With a few inclusions and nuances different, I would be pleased to speak from the pulpit today in the same manner I did in 1978. In the meantime, I have endured considerable ordeals, external and internal, which I will not elaborate upon here, over same–sex issues. One must confess that only God in wisdom knows the truth. Surely we see through a fragmented mirror and spy various images. I think the Catholic Church, with its ethical foundation in natural law, offers the best clues for clarity here.
I would add a pastoral note. Through the years, I have had opportunity to minister to practicing gay and lesbian persons. While I have held opposition to their lifestyle, I believe I have been enabled to treat them in the same manner as I would anyone else. Their response to me and my ministry indicates they felt treated well. I say this in credit to the Spirit, not to myself.
A lot of water under the bridge since the Spring of 1978. A whole torrent, in fact. The eddies in the stream had only begun to ripple. The deluge, now forty years old, was building. Now the flood is upon us.
May 18, 1980—When Mt. St. Helens Blew
I had announced that for the all–church picnic in Reany Park the pastor had ordered a perfectly beautiful day. And so it was. Warm for May. Bright blue skies shone overhead as we gathered for morning worship. Afterward many of us stopped by our homes to don casual clothes and head for the park.
We had no idea that 300 miles to our west Mt. St. Helens had blown her stack. There had been plenty of advance warnings of the volcanic eruption. “Don’t go there!” red zone parameters were established. Still, when she blew her top some fifty of God’s children lost their lives. Others managed to outrace the hot ash and survive.
There we were playing games, conversing, preparing picnic food, and generally enjoying the day. Unaware were we that the mountain had exploded while we were in worship. At some point I looked to the west and saw a black line across the horizon below the cloudless sky. I said to my wife, Dianne, “That looks like the approach of a Midwest thunder storm.”
Then from across the street, where he lived, the Lutheran Campus Minister, Roger Pettenger, hurried toward us. This is what I remember him shouting: “Don’t you people know what’s happened? Go home!” We did.
By late afternoon the ash, blown by the trade winds, had reached Pullman, Washington, on the Idaho border. It fell like a heavy grey snow. Unprecedented! Calm people became agitated. Nervous people reacted with patience. Public schools suspended classes. Washington State University (WSU) closed for the term, causing seniors to be concerned if they would graduate.
By the next morning two inches of ash lay on the Palouse hills. Some forty miles north, six inches fell and choked the winter wheat. Light like talcum powder when dry and heavy as cement when dampened. The scientists at WSU and at University of Washington could not agree as to the danger to the lungs of this ash, but there was a run in the drug stores on face masks. All seemed to agree that this ash bore real danger to internal combustion vehicles.
A week later, on May 25, 1998, my pulpit word title read, “Fall Out.” It was Pentecost Sunday. I spoke of “ambiguous fall–outs” such as ash that clogs motors and injures lungs but might mix with the Palouse soil to produce fine crops. (This latter result indeed happened.) And then I called attention to “benevolent fall–outs” epitomized in the birth of the Church when the Spirit of God fell on praying and believing people empowering them to give unashamed witness to the Christ who brings wholeness into the world, a fall–out we still need. And then, in preparation for Holy Communion, I referred to the need for the bread to be broken in order to enter us. I used a quotation from the Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan, “When I hear bread breaking, I see something else. It seems as if God never meant us to do anything else . . . so beautiful a sound . . . the crust breaks up like manna and falls all over everything. And then we eat—bread gets inside humans.”11
Then I prayed:
O graceful fall–out from the Lord,
Covering us, getting inside of us,
with the flavorful nutrition of
amazing love.
O graceful fall–out from the Lord,
spilling over the barriers
of our doubt and fears
with the fruit of divine favor.
Spirit of the living God, fall on us.
I had a hard time living down my promise of a great weather day for a picnic—May 18, 1980.
Easter Day in the Queens
When one says New York City, the name refers to five boroughs. If listed in terms of notoriety, in descending order, we name Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and then Queens. Unfortunately, many people know Queens for a tragedy—the site of a horrendous rape and murder of Kitty Genovese while, as it is alleged, thirty–eight persons in neighboring apartments might have come to her rescue but failed to do so.
As of February 25, 1968, Rev. James H. Ameling had resigned as Associate Minister of Union Church, a formerly Congregational, now UCC, in the Richmond Hill section of the Queens. I was to assume that position as an Interim by the end of March.
Easter Day dawned on Union Church on April 14, 1968. A couple hundred persons or families bought flowers for the day in honor or in memory of a loved one. The choir offered up the anthem, “Lo, the Tomb is Empty,” by Edward Broome. Then Rev. Arnold W. Tozer, the Senior Minister at the church since 1961, mounted the pulpit. As someone said, “If a Christian minister has nothing to say on that day, he/she should be quiet for the rest of the year.”
The denouement of Mr. Tozer’s message claims a fixed place in my memory. His title for the day, “Celebration,” gives a clue that what ensued, though seemingly spontaneous, in reality grew out of his plans for the proclamation.
I recall with clarity that Tozer suddenly said something like this: “This is Easter. The day of Resurrection. Christ is not dead. He is risen. Why do you just sit there? Stand up on your feet. Shout ‘Hallelujah!’ Say ‘Amen!’ Give God praise and glory.” As he spoke, his voice rose, his arms shot up, his whole being exuded animation.
Now this was no Pentecostal church. We were not in Baton Rouge with Jimmy Swaggert shouting, “My! My! My!”, and then breaking into tongues. No, I refer to a staid and proper United Church of Christ in the heart of Queens.
What happened? The Easter congregation rose out of their gravely pews, all the while looking about for assurance. In a way there seemed to be no alternative, given the pastor’s urging. But I can attest that from my seat in the chancel I saw not proforma obligatory obedience. There before my eyes, this old–line, main–line congregation stood en masse and shouted, “Hallelujah! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.” I too joined the celebration.
Not long after my Interim at Union Church ended, I, my wife, Dianne, and our young son, Kirk, moved on to a permanent situation in Michigan. But if someone asks me, “What’s your most memorable Easter?”, I suppose I might say, “Back in Queens when Tozer persuaded that congregation to stand up and shout, “Hallelujah!”
2. Berrigan, Testimony, 174.
3. Speratus, Evangelical, 314.
4. Lyte, Lutheran, 549.
5. Barth, The Word of God, 186.
6. Hazelton, Roger, Christ and Ourselves, 8.
7.