Mistaken Identity

You cannot imagine my surprise when I descended the stairs from the south balcony of Fourth Presbyterian Church after fulfilling my roll at the Christmas Eve worship and lighting the candles of those seated there  and was greeted by four Chicago Policemen.

“Merry Christmas fellas.” I said.  “What’s up?”

Before the police could answer a man pointed to our director of worship and said, “This guy wouldn’t call the cops so I flagged some down off the street.”

“Why?” I asked more puzzled than ever. 

I had ushered in the center aisle before worship and there had been no trouble.  Nobody acted up during the offering.  The candle lighting portion of service went smoothly. Even with the huge crowds it had been a quiet night.

“Those three guys sitting in the front row.”

“What three guys?  Where?  Everybody has been as good as gold.”

The police were as puzzled as I was.  Should they come in or not?

I suggested they not enter the sanctuary but they were more than welcome to wait in the hall while I went to have a look.

“For the love of God!” I thought to myself.  There were three guys sitting in the front  of middle eastern decent.

You’ve probably forgotten this but on December 22nd of 2016 it was widely reported that terrorists were planning on attacking churches and other soft targets over the Christmas holidays.

The man, described later by our worship director as a “nervous Nelly” saw them  whispering to each other during the service and decided we were soon to be under attack.  I must confess that I looked them over carefully when I returned to the sanctuary.

When the service concluded out of curiosity and guilt I made a special effort to greet the young men who where more than gracious. 

They told me that they were students and they couldn’t find an Orthodox church downtown and decided Fourth looked to be as close as they could come.  They also said they were a little confused by the singing in the worship but delighted that it was in English.  They were also surprised that we had women “priests.”

Aside from the obvious takeaway that profiling can be not only embarrassing but destructive there are two other things to learn from this encounter.          

First, people need to go beyond the short hand media reports they hear and dig deeper than the sound bites that their average newscast provides. 

The Federalist, a darling magazine of the conservative movement reports about the plight of Christians in the Middle East.  Chances are high that they were ancestors of our front row friends.

Assyrian Christians have long endured persecution for both their ethnicity and their faith: the Iraqi Assyrian population, for example, has dropped from 1.5 million in 2003 to approximately 200,000 today. From 1910 to 2016, the proportion of people in the Middle East identifying as Assyrian Christian dropped from 14 percent to 4 percent. Today the Assyrian diaspora exceeds 4 million.

Recent events have exacerbated the persecution, and Assyrian Christians continue to flee the Middle East in droves. ISIS occupied Mosul in June 2014, prompting a mass Assyrian exodus. By July, ISIS declared the city was Christian-free. For the first time in its Christian history, mass would not be celebrated in Mosul.1

Middle Eastern Christians fled to this country to enjoy the blessings of liberty not to abuse or destroy them.  And enjoy them they are because second:

It’s believed that America’s Muslim community is the wealthiest in the world.  According to the Pew Research Institute, 45 percent report making at least $30,000 per year, a higher share than the 36 percent of Americans as a whole. They report owning a business or being self-employed at a higher rate than the general population. Forty percent of Muslim Americans hold a college degree—- compared with 29 percent of the population as a whole—- and according to Gallup, one in three have a professional job. Muslim women are among the most educated in the country - second only to Jewish women - and work outside the home at the same rate as Muslim men. The gender gap in pay among American Muslims is smaller than that of any other religious group.2

 Had the cops calling, carol singing, Christmas Eve Christian  remembered or even known all of this he wouldn’t have hailed officers off the street but spoken to the men and found out that they had no more intention of blowing the place up than we did of burning it down when we gave 1,000 worshipers candles.

_________

1.  Hodson, Alexandra. "Assyrian Christians Live in Fear of Genocide." The Federalist.  26 September 2016. Web. [http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/28/assyrian-christians-live-war-torn-limbo-praying-genocide/].

2.  Holland, Joshua.  "The Truth About American Muslims." The Nation. 09 December 2016. [https://www.thenation.com/article/heres-why-we-should-all-praise-allah-for-american-muslims/]

Don’t Let a MacGuffin Ruin Christmas

Up until last week I didn’t even know what a “MacGuffin” was.  At first  I thought a band a friend sings in made a major news story but they are the McGowens. Or, a character on The Muppet Show? No, that was Angus McGonagle, the Argyle Gargoyle, who gargles Gershwin gorgeously.

The term “MacGuffin” was coined by a screenwriter Alfred Hitchcock worked with named Angus MacPhail and is the mysterious object in a thriller that sets the whole chain of events into motion.

Think of the ring in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen or in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.  It is the falcon in The Maltese Falcon.  It is the Holy Grail in countless books and movies. 

But most of all, said Hitchcock, “The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing. Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the MacGuffin is that it contains the word ‘guff,’ which means a load of nonsense.” 1

A MacGuffin relates to Christmas when you try to make this Christmas the best Christmas ever.  You may think that having the best decorated home, the best Christmas dinner, giving the best presents, or anything else will make it the best but it won’t.

Preachers get severe cases of “flop sweats” this time of year when they try to write the best Christmas sermon in the history of time.  I always remind my brothers and sisters in the clergy what Dr. John M. Buchanan’s wife Caroline told him when he was fretting over his last Christmas sermon at Fourth Presbyterian:

“Stop worrying about this. We don’t come on Christmas Eve to hear a sermon. We just want to hear the story, sing the carols, light a candle, and get home at a reasonable hour.” I didn’t lament this year, but she told me anyway as I was working: “Remember, we just want to hear the story, sing the carols, and light a candle.” 2 

No “guff” in that.  It is straightforward and correct. 

No preacher can conjure up Christmas joy and no amount of work can bring it.  Joy just happens.  The joy you chase after just may be a MacGuffin.

