couple will be remembered by God, and their wedding day will be remembered by the permanent stain of mascara and grease paint forming the outline of her shoes on the concrete where she had stood. Her make-up had disappeared down the neckline of her dress but had then reappeared in a great pool that eventually congealed around her feet. The paw prints will forever remind us that God’s promises are eternal.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

August 12, 2009 - Evil is Contagious

2010-01-18T08:48:00.001-05:00

You can spread mayonnaise, disease, depression, rumors, lies and bad news. Of the six, only mayonnaise can be spread without doing any harm and, if it is “Dukes Mayonnaise," can actually do a little good. I can think of many other negative things that a person can come across, and a large number of them are highly contagious. However, good health, harmony, good words, truth, and good news are neither spreadable, nor will they have a beneficially contagious effect upon a person.

A person can catch many diseases by contact and airborne contaminants, but good health is not contagious and cannot be passed on to someone else. A diseased parent can surely pass many illnesses to other people in the family, but as much as a parent might wish otherwise, they cannot pass along their good health to a sick child.
     Likewise, disharmony can begin with something as minute as a single misspoken germ of a word and escalate in a matter of minutes into a shouting match where more and more words are said that should never be said. Harmony, however, is taken for granted, and we act like it is no big deal, and of little consequence. One person’s disharmony will grow into a dividing wedge in a family until every member of the family has chosen a side. One harmonizing individual in a family will not positively impact the disharmonious family nor spread healing from one member to another in the same way that disharmony will corrupt and be spread like a cancer.
     A gossiping person can tell us multiple half-truths and lies, and we will tell the next person we meet what we have heard. I once told a rather forgetful neighbor a juicy bit of gossip. Before we parted ways, he remembered the gossip but forgot that it was I who had just told it to him. He proceeded to tell me that he had heard some real gossip, and he then repeated to me details of the same episode I had passed on to him, complete with a new chapter I had not previously heard. The story had grown in the few minutes we had talked and was a little bit juicier. Bad news spreads and enlarges and suffers much harmful embellishmen and elaboration.
     But you can spread all the good news you want, about any person, and when the story gets back to the originator, the story will not have grown any larger and, if anything, will have become depleted. Actually, good news is not spread nearly so quickly or thoroughly as gossip. Gossip will be remembered and good news will be forgotten.
     The point I want to make is that evil and licentious talk, disharmony, and wickedness are more popular than good news and righteousness. Evil and wickedness have the advantage over goodness and righteousness.
     There is a reason for this inequity. Evil is usually shallow, thin, and lightweight. It is easily spread and remembered for years. Evil takes on a life of its own. Goodness, however, has to be acted upon every day and requires a conscious decision, a depth of spirit, and a courageous stand.
When faced with a decision between good and evil, a person has three choices: to choose good, to choose evil, or not to choose. To choose goodness will bring about a good result, but a person can serve evil by either choosing evil, or by not choosing at all. Evil has the advantage of being the comfortable and easy choice for most people. Being apathetic and never mounting the courage to take a stand serves only the evil in our world.
     If you place a rotten apple in a barrel of good apples, all the apples will eventually turn rotten due to the influence of this one bad apple. Place a good apple beside one single rotten apple, and the good apple will turn rotten, as opposed to the rotten one becoming fresh again.
     Even the very word of God, in the hand of a terrorist, racist, or person with an agenda, can become a tool of a spreading evil. It only requires a little twisting of minute verses taken out of context, and suddenly, the God of grace and mercy has become the God of revenge and retaliation.
     Doing godly acts, taking stands due to love and righteousness, daily choosing to serve God with acts of justice and kindness are always conscious decisions requiring courage and a conscious choice. Serving evil may require a choice but is usually the easy way out resulting from apathy, laziness, cowardice and unrighteousness. Choosing to serve God is not within a lazy man’s grasp.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

