Author: jgarrison

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Humbled but Valued

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Churches
January 29, 2023
I Peter 2:1-10

Sermon recorded on Friday, January 27, 2023 at Mayberry Church

At the beginning of worship: 

Last week, I began by discussing humility. I will again hit on this topic in today’s service, as it is a major them in Peter’s first letter. Christians are to be humble, because we give God the credit and realize that without the help of the Almighty, we would be nothing.

The great 19th Century British Calvinist Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, writing about our work in helping others discover the grace found in Jesus Christ, said:

Humility makes you feel that you are nothing and nobody and that, if God gives you success in that work, you will be driven to ascribe to Him all the glory for none of the credit of it could properly belong to you.[1]

I only partly agree with Spurgeon on this. Yes, God’s grace should make all Christians humble. On that, we agree. However, God’s grace shouldn’t make us feel as if we are nothing or nobody. We are somebody, for God has claimed us. We are a member of God’s family and that’s more than enough to make us something. However, it also means we need to give God the credit. Scripture reminds us of this. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, “rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.”[2]And to the Corinthians he wrote, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”[3] We’re here today to give God the glory. 

Before reading the Scripture:

Before reading the scripture for today, let me summarize where we’ve come in this letter. In the first chapter of 1st Peter, we saw how Peter addressed his audience with a blessing that reminds them of God’s work in their lives. And while the term “Trinity” wasn’t used in first century Christianity, Peter hits on all three members of the Trinity. We’ve been chosen by God the father, sanctified by the Spirit, and sprinkled with Jesus’ blood. Then Peter reminds the reader of their living hope in Jesus Christ (my sermon from two weeks ago).[4] Because of our hope, he calls us to live holy lives (my sermon last week).[5]

First verse

As we begin the second chapter, I debated whether to attach the first verse with last week’s sermon or this week. The verse reminds us of what we’re “cleansing ourselves of” as we strive for holiness. But it also goes with the verses following as we consider our calling by Christ into the Christian life where considered a part of the chosen race, commissioned as priests, naturalized as citizens in the holy nation, and considered God’s own people.[6]  

Read 1 Peter 2:1-10  

There are three things I want you to take from this passage. First, the importance of the church, the body of Christ. Second, the reason why we are called into this body, which is to glorify God. And finally, the impact our calling by God should have on our lives and how we relate to others. 

Avoid sins that break unity

As I mentioned before reading the scriptures, the first verse could go either with the previous chapter or this one. Part of this is the limitations created by chapter and verse numbers, which were not a part of the Scriptures until centuries after the Bible was completed. To show you two ways of understanding this verse, the New Revised Standard version places it clearly with the opening of the second chapter as they title the first ten verses, “The Living Stone and the Chosen People.” However, if you look at the Revised Common Lectionary, which I seldom follow, you will see when this passage comes up, they skip the last two verses of chapter 1 and begin Chapter 2 with verse 2.[7]

This opening verse, as I said before reading the scripture, addresses what’s important for us to rid ourselves of if we’re to live holy lives. Interestingly, however, the sins which are mentioned at this point in the letter are not what we might think of as most important. 

Peter discourages sins that break unity

Peter doesn’t address here what we might rate as the top ten individual sins. He doesn’t say to be honest in your business dealings or faithful in your relationships, or no violence. There’s no mention of avoiding immoral or illegal behavior… Peter will touch on some of those issues later in this letter.[8] But here, first, he harps on community-destroying vices. As one commentor on the passage points out, these are the type of sins “often tolerated by the modern church.” He wants his readers (including us) to avoid actions that cause bickering and division within the church. He knows persecution can strain the fellowship. So, he first insists we do our part to help the church remain united in God’s mission by avoiding malice and guile (or hypocrisy), insincerity, envy, and slander.[9]

Spiritual milk

Following this, Peter reminds us of our need of pure, spiritual milk. We must start off with what’s essential, as an infant begins its nourishment with only milk. This is a familiar metaphor in the New Testament Epistles, but Peter also must have had in mind Psalm 34, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”[10] We discover God’s goodness, which leaves us wanting more.

Coming to Christ, the living stone

The heart of this passage begins in verse 4, where he encourages his readers to come to Christ the living stone. Like Christ, society may reject us. As I’ve pointed out over the past two weeks, Peter’s audience found themselves rejected and on the outskirts of society. While society may reject us, we should remember that we are precious in God’s sight. As living stones ourselves, Christ collects and builds us into a spiritual house.

Stone Churches and this passage

I can’t read these verses without thinking about these stone-walled churches in which we worship here along the Parkway. Here again, we find an image of the importance of the body, the fellowship. Before these rocks were used to create these churches, they laid despised in fields. After all, they might be just below surface and at a place where they could nick a plow blade. In digging, they meant one had to lay aside the shovel and get out an iron bar to break up the stone. 

But as the members of these churches, who are now mostly gone, collected those “hated stones” out of their fields, they were brought here and mortared into these walls. Here, when combined with many other stones from other fields, they collectively serve a useful function. But when laying on or in the ground, a single stone might cause us to trip. Like the stones, when collected, we are much safer together than being alone where we (and because of us, others) might stumble. 

A Church of stoners?

On a side note, if you need to advertise our church to someone out on the margins of society, you can tell them that we’re a church of stoners… Of course, Peter uses such illustration long before it was adopted by hippies and those strung out on drugs. If you want to make such a suggestion, be sure to also refer to this passage, so they won’t get the wrong idea. 

The Cornerstone

Don’t be offended that Peter suggests we’re stones or rocks, for he also includes Christ in this grouping. Drawing upon Psalm 118:22, a verse quoted more often by Peter and Paul than any other verse in the Hebrew Bible,[11] Peter reminds us of that Christ is the cornerstone. The cornerstone, the most important stone in a building from which the walls are based, is Christ. 

And I’m sure Peter would include himself in this for the Savior changed his name from Simon to Peter, declaring that “on this rock I will build my church.”[12]

We are somebody!

Peter begins to conclude this section of the letter with a bold proclamation. We are, as he writes in verse 9, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.” I love the affirmation! Returning to my opening remarks from Charles Spurgeon. Yes, we’re to be humble, but we are somebody because of what God has done for us. God calls us out of darkness and into the marvelous light and we’re to rejoice in what we’ve experienced. 

An ancient poem

In verse 10, Peter closes out this section with an ancient poem that reiterates what he just said.[13] “Once you were not a people, but now you’re God’s people…” The ancient Roman world was a caste society where everyone had their place. And if you were on the bottom rung of society’s ladder, you didn’t have many rights. But the gospel disturbed that order. The church didn’t see Roman citizenship as the end all. Instead, it was the citizenship into God’s kingdom that mattered. And in that kingdom, everyone is important, not just citizens or senators or Caesar.[14]  

The mosaic that makes up these rock-walled churches is beautiful. But the mosaic that makes up the church, the inclusion of us all, is even more beautiful because we’re all a part of the only kingdom that matters in eternity. 

Conclusion: how we should live

So, how should we live because of Peter’s writings? In our “Centered and Soaring” discipleship training we held back in November, one of the concepts taught was having “Jesus’ Eyes.” We’re to see others as Jesus sees them. This is a powerful concept that should cause us to have empathy for others and free us from reacting to what we may take as an affront. 

We don’t know what others endure, so we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Someone cuts you off in traffic, you let it go. Yeah, they may be a jerk, but they might also be rushing someone to the hospital. We don’t know, so we let them go. It may be humbling, but that’s what we’re called to do. 

Everyone is created by God, in God’s image, so we treat them others than they treat us. It’s hard, but that’s how true disciples try to live. That’s the challenge we have before us. Use your eyes to see others the same way Jesus see’s us and them. Amen. 

[1] Charles Spurgeon, The Soul-Winner (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1895), 47. Quoted in Christopher A. Hutchinson, Rediscovering Humility: Why the Way Up is Down (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2018), 193.

[2] Philippians 4:4. 

[3] 1 Corinthians 1:31.

[4] 1 Peter 1:3-12. See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2023/01/15/the-opening-of-first-peter/

[5] I Peter 1:13-25. See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2023/01/22/6254/

[6] 1 Peter 2:9.

[7] The Revised Common Lectionary is on a three-year cycle in which it attempts to “hit” the major themes in scripture, but not all the Bible. This year, on April 23, will have 1 Peter 1:17-23. Then on April 30, it will jump to 1 Peter 2:19-25, only to jump back on May 7 to 1 Peter 2:2-10. The lectionary omits 1 Peter 1:24 to 1 Peter 2:1  Commentaries also divide this passage up in different ways. 

[8] See 1 Peter 2:11-12.

[9] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 80.

[10] Psalm 34:8. For milk as a metaphor for basic Christian teaching see1 Corinthians 3:1-2 and Hebrews 5:13. 

[11] See Scott Hoezee, “Commentary on 1 Peter 2:2-10, https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2017-05-08/1-peter-22-10

[12]  Matthew 16:17-19.

[13] Davids, 93. 

[14] See Joel B. Green, “Aliens and Strangers in the World: A Contextual Theology,” in 1 Peter: The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) 191-197. 

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Doug and Elvira: A Pastoral Tale

Community Presbyterian Church, Cedar City, UT, where this conversation occurred. The congregation moved into a new and much larger facility in 1997.

A slender woman in a business suit stood at my office door. I guessed her age to be in her early fifties, fifteen or so years older than me. She was attractive and well-dressed. I wondered what she was selling. I stood and invited her in. 

“I’m Jeff.  What can I do for you?”  

As I offered my hand, I realized she was shaking. Her rather limp hand clasped mind and, looking down, she asked quietly, “Can we talk?” 

I gestured for her to take a seat as I stepped back behind my desk, sat down, smiled and nodded. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were both destined to be shocked by what would be revealed.

“I’m Elvira’s daughter,” she said.

“Yes, Elvira, she’s a special woman,” I said with a smile.  

