a serious question, I said, “No. Zombies are in movies, books, TV shows, and games. But they’re not real.”
She said, “My preacher says that zombies are real. He preaches that the devil reinvigorates dead bodies and that’s where zombies come from.”
Trying to avoid public criticism of another preacher I said, “Where in the Bible does he get this?”
She shot back, “Well, I don’t know where he gets it. All I know is that he says we’d better get our guns ready because zombies are real.”
“Where do you go to church?” I asked.
“I go to the Cowboy Church outside the loop. You know, you can see the rodeo arena out back.”
“How many people attend on Sunday mornings to hear that zombies are real?”
She said, “Oh, we usually have somewhere around 400 on Sunday mornings, with most staying around Sunday afternoon for pot-luck dinner. We have roping, barrel-racing, and other rodeo events after that.”
I didn’t know whether to cry, cuss, or pray for mercy. Every Sunday I preach well-prepared, biblical sermons to a congregation of 80 to 100 people, while across town 400 people dress up as cowboys and pack into a church to hear that zombies are real and go rodeo afterwards.
Someone asked me the other day if I thought I was depressed; I thought about this barbershop conversation. I responded that the question is not whether I’m depressed. The question is why am I not depressed?
There was a huge headline in our local newspaper about the Texas controversy over US Army training code-named “Jade Helm” going on near Austin, Texas. Some conspiracy theorists were worried that the Obama Administration was secretly preparing for the Army to seize control of the Texas government, impose martial law (some say Sharia Law), and seize everyone’s guns. Furthermore, apparently several Walmart stores had been inexplicably closed, which proved the point that the Army was preparing the stores to become detention centers for all those they arrested. Texas Governor Greg Abbot ordered the Texas State Guard to “observe” the Army training to make sure the Constitution was being observed.
The response by readers of the newspaper article was interesting. A few said that it was all true and we’d better get ready. A few others said it was extremism and how could anyone believe such weirdness and why did the paper even run the story. But most of the respondents said things like, “Well, you know where there’s smoke there’s fire. Sure, it’s a nutty story but at the same time, I’m glad the governor is keeping an eye on the Army. Better to be safe than sorry.” What was further disheartening is that many of those expressing such views are people I know in town who are active members of local churches.
I saw an ad for a new local food outlet that began with the words of Jesus to be prepared and “keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matt 25:13). As I read on, I realized that this was an ad for a seminar on how to prepare for the coming end of the world. Besides learning how to grow your own food, there was training in guns and ammunition, making your home into a fort, and knowing the escape routes out of your community.
I feel like the character Walter Sobchak (played by John Goodman) in the movie The Big Lebowski, who screams, “Has the whole world gone crazy?!” Zombies? Secret Army takeover plots? Apocalypse?
One more item: As I write this, last week was the annual National Day of Prayer observance. Our local version is held at one of the city parks where everything is decorated in American flags, the community choir sings “God Bless America,” and the series of speakers get up and fume, fuss, and shout over the demise of America, the dangerous rise of same-sex marriages, and why “Christians must take America back!” (Always an explanation point!) This year, like every year, it is an all-white audience completely distinct from our annual Martin Luther King Commemoration back in January. The pastors of the leading large white churches do not participate in the MLK events, but they always lead the NDP event. When invited to the MLK service, they often reply, “That’s too radical.” Yet, when some of us do not attend the NDP service, we hear, “Why can’t the church be one? You folks don’t want to be the unified church.”
Which reminds me of Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, where he prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:11). For a long time, this has been my most discouraging word from Jesus. Is this what Jesus is praying? That I be unified with churches preaching about zombies, while getting our guns ready, waving the flag, and building bunkers?
I can’t do this.
What I can do is trust that Jesus is praying for me, and for the wider church, when I can’t. And while I do not think Jesus is talking about being one with gun-toting, flag-waving zombie fighters, I do think Jesus is calling us to humbly trust him as we learn to be one with others who come to Jesus’s table or altar with hands that are empty, with hearts that are ready, and an appetite that hungers and thirsts for Jesus and his righteousness. In turn, formed and fed by Jesus we go out with the same humbling trust to serve the least of these.
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Old Pickups and Advent
Kyle Childress
There’s an old joke I’ve told many times at prayer breakfasts in the basements of small town and rural churches among men with sunburned faces.
Seems this midwestern farmer was driving his few dairy cows across the road when a big Cadillac with long steer horns across the front bumper roared up and stopped in the road.
Behind the wheel was a fellow in a big cowboy hat. He watched the farmer with the cows and asked him, “This your farm?”
“Yep.”
“How big a place you have here?”
The farmer motioned. “My property line runs from that line of trees you see over yonder to that ridgeline you see over there.”
“Yeah, I have me a place down in Texas,” the fellow in the big hat said. “I go out in the morning at sunup and get in my pickup and drive all day, and by the time the sun goes down, I still haven’t reached my property line.”
“Yep, I used to have a pickup like that,” the farmer said.
Well, I have a pickup like that now. It’s a 1977 Ford F-100 I inherited from my grandfather by way of my uncle and then my brother, who brought it to me the summer before last.
When my brother and I opened the cab door the first time, I quickly noticed the faint aroma of snuff that my grandfather dipped for nearly seventy years. The flashlight he always kept under the dashboard was in its place, and bolted over the back window was the same old gun rack he removed from and reinstalled in the various pickups he owned, more to hang hats and caps from than guns. Many of my earliest memories are of being in one pickup or another with him; he drove nothing else.
This one was his last. Old enough to be ugly but not old enough to be a classic, it has no frills, no air conditioner, no power steering, and a three-speed standard transmission that shifts on the steering column. It is not a comfortable pickup; it’s a pickup for work.
In the bed is my grandfather’s big toolbox. When I opened it, I discovered many of his tools, not only for his work as the all-purpose maintenance man at our local hospital for forty-four years, but also for working on the truck: a roll of duct tape, a hydraulic jack, a four-way lug wrench, extra bottles of motor oil, an extra radiator hose, an extra fan belt, jumper cables, various wrenches, screwdrivers, and a socket set. Here are the essentials for a man who knew how to work on his own truck.
There’s an old truism among drivers of old pickups that goes something like this: You either drive a truck with everything working or you have a broke-down truck that needs work.
Wrong. Old trucks are driven and need working on at the same time. They are always in need of more work, but you get them going and are prepared for a breakdown wherever you go.
This