Leaving Home: Last Installment

So here is the last installment of "Leaving Home" as promised.

Its 1981 and I'm sitting in the tiny bedroom of our basement apartment (1 bedroom - 3 young kids) in Brooklyn Park, MN with my Dad. We were taking a break while my family's belongings were being loaded into a grain truck by a few good men who had come to collect their new Pastor with his wife and kids and to see us safely to the parsonage belonging to our first church (Otho-Kalo Community Church) on the top of a picturesque hill above the Des Moines River in central Iowa.

Of course I needed the break more than my Dad. He was in way better shape. But he clearly wanted to talk. He had something important to say. So we found a quiet spot and he earnestly told me a story about the first time he left home and how he tried to find his way back.

He was 3 years old and living in a shack somewhere in rural Oklahoma (he was born in 1906 in Tuttle OK) with his Mom and Dad and 2 older brothers. It seems his Dad was a drunk and a gambler who neglected (at the least) his young family until one day his grandmother (an Irish woman named Garrett sp.?) could abide it no longer.

[I'm picturing the next part of the story in John Ford western mode]

So this old lady with a bonnet and long skirts comes riding up in a horse-drawn buckboard wagon in a cloud of dust one evening, pulls hard on the reins and comes to stop outside the shack, sets the brake, climbs down from the wagon and shouts to her daughter "Goldie! You grab what you can in a hurry, climb up in this wagon and we'll see the back of this place afore that no good scalawag of a husband of yours gets back. I'll help with the boys." And so with her cape flared out in the wind she swoops down like an angry hawk to where 3 year old Harvey sits at play and suddenly gathers him up and plops him down into the wagon with his mother and brothers and their few belongings and drives off into the sunset to God knows where and this little boy will not see his father again for over 30 years.

Now I can see the pain in my old man's face as his mind searches out the rest of this story and he conveys it to me with tears in his eyes as I'm about to load my family in our buckboard wagon (58 Chevy or 73 Buick or whatever) after 8 years of college, seminary and post grad study (I was 35).

I come from a family of story tellers and listeners (we all like to gab into the wee hours if we can find anyone to listen) but this was a story that I'd never heard until that day.

So now my Dad is in his thirtysomethings with three young daughters. He's a good 1200 miles away from that old shack and three full decades have gone by. His mom had remarried, he had been raised by a step-dad, the family had eventually made their way to Minneapolis where he met and fell in love with my mother at Washington Elementary School and they had married as teen-agers (at least Mom was) and had begun to raise their own family. And yet the longing to know his father had not gone away.

A lifetime of work and struggle had come and gone and my Dad was now in a position to take a long-awaited trip to Texas to meet his father. I believe they had had little if any contact for all those years. So he leaves Minneapolis with his wife (my Mom) and heads for Texas.

Somewhere out in rural Texas they come to a mailbox on a dirt road at the end of a long driveway up to a farm house and there's the name (Evans). "This must be it" he says to Mom and his heart is pounding as they slowly turn down that lane, pull up in the yard and make their way to the screen door where they're met by my grandpa's second wife and family and warmly invited in for coffee and some delicate conversation. "Your Pa's out plowing the back 40. Go on out there, I'm sure he'd be please to see you." So, while Mom stays and visits in the kitchen with these kind women my Dad goes out to find the back forty.

When he comes up on the field he sees the old man with the plow behind a team of mules some distance across the field. He climbs over the fence and walks through the soft, newly turned loam to his father who stands by the plow and waits for his approach. When my Dad introduces himself his father interrupts him and says

[at this point in the narrative I want my readers to know that everything you've read so far has come from my recollection of that day and certainly I may have embellished a few things or gotten a few things wrong. My sisters will correct, I have no doubt, some of the details, even the grammar of this blog as well they should. But this next bit is verbatim. These are the very words that have stayed with me all these years and my memory is sealed by the recollection of the deep emotion that my Dad displayed at this point in the story. He struggled...stopped and started...shook the tears from his eyes and cleared his throat as he recalled to me his father's words...]

"As soon as I saw you come over the fence I knew you were one of the boys."

This is where my father's story came to an end. It was time to go back to work loading the truck, but when he came to the end of his story he looked pleadingly at me through tears as if to ask without words "Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Of course I thought I did. It seemed to me then and now that what he was saying to me was simply that there is an indestructible bond between us and that wherever I traveled he would never forget me and whenever I came home again he would recognize me as one of his boys.

Of course the spiritual analogies here are rich for me. God is like my grandpa in a way. When we who are His children have wandered far and long from His fields and care and if we should return to Him He'll say to us (no matter what has intervened) that as soon as we stepped over the fence He recognized us a one of His own.

But God is very much unlike my grandpa also. He doesn't stand and wait for us to cross the fence. He's really more like my Dad. The longing runs deeper in Him than in us. He takes the initiative and pursues us. He leaves His home (Phil. 2; Luke 15:4 ff.) to find us and when He does He carries us (all the way!) to our real home and we'll never leave home again!

Authority and Submission

I got pulled over by the local constabulary the other day. As providence would have it (I almost said luckily) I was actually late for a funeral. "You're conducting the funeral?" asked the officer. "Yes I am." He shook his head and said something like "at this kind of speed (over 60 in a 30 zone I'm ashamed to admit) you're lucky its not your funeral". He actually let me off with a warning and let me know that this was an unheard of mercy. "I don't give breaks on speeding like this". When you pray at the funeral, say a prayer of thanks". (I didn't wait to get there)

I was, of course, very submissive to this officer. I saw the lights flashing, noticed his badge and uniform and dutifully pulled over, produced my license when asked, etc. It made me think a bit about issues of authority and submission.

Last night at a weekly Bible study in which we have been studying the Gospel of Matthew we came (providentially) upon an interesting exchange in Mt. 21:23ff. in which the question of the authority of Jesus is raised by the chief priests and elders. These guys were having a hard time with submission. This account follows the triumphal entry, the cleansing of the temple and the healing of a number of “lame and blind” after which Jesus accepts the praise of children (vv. 14-16). (The lights were flashing big time!)

Because these civic and spiritual leaders are unwilling to submit to Jesus’ authority, i.e., to acknowledge both its divine source and character, they are self-excluded from open and truthful dialogue with the Rabbi who is the truth.

Contrast the conspiratorial huddle and political considerations of these sad men with the joy of the children in the temple and of the people confessing Jesus as the Christ as He entered the city.

Those who joyfully submitted to the authority of Christ had no power of their own to protect and rejoiced to see the signs of the kingdom breaking out. The priests and elders wanted to retain their power and the advance of the kingdom was seen as a threat. They were not impressed with the healing performed by Jesus or by the cleansing of the temple, both of which are self evidently awesome.

They chose to retain their own power and as a result lost their opportunity to experience the redemptive power of the gospel which only comes to those who submit to the one whose children call Him Lord. No wonder Jesus was soon to cry out

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
(Matthew 23:37-39)

I'm Back

A few of you have encouraged me to continue to blog so I'm back at it. I was sick for over 2 months with a respiratory infection of some kind. It really knocked me down for a while but I'm completely recovered so I'll be blogging away again. Lets keep in touch!