In a few months, I had become very acquainted with Elvira. An elderly woman, she shown up at worship one Sunday morning in late 1993 or early 1994. I don’t remember if it was the first Sunday, but she soon starting requesting each week that we pray for her son, Carl.  I included him in our prayers during worship and he remained on the congregation’s prayer list. Over time I learned he lived in Elko, Nevada and was experiencing a relapse of cancer. Elvira was from Nebraska. She now lived in an adult foster home in Cedar City, Utah where I had visited her. The couple who ran the home were happy to see to it that Elvira got to church every Sunday morning and someone from our congregation would give her a ride home. While I was unsure about her living arrangements and her story, she had in a few months become a part of the church’s family.

Sitting in my office, Elvira’s daughter began telling me the story of moving her mother from Nebraska to Utah. At first, Elvira had lived with her daughter and son-in-law at their home in St. George, a town fifty miles south of Cedar City.

“It was a mistake,” she confessed. 

At their age, without children of their own, Elvira was like a child. And she had become a wedge between her and her husband. I sensed Elvira’s daughter experienced guilt for having placed her mother in the home but didn’t know what else she could do.  

“Are there other siblings who could help?” I asked. 

“No,” she said trembling.  

“I know you have a brother who has cancer. Is he Elvira’s only other child?”

“Yes. But my brother has been a problem all along. He was married and had a son, but then left his wife for a man. That’s a sin, but my mother just accepts it.”  

“Well, he’s her son,” I said.  

“Don’t you think that’s a sin?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that,” I responded. “But that’s not the issue. We’re all sinners and to her, he’s also her child, her flesh and blood.”

“He’s always asking my mother for money, and never pays it back.” I could sense she had nothing but disgust for her brother. There was a pause and I waited for her to continue.

“My mother doesn’t have that much, but she he gave him enough for a down payment for that house he and his opera singing lover built in Virginia City.”  

Doug, 1988

My brain exploded. “It couldn’t be,” I thought. Maybe she sensed my reaction for she stopped and, for a moment, we sat quietly.

“Did your brother also go by the name, Doug?”  I finally asked.

She turned white. Her eyes widened. After a moment, she nodded and bowed her head. Finally, she continued. “His name is Carl Douglas. We always called him Carl, but his friends know him as Doug.”

“I know him,” I said, confessing what was now obvious. “I haven’t seen him in three or four years and didn’t know he’d moved to Elko.” 

—

Memories of Doug flooded my mind. It seemed so ironic I’d been praying for a couple of months for someone I once knew well.

I’d met Doug and Rudi in 1988, right after moving to Virginia City. I was thirty-one years old and a student pastor at a small congregation there for a year. The first week, Doug and Rudi invited me to dinner at their home in the Highlands.  Although they were already living there, the house was still under construction. Doug had done most of the work. Before dinner, they showed me around their home in which the kitchen cabinets still lacked doors and there was much trim to be finished. I had the sense they might be gay, which was confirmed when they showed me their master bedroom. I was nervous, looking in, as I’d never been in a bedroom of someone gay. But I almost laughed. I was amazed at how messy it was, which went against my stereotypical images that I had of how gay men lived.  

First Presbyterian, Christmas 1988. The nativity scene is to the right.

Over the next few months, I got to know them better. Rudi sang at church functions and Doug was our go-to handy man. He built a manger for a nativity display we posted beside the church at Christmas. He had helped me winterize the house I was living in. Later, he’d help design a retaining wall that kept the hill behind the church from encroaching on the sanctuary. By then, though, he was too sick to do the work.

Perhaps my best memory of Doug was from New Year’s Eve, which was a Saturday in 1988. As I practiced my sermon for Sunday that afternoon in the sanctuary, I heard water run under the organ. Upon investigating, I found a crack in the pipe supplying our hot water heating system. I called Doug and he came down immediately with his tools. Together, we spent an hour on our bellies, under the organ, cutting out the damaged pipe with a hacksaw and then soldering in a new piece. We took turns holding the pipe and torch, as we each talked about our plans for the evening. Thanks to our efforts, heat was restored, even though we were both late for our respective parties.

Doug also helped me with my first computer. He ordered the parts and built the computer, showing me how it fit together. This was in January 1989. The computer had 640 kilobytes of RAM, a 30 meg hard drive, and a 5 1/4 floppy disk. He only charged me for the parts. It was still expensive, but about half of what a computer cost in those days (which is more than they cost today). With the coming of a computer, I would never write another sermon by hand.

Me, backcountry skiing outside Virginia City, late December 1988

A few months into the new year, Doug became sick. He had tests and asked me to go with him to the doctor to hear the report. It was cancer, lymphoma. The prognosis wasn’t good. The doctor had tears in his eyes as he talked about the prognosis. 


Doug soon started chemotherapy. On at least one occasion, I drove him to Reno for his treatments. We’d had a pleasant talk heading down the mountain on Geiger Grade. On the way back, Doug was sick and spend much of the trip with his head in a bag. By late summer, when I was leaving to return to seminary, Doug had lost most of his hair, but he was doing better. In the summer of 1992, when I visited Virginia City, I stayed with him and Rudi. Doug had been in remission for over a year. 

Later that year, I’d heard through mutual friends that they had split up. I lost contact with them. 

C Street, Virginia City, December 1988

—

I’m sure the room was spinning for Doug’s sister as I told her about my time as a student pastor in Virginia City and how Doug had been very involved in that church. We talked for some time that afternoon, as I tried to encourage her to reconcile with her brother.   

I am sure many people would consider this meeting as a coincidence, but I saw God’s hand-written all over it. I had to reconnect with Doug. The phone number Elvira, his mother, had for Doug in Elko no longer worked. I made some calls to friends in Virginia City. No one had heard from Doug in a while, but I was given a phone number for Rudi, who was now living in Las Vegas. Calling him, I was shocked to learn he and his new lover had moved Doug down for Elko. Doug was living with them. He had become so weak that he could no longer care of himself and there was fear he would be homeless. 

A few weeks later, as I was coming back from a trip to California, I stopped in Vegas and visited Doug. He was resting on the couch and remained prone the entire time. I was afraid it would be the last time we’d see each other. I could tell that he was pleased I had stopped and that his mother was in the church I served. I stayed only for an hour as Doug appeared exhausted.  

It turned out that wasn’t the last time that I saw Doug. A few weeks later, in early September, Rudi called and said that Doug had rallied and wanted to come up and to see his mother and me. The day of the reunion of Doug and his mother was hot with not a cloud in the sky. We toured Cedar City and ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant. By the time lunch was over, Doug was tired. Rudi suggested they head back to Vegas. But before they left, as we stood talking in the parking lot, Doug pulled me aside and asked if I would be willing to officiate at his funeral. He knew it wouldn’t be long. I assured him it would be an honor.

It was just a week or two later when I received the call that Doug had died. He was 48 years old. I went over to Elvira’s to give her the news. She expected it. She wanted to attend the funeral and hoped her daughter would take her. However, her daughter refused, so I offered to drive Elvira down to Vegas. 

The day we left, her daughter asked us to stop along the way for dinner. She lived only a mile or so off Interstate 15, so it really wasn’t out of the way. I agreed, secretly hoping I could encourage her to attend the funeral, but she remained adamant. After dinner of hash made from a left-over brisket, that was quite good, we left her home in St. George and continued to Vegas. 

As the interstate came out of the Virgin River Gorge, a violent thunderstorm moved through with high winds and blinding lightning that cooled the air from the day’s heat. I slowed down in the driving rain, but it felt as if the storm was cleansing the earth. Elvira and I both marveled at the lightning. That night, we stayed overnight at Rudy’s. Elvira slept in Doug’s old bedroom while I camped out on the couch where Doug had laid when I visited him earlier in the summer.

The next morning, September 30th, I escorted Elvira inside the chapel at the cemetery for one last look at her son. Then they closed the casket. Slowly others gathered. By the time all were present, about a dozen of us, we filled only two rows in the oversized room. Rudi, Doug’s former lover, was there with his new lover. His son had made it.  Hilda, who had also been a student pastor in Virginia City a few years before me and was organizing a new church in Green Valley, a Vegas suburb, was there, as was her husband whom she met in Virginia City. A few women who had been friends with Doug and Rudi rounded out the group. On schedule, the chapel’s organist played music. Hilda and I read scriptures and offered prayers. Then Hilda sang a solo and I preached the homily. 

Afterwards, we made our way out of the cool chapel into the late-summer heat of a Las Vegas morning, stopping at the gravesite. A few words were spoken, and the party broke up.  Elvira and I stopped for lunch and then drove back to Cedar City that afternoon.

Before the end of the year, Elvira moved back to Nebraska, into an assisted living facility. We kept up with each other for a couple of years through Christmas cards, but then her cards stopped coming. I sure she is no longer with us.  However, I am glad to have had the privilege to minister to her and to her son. I just wished her daughter could have found a way to reconnect to her brother before it was too late.  But I learned that I can’t change people and it’s not my job. Instead, I had to care for all three in what limited ways I could.

About the photos:

Several of these pictures was from a photo album given to me by the church when I finished my year. I know I have other pictures of Doug and some with his mother when they made the trip to Cedar City. I am sure I also have others of Rudi. They were probably taken on slides and stored in one of several large tubs in storage. The photo of the old Community Presbyterian Church of Cedar City was taken from the church’s website.

Other Virginia City Stories:

Matt in Virginia City, 1988

Riding the Virginia and Truckee

Christmas Eve on the Comstock, 1988

I have often used stories about my time in Virginia City in sermons. In this recent sermon, I spoke of my uneasiness during my move to Virginia City.

Virginia City (with St. Mary’s in the Mountains in the middle). Photo taken from the Flowery Cemetery, southeast of the town.
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Hope in the future, but there’s work in the meantime

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Presbyterian Churches
January 22, 2023
1 Peter 1:13-25

Sermon recorded at Bluemont Church on Friday, January 20, 2022

At the beginning of worship: 

Are you humble? What I if told you that humility is at the heart of the gospel, would you believe it? As one author writes, “Christian discipleship cannot be supplemented with a dash of humility for flavor but must have humility as the main ingredient.”[1] Because of what God has done and is doing for us through Jesus Christ, Christians are to be humble and gentle people. 

Before reading the Scripture:

Today, we’re continuing with our look at 1st Peter. As I said last week, I’m preaching out of this book through Lent. First Peter is “not a course for inquirers,” nor does it give us a “comprehensive exposition of the faith,” one scholar wrote. Instead, this book is written for those who understand the basic truth of the gospel.[2] Peter’s hopes to encourage those of the faith who are marginalized in the pagan world. He reminds them of the hope they have in the future as well as their marching orders in the present.

 C. S. Lewis once said that “it is safe to tell the pure in heart that they will see God, for only the pure in heart would want to [see God].”[3]Although Peter mentions our call to holiness and the hope we have in life everlasting, he doesn’t bribe his readers into good behavior with the promise of heaven. Nor does he try to incite fear in them to get them to clean up their act. Instead, he assumes their goal is to see God. Heaven is their true home; therefore, he reminds them of God’s promises as he encourages them to remain faithful.  

Read 1 Peter 1:12-25.

The Late Great Planet Earth

When I was in high school, I read Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth. The book had a profound and long-lasting impact on me. In the short-run, it caused me to be nervous about how long the world was going to last; in the long-run it fueled my interest in the Scriptures as well as how people can find wild interpretations in the Bible. Although Lindsey doesn’t come out and give a date for Christ’s return, he certainly hints it would be soon—like in the mid-1980s, within 40 years of 1948. As I read this book in the mid-70s, it didn’t look like we had much time. 

Was 1988 the year?

Obviously, if I interpret Lindsey’s correctly, he was wrong even though once in 1988 I wondered. I was in the check out line at a K-mart in Carson City, Nevada. A woman came into the store and at the top of her lungs shouted: “Thus says the Lord.” Everything stopped. We all turned and looked at this lady. She continued, identifying Ronald Reagan (who at the time was winding up his last year as President) as the anti-Christ and warning us the end was at hand. As soon as she finished, she turned and walked out, not providing time for questions. All of us—cashiers and customers—stood stunned. Did she know something we didn’t. Obviously, not.  

Signs in the sky

One summer in high school, shortly after reading The Late Great Planet Earth, I became convinced the end was here. It had been a stormy day with numerous thunderstorms sweeping through the region. Early in the evening, as the last storm cleared, that fiery globe we know as the sun dropped below the horizon. Although the sun was not visible, its rays stuck the clouds in a way that everything turned blood red. It was eerie. I should have enjoyed the moment. But instead of being in awe at God’s creation, I thought the end was at hand. I pointed out the sky to my mother. She thought it beautiful and didn’t seem concerned, so I went into my room and prayed. 

Obviously, I was wrong, the world didn’t end. Since that time, I have learned to appreciate such special spectacular displays as a blessing from God instead of a sign of impending doom.

Why do we worry when the end will come?

There appears to be something about us as humans that make us curious about the future. That’s why so many books are written about the second coming, but it doesn’t stop there. After all, we pay consultants to predict what’s going to happen to the economy and to tell us where to invest our money—that is if we have any left after buying groceries.

Think about other ways we try to learn of the future. In many places, foretelling and palm reading appear to be a cottage industry. All you need is a quaint older home, a plywood sign, and something other than a basketball into which to gaze. The Farmer’s Almanac has been around for centuries, supposedly informing what the weather will be in the coming year. Most primitive religions have shamans, whose role is to predict the future. However, scripture is clear. The future is for God to know, not us.[4]

Peter’s audience: those without control

However, we want to know and to have some control over the future. It may have been no different for Peter’s audience. But in a way, Peter’s audience didn’t have much control over anything. As I explained last week, they have been alienated from society, who ironically thought of the Christians as atheists. They are, in a sense, homeless people. They don’t fit, a problem that the church faced for the first several centuries. 

The church after Constantine

After a few centuries things did change. Thanks to Emperor Constantine, the Roman Empire adopted Christianity and the church moved into the center of power. It’s been a rocky road ever since… 

Story about Francis of Assisi

To illustrate this, let me share with a legend of Francis of Assisi. This humble disciple was supposedly once given a tour of the Vatican by the Pope. According to legend, when the Pope showed Francis the papal treasury, he couldn’t help but brag. Referring to the story in Acts 3 with Peter and John at the temple, the Pope said: “No longer do I need to say to a poor beggar, silver and gold I have none.”   

“True,” Francis said, “but neither can you say, ‘stand up and walk.”[5]When the church became successful and powerful and rich, we lost the ability to trust and depend upon God. It became too easy to depend upon our own abilities, a battle we fight to this day.

Resident Aliens

One book that has been eye-opening to my entire ministry is Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony. The book was published during my last year in seminary, and I first read it shortly afterwards. The authors point to how the church became a supporting institute to western culture. 

By the way, they are critical of both the conservative and the liberal expression of the faith. They see both as the opposite side of the same coin, focusing on the political process. In other words, both talk about what we can do to change the world. Instead of calling for a church that’s foremost task is to change society, they call for a “confessing church,” whose purpose is to worship Christ and to determine how to live as followers of Jesus in a hostile world. For you see, our call does not come from society but from the Lord and it’s to him that we’re to be faithful. 

Hawerwas and Willimon see the “Confessing Church” as a church on a journey as its members, resident aliens, strive to know God. [6] This sounds a lot like the church Peter addresses, don’t you think?

Opening conjunctive

Our text for this morning opens with the conjunctive, “Therefore.” When you see such a word, you should go back and review what’s been said. He also shifts to the imperative.[7] Essentially Peter says, “because of what I said (what we covered last week), do this.” While our salvation depends on God, we are still expected to work with God as we strive for holiness. 

This “therefore” is followed by the command that we prepare our minds for action. But the Greek here translates more literally, “grid up your minds for work.” This creates an image of one rolling up their tunic as they prepare to go into the field to labor. We are not to spend our time just waiting for Jesus to return. Instead, we are to be busy, doing his work. Peter began this letter reminding his readers of their hope, now he moves on to our relationship to God as “obedient children.”[8]

On a journey to God

Peter sees us on a journey. We’re not home yet; we’re not home till Jesus arrives. But while we’re waiting, we’re to be busy doing his work. Our foremost task, with God’s help, is to strive for holiness. That’s the standard set for followers of Jesus. 

Striving for holiness goes against popular goal setting theory which says you set achievable goals. This is a goal we can never achieve on our own, but then that’s the message. We must depend on him, on our Savior, on the one who sacrificially gave his life for our lives. Our hope is in Christ, who paid the price for our redemption. Because of what Christ has done for us, we are to live for him.

God as a parent

Peter describes our relationship with God as that of a child relating to his or her father. As children obey parents, we are called to obey God. We’re also to fear God, but not in a terrifying fear that one might have of a vengeful God, but in the respectful fear that we might have of our parents. This is the type of fear that kept me from racing my dad’s car because I didn’t want to tell him I wrapped it around a pine tree. Such fear is good—it keeps us in line, but it also helps us to stand in awe of God and his power and glory. 

We don’t have to fear earthly masters

One scholar, recalling the precarious existence of Peter’s audience, suggests they’d understood his message as “Christians don’t have to fear their temporary masters [here on earth] because they fear God.”[9]Jesus says something very similar: “Do not fear those who can kill the body…, rather fear him that can destroy both the body and soul.”[10]Such an attitude puts things in perspective. Because God is good, instead of seeing our fear as binding, we should see that it frees us to be in awe of God’s glory.

An imperishable seed

Our passage closes with a reminder that this new life we have as Christians is born, not of a perishable seed, but an imperishable one. While Peter quotes Isaiah 40 (the grass withers, the flower fades), we’re reminded that our hope is grounded in God who has saved us eternally. But this doesn’t mean we can brag about the state of our souls. Because of what God has done for us, we can’t be prideful. Instead, such knowledge provides us hope and humbles us as we love God and our neighbors.[11] Amen.  

[1] Christopher A. Hutchinson, Rediscovering Humility: Why the Way Up is Down (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2018), 31.

[2] David L. Tiede, “An Easter Catechesis: The Lessons of 1 Peter,” Word & World (St. Paul, MN: Luther Northwest Seminary, 1984). 194.

[3] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain as quoted by Rueben Job and Norman Shawchuck in A Guide to Prayer (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983), 151.

[4] In a sermon I gave a year ago (using Jesus’ words and Saul striving to learn of his future), I tried to make this message clear. See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2022/01/remain-at-your-post-stay-awake/

[5] See Acts 3:1-10. This story has been told in many places. It probably isn’t factual but certainly illustrates Truth in a capital “T” sense. 

[6] Stanley Hauwerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989), 36-46. 

[7] Joel B. Green, 1 Peter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 33.

[8] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 65. 

[9] Tiede, 197.  Tiede is quoting Gerhard Krodel, “The First Letter of Peter,” Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation by Fuller, Sloyan, Krodel, Danker, & Fiorenza (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 74.

[10] Matthew 10:28.

[11] See Hutchinson, 94. 

The destination may be blurred, but the road is sure…
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Lopez and Volf: How might we foster a better world?

These are two other books which I read while down with COVID. While they may seem totally different, I did find some common ground between these two deep thinkers. Both are interested in how we can help others achieve their potential and sustain society. 

Barry Lopez, Horizon (2019, New York: Vintage Books, 2020), 572 pages including maps, index, and bibliography. 

In six extended essays, the late Lopez takes us along on his travels to isolated spots around the globe. As his fellow travelers, we are privy to his thoughts. Not only does he beautifully describe this location and what’s happening there, but each setting also allows him to converse with authors, artists, explorers, natives, and scientists. While each essay stands independently, there are several people from the past who appear in more than one of the essays. These include the British explorer, “James Cook,” the British scientist Charles Darwin, and a little known half-native Canadian, Randall McDonald (who taught English to the Japanese court years before Commander Perry opened the Japanese mainland to western shipping).  