So, I can’t tell you where you will find joy this Advent/Christmas season.

All I can do is suggest that you not blast your way through this beautiful time making plans for New Years’ Eve - which also can turn into a MacGuffin. 

Take time to ponder, and pray, and thank God for your blessings, your dear ones whose love is so very precious.  Ponder the mystery of God whose love for you is greater than anything you will every experience.  And then, ponder the greatest mystery of all, God coming into the world as a child, to become one of us and to journey with us full of grace and truth.

In my favorite Christmas Movie, The Bishop’s Wife, Henry Brougham, thinks that his greatest joy will be in the completion of a new Cathedral.  It is his quest. It is his MacGuffin.  Instead, through the intervention of an angel, who hits on his wife, he discovers that joy is not in a building but in the people he loves.

At the conclusion of the movie he preaches this Christmas sermon.

Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking. Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child's cry, a blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts.

We haven't forgotten that night down the centuries. We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts. 

But especially with gifts. You give me a book, I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer and Uncle Henry can do with a new pipe.For we forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled, all that is, except one.  

And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. 

Its his birthday we're celebrating. Don't let us ever forget that.

Let us ask ourselves what He would wish for most. And then, let each put in his share, loving kindness, warm hearts, and a stretched out hand of tolerance.

All the shining gifts that make peace on earth.3

And joy in our hearts.
___________

1. _____, "Alfred Hitchcock Explains the Plot Device He Called the ‘MacGuffin’.  Openculture.com.  July 9, 2013.
 http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/alfred-hitchcock-explains-the-plot-device-he-called-the-macguffin.html

2. John M. Buchanan, “A Christmas Eve Sermon.” The Fourth Church Pulpit.  December 24, 2011.

3. The Bishop's Wife. Dir. Henry Koster. Prod. Samuel Goldwyn. By Robert E. Sherwood and Leonardo Bercovici. Perf. Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven. RKO Radio Pictures, 1947. Videocassette.

Civility Begins at Home

Our last night in Palm Springs was perfect.  The super moon brightened the whole resort as we took our place in the hot tub along with two guys from Seattle we had spoken with briefly earlier in the day.  Since Lowell is from Bellingham, Washington they had much in common.

One was a police office and the other was a realtor and when the conversation turned to politics, as it had often since the last election, I was careful to hear them out to see where they were on the political spectrum. 

Doing some audience analysis before you open up your yap is something I learned in Communication 101.  Admittedly I don’t often practice this theory in my daily life but I have heard of it.

Once we discovered that our new friends from Seattle were as despondent as we were over the election results we felt free to say how we really felt.  Or, in other words, we had a gripe session.

Then two guys from Reno appeared and asked if they could join us.   We stupidly said yes.
 
One worked for the state of Nevada and the other one worked on my nerves.

They had overheard what we had been talking about and quickly dominated the conversation with one far out speculation after another.

“Could Mr. Trump be impeached before he took office?” No. 
“How about indited for the Trump University business?” Yes.
“If he was indited could he be kept from assuming the presidency.” Not sure, I said.
“What about abolishing the Electoral College?”  Twelfth amendment to the Constitution.  Possible but amending the Constitution takes time.
“What about if a majority of the electors voted for Secretary Clinton and not for Mr. Trump.”  “Wow! I’m not sure I would like to participate that kind of Constitutional Crises.” I replied.

You have all been in conversations like this.  Things are going great and then someone shows up and sucks the life right out of the occasion.

“Where is all this coming from?” I asked.

You have probably already guessed their response: “From the internet.”

I felt Lowell grab me before I could throw my head back and scream, “Oh for the love of God...”  Thankfully I didn’t then but it was only a matter of time.

They had no television and got all their news from the internet. 

Apparently they did miss the post from President Lincoln (Or was it Albert Einstein?) who recently reminded his friends, “don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

They did and concluded, in their words, that “Donald Trump is a real bastard.”

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” I said trying to lighten things up. “I’m a real bastard and I resent those remarks!  Besides, I’ve never seen him at any of the meetings.”

It may have been my friend Scott who wrote the line for me to use when somebody called me a bastard. “I am by birth but you sir seem to have made it your vocation.”

“That’s okay,” said the  Nevadian who was about to work my last nerve. “Jesus was a bastard.”

“Ahhhhh, not quite.” I replied through my teeth.

“Then who was his father?” he shot back.

I quoted Gabriel to Mary in Saint Luke’s gospel, “you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus."

“You still haven’t told me who Jesus father was.  Why isn’t he a bastard?”

The fellas from Seattle knew what I did for a living. 

The police officer had been raised a Lutheran. His husband, the relator’s faith was undisclosed but he did tell the story of his father who was such a crack shot during the Vietnam war that he became a sniper.  When his commander’s told him to pick off anybody - men, women, children - and not specific targets he refused.  They didn’t discharge him but in post-mortem “Hacksaw Ridge” fashion they put him in charge of placing the remains of the dead into body bags.  That he did that gruesome job until he was discharged honorably says something about his character.

They visibly winced and Lowell was too late to grab me before I unleashed my linguistic sword and performed an intellectual lobotomy on the wise ass inquirer.

“Listen pal.” (When I use the word pal it is always best to duck out of the way of the incoming verbal Katyusha Rocket!) “I spent thirty-two years as a Lutheran Pastor and have an earned doctorate.  I would gladly be willing to explain to you in great detail the doctrine of the incarnation if I thought you would listen or had the ability to understand.  But I am warning you! Don’t challenge me unarmed.”

“You’re a preacher?” he said in amazement but not amusement.

His partner said something about him being a political science major who loved to get into debates with people.  Clearly he knew that his partner had muddied the waters of not only the hot tub but poured ice on any further socializing.

I believe I said something about how he should be more careful about where and with whom he is debating.  They bid us a quick good night and I felt terrible.  What would the other guys think? 

