A Literary Dish Served Cold

The Wisdom of a Presbyterian pastor patriot

“Leisure is serious business,” writes Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks . Agree or disagree? You may recoil from this statement. With graduations around the corner and temperatures soaring into the 90s, perhaps you can’t wait to get to the Shore and get away from the serious business of making a living and from seriousness in general. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we set out to do nothing, we’ll soon fill that void with pointless and unfulfilling busy-ness: scrolling social media, ruminating, booze. If you aren’t careful, even an expensive vacation can be frittered away! Don’t think of leisure time as time off from work, Brooks writes, but time when we occupy ourselves with a different kind of work—the work that reaps non-monetary rewards. Leisure time is for planning and executing activities that feed our souls. To do this, structure and goal setting must be as much a part of our leisure time as it is our time in the office. Brooks, a cradle Evangelical turned devout Roman Catholic, seconds the advice of Bishop Fulton Sheen , who recommended his listeners set aside a “Holy Hour” each day for reading scripture, prayer, and meditation. Evangelicals call this “quiet time.” This is a great thing for us mainline Presbyterians to build into our schedules. Commit to it as you would an important standing meeting at your workplace. The goal of making this commitment is “a closer walk with God” and bearing more spiritual fruit. In the Reformed tradition, we call this “sanctification,” or growing in holiness. If an hour is too much time, start small. Try 10 minutes. It is also good to set wellness and artistic goals for ourselves and our leisure time. A good goal is something that is attainable but also stretches you. That could be setting a goal to take 10,000 steps per day, or to train for your first ever 5k or 10k race. If you want to grow in artistic talent and appreciation, what if you committed to water-coloring for 15 minutes per day and going to a local art museum once a month? Then reward yourself with a yearly weekend getaway to another city to visit several museums there. We have high hopes for our vacations, but we often find that the rest and renewal we experience on vacation is short-lived. That’s the way it is with planned inactivity, Brooks maintains. It’s the junk food of time. It’s less restful than we think. But if we treat our daily and weekly time away from the office with thoughtfulness and intentionality, and bring the habits we develop there to our vacations, then we may find our wellbeing boosted and our joy restored.

Most Americans are Christians, but is America a Christian nation? Should it be? Christian Nationalism is a political movement that answers “Yes” to both those questions. Last weekend’s Rededicate 250 gathering in Washington DC is a good example of Christian Nationalism in action. Rededicate 250 brought thousands of people to the National Mall to sing, pray, and hear pastors and political leaders laud the nation’s Christian heritage. The gathering fell on the 250 th anniversary of a national “ Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer ” proclaimed by the Second Continental Congress at the outset of the American Revolution. Christian Nationalism has critics, many of whom are Christians. The Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, for example, argues that Christian Nationalism “distorts both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy” by merging Christian and American identities. Why is Christian Nationalism a distortion of the Christian faith? To answer that question, let’s compare the 1776 proclamation, written by William Livingston, a Presbyterian delegate from New Jersey to the Continental Congress, to the invocation prayed by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at the Rededicate 250 event. In view of the “insidious and vindictive” British administration, the Proclamation called all residents of the 13 colonies to acknowledge God’s providence over the current crisis, to confess their sins, and pray that the present danger might be averted. The proclamation urged Americans to fast and to forgo work on May 17 (a Friday that year) to gather in worship with Christians of all denominations. It further implored God to frustrate the plans of the British and turn them to “justice and benevolence.” But if that were not God’s will, the proclamation asked that God would grant the colonists victory on the battlefield, bless their leaders, and quickly restore America to peace, health, and plenty. Speaker Johnson’s invocation also interceded for our nation’s leaders, as well as soldiers, health care professionals, parents, and pastors. He also acknowledged, in far more muted tones than the 1776 proclamation, our collective shortcomings. “Father, we pray for mercy upon our land, mercy upon us for our mistakes.” But the Speaker’s prayer was really quite different than William Livingston’s resolution. Johnson did not call on the attendees to humble themselves. He claimed that the Rededicate 250 crowd was already humble because they viewed the nation’s victories as divine miracles. Johnson noted the rise of sinister voices that “insist that… the American story is one of hypocrisy and failure, and this story can only be understood through the lens of our sins. But Father, we reject that. We rebuke that.” The Continental Congress did not reject those sentiments at all! Its resolution spoke frankly about sin, not just the sins of an arrogant King across the Atlantic, but sin on this side of the Atlantic, which God was punishing by wielding an arrogant King against them. Speaker Johnson did not pray for his ideological enemies. He mentioned them only to condemn their viewpoints. While Livingston’s resolution strongly denounced British oppression, it called the British “our unnatural enemies.” War between Britain and America was not normal! It was fratricide. “We are inoculating the world with a mild form of Christianity, so that it is now practically immune against the real thing,” wrote E. Stanley Jones, missionary and theologian. That’s what Christian Nationalism does. Christian Nationalism uses Christian language, scripture and symbols to form self-congratulatory people. It asks nothing more of people than to look at the past through rose-colored glasses and feel confirmed in their low opinions of their present day opponents. It certainly doesn’t ask people to fast!  Christian faith, on the other hand, calls people to turn their lives around and turn to God for help to be peaceful, virtuous, and courageous citizens who hope for reconciliation, even in the most bitter conflicts. And that call to transformation begins with Christians.