The book opens with a 47-page introduction titled, “Looking for a Ship” in which Lopez provides some background into his life and explorations. Much of this material was also covered in more detail his memoir,About This Life. However, the introduction does provide the reader with a context to understand Lopez’s journeys that take him to the polar caps and places in between. Lopez’s first essay centers around Cape Foulweather in Oregon, where Lopez lived when not traveling. Cape Foulweather is also the site of James Cooks first sighting of land along America’s West Coast in 1778. He tells about his many visits to this point, as he reads James Cooks travels and strives to understand how the landscape has changed over the years.  His next stop is Skraeling Island in the arctic waters of northern Canada. Then he moves on to Puerto Ayora in the Galapagos, and then to the site of an archeological dig in Kenya (titled Jackal Camp). Next, he goes to an old British prison in Tasmania, before concluding his journey in the Antarctic.  Some of these sites, Lopez visits for only a season. Others, he has returned many times.

Except for the Antarctic essay, which is the only place on earth without any human ancestry, Lopez seeks out to understand the lives of those who lived before the region was “discovered.” This includes Native Americans in Oregon, Paleoeskimos in the Arctic, South Sea islanders in the Galapagos, early humans in Africa, and Aboriginals in Australia.  With his extensive knowledge in botany and biology, he discusses the changes to the landscape from human migration. As an example, I knew red foxes were not native to North America but learned the British also imported them to Australia for hunting. 

These extended essays provide Lopez time to reflect on the colonial world, the role class plays in a society (which he even found in the scientific communities in the Antarctic), how animals and landscape evolve, and the concerns of the speed of such evolution in recent centuries. Lopez also looks to the future and ponders creating new ways of bringing more people to the table to discuss and help the world from the crisis that we are experiencing from industrialization. Lopez often comes back to the role elders play in traditional communities and suggests that we need to listen to them.

This is a book to be savored. Lopez encourages us to look around and to understand our place in the world. 

QUOTE ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN: “to live in fear in a whole in which one’s destiny is never entirely of one’s own choosing.” (page 508). 

Miroslav Volk, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011), 174 pages including notes and index. 

There are many who blame religion for many of the world’s problems. Monotheistic religions seem especially vulnerable to such changes. While Volf is writing to Christians, he does make many references to Islam. Of course, all religions have examples of failing to live up to their potential (Volf labels this “malfunctions of faith”), Volf believes religion and especially the Christian faith has the potential to contribute much to the common good. Furthermore, as Volf notes, much of the terrible violence of the 20thCentury, the most violent century in human history, wasn’t because of religion. Genocide was most often conducted by secular regimes. 

Volf begins his study by looking at how and why religious groups have failed to contribute to the common good.  For Christians, this “malfunction of faith” is mostly due to our failure to “love God and love our neighbor.” The Christian faith, for Volf, is certainly not waiting for “pie in the sky.” Instead, our faith should be a source of human flourishing, and not just flourishing for believers, but all people.  Religion is about the good life and requires religious people to engage in their communities for the good of all. However, he criticizes the extremes. The followers of Jesus should neither withdraw from society nor should they try to dominate society. Instead, with creativity, they should seek to engage positively in a religiously pluralistic world.

One of the problems in the West is that we tend to understand the good life as “experimental satisfaction,” which can never sustain our deepest desires. The source of the good life is not found within us, but outside, from God and from others. Only by living up to Jesus’ great commandment, can we experience such goodness. 

Volf does not envision a world in which there is only one faith. In fact, as I pointed out above, he’s critical of such ideas. We will never be able to bring God’s kingdom to earth. Only God can do that.  For us to attempt to bring about heaven to earth by silencing other beliefs will only lead to further malfunctions of our faith. Instead, he envisions a pluralistic world where those of all faith need to be in conversation with one another and learn from others. While Christians believe in the truth in Jesus Christ, that doesn’t mean there are not things we can learn from others. While he doesn’t use the term, the Calvinist view of “common grace” (as opposed to saving grace) seems to apply here. All good comes from God, including that which is good in those who may have a different view of faith from us. 

Volf is a professor at Yale Divinity School and the director Center for Faith and Culture. There is a lot packed into this thin book on how we our faith can help a troubled world. 

For those interested, Volf will be the keynote speaker at this year’s “HopeWords Writer’s Conference in Bluefield, West Virginia on March 24-25. This is a reasonably priced conference that I highly recommend. Check it out by clicking here.

HopeWorld 2023 Speakers
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The Opening of First Peter

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry and Bluemont Presbyterian Churches
January 15, 2023
First Peter 1:1-12

Sermon recorded at Mayberry Church on Friday, January 13, 2022

At the beginning of worship:

This week I finished reading Miroslav Volf’s A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Seve the Common Good. It’s a short but a deep book that deals with the paradox we have as Christians, living in a world but not being of the world.[1] Volf spends a whole chapter on the topic, “human flourishing,” which he begins, “Hope, in a Christian sense, is love stretching itself into the future.”[2] I like that.


For the next three months, I will work through in my sermons First Peter, a beautiful letter written to marginalized Christians in the first century. We may think, at times, we have it bad. But consider being a follower of Jesus in a time when the world truly hates you? How would we live? Where do we place our hope? Peter encourages his readers to have a living hope in the future.[3] Sounds a lot like Volf’s thesis, doesn’t it?

Before reading the Scripture:

Addressed to a group of churches in what we now know as the country of Turkey, First Peter was penned in the last quarter of the first century. The letter encourages these churches as they strive to live as followers of Jesus in a hostile world. For this reason, we find applications that apply to our lives as we strive to follow Jesus in a world that is often indifferent. 

The return address on the letter is Peter’s. There is debate among scholars as to whether it was written by Peter the fisherman (if so, he most likely had some help with his Greek grammar). Or, as was often done in the ancient world, was the letter written by one who admired Peter and therefore attached the apostle’s name. 

Confusing things even more, the letter doesn’t go into details of Peter’s life other than to say he’s an Apostle. Instead, it focuses on the life within the recipient community,[4] so whether Peter pinned these words or dictated them, doesn’t much matter. Finally, let me say that this letter follows a familiar correspondence format, as does many of Paul’s letters. Today we’ll look at the introduction and opening. 

Read 1st Peter 1:1-12.

I woke precisely at 6 A.M. The radio came to life with the Star-Spangled Banner. KIKX returned to the airways with its whooping 58 watts of power dedicated to covering the Wood River Valley. It was the only station that I could pick up in the valley. During the summer of 1988, I depended on it as an alarm clock. I went to sleep with the radio on at night, as the station went off at midnight. In the morning, I’d be rousted out of bed with patriotic furor. 

Normally, I jumped out of bed, dressed quickly, and headed down to the lodge. There I started a fire in the potbellied stove to knock the chill out of the air. In the Idaho mountains, it could be quite chilly in the early morning hours, even during the summer. But on this day, I was not too quick to jump out of bed. I was fearful of what was ahead. I laid there, warm under the covers, listening to the national anthem, and then the news and the weather. Although it was in the mid-30s at camp, the temperature in the desert to the south would spike above 100 that afternoon.  

It was Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, my last day for the season at camp. In the kitchen, the cooks prepared the last meal of the season for the few of us who were still on site. Over a cup of coffee, we talked and laughed about the summer. But inside, my stomach churned. I thought about leaving the familiar setting of camp and heading for the unknowns of Nevada. 

I’d taken a break from seminary to devote a year serving as a student pastor for small church in Virginia City, Nevada. I wasn’t sure what to expect. As a naive seminarian, Nevada appeared a den of iniquity. Saloons and casinos never closed. Gambling and prostitution were readily available. What was I getting myself into.? 

The following afternoon I made it up the windy road to Virginia City. I told you a month ago about the nail in my tire as I drove across the desert.[5] But I made it without any other issues. I parked in front of the rickety white wooden church C Street. The doors were locked. For a few moments I stood on the porch, looking down Six-mile Canyon toward a rock formation known as Sugarloaf.[6] There were plenty of people on the streets, but no one seemed to notice me. Everyone assumed I was just another tourist.

A couple minutes later, I headed down the boardwalk to the Bucket of Blood, a saloon where I had been instructed to pick up the keys for the church and for the little house where I would live. It seemed a little odd for my first task to call on a place named the Bucket of Blood. The sun warmed the air. Although the peak of the tourist season was over, sightseers on C Street still vied for the slot machines standing just inside the establishments adjacent to the boardwalk. The noise of the electronic bandits and the smell of the sausage dogs and spilt beer overwhelmed me. What was I getting myself into?

It’s hard for me now to think about how I felt when I first went to Virginia City. I was nervous. I didn’t gamble. I’d never been in a casino. The idea of legalized prostitution seemed barbaric. It still does. While I’ll occasionally have a drink, the thought of having alcohol available 24 hours a day was unsettling. Furthermore, I’d never lived in a place where, on any given Sunday, only a handful of folks would be in church. I was nervous as to what I’d signed up for. 

Living there forced me to think hard about what it means to follow Jesus. Many times, there and even here, being faithful to Jesus means we must live differently than the society in which we find ourselves.

In the first sentence of Peter’s letter, we learn that its intended recipients are “exiles from the Dispersion.” Now the Dispersion refers to those Jews who lived, at this time in history, throughout the Mediterranean region. After Babylon, Jewish enclaves were established through that part of the world and, as we know from early church history, Paul and Peter and other Apostles were often able to find a receptive ear in these communities. 

Think about Paul’s travels in Acts, his first place to visit in a new city was often the synagogue.[7] But Peter isn’t writing to those in the synagogue, instead he’s writing to those who have been exiled or booted out of the synagogue. In a religious sense, these are marginalized people. Because they are followers of Jesus, they find themselves exiled even from the synagogue community that was, in a sense, exiled.[8]

Now think about the world in which they lived. Most of their neighbors worshipped the ancient gods as well as Caesar. For them, God in the flesh was the emperor in Rome. If you lived in this world, you were expected to pay homage to the gods and to Caesar, the one loophole being that you were a Jew. Then, provided you weren’t causing trouble, you could worship the God of Israel. As the early Christians found themselves no longer a part of the Jewish minority, they had nowhere to go. Shunned, they were considered atheist as they worshipped an unseen God. 

But there is good news to these “twice-shunned” believers. Peter, with language that carries overtones of predestination, reminds them that they have been chosen and destined by God. So even though they may feel like out-casts, and are persecuted, God is with them. Furthermore, they’re sanctified by the Spirit and have been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus, the one to whom they are obedient. Peter, in the first sentence, packs in the theology. He mentions all three members of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit. He speaks of God’s gracious sovereignty, Jesus’ atonement, and our need for sanctification by the Spirit. Peter wants them to understand that they haven’t saved themselves; their salvation is grounded in God.

Then, in verse 3, Peter lays out the hope they have in Jesus Christ. In the Greek, this is all one long run-on sentence, going all the way to verse 12.[9] Luckily, for us, most translators break the sentence into smaller chunks. In this super-sentence, Peter acknowledges the trouble his readers face, the trials they endure, but reminds them that their inheritance. Hold on, be obedient to Jesus, for it is in him that we have hope. Even though it may not always seem like it, God’s with them, and their future is bright.  

Now, let’s face it, whatever tribulations we face today are nothing when compared to what Christians in the first three centuries faced. Furthermore, we in America have no idea what Christians in other parts of the world must endure today. Think of Christian in Pakistan, China, India, North Korea, Nigeria, or Saudi Arabia. 

But even if we do face persecution, we must remember that our first loyalty as a disciple of Jesus is to him, the one in whom we have our hope. And what does Jesus call us to do? We’re called to be the salt of the earth, to love God and to love our neighbor, and to love even our enemies.[10] Are we doing that?

In the last three verses of this section, Peter recalls the work of the Old Testament prophets, those who foretold what God was doing and the Messiah to come. Peter notes that they did not serve themselves, but were in a sense serving those, like Peter’s audience, who experienced such grace. It pleased the prophets to do God’s work for the benefit for future generations. And in a way those suffering for Jesus, to whom this letter was addressed, worked on our behalf. We are their beneficiaries, and we’re to benefit those who follow us.  

So, what does Jesus call us to do?  Like those who received this letter, he calls us to be faithful and obedient. We’ll all face challenges. Sometimes the pressure of society will try to lure us away from Jesus. Or we may be lured away from the Jesus of scripture to another form of Jesus, one who is more our image and doesn’t look like the Jesus of the Bible.[11] When this happens, Peter reminds us of what’s important.  

Going back to my fears when I moved to Nevada, I quickly learned that just because bars and casinos remained open 24 hours a day, I didn’t need to take advantage of it. And when I did go inside such a place, moderation was the key. Too much of a good thing can also be bad. And there were places where I shouldn’t’ be seen, and I stayed away. And on Sunday morning, when I put on a suit and walked down the boardwalk to the church, people knew where I was going. Hopefully, by my witness, I planted a few seeds. 

When we are obedient to Christ, we witness to the world a gentle faith that God is in charge, and we’ve placed our hope in his hands. Amen. 

[1] John 15:19.

[2] Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (Grand Rapids, MI: Bravos Press, 2011), 55.

[3] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter (Grand Rapids: Eerdman, 1990), 52. 

[4] Donald Senior, “First Peter Introduction” in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 2181-2182.

[5] https://fromarockyhillside.com/2022/12/hope-in-the-desert/  

[6] This view, which I so enjoyed, is no longer available as new construction was built across from the church. During the Bonanza era of the 1870s, the view wasn’t available either, as the Baptist Church (that closed in the 1880s), sat across the street. 

[7] See Acts 13:5, 13:14, 14:1, 17:1, 17:10, 18:4, and 19:8. 

[8] For insight into this community to whom Peter writes, see Joel B. Green, 1 Peter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 14-18. Green notes that most of those first reading this letter probably were not Jews, but gentiles. 

[9] Green, 22.

[10] Matthew 5:13, Luke 10:27, and Matthew 5:44.

[11] Those who want to promote a masculine Jesus (aka, Rambo Jesus) or make Jesus into a nationalistic symbol risk creating a Jesus in their own image and not in the image of scripture. 

Virginia City at night during the winter of 1988/1989
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Three Books about the Appalachian Trail

As I’ve been treated with back to back bouts with COVID, I spent much of my time reading about the Appalachian Trail. I don’t think I’ve read a book about the trail since I read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, back in the 1990s. It was great to visit the trail once more as I read these three books that brought back lots of memories and made me a little homesick. I’m including a few pictures from my own journey. The photo to the left is of me on Mt. Katahdin in 1987, after having hiked from Virginia to Maine to complete the trail.

By the way, I finally received a negative COVID test on January 9th!

Ben Montgomery, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

 (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014), 277 pages including the index and sources. Maps and some photos. 

I have been meaning to read this book for the past three years, ever since my ministry colleague on Skidaway gave me a copy. Of course, I have known of Grandma Gatewood’s walk since at least the early 80s, when I first started hiking the Appalachian Trail. Having completed the trail and having read many books about it (the last probably being Bill Bryson’s book in the mid-1990s), I had kind of put the trail out of my mind. But as I began reading about Grandma Gatewood, I was drawn back into the lure of the trail. This book is well written and is easy to read.

Part of the danger of having completed the Appalachian Trail is that I read this book through my own lens. Even without going back into my journals, the names of the towns, shelters, rivers, waterfalls, ponds, and mountains, all began to come back. 

While I enjoyed the book, my critical eye questioned a few of the authors observations. I don’t think Gatewood saw any chestnuts on the trail. Certainly, even thirty years later when I was hiking the trail, there were shoots coming up from old stumps, but the chestnuts in the Appalachian Mountains had died in the 1920s. She didn’t have to fear water moccasins along the trail as they are not found in the mountainous areas of the south (and even Gatewood only acknowledging seeing rattlesnakes and copperheads). And the rugged rock in Pennsylvania was not created by glaciers (they tend to smooth out rock), but by upturned limestone that leaves a jagged edge to the rock that creates a challenge in what would be an easy part of the trail to hike. Finally, the author twice referred to Boy Scout “Packs.” It’s a Boy Scout Troop, Cub Scouts have packs. Again, these are just minor points. Overall, the books drew me in quickly and I read it in a 24-hour period while quarantined for COVID. 

For the bulk of the book in which he tells of her first (of three) completions of the Appalachian Trail, the author creatively tells two stories. At one point, he’ll be telling of Gatewood’s hike as if he was with her as she made her way in her tennis shoes along the trail. Then, he’ll go back to share vignettes of her life before she set out in her mid-60s to hike the trail. We learn about her hard life and her abusive marriage. Gatewood had a wanderlust streak in her and had once before left home We also learn how she’d left her husband once before and traveled out to California in the 1930s. But she had children to tend. It was after they’d left home that she began hiking. 

A 1987 photo of me that appeared in the Union News of Springfield, MA

As Gatewood began hiking, she became famous with newspapers and Sports Illustrated running articles on her. After she completed the trail, she was on the Today’s Show and game shows. She continued hiking, doing two more trips on the AT, along with walking the Oregon Trail. She promoted the Buckeye Trail in her home state of Ohio. She died in 1973. 

There were a lot of her stories to which I could relate and share similar experiences. She hiked through two hurricanes. I had a similar experience going over Standing Indian Mountain. That hike was miserable. The trail became a stream with the water over my boots. The next day, it was clear. I met a couple from Franklin, a town in the valley, who said the town had received 10 inches of rain that day I was climbing Standing Indian. 

On her hike in 1955, coming off Mt. Cube in New Hampshire, Gatewood met the wife of Meldrim Thomson, whose family had a farm and a maple syrup operation off the side of the mountain. The author notes the Thomson would later become governor of the state. They became friends. 

Jane and Happy at the Thomson’s Maple Syrup house

In 1987, when I came through this section, I stopped that morning for breakfast at a well-known pancake house that Mrs. Thomson ran. As she was cooking pancakes, I read framed news clippings about her husband that was posted on the wall of the diner. When she brought the cakes and a bottle of maple syrup, I said it appeared her husband had been governor wondered if he was still involved (he’d been governor in the 1970s). She said yes that he was out campaigning with Paul Laxalt who was running for President. As I was hosting my pack to head back to the trail, a pickup truck pulled up and two men in suits got out and ran over to me. It was the former governor with Paul Laxalt, who shook my hand even though I was not a New Hampshire voter. Laxalt pulled out of the primary long before the vote that February. 

Even if you have not hiked the AT, Emma Gatewood’s story is one of courage and fortitude. I think you’ll enjoy taking a walk with her. I recommend this book. 

Earl V. Shaffer, Walking with Spring

 (1983, Harper’s Ferry, WVA: Appalachian Trail Conference 2004), 152 pages, no index or bibliography.

I first read this book in the mid-80s. I was living in Hickory, NC, dreaming of the trail. I lent my copy to a friend and never got it back and moved shortly afterwards. A few months ago, I was in a store along the Blue Ridge Parkway and spotted another copy and thought I should read this book again. When I first read the book, I had hiked most of the Appalachian Trail south of Bastian, VA (where I-77 crosses). A few years later I finished the trail after doing a long hike from the Shenandoah’s to Katahdin in Maine. 

This book took me back to a time when the trail was young and not well known. Shaffer was the first person to hike the entire length of the trail which in one season. At the time, the trail ran from Mt. Oglethorpe, Georgia to Katahdin. A few years later, the southern terminus of the trail would be moved to Springer Mountain.  While much of the trail and even some of the shelters were familiar with me, there have been many changes. Going through Southern Virginia, the trail Shaffer hiked headed east from Damarcus, where it picked up and paralleled the Blue Ridge Parkway. This section had a lot of road walking and plans had been made much earlier to move to trail to northward, toward Pearisburg, VA, before swinging it eastward and paralleling the parkway starting north of Roanoke. The plans, which were made before the war, didn’t materialize until around 1950. Interestingly, Shaffer would have hiked past Bluemont Presbyterian Church, one of the two Rock Churches I serve. While he doesn’t mention Bluemont, he does comment on Puckett’s Cabin which is two miles north. (See my book review of Orlean Puckett: 1844-1938.) He hiked this section at the right time because the flame azaleas were in bloom. He missed Mayberry Church for at the time the trail left the parkway and crossed over the crest of the Pinnacles of Dan before returning to the parkway just south of Mabry Mill. 

In one of his poems at the beginning of an earlier section titled “Mountain Medley,” he wrote:

A medley of summit pastures,
Spring flowers and whip-poor-wills,
Stone Churches and upland rivers,
And steep farm-sided hills.

This section of his book deals with his travels that crossed the Big Pigeon, Nolichucky, and Watauga Rivers, which are along the North Carolina and Tennessee border. I wonder if he mistakenly posted the poem there.

Me, 1985, hiking in NC

Shaffer also hiked before the availability of lightweight gear. He often ate canned food. He didn’t take a stove; instead, he built fires to cook his meals. He traveled light, with just a poncho which doubled as a shelter (with him putting his rain hat over the hole in the middle of the poncho). In 1948, much of the trail had been neglected because of the war.  Another big difference in Shaffer’s hike and mine was getting into town to resupply. While we both often hitchhiked, he was often able to catch a bus. I only did this once, in Garrison, NY, where I caught a bus into Peekskill to get my boots repaired. 

Shaffer, himself, had been a soldier in the South Pacific. While he often comments on his status as a veteran, he never writes about the war itself. But the war is mentioned. When a New England ranger invites him into his home in the woods and immediately sets on a pot for tea, he’s reminded of the kindness of New Zealand soldiers offering tea. On occasions, he meets other veterans from the Pacific, and they discuss their experiences which are not shared in the book. Shaffer, having lost his pre-war hiking friend in the war, had a good reason to “walk it off.” (Doug Peacock, who was a green Beret in Vietnam and the model for Edward Abbey’s Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang, titled his memoir Walking It Off). In doing some research after finishing this book, I learn that he did write about his Pacific experiences in a book of poetry titled Before I Walked with Spring: A Dough Boy’s Odyssey and Other Poems of World War II.

Essentially, this book is about his walk on the Appalachian Trail. It’s a day-by-day journal that give us a taste of what Shaffer experienced on his “long cruise.” It is apparent that Shaffer is well-read as he often refers to literary works. He is also a poet and includes many of his own poems. The book wasn’t published until the 1980s which probably explains why he used a metaphor of “programing a computer.” Except for a few scientists, that term doesn’t seem to fit in the world of 1948.

Shaffer’s prose provides an understanding of the landscape. I didn’t realize that the New River in Virginia was the last of the rivers to flow west (and via the Mississippi, south to the Gulf of Mexico). Nor did I really put it together that Sunfish Pond, in New Jersey, was the southern most natural pond/lake on the trail. I do remember commenting in my own journals about how the water sources changed. South of New Jersey, there are many springs from which you get water. As you head north, they become fewer and fewer. 

If you want to learn about the Appalachian Trail, this book is a good place to begin. 

Sherry Blackman, Tales from the Trail: Stories from the Oldest Hiker Hostel on the Appalachian Trail

 (North Hampton, NH: Mindstir Media, 2021), 231 pages including six pages of photos. 

The Reverend Sherry Blackman, a former journalist, serves as pastor of Church of the Mountain, a Presbyterian Church in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. The church’s basement has served as a hostel for those hiking on the Appalachian Trail (AT) since 1976. In 1987, I spent two nights there while hiking from the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine, which finished my goal of hiking the trail. 

In this collection of essays, Blackman recalls many of the hikers she’s met along the AT since she began her ministry there in 2014. These stories explore a host of themes common to the human condition. Some hikers try to find something they feel they’ve lost. Others try to forget or to figure things out. The walking wounded often stop. Some wounds are physical. They try to push through the pain and limitations as they make it along the trail. Others carry mental and spiritual wounds. Can they find forgiveness, acceptance, or hope?  And then there’s the ugly side, those who must be removed from the hostel for the safety of the other hikers. One essay recounts the number of murders that have occurred along the trail over the past 50 years. Mental illness is another battle many faces and which often leads to challenges for those running the hostel. Through all this, we also see how Blackman and those who run the hostel strive to be graceful. They listen and don’t try to force advice on those who come their way, as they offer hikers a shower, a bunk for a night or two, and once a week, a potluck dinner. 

Presbyterian Church of the Mountain at Delaware Water Gap

In all these essays, we see Blackman listening and accepting the hiker wherever they are on their journey (not just on the trail, but in their lives). Often, her conversations turn to spiritual issues. She asks gentle questions as she helps the hiker along their way. She provides compassionate and insightful counsel, along with learning herself from the stories of others. She also acknowledges the limitations we all have and how hard it is when we can’t help some people. 

Delaware Water Gap is just a little beyond the halfway point for those who are hiking north from Georgia (the actual halfway point is around Caledonia State Park just north of the Maryland border. Those who have started in Georgia (northbound hikers) have been on the trail for roughly 1200 miles. The last hundred miles, while not having difficult climbs, are tough because of the upturned limestone rock grinds the feet down. Blackburn has an essay on the rocks, too. Being in the middle of the trail means Blackman only gets to encounter a hiker at point in their journey. Reading these stories, I recalled work as a night on-call chaplain where I often visited with those going into transplant surgeries and never knew what happened afterwards. That’s the way much of life plays out. Blackman does her part, then the hikers head down the trail.

I found a lot of insight into one hiker who, after hiking the trail, visited after he finished pointed out: “At the top of Katahdin, there are no blazes to tell you where to go now.” As the stories remind us, lots of people set out to hike hoping to find something, but ultimately, there are few Damarcus experiences along the trail. Most hikers gain insight about themselves without having a revelation. 

I recommend this book to those interested in the trail as well as those in ministry who need to consider how we relate to others whom we interact through our lives. 

Hikers at the Church of the Mountains hostel hold a watermelon spitting contest

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Psalm 1: Two Roads

With back to back bouts with COVID, I’m still testing positive. So I taped the sermon at home using my iPhone (which is why you get a smaller photo of me). This sermon will be delivered by Libby Wilcox tomorrow at Bluemont Church. Mayberry Church will be closed because of COVID (mine and some others) along with freezing rain and icing that is called for earlier in the morning.

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont & Mayberry Presbyterian Church
January 8, 2023
Psalm 1

This was taped in my basement library on Saturday, January 7, 2022

We’re exploring the very first Psalm today. Before we get to the Scripture, let me tell you about the Psalms.

This book in the middle of scripture was the hymnal and a worship resource for the Hebrew people. When you read the Psalms, you may have notice many of them have Hebrews words like Selah written in the margins. It’s thought that this was an instruction for the musicians, maybe the point when a cymbal would clap or the tempo increased. We don’t know exactly what it means, but that’s the best guess of scholars. Many of the Psalms indicate worship, calling us to come into God’s presence, to sing God’s praise.[1]

Those who study the Hebrew Scriptures generally date the coming together of the Psalms, and much of the Old Testament as we have it today, to the Babylonian period. It was a time when the Hebrew people lived in exile. During that era, away from the Promised Land, the ruined temple and the holy city of Jerusalem, the Jewish people collected their writings to preserve their religious heritage. Text that had been passed on orally were written down. Other texts, like the Psalms, which existed as fragments, were collected, and put together into a book. 

Individually, many of the Psalms themselves are much older, some attributed to David and to earlier era of Israel’s history. We can image that the collection of the Psalms was much like the publishing of a hymnal today. A group of people gathers and decides on the hymns used and their placement in the hymnal, and then sends a rough draft off to the printer. Same thing happened then, only they didn’t have a printer and had to send a copy to scribes who copied it by hand.

Let’s consider a few hymnals. I grew up with the Red Hymnal—it was published by the Presbyterian Church a few years before my birth and was the main hymnal in use for over 35 years.[2] The first hymn in this hymnal is “Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty.” Do you think this hymn was chosen randomly? I don’t think so. It’s a fitting hymn for Presbyterians, the focus being on God Almighty and not on ourselves. In another hymnal I’m familiar with, the first selection is “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” Again, is was it picked randomly? I don’t think so, for it calls us into worship with a joyful heart. In the same way, when the collection of Psalms were compiled, there was an intentional decision, as they were led by God’s Spirit, to place what we know as Psalm 1 at the beginning of the collection.[3]

This Psalm was picked to remind the Hebrew people, and us, that if our prayers and songs are to mean anything, our lives must reflect God’s will. Ponder what it says as we listen to God’s word.  READ PSALM 1.

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“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” the poet Robert Frost wrote in his famous poem first published in 1916.[4]  Likewise, according to the Psalmist, there are two options for those of us who believe in the God of Abraham, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can be on God’s side, rewarded by the one who gives life. Or we can take the road of the scoffers, the path that allows us to think we or something else is god. This path will lead us away from the Almighty, the path to destruction. Two ways: God’s way which leads to life, or the other road which leads to death. Two ways, the choice is ours. Which one will it be?  

This could be a mother’s Psalm. Mother’s care about the path their children take. Will they follow the right path? There’s probably nothing more tragic than a mother dealing with the disappointment of a wayward child.[5]

Our psalm opens with a beatitude, promising us that if we’re good and on God’s side, we’ll be blessed and have a happy life. But the opening line also reminds us of competing claims within the world. Happiness comes from not accepting the advice of the wicked. Their guidance run counter to God’s word. The first verse makes it abundantly clear to the reader that we should we should avoid such people…  Accept their advice? Strike one. Follow their paths? Strike two. And sit in their assemblies? Three strikes; you’re out. Instead, after making three negative suggestions, the Psalm reminds us that we’re to delight and mediate on God’s law. 

The idea of delighting in laws is foreign for most of us. I mean, we’re running late, and the speed limit is only 35 miles per hour, do we slow down? Or, do we curse the car in front of us that’s maintaining the legal speed? We see laws as being burdensome; they hold us back, or so it seems. Of course, if we live on that street and have a child who plays in the front yard, we understand and don’t want anyone to drive by at 60 miles an hour. If we put ourselves in such a place, we see the rationality of the law. We have to admit that most laws are for our benefit or for the benefit of society. Of course, I still can’t see the reason some states outlaw barefoot driving.

God’s law, like most laws of the state, provides a boundary within which we can live life abundantly. Within these guidelines, life flourishes. Outside them, life diminishes. If we understand the law this way, we should take delight in it. We should learn and take to heart God’s instructions on how to live abundantly and to relate to one another and to Almighty faithfully.

Psalm 1 is just one of several Psalms that extol the virtues of following God’s laws. Perhaps the best known, of such Psalms, is the 119th, which is also the longest Psalm in scripture, going on and on for 176 verses. If I ever decide to preach on the whole 119 Psalm, I’ll give you advance warning so you can pack a picnic… Of course, that week, nobody will show up. 

Both Psalms, the 1st, which is rather short, and the 119, a marathon, encourage us to pay attention to the ways of the Almighty. Near the opening of the longer Psalm we’re encouraged to “delight in God’s decrees as much as we do in riches, to meditate on God’s precepts, to fix our eyes on God’s ways, to delight in God’s statutes, and not to forget God’s word.”[6] These positive verbs direct us toward God and an understanding of God’s laws.  

Now let me clarify a point. We can get a bit carried away with our emphasis on the law. After all, the law does not have the power to save us. The law points to our need for Jesus’ salvation and by obeying them, we’re allowed to enjoy life here and now. Obeying the law isn’t going to save us, but it will make our lives better and that’s its purpose.[7]

I like this idea of mediating on the law that’s found in both the 1st and 119th Psalm. It doesn’t mean memorizing the 10 commandments (although that’s not a bad idea) or the 600 and some other laws found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Instead, to meditate means to internalize the laws so they become, by second nature, our guiding rule. Such meditation allows God’s will to shape our will, and ultimately, that’s what it’s all about, us following God’s will. 

If we are following God’s will, we’ll be like that tree by a stream. Such trees grow fast, drawing upon available water. Likewise, if we live in a way that allows ourselves to be nourished by God, our lives will indeed be blessed. We may not have the riches or the power that we once desired, but we will be content and at peace with ourselves and with God.  

Of course, this psalm presents parallel images. The righteous is like a well-watered tree. The wicked, however, have no roots. They’re like the chaff that comes off the wheat during the milling process. The chaff blows away, it easily burns and no longer sustains life. The choice we make, whether to follow or run from God, determines which image applies. Do we want to be a tree, or husk blown in the wind? These two images lead the Psalmists to conclude with a warning of judgment. The wicked, the chaff, will be judged. But the righteous, the one watered by the Lord, will stand tall.  

The choice is ours. Whose side are we own? Those who compiled the Psalms placed this Psalm first, so that when someone began to read this book, he or she would be encouraged to decide to follow God and seek out God’s ways. Psalm 1 prepares us for the rest of the Psalms, which quite interestingly consist of five books, as in the Law, or the Torah.[8] The Torah called the Hebrew people to align themselves with God. Likewise, the Psalmist calls us to align ourselves with God, drawing upon the rest of the Psalms as that tree draws upon water.[9]

“Two roads diverge in a yellow wood…”  Which one will you take? Psalmist calls you to take the way outlined in this book, to mediate and internalize God’s word.  Amen.

[1] See especially Psalms 95-100 and 145-150.

[2] The “Red Hymnal” was titled The Hymnbook was published in 1955.  There was a hymnal titled The Worship Book that was published in 1970, but it wasn’t received very well and many churches continued to use the “Red Hymnal” until the 1990 publication of The Presbyterian Hymnal. 

[3] Eugene Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 25-28.

[4] Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost, Edward Connery Lathem, editor (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 105.

[5] See comments about mothers watching their sons die in a BBC article on the woman who served as communication director for the Texas Prison in Huntsville and who has observed more than 300 executions. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43995866

[6] Psalm 119:14-16.

[7] John Calvin and other reformers taught that the law had three purposes: to show our need for repentance, to help us live in God’s will, and to help keep the reprobate in check.  

[8] The Torah consists of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  The five books of the Psalms, which each close with a benediction, are Psalms 1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90-106, and 107-150.  

[9] James L. Mays, Psalms: Interpretation, a Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), 40-44.

Trees and Mountain Laurel growing by Laurel Fork. Photo taken on March 13, 2022.
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2022 Reading Update

reading

The Statistics

 20222021
Total5354
Fiction48
Poetry (and about poetry)65
History/Biographies1713
Theology and ministry[1]  2216
Essays/Short Stories38
Humor14
Nature96
Politics33
Memoirs1110
Writing (how to)22
Titles by women714
Read via Audible (I only read unabridged)2020
Books reviewed (I may review 2-3 more in 2023)3530

Summary

Reading on Cape Lookout, May 2022

Many of the books appear in more than one category, so they don’t add up to the total.

Last year I said I needed to read more fiction and humor and I read even less this year. Maybe that says something about 2022. There wasn’t a lot of humor to the year. I certainly need to laugh more!

I’ve questioned myself as to why I am not reading more fiction.  I think the answer is that I am curious about so much and most of my reading is for knowledge. 

I started tracking the number of books written by women authors this year. Interestingly, I read more last year, but this year I chose Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine as the most important book I’ve read. We all need to better understand the situation in Ukraine and her book on the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s helps us understand the present situation.

Books read by the Month

Below is my list by month. The highlighted books are ones I reviewed. Click on the link to go to the blog post where you can find the review. Like last year, I have picked my favorite of each month by posting a photo of the book. This I found hard. In March, Applebaum was up against Candice Millard, both incredible historians. In April, Updike’s novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies was up against the writings of the Anglican poet Malcom Guite. Then in May, I had to choose between a wonderful biography of Fredrick Laws Omstead and Trish Warren’s lovely commentary on the compline prayer. In August, the choice between Carver’s poetry, Herman’s philosophy, and Doig’s wonderful storytelling also created a challenge as did my November decision between Meacham and Doyle.  What all this shows is that I read a lot of good books in 2022!

January

Helen MacDonald, H is for Hawk

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (2nd reading, first in 1978)  

Gregory Orr, The Blessing: A Memoir

Daniel Allen Butler, The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathian, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic was Lost

February

Sibley Towner, Daniel: Interpretation 

Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

Erik Larson, Thunderstruck

Temper Longman III, Daniel: The NIV Application Bible Commentary 

Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Jackson Crawford, translator, The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes

March

Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President 

Lawrence Berkove, Heretical Fiction: Religion in the Literature of Mark Twain

Peter Yang, The Art of Writing

Robert Creamer, Baseball in ’41: A Celebration of the Best Baseball Season Ever

Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine

Jason Young, The Comeback Effect: How Hospitality Can Compel Your Church’s Guests to Return 

April

Rick Bragg, Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South 

Malcolm Guite, In Every Corner Sing:  

John Updyke, In the Beauty of the Lilies

Mark Jarman, Dailiness: Essays on Poetry

May

Hannah Anderson, Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul

Billy Beasley, Home  

Justin Martin, Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted

Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

June

Shawn D. Wright, Theodore Beza: The Man and the Myth

Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism  

Jonathan White, Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean

July

Andy Stanley, Not In It To Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church

Rick Bass, Why I Came West: A Memoir

James R. Edwards, From Christ to Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the Church in Less than a Century

August

Raymond Carver, All of Us: The Collective Poems

Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato verses Aristotle and the Struggle for Soul of Western Civilization

Ivan Doig, The Bartender’s Tale

Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More than Our “Correct” Beliefs

Aaron McAlexander, This Old Store

September

Bob Lantz, Lean Downstream! The Whole History from the Beginning to the End of the Blue Hole Canoe Company

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress 

John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Robert Maguire, Commentary on John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress 

Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson

N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer

October

David Halberstan, October 1964

Paul Willis, Say this Prayer into the Past: Poems

Charles Leerhser, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty

Harry Middleton, The Earth is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Flyfishing, Trout, and Old Men. 

November

Jon Meacham, And There was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle 

Willimon & Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life

John Oller, The Swamp Fox: How Frances Marion Saved the American Revolution

Brian Doyle, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder for the Spiritual and Nonspiritual Alike

Carrot Quinn, The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness, and Freedom on the Rails in the American West

December

Lenny Wells, Pecan: America’s Native Nut Tree

Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

Ben Montgomery, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk

Best Book over all: 

Anne Applebaum, , Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine

Runner Ups: 

Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President 

Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato verses Aristotle and the Struggle for Soul of Western Civilization

Jon Meacham, And There was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle 

Harry Middleton, The Earth is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Flyfishing, Trout, and Old Men

Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

Blog Friends Yearly Reading List

AJ’s (favorites)

Bob

Deniz

Jacqui

Joan

Kelly

Mainewords

Mary

A bunch of year end reading lists

I’ll add more as I see them. Let me know if you have a 2022 reading summary and I’ll post it here.

Click here for my reading list from 2021 and from 2020

Did you have a favorite book that you read last year? What’s the title and why did you like it?

[1] This section includes devotional books and commentaries that were completely read as opposed to those just used for reference. 

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And There Was Light

We’re at the season when the days are slowly beginning to lengthen. Perhaps this is a good time to review this book which I read in October. I did not finish the review then, even though I quoted the book in several sermons. This is my last review of the year! On the COVID front, I am still testing positive, but feel great although I do tire easily.

On Sunday (as I am not preaching this week), I will post the review of 53 books read during 2023. This is one of the best books I read during this year, the other being Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. It’s a hard pick between the two books. I recommend both. One enlarges our view of the world and our understanding on what is happening in Ukraine. This book provides insight into our own national challenge. Race is still the proverbial “elephant in the room,” in American politics. 

Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle 

(New York: Random House, 2022), 713 pages (37-page prologue, 421 pages of text, 225 pages of notes on sources and bibliography, an index) plus 16 inserted color plates. 