I apologized for my behavior.  I told them I really wasn’t like that.  Or, at least, I tried not to be.  I told them that I didn’t want them to think that all pastors are jerks.  Or, at least as big of a jerk as I felt I had been.

The policeman said that if he were filing a report he would have called it a provoked stabbing in self-defense.

I slunk back to the room muttering.  “How can somebody say something that stupid in front of people he didn’t know?  How could anybody want to turn a perfectly lovely evening into a debating society? How could anybody be so disrespectful of even the idea that there might be people of faith around to even think of calling Christ’s parentage into question using the word ‘bastard?’”

Lowell was softly singing “Let it go! Let it go! Let it go!”

I was having an attack of l'esprit d'escalier.  It is a French term that literally means “wit at the bottom of the stairs” and refers to the clever retort you should have said to a rude guest during the party but only thought of long afterwards when you were heading upstairs to bed.

What I should have said was.  “I hope you are kidding.  And even if you aren’t please remember that Jesus is a person that many of us love and everybody respects.  Most of us are trying as best we can to live our lives based upon his teaching.  Many of us have given our lives to trying to serve him in response to the grace revealed in him.”

I didn’t say any of that to him.  He and his partner chose to sit at a separate table from the rest of the group the next morning.  I followed Lowell’s advise and “let it go.”

Here though is what I have learned from that heated little exchange and my Facebook posts from the last weeks.

First, people on both side of the election debate have been working my frayed nerves with countless posts about the election and how evil the other candidates are. Trump supporters saying things about Clinton and Clinton supporters saying things about Trump. 

Somehow even President George W. Bush has been mentioned and he hasn’t been in office for the last eight years.  As far as I can tell he is still being blamed for everything from the decrease in Sunday School attendance to the heart break of Psoriasis.  Stop it!  Haven’t we all had enough?

Second, know that unless your post comes from a reputable news source I am not going to read it.  I will read stuff that comes from FOX and MSNBC because I know where each are coming from, however, I will look very carefully at the attribution and if I see that it is coming from www.Petersplumbingandpunditry.com I’m not clicking.

Third, I am trying to be more loving toward those people like the guy in the hot tub who pride themselves on being argumentative but give yourself and the rest of us a break. Dial it back with friends and don’t turn it on at all among strangers.

Finally, I’m telling you this because I am trying to follow my own advice and love you.  Now, for the love of God, stop making it so freaking difficult.

Sehnsucht

Sehnsucht represents thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences. It has been referred to as “life’s longings”; or an individual’s search for happiness while coping with the reality of unattainable wishes. 1

I think key to understanding the Trump victory is hidden in this German term. Voters gave into this vision of longing for a lost Eden that never was.  They looked back to a day when America was great and wanted to make it great again.  The question for me was did that day ever exist?

While I have personally found it impossible to over-react to the thought of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States. I have been remembering a conversation that I had with my uncle Herb when I was a kid.

We were sitting on the couch and I asked him: “What do you remember most about the good old days?”  His response was, “I remember that they weren’t very good.”

An honest response like that can help you forever take the long view of history in your life.

The “good old days” may have been great if you weren’t a black person riding in the back of a bus or living in a segregated society. They may have been swell if you weren’t a single mom looking to support her family.  It was also a time when your heart may have swelled with pride when a flag passed in parade but not if you were moved to hold the hand of your same-sex partner in public.

So it might be well for those of us who believe we are standing on the brink of history’s darkest hour to remember that, even if it is, there have been many dark times before and we have survived them.

Just looking back over my six-score-years-and-two I can remember many countless times when things looked bleak and that I am here to write about them tells me that if the republic can survive those difficult times it can also muddle through the times of Trump.

When I was nine there was the Cuban missal crises.  Yes, I am that old!

Imagine being nine years old and thinking that at any moment you could be reduced to a briquet.  For fourteen day we sweated out that fear. Even at my young age I knew that those crazy, black and white, “duck and cover” videos were not going to be enough. School desks were very sturdy back then but not quite sturdy enough to deflect an incoming ICBM.

When I was ten President Kennedy was assassinated.

Everybody who was alive then knows where they were on November 23, 1963 when Walter Cronkite announced that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. My fifth grade teacher Miss O’Byrne had the job of explaining to us what had happened and what would happen next.

It was pouring down rain when our parents came to pick us up.  The darkness at mid-afternoon made it look like the world was ending. It wasn’t.

During the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's national tensions seemed to increase on two fronts.  The Civil Rights movement was beginning to threaten the old ways of many.  And in a southeast Asian land far away, the Vietnam War was slowly escalating.

The nation was divided between people who believed that all God’s children were created equal and those who didn’t. The 60's were tumultuous years for those of us who lived through them.  It seemed like the whole nation was divided - blacks and white, hawks and doves. It looked liked the battles would go on forever.

Especially when political and civil rights leaders began to be assassinated.  On April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. Riots erupted in major cities and Chicago’s West Side was particularly devastated.

On June 5, 1968 Senator Robert Kennedy who had just won the California primary and was certainly on his way to being the Democratic Party Nominee was killed. 

Imagine two assassinations within three months.

That summer, those of us who lived in Chicago were certain the world was coming to an end as we watched from our front stoop one National Guard plane after another land at the Glenview Navel Air station in preparation for the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The riots in Grant Park during the Democratic Convention were the mother of all riots.  They set the standard for riots. 

If you think the Black Lives Matter versus Police Lives Matter demonstrations of this past summer were troubling they pale in comparison to what happened in the summer of ‘68.  
I was 15. I was hooked on politics and I was terrified.

As the Viet Nam War escalated and Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia, the rioting across America reached a fever pitch.  When I was in college, protesting students were shot at Kent State. 