August 5, 2009 - The Great Football Speech

2010-01-18T08:47:00.003-05:00

     With football season already present, it is a perfect moment to remember the great inspirational speech of my football coach, the late great Coach Casivance Swackhammer. Coach Swackhammer was an inspirational English teacher by hobby and certification, since he could not coach unless he also taught, but his real profession was coaching and oratorical inspirations in the locker rooms and on the sidelines. He wasn’t one to cuss, and he didn’t appreciate foul words from any of us, but he could raise his voice to a decibel, such that a good cussing would have been a blessing, and he could make you feel so bad about your delinquent playing that you found yourself wishing that you had been born a stray dog.
     I never shall forget that big Guard, Hiawatha Tadlock, when in the first half against Grimsley High School, he got pushed all over that field like he was a shopping cart, and he walked to the locker room at halftime begging the coach, “Please Coach, don’t talk to us, please Coach Swackhammer, anything but a talking to.” It "weren't no" use. Coach already had his explicatory remarks in the front lobe of his brain, and he let old Hiawatha have it like he was Abishag, who’d been caught asleepin' with King David. Poor old Hiawatha cried like a baby and then played the second half like he had Cummings 903 diesels for thighs. He plowed up so much dirt apushin' the other team around, that Coach Swackhammer brought in a load of topsoil on Monday and made Hiawatha repair his divots.
But the 1971 preseason inspirational speech of Coach Swackhammer, to the varsity and the junior varsity teams, was one fine example of motivational logic that I now pass on to you for your own inducement. As you read this most memorable speech, it is best to hang some old dirty socks around your neck while standing in a storage shed in the noonday sun with the door shut, (a duplicate setting to an August high school locker room), raising your voice to a higher volume and pitch while increasingly waving your arms and shaking your fist in the air as you read further into the speech.
     Coach Swackhammer began the ’71 season with this speech: "Men, there’s one word to describe the game of football and that is, ‘You never can tell!’ And I want you to remember this every moment of every day of every football game. Because the game will be decided on an equal field, and you have to be careful, for if you don’t know where you are going, you might not get there.” (The other coaches formed a choir behind him in a line with their arms crossed, nodding their heads in approval and holding back tears from this first great truth.)
     “We ain’t going to be aplayin' no teams wearing lavender and cream this year. They ain’t going to be children of decent people. They won’t be asippin' no Slimfast on the sidelines and aworrin' about the carbuncles on their knees, noses and necks. A kindergartner could count their teeth. They gonna look biggern' a grizzly bear with bouffant blow-dried fur. They gonna make Haystack Calhoun look like the runt pup of the litter. And they gonna be faster'n old Tadlock hereagettin' to the table when his mama’s turned the grease into gravy.
     "Men, you had better get your heads adjusted, that we are going to win only because we are smarter than they are. There comes a time in many a man’s life, and I have had many of them. For you can observe a lot awatchin', and we will have to fake a bluff and bluff a fake and use our heads for something other than a helmet holder, allst the while staying one step ahead of them like we were a shadow walking into the sun.
     "Now you be honest with yourself and truthful too. For if you hold back a smidgen, you won’t be no betterin' old Annanias and Saphira when they gave only what they could do without, when God asked them for everything. If you don’t give your everything out there, then that field will be the place where the rest of your team will become fertilizer, and your mama will hang her head in shame. The grass may grow a little greener, but your name will be forgotten. Your laziness and putrid attitude will culminate into a condition not unlike a run over animal on the road…like sawing the branch you're asittin' on, the better you saw it, the harder you will hit the ground.
     "Old Bobby Frost once wrote, ‘I came to a split in the road, and I took of the split that was less traveled.’ Well men, you had better take the one that is the most traveled, and you had better run up it like it was downhill to Myrtle Beach, or your daddy will be ashamed of you and the day you was born. And when you go out there to play. I don’t want you ahurtin' nobody deliberately or nothing, 'lessen of course, it's a conference game, or a playoff or something.
     "Now I'm not too smart, and I don’t pretend to know much about nothin' except football and your need to be determined to play for me like I was butterin' your biscuits, and I don’t know how to say 'adios' in Spanish, but I do know this, if you play the best you can play and forget about sleeping in between cool sheets in your little bed at home with your mama awashin' your pajamas, and you tell that cheerleadin’ girlfriend of yorn that you ain’t gonna do no kissin 'til the basketball season, and you stop your smokin’ and start chewin’, then this town will not be ashamed of you, and we will play great at home cause we will have the best home record of any team in the league, because we will lead the league in home victories and do good on the road, too. Now put on your helmets, and get your rear ends in gear, and forget about drinking water, take your salt pills, and get out to the practice field, and make your mama and daddy proud."
     If this kind of speech can excite a bunch of football players to win ballgames, how much more will the truth of the word of God move us into holiness and salvation. Coach Dan says, “Read your Bible and pray regularly, and the Lord will save your soul and teach you to love everybody, ‘cept of course them football officials and them sinners that drag others down with ’em.”

