Randy's Ruminations

When I was 6 years old I was playing Roy Rogers in the woods. Now, my 6 year old and her sisters were stuck on freeways trying to get home ahead of spreading riots.

I am often tempted to jump on the bandwagon of how much better things were before and how awful they are now. When I was in grade school my parents never had to wonder if I was going to make it home due to the social structure falling apart and the city being torched.

But our recall of history is short-lived and filtered by nostalgia. On second thought, my kids have had it pretty good. They didn’t have my experience of nuclear attack drills in the first grade. At the sound of the civil defense sirens we closed the curtains and each got under the desk to “duck and cover.” Did some bureaucrat really think those actions would increase our chances of surviving a nuclear warhead!

Or I can go back another generation to the school years of my parents during the depression and World War II. When dad was in the 6^th grade his shoes had holes in the soles and there was not a single present at Christmas. And how about being a school child during the war years of Pearl Harbor, London being bombed, Paris falling, and on and on? My kids have had it pretty good. What’s a little riot?

It is tempting (and perhaps perversely egotistical) to think that we live in the worst of times. I hear Christians talk this way all the time. But history is chock full of some really awful times.

Two things make us feel overwhelmed. The first is that every generation has to face new problems – or at least new versions of old problems. Yes, there are things we face that others have not. But there are many things we do not have to face that other generations struggled with greatly. It is easy to forget about those. It is the new problems that get our attention.

To someone who feels that this is the worst time in American history, I would remind you of another time in our history when human slavery was legal in this country and often defended by church people. And then there was that little matter of an American CIVIL WAR that engulfed the whole nation and killed between 600,000 and 700,000 Americans (plus tens of thousands wounded and maimed).

It is a matter of perspective. We acclimate to problems that have been around. We are more fearful and upset when confronted by new problems.

When I think of acclimating to a problem I think of how 50,000 traffic deaths a year did not bother many people in the late 1960’s or early 70’s. Remember, at the same time the war in Vietnam was being fought. Some 58,000 Americans killed in a decade in Vietnam seemed a whole lot worse than 50,000 killed on American streets in a single year.

The second reason we may feel overwhelmed is the availability of global news in a shrinking world. Such news is not only available, but nearly unavoidable. Through modern communication systems including video, we now know and “experience” the world’s problems, not just those that are local or even national. In fact, the world’s problems often have some impact on us as a nation, if only in triggering our desire to help.

Some people find it hard to cope with all the bad news. They can easily feel that everything is going down hill and life becomes a burden or sad. Some people need to watch less news.

So back to where this started: I can feel nostalgic about the good old days and I can shake my head at the problems we face, but honestly – I don’t want to live in any past decade or century. I’ll take today.

Many of us may have experienced colliding worlds – especially a past world colliding with the present. That happened to me on April 29, 1992.

I was standing in the private office of Roy Rogers. Just Roy and me, plus a mutual friend. My friend and I had driven out from LA to the Roy Rogers museum in Victorville.

Roy Rogers was the #1 hero of my childhood. The essence of the good guy hero in the white hat who had it all: Trigger - the best horse; Gabby Hayes - the best sidekick (or Pat Brady and Nellybelle - the funniest sidekick); and he looked and sang better than Gene Autry! On my 6^th birthday I had a cowboy outfit with a gun belt, pistols, boots, hat and a cap-firing rifle. Roy was my fantasy world.

Now fantasy collided with reality.

While making small talk with Roy, I noticed a television set was on in the corner when a special news report caught our attention. The LA riots were breaking out following the verdict in the Rodney King police beating case.

Oops, gotta go. My friend and I had kids in LA schools and wives somewhere out there, too. Our city was melting down and we had loved ones potentially in harms way. It was a long two hours back into the city. It was an even longer distance back to those days of playing cowboy in the Pennsylvania woods of my childhood.

As a follow-up to last Sunday's history sermon here is a summary of a current news item.

Near the biblical site of Megiddo a recent excavation for a new wing of a prison has uncovered what may be a very early Christian church complete with a mosaic.

Preliminary conclusions include that a simple table stood at the center of the church for a sacred meal in commemoration of the Last Supper.

The use of a table instead of an altar would point to a simple format of worship.

An inscription mentions a Roman army officer who donated money to build the floor. Another inscription honors four women while a third inscription speaks of a woman named Ekeptos who "donated this table to the God Jesus Christ in commemoration."

The building is tentatively dated from the early 300's shortly after Constantine's conversion and the beginning of legal status for Chrsitianity in the Empire. A pottery find confirms the date, but further excavation will be needed to be certain.

The building is in a simple rectangular shape rather than that of a basilica with an apse on one end. (Those who heard last Sunday's sermon will know what that means!) Therefore, it is not a "church" in the later traditional sense.

(This is a post by my daughter Grace.)

Everyone is starved for human connection. Even just one moment of understanding -- of camaraderie -- can lift a person's spirits for days. I remember last winter I was coming home from school and I had that kind of moment. I was leaving school -- really leaving, not just for break -- and I was defeated, depressed, and demoralized. On the long drive home, though, something happened that completely lifted me up. As I was driving I passed another college student going home for break -- then he passed me, then I passed him, etc. Viola! Freeway flirting. As we dodged traffic together I felt encouraged. I wasn’t alone! I was part of a "team." Time passed and our freeway split in two directions -- I headed one way, he the other. For a second I panicked -- I needed affirmation of the connection I believed we'd made. There! A wave! An acknowledgement! I am not alone -- I am connected -- I am known.