Tensions mounted to the point that buses were parked bumper-to-bumper around the White House to protect the President from the angry mobs.  Would America ever again be a civilized place to live?

In my lifetime I have seen the resignation of one president who was on the verge of being impeached and articles of impeachment voted against another.  The Watergate break-in was a product of Nixon’s paranoia. His impeachment was a result of the cover-up for the crimes of his cronies that never needed to happen in the first place.  He was on the verge of a landslide victory over Senator George McGovern.

The Clinton business was just plain tawdry.

Remember the “Whip Inflation Now” buttons and the gas crises brought on by instability in the middle east?

I was in seminary when someone called Ayatollah Khomeini came to power.  At the time we made fun of him.  Our Vice-president for Student Affairs called himself on occasion the High-a-tollah.  And those of us who did grunt work in his office called ourselves the Low-a-tollahs.

The laughter stopped when an Iranian mob stormed the U.S. Embassy and took hostages.  “Nightline” which was later to become a staple of late night reporting was originally called “America Held Hostage.”

A failed rescue attempt left us feeling helpless.  We were Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians.

When Ronald Reagan became the President, it was another one of those moments where many of us wondered “Where did we find this guy?”

Benefitted by a sunny disposition and an ability to work with members of the opposition party.  (See Tip and the Gip by Chris Matthews.)  Reagan benefitted from “the law of diminished expectations” and got re-elected in a landslide. 

Remember the election of 2000?  Hanging chads! An election that could have gone a million different ways depending on not just Florida but Tennessee and New Hampshire. An election decided by the Supreme Court in two decisions  - one everybody remembers and another nobody does. 

The first was a 7-2 vote based upon something that David Boies, council for the Vice-President, said in response to the question as to whether all Florida’s ballots were being handled in the same manner from precinct to precinct.  He responded that he wasn’t sure ballots weren’t being handled the same way from table to table in the same precinct.

This violated the one person one vote mandate of the Constitution. Simply stated your vote has to be handled the same way as mine.  Your’s can’t be processed once and mine scrutinized three times.

The second was the 5-4 decision as to whether Florida could conclude its election in the allotted time. The state statute required “that any controversy or contest that is designed to lead to a conclusive selection of electors be completed by December 12. That date is upon us, and there is no recount procedure in place under the State Supreme Court's order that comports with minimal constitutional standards.”2

Because of this and many other things, President Bush was sworn in to under-whelming support. Gore supporters were enraged and some of them were saying that Bush would never be their President.  The same is being said of President-elect Trump. 

Then came the morning the September 11, 2001 when I really believed not only our nation but our world was coming to an end.  It didn’t.

I offer all of this up as an antidote to Sehnsucht.  If anybody’s eyes roll back in their heads and they long for the good old days remind them of just a few of the things I told you. You can probably think of countless other examples.

Uncle Herb was right.  There was very little good in the good old days.

And now we face another challenge.  In every other election that I have voted, I have never thought that one party’s candidate was not only totally incompetent but was deplorable. Secretary Clinton was no saint and self-inflicted wounds cost her the election but if your son or daughter said the kind of things Mr. Trump said he or she would not be bound for the White House but grounded for life.

Sehnsucht is a longing for a lost splendor. This is not a time for dreaming of days gone by this is a time for action. 

Here is what my pastor The Rev’d Shannon Kershner said two days before this last election that left so many of us devastated:

In this age, compassion is often seen as naivete, and showing vulnerability is viewed as being weak. But in that age, in what God is doing in Jesus called God’s Reign, compassion and vulnerability and kindness and mercy are what matter. In this age, especially these days, people hate very loudly. But in that age, in what God is doing in Jesus called God’s Reign, people love even more loudly.3

Here is what a dear friend, with whom I have rarely agreed politically posted on his Facebook page with a few words changed for a more general audience.  It is the course I plan to follow for the next four years and I urge you, with every fiber of my being, to follow it too.

We will love you if you are a Muslim.  We will love you if you are black. We will love you if you are Hispanic.  We will love you if you are gay.  We will love you if you are disabled. We will especially love you if you are a victim of sexual assault. We will love you if you are poor.  We will love you no matter what and fight for you no matter what.

 And if he builds a wall. My friends and I, our grandparents, our neighbors,  our children, and even our grandchildren if need be, will rise up and tear it down.4

Mr. Trump, to paraphase President Reagan, “we will tear down your wall and all the other walls you are trying to build between us.”

An honest response like that can help you forever take the long view of history in your life.

For not with swords loud clashing,
 nor roll of stirring drums,
 but deeds of love and mercy
 the heav'nly kingdom comes.5

__________

1. Sehnsucht.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht .

2. Text of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore.  USA Today.  January 21, 2001.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/pres244.htm

3. The Rev'd Shannon Johnson Kershner, "This Age and That Age."  The Fourth Church Pulpit. November 6, 2016.

4. From a Facebook post by Jon Hultgren.

5. From the hymn "Lead On, O King Eternal."

A Dream Comes True

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams... Joel 2:28. (NIV)

If history can offer portents for the future it must be remembered that on September 17, 1908 - the last year the Chicago Cubs won the World Series - Thomas Selfridge was the first passenger to die in an airplane crash.  The pilot was Orville Wright. 

Anybody who has seen the hilarious opening Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXT4pgW_UGk) may wonder why someone wasn’t killed sooner.  (WARNING: While this link does not contain a virus it does contain an ear worm that will stuck in your brain for weeks.)

As we also know, in 1945 the Chicago Cubs were the champions of the National League. Also in that year, World War II came to an end, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, “Carousal” debuted on Broadway, and Sir Arthur C. Clarke made a stunning prediction.  He is best known for being the co-writer of the screen play “2001: A Space Odyssey.” be he was not only a science fiction writer but a scientist.