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

July 29, 2009 - Waiting Through "Peach" to Get to "Apple"

2010-01-18T08:47:00.001-05:00

     Maybe you did not realize it, but we are square in the middle of a season called “Peach.” I have long forsaken the use of months’ calendar titled names as I now use food to designate the seasons of the year. “Peach,” for instance, is a most glorious season of the year and is highlighted with many varieties of fruit for which the honorary seasonal name is derived. “Peach” is always the season just before “Apple,” that season which comes a little later in August and continues into the early autumn months. Of course, you know the peach is a great summer fruit containing the needed healing properties to fight off that dreaded condition known as “humidit.” A good juicy peach will not solve humidity, but it will take your mind off of it for just an instant.
     We all have our favorite recipes for peaches. From sorbets to cobblers, ice cream to salsa, or brandied to frozen (for later use), there is no way to misuse a peach so long as it eventually winds up in your mouth and headed for personal digestion. My favorite recipe for a peach involves a kitchen sink and a paper towel. While leaning over a kitchen sink, with your tie tucked in your front shirt pocket, you rip open a peach, bury your face in it, and suck out the juicy deliciousness of the peach, all the while taking care that not a drop of the nectar falls into the basin of the sink, therefore eating both halves in quick succession from the right hand, while the left hand instantly reaches for the next peach thus, completing a fluid and slurping transfer of fruit to mouth. This recipe insists that you not stop the sequence until all of the peaches are gone. The paper towel is used only at the very end while catching your breath.
     My grandmother had some peach trees. They were the object of her guarded existence. The peaches were of the Georgia Belle variety and were known to be particularly succulent. Come the middle of July, she would secretly, by night, place her land mines, install trip wires, and cover the trees in cheesecloth in order to prevent any sort of wild varmint or kinfolk pestilence from robbing her of a single peach. Here efforts were all for a good cause, since at around “mid-Peach,” we grandchildren would begin our siege of the peach trees requiring great speed, dexterity, with quick and orchestrated flanking procedures that would have made Vince Lombardi weep out of pride. A caught peach fiend knew of the great possibility of ear pulling, shin kicking, or death by lead, fang, or claw. Grandmother was a force to be reckoned with and you have never seen a “little church going Christian lady” act suchly.
     I remember long nights of dreaded humidity when I would dream of endless rows of peach trees hanging full of peaches that grew wild with no impediments of search lights, guard towers, or canister bombs. Just the thought of a peach drove the humidity a quarter of an inch from my body for a short period of time. But this was only a dream and was short-lived. There was never enough of the cure to rid us of the humidity. Humidity always won.
     Once, a great friend, who grew and sold peaches, invited me to help pick his crop. I remember how he spoke the most precious words in the world as he said, “you may eat all you would like as you pick them.” Without going into much detail, you can surely imagine that I gathered nary a peach in my basket, while following his instructions, and wound up wonderfully sick in a way I cannot go into here. Suffice it to say, on that wonderful feast day, the humidity was wonderfully cured and, even in my most challenged condition, I was able to offer many contemplative smiles.
     For those of us smitten by the great allure of the peach, there are only two prepositional seasons of the year: the season “of” the peach and the season “without” the peach. Either I have a sore back and fuzzy lips from leaning over the sink, or I am pining away for the first fruits of “The Season.” Then, just as the season of Peach goes away, we are offered salvation by the season of Apple, a season marked with sweet dreams of Stayman Winesaps, Romes, and McIntosh. The season of Apple is followed by the season of Pumpkin, followed by the season of Turnip, followed by the season of Collards, followed by the season of Baked Goods, and on and on.
     All of this recollection of past days of the “season of Peach” reminds me of the painful reality of delayed gratification. I know all about delayed gratification. I know what it is to be required to wait. I know what it is to long for something that cannot presently be.
     Any season or period of longing is a most uncomfortable place for us to be. None are good at waiting. In our immediate gratification world, we want “it” and we want “it” NOW! The fact is when we long for situations that have not yet come to reality, we have no recourse but to pine away and soothe our yearning with prayer. All of us long for healing, peace, mending of relationships, future blessings that are now only a dream, graduations, careers, investments that come to maturity, or some other fulfillment that has not yet come. We always want that which we cannot have. However, we are taught to be patient, to trust the Lord, to not act out in haste. Psalm 90 consoles this situation best as we are passionately reminded to “wait for the Lord.”

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

July 15, 2009 - The Bible will "holp" you

2010-01-18T08:46:00.001-05:00

     You have never heard of the word “holped,” pronounced with the “l” barely heard. No one today says, “She holped me!” Even though this is a word we do not use, I am of the belief that from the close kinship, you can assume it means “helped”. My grandmother used the word “holped,” and so did ‘most every member of our extended family. It was a word that was common to our usage. I only learned later that no one else used it.
     Actually, “holped” is a real word that has simply gone out of style today. 300 years ago, in southern England and Wales, “holped” was the way you referred to the past tense of the present word “help”. My family claims this area of Great Britain for our lineage, and this word is some ancient evidence of our previous homeland that has survived to my generation.
     You will not be surprised to note that time often changes things. Something which was meaningful and purposeful for one generation is of little or no value to this generation. I have just completed reading three of the many volumes of John Wesley’s sermons. This was not enjoyable reading, and if I preached any of these sermons today, our worship would be a snooze fest. Wesley’s sermons speak honestly to the Word of God, but they do not necessarily speak to us today in this century.
     I have a collection of ancient commentaries on the Holy Bible. I have a copy of John Wesley’s Commentary on the New Testament that begins by saying that Matthew is a perfect Gospel, but where Matthew ends, Mark takes up, and where Mark ends, Luke takes up, and so on. Today, we know that this particular commentary cannot be true, since we have observed that all of the Gospel of Mark appears almost word for word in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, suggesting that Mark was the first Gospel written. In other words, the scope and depth of the commentary is dated, and the implied references are a bit skewed for today.
     I have another commentary written in the 1930s that reads like an antiquated commentary from a foreign planet due to its being written prior to World War II. This commentary reveals a lack of insight that we have today following the 1947 discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And another commentary written just after World War II seems to draw all of its wisdom from Winston Churchill and General Douglas MacArthur.
     Some would say that the Word of God could not and must not change, as, of course, the physical word does not. However, the way we identify with the Word of God, the stories that tell the truths of God’s Word, the filters on our vision, and the visions we have witnessed along the way, impact the language we use to make God’s Word a living word for our life today.
     This is, finally, the point I want to make: The Word of the Lord is a living word that grows, swells, consumes, invades, and impacts every aspect of our life. With every new era, life event, blessing, and tragedy, the way we interpret God’s Word grows. The truth we find in the Holy Bible today is not the truth that will suffice for our life in the decades to come, in much the same way that almost any sermon preached in America prior to September 11, 2001 would seem a little empty and flat after the tragedy and the war that has followed. The strength of the Holy Bible, God’s Living Word, is that every generation, individual, and circumstance will find God’s presence within the Living Word to abundantly offer us hope, mercy, grace, and salvation.
     Reading through the Holy Bible once, from “kiver to kiver,” and believing this is sufficient for all time, is the belief of a fool who has not known the marvelous and mysterious joy of God’s Word, that will beat with our heart, flow through our veins, and focus our minds on the present incarnation of God in our lives. God’s Living word can “holp” you today.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

July 8, 2009 - Eye of Newt, Spells, and Incantations

2010-01-18T08:45:00.000-05:00

     The Christian Faith does not have magic included in its doctrines. We cannot pull together a brewed concoction of herbs and entrails to form a potion that will cause to happen what we want to happen. Icons do not hold power within themselves, water from the Jordan River does not have healing powers, a rock from Jerusalem is not sacred, and even the elements of our Sacraments purposefully have an incarnational earthbound nature.
     Oh, I know we are constantly pulled toward the magical. There are certain preachers who can supposedly, on TV, cause weakened legs to grow strong, cause the deaf to hear, and the blind to see. They can hang up the crutches on the wall to attest to the miracles. They always claim it is the Lord who heals, but all the offering money goes into their pockets.
     There are certain places you can go where someone mystically saw a vision, or cosmically received knowledge and insight, and where illnesses and inabilities are removed. There are shrouds, vials of blood, bones of saints, carvings, statues, and figurines that supposedly have power. You know of these places and have heard tales of these items.
     I once knew a man who was told, by God, that the dirt from a particular side of the creek combined with the creek water, some camphor, moth balls, and a good measure of grain alcohol in a galvanized bucket, mixed together thoroughly, then soaked onto a rag tacked to the end of a stick could, when swathed on the infected tonsils of a child, cure tonsillitis. Truth be known, I never heard of one kid who ever came back for a second treatment since any “treated child” was probably afraid to ever complain of any form of sore throat again. One dose of that concoction gagged down your throat would be enough to cure anyone. You can count that as a 100% success rate.
     While visiting Saint Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican a few years ago, I stood in line and touched the toe of the statue of a Saint that was supposed to give me forgiveness of my sins for 40 days into the future. Those were some fun 40 days.
     The magical has an alluring affect on us. The magical draws us, because we long to be in control. We want our own will to be the way and our own illness to receive the cure. We are not easily reconciled to bad ends, risks, and fear. God’s children are quick to look to magic and superstition to get positive results and to promote safety.
     Often, individuals in need would touch the hem of the garment of Jesus and be healed, or be cleansed by His spittle and suddenly be able to see, but in every case, the healing was by faith in the hand of God, and never by the garment, spittle, or any other physical item or relic. Healing is not magic, and it cannot be controlled by our will.
     Faithful people with pious lives die of horrible diseases at a young age. Dishonest individuals who are a plague in society live long lives and amass fortunes. Where is the justice? How can this be? The tendency is to take up the wand, pray the incantation, dance the rain dance, or rub the toe of a statue believing that this will bring us the outcome we desire.
     The punch line of Job was the God speech: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou send forth lightning? Hast thou given the horse his might?” The answer from God is that we cannot know God’s way, God’s purpose, and certainly cannot control God’s will. All the magic, incantation, and prayer for earthly control is an empty vessel. As Ecclesiastes reports, the firm intent for us is to “be happy in our work,” to find joy every day, and to give thanks for each blessing.
     Perhaps the Word from God might be for us to put down the pins and dolls, stop trying to sway God’s will, and instead to depend on God in hard times and in good times. Our great opportunity is to surrender, trust, and depend on a grace that is not earthbound with feet of clay, but, rather, a grace that is beyond all that is transient in this life.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com