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“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot, but this February is giving April a run for its money. January’s snow and ice held on for weeks, and no sooner had it finally melted than a blizzard dumped a new foot of frozen stuff on us. But in defense of February, it has blessed us with more than snow and cold. We have gained an hour of daylight this month! Imagine how much worse you’d have felt if you’d had an hour’s less daylight on Monday to shovel all that snow. The lengthening of the days coincides with the Christian season of Lent. In fact, the word Lent comes from an old Germanic word for spring, langatin , the season in which the days grow longer. So, what is Lent? A season in the church when the sermons grow longer? Not necessarily. In the ancient church, candidates for conversion went through a period of study, prayer, and fasting to prepare for baptism, which often happened on Easter. By the fourth century, this pre-baptismal, pre-Easter “intensive” course in Christianity had grown to 40 days, inspired Jesus’s 40-day fast in the desert. At its best, Lent is about refocusing ourselves on the death and resurrection of Jesus, our own dying to sin and rising with Christ in baptism, and basic Christian spiritual disciplines. “Just as athletes need to drill key skills and musicians need to practice scales, so too Christians need to practice self-denial and self-giving love,” writes Belmont University’s John Witvliet. John Calvin, the 16th century Reformation leader, was a strong believer in fasting, prayer, and education, but not as it was practiced during Lent in his day and time. He believed that mandating annual observances of spiritual disciplines encouraged hypocrisy and spiritual pride. He wanted Christians to take up spiritual disciplines in response to their feelings of gratitude, not because the calendar said so. In recent decades, Presbyterians have reintegrated Lent into our worship life. We observe Ash Wednesday each year. In February and March, we hear passages of scripture that focus on our need for repentance and Christ’s suffering on the cross. Some Presbyterians give up things for Lent—everything from chocolate to social media. But we do well to remember Calvin’s concern about hypocrisy and pride. As Peter Bower has written , ashes on our foreheads are not there to show off our faith. They are there to remind us that we are going to die, and everything we cling to tightly we will one day relinquish. The ashes in the shape of a cross remind us that if we want to live for Christ, we must die with him.  I applaud all efforts to give up sweets and social media, but there might be a deeper question to grapple with this time of year. What needs to die in you so that you may live forever with Christ? What needs to die in our church so that we may receive Christ’s resurrection power? How might you express your gratitude to God in concrete ways? In this season of lengthening days, how is the Spirit of God stretching you?

Before there was streaming, and before there was cable TV, there was ABC’s Wide World of Sports. If you wanted to watch athletes in lower profile events such as power lifting or skiing, you tuned into Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoons. Each week the show began with the same tag line: “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat…” This year’s Winter Olympics have delivered plenty of thrills, and plenty of agony. When Norwegian skier Atle Lie McGrath threw away his ski poles and stomped off the course after missing a gate in the slalom final, I initially thought he was being a poor sport. Then the announcer informed me that McGrath’s grandfather had died on the opening day of the games. As the camera zoomed in on McGrath lying in a snowbank at the edge of the woods, my heart went out to him. My heart goes out to slalom gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin in a different way. When she broke a 12-year drought in the Olympic slalom competition, Shiffrin stood motionless for a good long time. In 2020, Shiffrin’s father had died from injuries sustained in a fall. The skier told reporters that when she came across the finish line a winner, she felt at peace about her father’s absence for the first time, so she took a moment to be silent with him. These and other stories remind me of a fascinating Olympic story from a century ago that was brought to life in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. The movie dramatizes the experiences of two British runners at the 1924 Paris games, Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian, and Harold Abrahams, a Jewish Englishman. Abrahams must overcome prejudice to achieve his potential, while Liddell must allay his sister Jennie’s concerns that he is neglecting God’s call by pursuing a running career. (Liddell was born in China to missionary parents.) In a memorable scene , Liddell explains, “Jennie, you’ve got to understand. I believe that God made me for a purpose—for China—but he also made me fast! And when I run, I feel his pleasure. To give it up would be to hold him in contempt.” Liddell’s dream to win gold for Britain is seemingly thwarted when the 100-meter heats are scheduled for a Sunday. Despite pressure from the British Olympic Committee and the Prince of Wales himself, Liddell refuses to break the sabbath by competing. Another British competitor, having already medaled, gives up his place in the 400-meter race to Liddell. In the 400 final, held on a weekday, Liddell won gold, while Abrahams won gold in the 100. After the events memorialized in the movie, Liddell did return to China as a missionary. During World War II, he was interned in a Japanese concentration camp. In the camp, he won the respect of all the prisoners for his tireless efforts to serve them and ensure a just distribution of food and medicine. He died of malnutrition and a brain tumor five months before the camp was liberated. Liddell’s life witnesses to the Protestant belief that God can be glorified in secular life as much as in ordained or clerical ministries. Liddell also believed that the pursuit of a secular vocation should be governed by obedience to God’s commandments. Christian disagree about what should and should not be done on the sabbath, but then and now, people respect Liddell for not compromising his principles. As you watch the final events in this year’s Olympic games and witness new thrilling and agonizing tales spun on the ice and in the snow, remember Eric Liddell’s quote, and fill in the blanks for yourself: “I believe that God made me for a purpose, for _____, but he also made me _____! And when I _____, I feel his pleasure.” Complete those two sentences, and you’ll know without any doubt what your calling is.  Image credit: By Alexandquan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91164821