While not the first, Clarke believed that there was a way to launch a satellite that in a geosynchronous orbit around the earth that could be used for communication purposes.

Any reasonable person would have believed that the Cubs would have returned to the World Series before we were regularly launching satellites into space. 

Those reasonable people would have been wrong. 

The 1945 World Series appearance by the Cubs might also have been classified as tainted glory because according to Gary Bedingfield’s “Baseball in World War II”

More than 500 major and minor league players swapped flannels for khakis during World War II, and such well-known players as Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg and Bob Feller, served their nation off the diamond. The minor leagues, formerly a veritable oasis of baseball talent, were seriously affected by the manpower shortage with 4,076 players seeing military service. On a daily basis, talent was drained from the game. By the end of the war (1945 ironically) no more than 12 minor leagues survived the war years compared to 44 circuits that operated in 1940. 1

Through most of the tough years the Cubs were owned by P.K. Wrigley who was a noted recluse.

George F. Will said of him in the book A Nice Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred. “His business was chewing gum.  Baseball was a hobby And it was not his favorite hobby, which was tinkering with motors.”  Charlie Grimm said that “concerning baseball, Wrigley was ‘absolutely wrong about everything.’”2

Wrigley was more into marketing the sunshine and relaxation than he was baseball.

 

In the late 1950's and early 1960's Wrigley went so far as to instruct his players and broadcasters, to  “stress the green vines on the wall (and) stop calling it Wrigley Field (but) instead call it Cubs Park.  We are aiming at people not interested in baseball. These are the fans we want to get. Dyed-in-the-wool fans ... know what is going on.”3

And so it continued day in and day out with the Cubs only finishing above .500 in 1963.

In 1966 Leo Durocher become the Cubs manager.  “No one was more temperamentally opposed to Wrigley Field’s golly-the-ivy-is-so-green-and-the-sun-is-so-warm-and-the-beer-is-so-cold-and-the-ambience-is-so-gosh-darn-friendly-who-cares-what-the-score-is-ethos.”

Durocher believed that “nice guys finish last” and in his first year he did.  In 1966 they lost 103 games.

1967 and 1968 were better years but 1969 was tremendous - until September.

Playing only day baseball at home and fielding a line-up that many of us can still recite in our longtime P.A. announcer Pat Piper voice players like Don Kessinger, Glen Beckert, Billy Wiliams, Ernie Banks and Ron Santo took the field almost every day.

After Ken Holtzman threw a no-hitter on August 19, the Cubs took their biggest division lead of the season, up 8.5 games on the Cardinals and 9.5 on the Mets. With all the momentum in the world on their side, they seemed well on their way to October.

However, they went on to lose 17 of their last 25 games in what was one of the largest collapses in sports history, as they finished a full eight games behind the "Miracle Mets," who won 38 of their last 49 games. 4

The Cubs spent most of the 70's as an average to mediocre ball team.

In 1984 things turned around.  Dallas Green was the General Manager; Jim Frey was the manager; Ryan Sandberg was the National League MVP; and Rick Sutcliffe was the Cy Young Award Winner.  On September 24 Satcliffe threw a two hit complete game and the Cubs won the National League East.

A myth is that the Cubs were deprived of home-field advantage for the 1984 National League Championship Series (NLCS) because they could not host night games.

However, from 1969-1984, the LCS were five-game series played in a 2-3 format. The NL West and AL East champs hosted the first two games in odd years and the NL East and the AL West hosted the first two games in even years. Thus, no changes were made to the NLCS schedule due to Wrigley Field's lack of lights.5

The Cubs left Chicago in great shape needing only one win to beat San Diego. 

They lost game 3 in a 7-1 blowout.

In game 4 tied at 5 in the bottom of the ninth Lee Smith gave up a single to Tony Gwynn and a homer by Steve Garvey. The Cubs lost 7-5 and the series was tied at 2.

In game 5 the Cubs had a 3-2 lead going into the bottom of the seventh.
Rick Sutcliffe was on the mound.

After a walk and a bunt, Tim Flannery came up with Carmelo Martinez on second and one out. He hit a grounder to Leon Durham at first, but the ball went between his legs and into right field, scoring Martinez with the tying run. Then the floodgates opened. Alan Wiggins singled, Gwynn doubled home two and Garvey singled home Gwynn to give the Padres a 6-3 lead. Closer Rich Gossage came in and shut down the Cubs in the eighth and ninth to send San Diego to the World Series. Final score: Padres 6; Cubs 3.6

Nine years would pass until the Cubs made the playoffs only to lose 3 games to 1 in 1998 to the Altanta Braves.

Then would come 2003.

We all know what happened.  A legendary moment occurred in Wrigley Field history that was comparable to the ejection of Billy Sianis’ goat and Babe Ruth’s called home run.

Let’s recap with facts trumping fiction.

The Cubs led by 3 with 5 outs separating them from the World Series.

Luis Castillo was at bat with a 3-2 count.  He hit a foul ball down the left field line.  Moises Alou ran faster and jumped higher than he ever had in his life.

The wall reaches 15 feet high in the corner where it meets the bleachers. That’s important to remember when you consider how high of a vertical leap Alou made.  Countless fans reached out for the ball but the closest was “a twenty-six year old man wearing a green turtle neck, black jacket and headphones.”7

There are lots of things to consider about this moment. 

First, it was a foul ball.  Had it bounced off the wall. Had it fallen three feet in front of Alou.  Had it landed four rows back in the stands,  Bob Rosenberg the official scorer then and the official scorer now, would have ruled it “no play.”

Second, Mike Everitt, the left field foul line umpire “ruled there was no fan interference because the ball had broken the plane of the wall separating the field of play from the stands and entered the stands.8

I often wonder what would have happened Everitt ruled fan interference.  The batter would have been out and every body in his section might have bought the young man a beer and hailed him as a hero.

Two attorneys, Walter J. Yurkanin and R. Thomas Hoffman, say that is exactly what should have happened.

Forming their own "Commission," they held every aspect of the infamous "Bartman Play" under the microscope - interpreting and analyzing the rules, evaluating comments from players and managers, reviewing media reports, and looking at countless photos and video replays.

This is what they concluded in their book Mad Ball: The Bartman Play.

Many fans in the entire section thought that the ball was clearly going to be in the seats and out of play but the wind seemed to blow it back toward the field.

Most important of all the lawyers determined that Steve Bartman, as well as others did reach into the field to interfere with Alou’s catch. 

The conclusion was that umpire Everitt called the play incorrectly.

Specifically, Rule 6.01 (e) (3:16) states:

If spectator interference clearly prevents a fielder from catching a fly ball, the umpire shall declare the batter out.

When there is spectator interference with any thrown or batted ball, the ball shall be dead at the moment of interference and the umpire shall impose such penalties as in his opinion will nullify the act of interference.

3:16? As in John 3:16?  Stop it!

No grace, just law. 

Castillo would have been out and the game would have continued with two outs in the inning.

Here is where things fell apart. 

The network showed the replay from multiple angles and zeroed in on the face of one fan, Steve Bartman. 

Dane Placko, a lifelong Cubs fan and a member of the parish I served, was there as a reporter for WFLD, and remembers the horrors of what happened next in a YouTube Video. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE6iY346pNE

I have always thought the media did the Steve Bartman a great disservice.

Placko told me: “Security kept bringing fan after fan down.  Fans who had been throwing stuff at the perpetrator.  We didn’t know which one was which. Finally they brought him down with his head covered.”  The reaction was ugly beyond measure.

When I was his pastor I asked Placko if we really needed to know the fan’s name?  The question gave him pause. 

As a newsman his first reaction was to get the story, the whole story, and that story included the question, “Who?”  I understand that! But I still believe that considering the reaction of the fans at Wrigley and the general populace the “who” was not something we needed know.

The next morning The Chicago Sun-Times spilled the beans.

Had we not known his name the police wouldn’t have been called to protect his home.  The police wouldn’t have to cordon off his place of work.  His family wouldn’t have had to change their phone number because of the threatening phone calls.  And the scapegoat would have never had to go into hiding.  Steve Bartman’s name was one of those things that we just didn’t need to know.

Finally, we tend to forget what happened after - none of which could be blamed on Steve Bartman or any other fan in attendance that night.

Castillo walked. Rodriguez followed with a single, scoring Juan Pierre. Miguel Cabrera hit a grounder to short that could have been a double play, but Alex Gonzalez muffed it, loading the bases with one out. Derrek Lee doubled, scoring Castillo and Rodriguez. Kyle Farnsworth came in to replace Mark Prior and intentionally walked Lowell, loading the bases again. Conine hit a fly ball to deep right, scoring Cabrera and allowing Lee and Lowell to move up a base. Farnsworth intentionally walked Todd Hollandsworth, loading the bases for the third time. Mike Mordecai doubled, scoring all three runners. Pierre singled in Mordecai, capping the Marlins’ eight-run inning.9

The Cubs lost the controversial game 8-3 but there was still one chance left to advance to the World Series.  That game was a nothing burger and the Marlins were off to the World Series.

In 2007 and 2008 the Cubs were blanked in the NLDS 3-0 by the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers.

Last year after defeating the Cardinals 3 games to 1 the Cubs went on to lose three games to the dreaded New York Mets.

This year, things were different. 

In a play-offs and World Series that were described by Tom Verducci as “baseball at its excruciating best” the Chicago Cubs, after five-score-years-and-eight, won the World Series.9

If there is one moment that described the entire post-season it was this exchange between David Ross and Anthony Rizzo when the Cubs were leading 3-1 in game 7.

Rizzo: I can’t control myself right now. I’m trying my best.
Ross: It’s understandably so, buddy.
Rizzo: I’m an emotional wreck.
Rizzo: I’m in a glass case of emotion right now.
Ross: Wait until the 9th with this three-run lead.10

My first reaction was - “Who talks like that?” “A glass case of emotion?” Those sound like words that were written for some soap opera.

My second was Ross should have warned us all not only about the 9th,  but the rain delay, and the 10th.

By the time it was over and the Cubs won not only was the whole city an emotional wreck but my emotional glass case had shattered all over the living room floor.  And I’m a White Sox fan!  I can’t imagine what it was like for those who bled Cubbie blue.

When I finished sweeping myself up and watching every post-game show there was and I climbed into bed my heart rate showing sure signs of tachycardia.  I thought about calling an ambulance but was worried that none would be available from others suffering the same malady.

Countless times since the turn of the century I have presided over funerals of people in their 80's, 90's and even 100's who were lifelong Cubs fans who never saw their beloved team in the Series.  That night they rejoiced with us albeit upon a distant shore and in a greater light. They sang “Go Cubs! Go!” with angels and archangels and the whole hosts of heaven.

The last time the Cubs were in the World Series World War II was ending.  When they finally won a World Series we were, by anyone’s standards, concluding perhaps the most divisive year in recent memory. 

Dare I recap?

A bomb blast in Brussels; a airport attack in Turkey; a nightclub shooting in Orlando; police shooting and being shot; people taking sides over black lives mattering or blue lives mattering; the streets some neighborhoods in Chicago, et. al.

Add to that a dumpster fire of a presidential campaign that stretched on forever and when it ends might not leave us sooty but scared.

After having our dream realized by a Chicago Cubs World Series victory perhaps now we can hope for the dream that was played out on “Saturday Night Live’s” cold open. 

For the past few weeks Alex Baldwin and Kate McKinnon have been doing devastatingly accurate portrayals of the Trump and Clinton debates and campaigns.  On the last Saturday night before the election they broke character.

“I just feel gross all the time,” Baldwin said, turning to the audience and asking, I mean don’t you guys feel gross all the time about this?”

“You know what I think would help us?” McKinnon asked. Let’s get out of here.”

Then the duo bolted from 30 Rock, running hand and hand out of the studio. Baldwin, as Trump, hugged a black man and an Hispanic/American family. McKinnon as Clinton hugs a man in a “Trump That B****” t-shirt. Finally they joined hands and formed a circle with the panoply of Americans who are visiting Times Square - Red, Yellow, Black, White, Gay Straight - and they danced.   

When the duo returned to the stage, an emotional Baldwin looked into the camera and said, “Now it’s time to get out there and vote. None of this will have mattered if you don’t vote.”

McKinnon, her eyes sincerely welling, said, “And we can’t tell you who to vote for but on Tuesday we all get a chance to choose what kind of country we want to live in.”11

We want to live in a world where even more people than the millions who gathered on Friday can come to celebrate not just a World Series win but love’s victory over hate.

That’s my dream and, if you have plowed this far through this tome on baseball and life, I’ll bet it is yours too.

Let’s pray that it doesn’t take 108 years for this dream to be realized.

______________

1. Gary Bedingfield, “Baseball in World War II.”  http://www.baseballinwartime.com/baseball_in_wwii/baseball_in_wwii.html


2. George F. Will, A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred.  p. 49.

3. ibid., 65.

4. Joel Reuter, “The 1969 Chicago Cubs: A Look Back.”  Bleacher Report, February 2, 2010.  http://bleacherreport.com/articles/338335-a-look-back-the-1969-chicago-cubs#

5.  http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1984/YPS_1984.html

6. Houston Mitchel, “The Cubs are 0-6 in NLCS Closeout Games: Here is How it Happened.  The Los Angeles Times.  October 21, 2016.
 http://www.latimes.com/sports/mlb/la-sp-cubs-chart-20161021-snap-story.html

7. Kent Babb, “Steve Bartman’s Agent Keeps the Wolves from the Door.” The Chicago Tribune. October 15, 2015. 
http://www.latimes.com/sports/mlb/la-sp-cubs-chart-20161021-snap-story.html

8. Lisa Olson, "Fan Latest Goat in Historic Hex." Los Angeles Times. October 15, 2003. p. 65.

9. Tom Verducci, "This Has Been a World Series for the Ages."  Sports Illustrated. November 2, 2016.

10. Andrew Joseph, "A Glass Case of Emotion." USA Today.  November 2, 2016.

11.  Greg Evans, "Alex Baldwin and Kate McKinnon Break Character."  Deadline Hollywood. November 6, 2016.

Church: Declining Membership

One of this issues that have worried church leaders in the last couple of decades is the decline in church membership and the rise of the group called “nones.”

We know the statistic as presented by the PEW research group: 

Mainline Protestants have one of the lowest retention rates of any major religious tradition, with only 45% of those raised in the faith continuing to identify with it as adults. Young adults are particularly unlikely to stay with mainline churches -–just 37% of Millennials who were raised in the mainline tradition still identify with mainline Protestantism,1  

Solutions abound. 

One of the most interesting comes from Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist Studies and church history at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, who suggests that the decline of church membership is a result of “the demise of church and city-wide revivals once common in the United States, especially in the South.”

He goes on to say:
“There was a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries where you would have six-week revivals. They would go into little towns and at night everything was shut down,” Leonard said. “This was true for Methodists and Baptists in particular. It was the best show in town,” he said.2

It was also something that few of us in northern, mainline, denominations ever experienced. 
Most Yankees, I would wager, had never even heard the term “Born Again” until Jimmy Carter ran for president. And, we were completely in the dark about what went on at a “revival.”

The closest we ever came was a Billy Graham crusade.  These were a lot like church except for the altar call at the end where people would stream out of the stands while the choir sang “Just as I Am” over and over again as Graham’s voice boomed forth, “The busses will wait!  The busses will wait!” These crusades were very benign affairs when compared with what came after.

I believe that the decline in church attendance coincides with the rise and fall of “televangelists” who used the expansion of cable television to their advantage.

Their exploits are excruciatingly detailed in Lutheran Pastor, Nadia Bolz-Webers’ book Salvation on the Small Screen.  In which she, for our good and the good of the whole church, watched 24 hours of Christian television.  I could explain what she saw to  you but instead I suggest you follow this link to “Crazy Televangelists” on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odLDEcRoZf8

I must confess that watching the video I laughed until I cried for there was much to laugh at and cry about.

Since it was on television it had to be real, right?  Whether it was or not the charlatans became the face and voice of the church.  When the fledgling news networks needed someone for an interview to boost ratings they did not turn to the relatively unknown preachers like William Sloan Coffin at the Riverside Church in New York or any mainline seminary professor who labored in obscurity, but to their own.

Before we even knew it Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, D.  James Kennedy and Robert Schuller becames our spokesmen.  In the interest of full disclosure I did watch Schuller and Kennedy but more for the music than the preaching.  (I was in seminary, what did I know besides everything?)

To say the least they were an abrasive bunch.

However, they were the embodiment of an article I have saved from my seminary days: “Rinky Dink Religion Goes Big Time.”  In this 1977 article Church of the Brethren scholar, Murray L.  Wagner becomes almost prophetic:

As I shudder over the Christian "schlock wave" of the future, I can hear practically every air wave pulsating with rinky-dink religion. It will be piped into Christian elevators. Christian steak and shake drive-ins, the offices of Christian business executives, into the hair driers of Christian beauty parlors, and the locker room of the Dallas Cowboys..

What's more, I fully expect rinky-dink religionists to start cashing in on the booming tourist trade. I can envision a day in the not-too-distant future when the arrival of the ticky-tack millennium will be announced from "Godland," probably to be built in the American heartland, at a place on a straight continuum between Busch Gardens and Seven Flags.

  (This) wave of popular piety (will) inundate us as hucksters discover that ''old time religion" is the formula for quick money and publicity.3

Remember that this is one year before Heritage USA opened in 1978. 

By 1986 it attracted nearly 6 million visitors annually and employed around 2,500 people. The facilities included the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, Main Street USA, an indoor shopping complex, the Heritage Village Church, a 400-unit campground, The Jerusalem Amphitheater, conference facilities, a skating rink, prayer and counseling services, full cable TV network production studios, Bible and evangelism school, visitor retreat housing, staff and volunteer housing, timeshares and the Heritage Island water park and recreational facilities.

Next time I go to the track to watch and bet the ponies I’m taking Murray Wagner with me!

He would become even more prophetic when he wrote:

Claptrap has so pervaded the pop-culture of Christian America that it is now very dangerous to suggest that the God of the prophets and of the prophets' sons and daughters might just devour rinky-dink religion and throw it up - and out of the garden of living things.

The devouring came when these “religious empires” began to fall. 

The Charlotte Observer caught Jim Bakker and his PTL overselling “lifetime memberships” to a hotel he was building on the grounds of Heritage Village U.S.A. For $1000 a throw you were promised a three night stay at his luxury hotel.  You and thousands of others!

It turned out that not enough rooms were built to accommodate all the partners who bought into the promise.  The other money went to operating expenses including Bakker’s salary and a payout of hush-money to his mistress Jessica Hahn.  4

Then there was Jimmy Swaggart who in February of 1988 was caught with another woman who was not his wife.  In a YouTube video his weeping (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWkVa-_sd24) became the image of Christianity. 

In effect it was the beginning of the end of a decade long party.

The problem was that those of us in the mainstream church never realized that our party would be ending too.

I was just starting in the ministry when all this happened and I was sure that people could
differentiate what was happening on television from what was going on in their local parishes where women and men were faithfully preaching, teaching, baptizing, and visiting the sick.

It’s not that the faithful couldn’t but those who were looking for excuses never to darken a church door again had them served up to them in a silver chalice.  The church they saw on television was loaded with charlatans whose prayers preyed on the emotions of the desperate. 

“Got an earache send in your $75 ‘love gift’ for a healing cloth.”  “Need a new car ‘sow of seed of faith’ of $500 for a new one.”  “About to lose your home ‘write a letter with a check for $1,000 enclosed’ and you will be living in a mansion.”
  
In the meantime, mainstream Christianity was offering up exactly nothing.  Few churches north of the Mason-Dixon line were anywhere to be found on television. 

If there were any offerings it was “30 Good Minutes” produced by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club.  It was crushing boring and laughably bad. You could flip from the music of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church to the stark studio of Channel 11 and feel the air get sucked out of your spiritual sails. 

“Is this the best we can do?” I found myself wondering again and again.

The only good news is that those television charlatans who once were everywhere are now found only on the highest numbers of the cable or satellite menus.  But the same faces are still there.

One Saturday night I was channel suffering and there was Brother Swaggart, now 81, still preaching his message of division and damnation to those who don’t believe like he does on any given issue.

Most amazing of all was when, one afternoon, again riding the remote, there was another familiar face.  “Where have I seen that old goat before?”  I asked myself. 

It was Jim Bakker broadcasting from a place called Morningside “where [the] 74-year-old pastor, is preaching an imminent end of the world and, for those who survive it, survivalist meals.
He is also promoting Morningside  - - a Christian retreat and retirement community set on 600 acres of land near Branson, Missouri.5

Seeing these two birds still in business the only response I could think of was: “We’re going to have to drive a stake through their hearts to get rid of these guys.”

Perhaps our only hope is to return to being what “Rinky-Dink” author suggests.  Let’s hope the prophetic longings of Murray L.  Wagner will come true:

 I want some honesty. I want confession time for those who yelp the loudest about their love of the Word, their devotion to the Scriptures, and their allegiance to the Kingdom of God.  Spare the electric bands, cut the splashy productions. Put as much energy in justice and mercy: the world will get the message.

Without one neon sign or a single bumper sticker, the world will know exactly who we are (and) the world will hear the name we bear.

Let’s pray that sometime soon after the tumult and the shouting dies the church’s prophetic voice will be heard once again in the land.
_______________
1. Michael Ripka, “Mainline Protestants make up shrinking number of U.S. adults.” May 18, 2015. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-u-s-adults/

2.  Jeff Brumley, “Looking for the origin of decline in the U.S. church? Baptist historian thinks he may know the answer.” August 12, 2016.  https://baptistnews.com/article/looking-for-the-origin-of-decline-in-the-u-s-church-baptist-historian-thinks-he-may-know-the-answer/#.WAfkEYWcHIU

3. Murray L.  Wagner, “Rinky-dink Religion Goes Big Time.” The Messenger.  January, 1977. http://www.manchester.edu/OAA/Library/Archives/index.aspx?q=Wagner

4. Emily Johnson, “A Theme Park, a Scandal, and Faded Ruins of Televangelism.  Politics and Religion fit for Polite Company.  October 28, 2014. http://religionandpolitics.org/2014/10/28/a-theme-park-a-scandal-and-the-faded-ruins-of-a-televangelism-empire/

5.  Maggie Harbour, “Jailed Televangelist Jim Bakker is Back in Business.”
The Daily Mail.  September 15, 2014.  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2752391/Jailed-televangelist-accused-rapist-Jim-Bakker-business-hawking-survivalist-kits-including-padded-clothing-buckets-beans-enemas.html#ixzz4NT3FaGpX)