July 1, 2009 - The red apple invites stones

2010-01-18T08:43:00.001-05:00

     Every fruit-bearing apple tree that I have ever known has always had one thing in common with all the others. This commonality is in the fact that the biggest, brightest, juiciest, and most cherished apple is always at the very top of the tree, unreachable by boys, a tiny target for a rock, too high up for a stick, and tempting beyond belief. From miles around, you can visit any apple tree that is in season, and the apple you want is always the one at the top.
In reality, the other apples, the low-hanging fruits, are perfectly delectable and juicy. There is nothing wrong with an apple you can reach and nothing wrong with an apple that is available. However, for young boys who have been dutifully damming up a creek or building forts out of corn stalks or rolling down grassy hills or riding bikes all over creation, who stand gazing at the luscious top fruit with sweat-trails streaking down their dirty faces and their bare torsos all the way to their bare feet, that apple up at the top is the prize that must be had. All manner and amount of effort and energy is justified to achieve that one goal that tauntingly hangs just up there where only bird and angel can live.
     Tree-shaking is the first order of business. Boys perched halfway up on strategic and precarious limbs, boys down below with firm grasps of the trunk, and boys out on the edge limbs ready to pull and heave, work together as a team to disengage that booty on high. But, the booty only taunts the failing tree up-rooters and the apple remains barely shaken as the wiry and fibrous tree endures and emerges unscathed. Shaking will not loosen the grip of the stipule and the grand champion apple remains in place and survives.
     Rocks are the next order of business, and with great piles mounded at various stations on one side of the tree, the bombardment begins. Field stones are heaved and lobbed with nary a direct hit. A miniscule few dimple the apple, but none are correctly aimed to dislodge it. When the stone piles are depleted, the boys, resembling ant soldiers on a mission of mercy, gather the once-used stones on the other side of the tree, and the barrage continues. In the end, the bonafide golden fleece resembles the “Old Glory” of Frances Scott Key: battleworn and showing the signs of encounter but proudly perched none-the-less.
     Why is the best apple always on top? Why is our interest targeted on that which is seemingly out of our possible reach? Why do we want that which we cannot reach? Why do we want to bring down the proud and the honorable?
     An old adage reminds us that “The red apple invites stones.” Truly, this is an accurate statement. The high, glistening, unreachable, soaring, and beautiful always attracts us and causes us to desire a great downfall. The pure, lofty, and virtuous will always raise the ire of the lesser world – which will finally use all force to bring down anything possessed of integrity. The noticeably virtuous will always be vulnerable to attackers.
     When stones are being thrown at you from below, it is because your radiance and demeanor have become an implicating witness to the base and counterfeit nature of those who can only find peace when they can have your character as their prize. When stones are being thrown at you, it is because you stand for all that others would aspire to be, if only they had the courage, strength, and stamina required to surrender to the purpose that is only attained by complete and highest allegiance.
     No one will ever long be satisfied with the low-hanging fruit. The low fruit is easily reachable and can be had for a pittance. We, as Christians, only aspire to that which is lofty, and as Christians, can only be had by the grace of Jesus Christ. The result of our high aspiration is often the contempt of those who gaze at our sanctification from below, and who long for the prize but lack the willful surrender and acceptance of the grace of Jesus Christ. Aspire to the redeeming and exalted place of grace, and be ready for all that the world will throw at you.
Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com