Humans are constantly searching for this sense of being known. We join clubs, play sports, and organize bingo and poker night. We get excited when someone likes the same movies, books and activities. We post blogs hoping someone will commiserate. We glance at the car beside us when we stop at a red light. No one wants to believe that they could die and it would go unnoticed -- erased from the earth with no one to mourn, no one to remember. We are all searching for a wink.

In the movie I, Robot Will Smith tells a robot that a wink is "a human thing -- a sign of understanding." A symbol of belonging, knowing, and -- dare I say it -- fellowship. The world is so big (never mind the galaxy or the universe) that it's easy to feel like we don't matter. We need these "winks" to affirm our belief that we do matter.

The problem is, we don't matter. Nothing we do on this earth really matters. Build a tall building; someone will build a bigger one. Cure cancer, people die anyway. Stop one war, thousands of others will follow. After my grandchildren are dead -- that's a mere two generations -- no one will remember me. I will be erased from the earth. Is this the truth? Yes. Bleak though it is, it is the truth. Is this the whole truth? Thank the Lord in Heaven, no.

The only way our lives mean anything is if they are used to do good for God. The only way to have something last eternally is to be part of the eternal. Am I eternal? Interesting question. I was designed to be, and my soul is even as my body withers and dies. My life is finite (here on earth, anyway), and I have no control of what comes after that. So though my soul is eternal, I do not commune with the eternal. Who does, then? Who's flying this plane anyway? In order to be part of the eternal, we must step outside of time and the only one there is the Holy Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The only time 1+1+1=1. We can talk more about that later, though. For now I'm concerned with the human need for winks.

All of the winks I mentioned (clubs, sports, interests) are not eternal. What good is a wink if it fades? The guy who waved to me almost certainly doesn't remember me anymore, therefore the connection is severed. The wink is gone. All that remains is a shadow of a wink -- a memory. But that's not good enough! Now I need a new wink! I need new affirmation! I'm still starving for that connection! See the problem? It's never enough. What is the answer, then? Do we just keep scrambling from wink to wink, trying to add more and more before the old ones fade? No! That's absurd. It's like trying to quench a great thirst by sucking on a lemon, or a great hunger by eating a Tic-Tac. Somehow, it doesn't quite cut it.

So we need an eternal wink. One that won't fade away. A wink so powerful, so huge, that we'll never need another. And what is eternal? Say it with me, class: GOD! A wink from God would be a powerful thing, indeed. How much do we scramble to be noticed and acknowledged by celebrities? The President? Okay, now multiply the power of a wink from one of them by, say, a kajillion and you'll be in the ballpark (well, that's not really true because God is perfectly good so he's infinitely better than those other guys, but you get my point). Think about it! The all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, all-being Creator of the Universe (and Time, and Love, etc.) is not only winking at you, but calls you one of His kids! Out of all the people on this earth, out of all the planets and stars, suns and moons, black holes and supernovas in the universe, God, the author and perfector of all things just and good, has come down and affirmed your importance as one of His own. That's what I would call a great big eternal cosmic wink.

P.S. If the answer you gave to the question of "Who's flying this plane" is "No one. The plane, the passengers, and the flight are all accidental," then I encourage you to read Descartes' First Meditations on Philosophy. The guy's a pompous jerk, but he gives the best intellectual argument for the existence of God that I've heard.

Genesis 22:2 - Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

This is the first occurrence of the word “love” in the Bible. Abraham loves Isaac. A father loves his son. This is a beautiful statement. Would that all fathers love their sons.

But here in Genesis 22, when we find love stated for the first time, a potential problem arises. It raises the issue of ultimate love for God. Abraham loves Isaac, but does he still love God? Is he still loyal to God? Does he love God more than anything including his own son? The objects of our love have the potential to corrupt our love of God.

The impact of the story is dulled by knowing the outcome. Abraham did not know the outcome! He is told to sacrifice his son. Literally. Tie him to an altar, slit his throat and burn him.

He can’t get off easily(?) by one momentary act of blind courage and pain. He has to make preparations. He has to travel three days. He has to look at Isaac along the way. He has to deflect Isaac’s heart-wrenching question “Where is the lamb?”

Abraham has to own this decision.

The demand of God is even more difficult, if we can imagine it, because Isaac is the son of promise through whom all of God’s promise and plan is to be fulfilled. He is not just a son, as awful as that phrase sounds, but the son of God’s promise.

So we might expect Abraham to have some faith questions such as “How can God contradict himself?” That could easily lead Abraham to conclude that the sacrifice message was a mistake; he mis-heard.

But Abraham never wavers. The narrative is almost too compact and unemotional. The effect is to communicate that Abraham was resolute.

Yes, God stays Abraham’s hand of execution at the last moment. We imagine the great relief Abraham must have felt. Beyond that relief is the great joy, satisfaction and spiritual peace (“that transcends all understanding” –Philippians 4:7) that Abraham must have known at that moment because he did not waver with God. In this he is truly the father of the faithful; he is my model ancestor in the faith.

Approximately two millennia later Jesus would demand that his disciples love him more than mother, father, son or daughter. If God is God, how could it be any other way? But only if God is God can I begin to love him more than my family. In other words, this God-business is serious stuff. It’s either all or forget it.