Holding Each Other Up

This is a cross-post from my reflections last week in the Second Page, our church newsletter. After our wrote this, another one of our beloved members Janelle Bevers passed. Her funeral was on Saturday, and was the fourth funeral our church was a part of last week.

What an incredibly hard, but good week. And what a church.

There is a memorable scene in Exodus 17 where the Israelites are making their way through the wilderness and are suddenly attacked by Amalekites. Moses dispatches Joshua to go out and fight while Moses climbs to the top of a hill from which he has a bird's eye view of the battle. There from the top of the hill Moses' raises his arms, the staff of God held high above his head. "As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning," (Ex. 17:11) Two men, Aaron and Hur, then come to Moses' aid. They take hold of Moses' drooping arms and help him hold them up the rest of the day, all the way to the setting of the sun. And this is the way that Joshua and the Israelites won the battle against the Amalekites.


It seems an unusually large number of Second B families are in the midst of some battle right now. This week we bury two Second B members, Randy Juergens and Bill King. Other members are doing all they can to choose life against the onset of Alzheimer's, cancer, and other debilitating afflictions. Pillars in our church are in the waning days of their lives. Some among us carry that most sorrowful burden of having to watch their own children suffer.


And it is here, in the midst of life's greatest struggles, that I see you visiting one another. I see you cooking for one another. I see you sending prayer cards to one another. I see you holding and hugging one another. Simply put, I see you loving one another.


I want you to know what a tremendous privilege it is to pastor a congregation full of Aarons and Hurs - companions who, when the weight of the world is too much for us to bear, walk up the hill beside us to help carry the load. And you do this all day long, till the setting of the sun, and then even beyond, back down into the night and through the valley of the shadow of death. What faithful friends you are.


Not long ago I stood in the kitchen of one of our dearest members who had just lost her husband, and I heard the words I will no doubt hear hundreds of times over the course of my pastorate at Second B: "If it wasn't for this church I don't know where I would be."


And I thought to myself, "Thank God, we don't have to know."

Reflections on Ardelle Clemons life

These is my tribute to Ardelle Clemons printed in this week's Second Page:

On Monday of next week I and many others from Second Baptist will travel down to San Antonio to say goodbye to Ardelle Clemons. It is hard to express just how much Ardelle’s life and spirit helped to shape me, Irie, and indeed all of Second B.

When I was a young boy at Second B I knew Ardelle only in a very limited way. Hardy Clemons was then the senior pastor at Second B, and Ardelle was first and foremost in my mind Hardy’s wife. When I was a child I thought like a child, and I thank God that as I grew up I put away such childish thinking. In fact, we all did. Ardelle pretty much insisted on it. The other day Penny Vann told me that when he and Joy first joined the church back in the 70’s, someone introduced Ardelle to them as “the preacher’s wife.” Penny said Ardelle looked at that person square in the eye and clarified. “I am Ardelle,” she said.

I was reacquainted with Ardelle and Hardy while I was in divinity school in Durham, NC, and they were in Greenville, SC. Once a semester I would drive south from Durham to Greenville and stay the weekend with the Clemonses. I always looked forward to sleeping in the big “Grady Nutt Memorial Bed” upstairs and waking to enjoy a cup of Ardelle’s “Brazilian style” coffee – half coffee and half milk. Just the way Ardelle liked it.

What amazed me about Ardelle most on those trips was the way she jumped right in on the late-night, theological bull sessions. She could hold her own whether we were talking about the modernism of Harry Emerson Fosdick, the fundamentalism of Paige Patterson, or the temperamentalism of First Corinth. Ardelle knew theology and, having grown up a preacher’s kid, she knew church — or, as she lovingly called it, “the fish bowl.”

It was Ardelle’s way with navigating the fish bowl that I give the most thanks for. Once Irie and I were engaged and then first married, we spent even more frequent weekends with Hardy and Ardelle down south in Greenville. I had stopped kicking against the goads and decided I was for sure going to be a pastor, and that decision left Irie – all of age 22 – afraid she needed to learn to play the piano and knit doilies so as to fit into her new “preacher’s wife” role.