This is an excellent book that needs to be read and studied by Americans today. Meacham provides a biographical portrait of Lincoln, with an eye on the President’s struggle during the Civil War. He also delves, as much as one can, into Lincoln’s private faith that allowed him to continue in his position while the nation was being tested and as he endured personal tragedies including the loss of children and the challenges of an unstable wife. A politician who had served in the state house and one term at the Capitol in the House of Representatives, Lincoln seemed unsuited to lead the nation through our most trying hour. He also was a flawed man, hating slavery but not necessarily believing in equality of the races. But Lincoln was able to draw from his experiences and find the strength to become what many historians believe to be the best president in America’s history. 

This book builds on Meacham’s earlier book, The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels. In the Soul of America, the author drew heavily around Lincoln’s first inaugural address. In this book, he begins with Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which is often considered the most theological of all inaugural addresses and was given just weeks before Lincoln’s assassination. In both books, Meacham does more than write about the past. His writings provide insights for our nation to move forward, even when deeply divided. Meacham see’s Lincoln as a providing a path, one in which we hold tightly to what is good and nobly while also being gracious to our enemies. 

The Election of 1860 and 2020

Meacham provides a detailed account of the events between Lincoln’s election in 1860 and his inauguration in March 1863. Some of the details are eerily familiar. Vice President John Breckinridge, who had just been defeated by Lincoln in the general election, oversaw the counting of the electoral votes on February 13 (this was before the inauguration was moved to January). As with January 6, secret forces gathered in Washington hoping for a coup and to make Washington the capitol for the Confederacy. Like Mike Pence, Breckinridge, who would later become a Confederate General, did his duty.  Furthermore, General Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mexican War, ordered troops into Washington to quell any attempt to overthrow the government. The electoral college votes were counted without trouble. The next step was the inauguration itself. As Lincoln moved from Illinois to Washington by train, there were plans to assassinate him enroute. Secrecy and security prevented it from occurring. 

I couldn’t read the accounts of what happened between the election in November 1860 and the inauguration without being reminded of January 6, 2020t. It has been shown that the events on that day were not spontaneous but planned. I found myself wondering if those behind January 6 had studied what had happened in 1861 and attempted to “correct” the mistakes of those who had attempted to keep Lincoln from the presidency.  

Lincoln’s theology

This volume is steeped in theology. On the one hand, this seems strange as Lincoln never joined any church. His background was Baptist and Presbyterian, but he also read widely including the Unitarian Theodore Parker. It appears that as President, Lincoln became surer of his faith. His discussions and friendship with the Reverend Phineas Densmore Gurley of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church helped the President see God as an agent in the world. Gurley comforted the Lincolns at the death of their son, Willie, and was present at Lincoln’s own death. In seeing God as active in the world through humanity, yet God’s providential will being at times hidden, Lincoln developed a trust that helped him moved from one who attempted to keep the Union together to one who sought to end slavery. 

Recommendations

I hope this book is widely read. As a nation, we should learn from Lincoln’s struggles. 

I have come to appreciate Meacham’s writings over the past decade. Along with this book and The Soul of America, I have also read two other biographies by him: Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.

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Christmas on the Blue Ridge

This will go down as a strange Christmas. Christmas Eve is always rushed. This is especially true when Christmas falls on a Sunday, which means I have two messages to prepare… This year, I thought I would get ahead of myself. Partly, I was forced to because the guy who tapes the sermon for Mayberry Church was leaving town for the holidays. So I taped the sermon on Tuesday. Because he was traveling and a number of people in the church had come down with COVID, we took precautions and wore masks or stood (as with the taping) on opposite ends of the sanctuary.

Then I woke up on Wednesday, feeling congested and not very well. I tested myself. After almost three years of avoiding the virus, I was positive. The quarantine started… Thankfully, my library (and visitor guest room) is almost done in the basement, so I moved down stairs). I would not be there for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (which I never got around to preparing a sermon for). I am thankful for many people who stepped up and help make sure worship will continue.

Then there’s this bomb cyclone that much of the country faced over the past two days. Last night, when I went to bed, the temperature was at -2 with winds gusting. This morning, I got up at 6 AM and the temperature was -6, with the winds sustained around 18 mph and gusting much higher. Lots of people lost power. For a time, it was questionable if we’d have the service at Mayberry tonight, as their power was out, but it’s come back on. The power is still out at Bluemont Church and Appalachian Power doesn’t think they’ll get it back before tomorrow night, so we cancelled the Christmas Day service that was to be held there…

As for COVID, I was very congested for the first two days. Now, I don’t feel bad, but will abide by the recommended quarantine. I hope I’ll be back to normal next week. Here’s the sermon I was going to preach tonight. Instead, it will be shone to those who brave the cold on a big screen TV.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry Presbyterian Church
December 24, 2022
Isaiah 9:2-7

Homily taped at Mayberry on Tuesday, December 20, 2022

This evening, I’m drawing my homily from a well-known passage from Isaiah, one often read during the Christmas season. As I have been reminding you through Advent, the first 2/3s of Isaiah is filled with judgment with a few kernels of hope sprinkled in. We’ve been looking at these passages of hope. This is another one of these passages. As we’ve just past the winter solstice with the longest night of the year, it’s good to be reminded that darkness never has the final word.  Read Isaiah 9:2-7.

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Benighted is a word that is often used by mountaineers. It refers to getting caught in the darkness when climbing or hiking.[1] Generally, one doesn’t plan to get caught out like that, but I often go out for a walk as the sun sets, so that I might hike back in the night. I love watching the light fade from the horizon and the stars to pop out in the sky as I acknowledge each constellation as old friends. If I’m walking back up Laurel Fork Road, some of the hayfields allows for long views off the west and in the winter, I can see lights twinkle at Crooked Oak and toward Hillsville. I take comfort in these lights, knowing they represent homes where people are warm and safe.

It’s a little more troubling to hike at night when there is no light. I’ve been caught a few times like that, when it’s dark and you can’t see more than a few feet ahead. Once, in a backpacking trip in Yosemite, I’d walked out to a ledge about a half mile from where we’d camped to watch the sunset. I stayed a little longer than planned and was making my way back in the dark. Suddenly, a bear coming down the path in the other direction, stood up in front of me. It was as startled as me, and thankfully took off in another direction. Darkness can be scary. 

Without vision, there is no comprehension of what’s out there, what’s around you. It’s all about what’s with the next step or within our reach. You walk slower and try to avoid running into things. It can be scary. We become confused and find ourselves lost. We’re become anxious and apprehensive, as I was the rest of the way back to my camp. 

This is the situation Isaiah addresses in this oracle. People walking in darkness, living in a land of absent of light. Tonight, millions of people in Ukraine live in darkness because Russia constantly bombards their electrical grid in an attack of civilians. Those civilians could identify with those whom Isaiah addressed in this passage. We’ve all dealt with similar darkness during ice storms. It’s frightening, but Isaiah offers hope. There is a promise of light filling the land. The light brings joy, there is a renewed confidence. As with the breaking of dawn, things are changing.  

We take light for granted. We flip the switch and like magic, light appears. We are troubled when the power doesn’t work, which is why many of us have generators. Candles and flashlights just don’t do it for us anymore. Especially now, at the time of the year when the nights are at their longest and the air is cold.

Yet, despite the easy availability of light, we still suffer from depression and want. The metaphor of darkness still applies to us as we worry about the present and fret over the future. We need to hear and experience Isaiah’s words again. 

This passage of Isaiah, possibility originally written for the birth of one of Jerusalem’s kings, offers hope to a people oppressed.[2] As a nation, Israel and Judah stood at the crossroads of mighty nations. In world affairs, they were a pawn, in the middle of a chessboard, with the powers of the Fertile Crescent on each side. The dark pieces of the chessboard could have been Egypt and the white pieces could represent a variety of nations (Assyria, Babylon, or Persia) depending on the era of history. Sitting in this crucible, Israel always felt insecure. But at the time of a new king there would be hope that alien rule would come to an end and their enemies would be defeated as the new king restores the prominence of Israel to what it had been under David. It would be centuries before Jesus’ came, fulfilling this prophecy.

In verse 4, Isaiah recalls the victories of Gideon at Midian, where he led the Israelites into battle. Over 32,000 Israelite men responded to the call to arms to save their nation, but God had Gideon whittle down the number of soldiers. In the end, he kept a force of only 300 who slipped into the Midianite and their allies, the Amalekites, camp and routed them. With just a handful of men, but more importantly with God’s help, they were victorious over a much larger army.[3]The promises in our passage all link to God working to end their oppression as God had done in the days of Gideon. This leads to verse 6, which is perhaps the most hopeful verse in scripture, where Isaiah’s oracle announces the birth of a child. But sadly, no such king was born during Isaiah’s era.

The early church quickly realized how this passage applied to Jesus, whose birth we celebrate tonight. Jesus came in humility, yet had the authority of God, was God with us. Jesus offers us a new way of enjoying peace. Of course, his reign hasn’t been fully realized and there are still those who oppose his kingdom, but his victory over evil and death has been won on the cross and it’s only a matter of time. For as we celebrate his birth, we also long for his return and the everlasting kingdom.  

On these dark winter nights, when you see lights glimmering in the distance, think of the hope we have in Jesus, the light of the world. As we heard earlier this evening from the prelude to the Gospel of John, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.”[4]

There is a legend that one winter, the great church reformer, Martin Luther was walking in the woods at night. There was a cedar tree frosted with snow on a hill above. As he looked up at this sight, he could see the stars flickering behind and through the branches of the tree. He was so moved that he had a tree cut down and brought inside his home and decorated it with lights to recapture the glory he’d witnessed. This season, I hope you can capture that same glory when you look at the lights all around us and be reminded of the hope we have in Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate this evening. For in Jesus Christ, born of Mary, God came into our world and lived among us, showing us how to live, and reminding us that we’re not alone. We should no longer live in the fear of the darkness, for unto us a child has been born….  Amen.  

[1] This word came from a Twitter post by Cian McCarthy: https://twitter.com/arealmofwonder/status/1605101212554117120

[2] For a more fuller discussion of this passage as an enthronement oracle, see Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 1:12, Old Testament Library, Second Edition, John Bowden, translator, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 210-214.

[3] See Judges 7.

[4] John 1:5.

A decoration on my tree