Ardelle showed Irie another way. She modeled how someone could be the wife of a pastor while at the same time keeping her own name and identity. Ardelle encouraged Irie take up only the things she wanted and felt called to take up in church – regardless of how short-handed the youth department or any other ministry in the church might be. “Feel free to be your own person,” Ardelle told Irie. And Irie listened. She listened because Ardelle spoke with the authority of someone who had not only survived being a pastor’s wife, but excelled at it. I thought of Ardelle when at our first church Irie said thanks but no thanks to being a part of the ladies’ auxiliary. Irie felt the freedom to be Irie because Ardelle had the courage to be Ardelle.

There is a saying attributed to Jesus that for me summarizes the gift Ardelle gave to Irie, me, and so many others here at Second B, First Baptist Greenville, and across the country. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is in you, what is in you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you, what is in you will destroy you.” Though not canonical, the saying is true. When we are free to be, and love, and express our true selves, then the truth of ourselves will set us free; and then we will be free indeed. This is the gift Ardelle Clemons gave to so many of us. She showed us how to be ourselves.

A decade after all those trips from Durham to Greenville, I find myself planning one more final road trip south to see Ardelle. Yes, I’m going to pay my respects to my first pastor’s wife. But I’m also going to pay my respects to a friend, and a mentor, and a fellow-traveler who showed me and so many others the way.

I’m going to pay my respects to Ardelle.

Bringing Down the Thunder

My friend and former professor Mike Broadway has an excellent and very thought-provoking reflection on Elijah's killing of the Baal prophets in 1 Kings.

Did God command the killing?

Does God command any killing?

What does Jesus' rejection of Elijah's violence in Luke 9 say about the way we are to live?

Read Mike's essay here:

http://mbway.blogspot.com/2011/10/elijah-in-cave-encouragement-or-maybe.html

Hope for Reconciliation

This is an incredible story of reconciliation down in Mississippi. It is the way to the world Jesus' still imagines.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_National/1242568525/ID=2169467616

The Next Faithful Step

I thought Lovett H. Weems's article is thoughtful and very timeley for Second B.

Lovett H. Weems: It is not enough to be right | Faith & Leadership

Inner Resources

This past Sunday afternoon I was invited to be a part of the anniversary service of Greater St. Mark's Baptist Church. It was a special invitation as Greater St. Mark's pastor Rev. Armstead has been battling brain cancer over these past several months and has been unable to be present for Sunday worship. But Rev. Armstead was planning to be there for the anniversary.


When I arrived I was disappointed to learn that Rev. Armstead was too weak to make it. I also learned I was going to be preaching the service. One of the deacons met me at the door and said, "Rev. Armstead can't make it but he wanted to make sure you got this." With that the deacon put a check into my hand.


"Oh, this isn't for me," I said. "I'm not preaching. I'm just saying a prayer."


"Oh no, your preaching," he said. "Rev. Armstead told us."


Without Rev. Armstead present to argue my case against I reconciled myself to the fact that ready or not I was soon going to be preaching. I turned to Elder Robert Kyles, who was a special guest at the service and who just happened to have come to worship at Second B earlier that morning. "You're going to recognize this sermon," I said.


I preached the same sermon I preached Sunday morning - though admittedly with a little more pizzazz and a lot more volume. My subject was "Inner Resources" and I again told how in WWII German U-boats sank British merchant ships and contrary to expectation it was often the older sailors who stayed alive in the turbulent and frigid waters. A study later determined that while the younger sailors were indeed physically strong, the older sailors had the inner resources necessary to survive such a trying ordeal.


At the end of the sermon I told the people of Greater St. Mark's that despite not knowing that I was going to be preaching, I believed God had nevertheless given me a word. I said that Rev. Armstead's boat had been sunk and that he is now swimming for his life. And I reminded them, he is no young sailor. He's been around a long time. He is in touch with his inner resources. He knows from whence his help comes from. He's not about to just give up. "And neither," I said, "is his congregation."


I sat down from the pulpit and Elder Kyles turned and leaned into my ear. "That was better than this morning," he whispered.


May the God of great inner resources give us all just the right words at just the right time as we encourage one another to keep swimming.

LISD's Expectation Graduation Walk brings dropouts back to school | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

I got a call last week from a from Nancy Sharp a parishioner, friend, and head public information person for the Lubbock Independent School District. "I'm going to make your day," she said. Then she told me about a story the Lubbock Avalanche Journal would soon run. Nancy was right. To have Wade come back a decade later and say, "You made a difference," made my day. Just goes to show you never know how you might change somebody's life. And BTW, Wade didn't even know I was back in town!

LISD's Expectation Graduation Walk brings dropouts back to school | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal