Al Capone Does My Shirts (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

It's 1935. Moose Flanagan and his family have just moved from the middle of the country to Alcatraz Island so that his father can take a job as a prison guard. Having a job, any job, is an accomplishment, even six years after the great stock market crash of 1929. But this job comes with both a decent salary AND a place to live. All of the guards at Alcatraz must live on the island, so quarters are provided for them and their families.

As important as those things are, though, there is another reason for them moving away from all that is familiar to them. Moose's sister, Natalie, needs a special school, and one of the few such schools, perhaps the best of them all, is located just across the Bay in San Francisco. Moose's Dad and Mom uprooted their family, made the move, took the dangerous job, agreed to live on the island, all pinned on the hope she will be admitted.

Al Capone Does My Shirts is one of my favorite reads. I recommend it to all (and I can hardly wait the few more years until I can read it with my grandson!). Gennifer Choldenko's novel has it all: dangerous criminals and trustees, family life and school, a Warden and prison guards, a likable main character and baseball, and, of course, Alcatraz and Al Capone.

But it also has some other things: uncertainty, yearning, forced relocation (for Moose), and not knowing who your true friends are.

And in these things, we find a connection to this week's Lectionary passages. I am particularly thinking of the upheaval being experienced by the Israelites who were forced to move to a foreign land, are captives there, and who must find their way, somehow, until they are released.

They yearn for the home they left behind.

I wished I could have reached into the novel and shared with Moose the comforting words Jeremiah wrote for God's people in Lamentations:

"But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:21-24 ESV)

When the Lord is our portion, it doesn't matter where we are, and we can place in God all our hopes for ourselves and our loved ones. God's faithfulness always exceeds whatever we lack.

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Who SAYS we never shake things up? Eric switched his sermon source for this week and last. This week, he will use the Lectionary passages intended for October 6, 2013. Next week, we will be back on track.

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 22 (27) (October 6, 2013)

Lamentations 1:1-
Lamentations 3:19-26 or Psalm 137
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-9
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

I hope to see you Friday morning at Lectionary Breakfast. We will gather at the Waco Egg and I restaurant at 8:00 to share food and fellowship.

Please leave your laundry at home.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

A Matter of Gravity (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Several years ago, a question was put to Futurists consulting with a government think tank: "How would life be lived if, every day for 20 minutes, there was no gravity?"

The group immediately split into two different camps: the "gravity will disappear every day at the same time" camp and the "no one knows when the 20 minutes of non-gravity will occur in a given day" camp.

The scenarios they tossed out were, to say the least, intriguing. Everything from "we would need to anchor everything not already tied down" to "we could take it as an opportunity to teach people to fly." Other ideas included permanently labeling everything so items that "strayed" could be returned to the rightful owner and strengthening roofs so they could withstand the impact of objects that would, surely, fall on them when gravity resumed.

Still, what is most interesting to me is that not a single one of them applied their scenarios any where except on Earth. You see, at that point in time, no one had actually flown into space; the Earth had yet to be orbited; space stations were fully the province of fiction. None of these folk, until later told to do so, considered the question from the perspective of outer space.

They were thinking chaos would ensue for 20 minutes every day; that, at a minimum, the potential for loss and injury had to be addressed.

This makes me think about the passages of this week's Lectionary readings. Psalm 81:11-12 talks about what would happen if our spiritual gravity were switched off, perhaps permanently. We would be allowed to follow our OWN counsel. Like an object no longer tethered to the Earth by gravity, we would spin off in the direction we were already headed, but with nothing to break our speed except impact. Our "own counsel" would soon lead us to destruction.

Despite how we often chafe against its seeming limitations, we need the spiritual gravity God offers us to keep us tethered to reality, to continue moving in orbit around all that truly matters.

This week's passages are all about HOW we do that.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 17 (22) (September 1, 2013)

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Sirach 10:12-18 or Proverbs 25:6-7
Psalm 112
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

I hope to see you Friday morning at "The Egg and I" in Waco. From 8:00 to 9:00, we have a great time rocketing through the scriptures, and the food is LOTS better than paste and Tang :-)

Enjoy the week!
Steve

The Sunday Milking (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

For a few years, my Dad was involved with a family friend in a dairy operation. Early on, before the dairy could pay for itself, the two of them also worked for one of the barge lines based in our hometown of Paducah, Kentucky. That job (pretty much everyone called it "working on the boat") required each of them to be away from home for an entire month; working, eating, and sleeping on the tug as it pushed barges down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, and then on down to New Orleans . . . and back.

Dad and our friend alternated months working on the boat; the one NOT on the boat handled the dairy. They would "swap off" the next month, and so on.

The dairy was a two-a-day operation. Once each morning and once each evening, the cows would make their way across the field and crowd up around the milking door. They were pretty insistent about being fed and milked on time. On the rare day we were late, we could hear them "bawling" clear out on the road.

I was expected to help Dad whenever he needed any assistance with the milking. I wasn't called on to do this too often, and, despite my grumbling about having to get up early or perhaps miss an after school activity, it really was no burden. While Dad got the equipment up and running, ensuring it was clean and ready, my job was to climb way up onto the feed floor, essentially an attic-like space filled with feed. I would make my way around the room, shoveling the feed into the tops of tubes that led down to where the cows would stand when being milked. I usually had to do this twice for each milking. When not shoveling feed, I helped with the cows.

The only time I really had a problem with all of this was one Sunday morning.

Even as a teen, Sundays were MINE. My "day of rest." My day to worship, attend Sunday School, and, in the afternoon, participate in youth activities before evening worship. We teens had such a great time being together, we often went out to the Dairy Queen after evening worship.

Nobody messed with my Sundays.

But one Sunday, the cows did.

I awoke early that Sunday to the sound of my Dad calling my name, telling me to get up because he needed my help with the cows. For a moment there, I was completely disoriented; wasn't this Sunday? But then, when my head cleared I KNEW it was Sunday. I pulled on my jeans and shoes, buttoning my shirt as I headed downstairs, but I griped all the way down the stairs . . . and all the way out to the farm. I whined about losing "Sunday time" to the cows; I was emphatic that we HAD to finish in time for me to get to church; I was oh-so-righteously ticked off at Dad for making me do this "on a Sunday!"

Dad didn't say a word all the way to the farm. He just let me rant. But, once we arrived and were walking toward the dairy barn, Dad turned and stopped me with a palm to the chest. I stopped walking (and, finally, stopped talking).

Dad said, "Do you hear that?"

Of course, I hadn't heard anything other than the sound of my own voice for several minutes. But as I paused, then, to listen, I did hear something.

"Yeah," I said, "It's the cows bawling."

And he then asked the question, the one that REALLY shut my mouth: "Do you know WHY they're bawling?"

In all the time we had been doing this, I had never once stopped to wonder . . . well, ANY thing about the cows. Sadly, I had to admit that I had no idea, really, why they were bawling. Somehow, in my youthful mind, I just thought they were ticked off that we were late.

Well, no.

"They're bawling," said Dad, "because they're in pain. And they will stay that way until somebody milks them."

I was just like those folks in this week's Lectionary selection from the gospel of Luke: I couldn't see past my own well-ordered world view to the actual living beings who were in need.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 16 (21) (August 25, 2013)

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

I hope to see you Friday morning at Lectionary Breakfast. We're still having a great time discussing the scriptures over a great meal at "The Egg and I" in Waco. Join us if you can.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

Run For Your Life (a Lectionary Reflection by Steve Orr)

The news was bad, about as bad as it gets. His life was forfeit. It appeared nothing could be done to change that. So. Decision time.

Fight, flight, or fold?

Some of us recall the television show, Run For Your Life, where, in the first episode, successful attorney Paul Bryan is told by his doctor that he has less than two years to live. Faced with a hopeless situation, he elects to "take the money and run." For 85 more episodes we follow Paul Bryan (perfectly portrayed by Ben Gazzara) as he travels the globe attempting to do all those things, go all those places that might, in modern parlance, constitute his "bucket list."

This show worked a lot like Route 66; each episode finding the main character embroiled in some situation, but rarely in the same place and rarely with people he had met before. One week he might be stuck in middle America because his car broke down, and the next he might be enlisted by US intelligence to perform some task behind the Iron Curtain (Why, yes, it . . ahem . . . WAS a long time ago).

For those who have never seen it, this is one of the best shows television has offered us, regardless of year. Great writing, great acting, and a who's who of Hollywood stars on their way up. Definitely worth your viewing time.

And that brings me to this week's Lectionary scriptures. In the 1st Kings passage Elijah, coming off the victory at Mount Carmel, suddenly finds his life threatened, and not by just anybody. He has been threatened by Queen Jezebel, a woman who has a reputation of delivering on her threats.

Like Joseph before him (and many others before and after), Elijah elects to run from the confrontation. It seems counter-intuitive, especially following Mount Carmel's mind-blowing victory. But, run he does.

Paul Bryan COULD have chosen differently. He could have stayed right where he was, just accepted the bad hand he had been dealt. "Fold" is always an option. But he chose, instead, to take a different path, to "run for his life." And because of his choice, adventures ensued. Elijah, too, ran from his troubles . . . right into the arms of God.

There are times when we need to press on, but there are also times when the thing to do is run the other way. Or if not run, then walk, or maybe just step off for a bit . . . and seek an audience with the one who is "a very present help in trouble." (Psalms 46:1 NKJV)

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 7 (12) (June 23, 2013)

1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Psalm 42 and 43
Isaiah 65:1-9
Psalm 22:19-28
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

Complicit (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Do you know the name, Lewis Powell? If so, then you get a gold star. Most people, even if they've heard it before, can't think why it should be memorable. Lewis Powell was involved in what many consider one of the greatest tragedies (if not THE greatest tragedy) in the history of the United States of America.

Well, that certainly narrows it down. No? OK, I won't keep you in suspense. Lewis Powell, and his friend George Atzerodt (another name you probably don't recognize), were accomplices of John Wilkes Booth.

Booth and his accomplices originally planned to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward (of "Seward's Folly" fame). Then, as we all know, things changed. Their goal had always been to cripple the Union by removing the President and those immediately in line to replace him. But when kidnapping proved impossible, Booth decided assassination was their only other option.

We all know Booth's name. It is infamous. Not only did he assassinate the President, but his act, all by itself, led to the extremely harsh Reconstruction period the South had to endure following the Civil War. Lincoln had made it clear he desired a kindler, gentler reabsorption of the South into the Union. With his mediating influence gone, the hammer came down and came down hard.

Booth was gunned down by Federal troops at a farm in Virginia less than two weeks after the assassination. But what about the other two guys? Powell went to Seward's house, stabbed and seriously wounded him (but Seward survived). Atzerodt could not bring himself to attempt to assassinate Vice President Johnson (he went out drinking, instead). Nevertheless, both hanged for their roles as accomplices.

And that brings us to this week's Lectionary passages. I've read two of these stories many, many times: the murder of Naboth for his vineyard (1st Kings) and the murder of Uriah the Hittite for his wife (2nd Samuel). But on every other reading I missed something, something pretty significant.

These murderers had accomplices.

I have always focused on the actions of Ahab and Jezebel that led to Naboth's death. And, of course, we know of David's lust and how it led to the death of Bathsheba's husband. But none of these villains acted alone. Jezebel involved the "leaders and nobles" of Naboth's city in her murder plot. And David involved Joab, his chief military commander, as well as who knows how many troops, in leaving Uriah alone and unprotected in combat.

We eventually learn of God's response to the actions of Ahab, Jezebel, and and David for their evil machinations. Even though none of the three actually committed the act, God punished them harshly. But we never read anything about their accomplices. I think I know the reason for that.

I doubt these other people escaped the consequences of their complicity. "What goes around comes around" has always been truth. You do, in fact, reap what you sow. But I think the reason these are not reported to us in scripture is this: because some people are leaders while most people are led, the greatest consequence must fall upon the leaders.

Our takeaway? We should look around us and consider just who it is we lead (because there are always some that follow us). Then we should take a little time to reflect on just exactly where it is we are leading them and what is we are leading them to do.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 6 (11) (June 16, 2013)

1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a
Psalm 5:1-8
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15
Psalm 32
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3

We would love for you to join us at Lectionary Breakfast some Friday morning. We're at The Egg and I (Franklin and New Road in Waco) from about 8:00 am to about 9:00 am. Good food and even better company.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

Hobbits at Pentecost? (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

In The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (and later in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy), the central characters are hairy-footed little Hobbits from a pleasant backwater of Middle Earth called The Shire. Outside of the adventures recounted by Tolkien, these little beings live generally low-key, unsophisticated lives; taking joy from eating and drinking and other homely activities.

They live the kinds of lives where Second Breakfast may well be the high point of the day.

And yet, Tolkien chose Hobbits to bear the corrupting "Ring of Power" to its intended unmaking in the volcanic fires of Mount Doom in Mordor. Much debate has occurred, both in and outside of the novels, about why the Hobbits were entrusted with such a crucial task.

It reminds me of the reaction of the crowd at Pentecost to those chosen by Jesus as the bearers of his Good News ["Utterly amazed, they asked: 'Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?'" (Acts 2:7 NIV)]. I know the Bible is not a movie script, but I think the translators may have really "under sold" the crowd's reaction. Shouldn't there be an exclamation point in there somewhere??!!

Umm, Galileans? Really?

That pretty much sums up the general response of ... well, just about all of those who encounter this band of Jesus-followers. Everyone considers them unsophisticated and ill-suited to the tasks they have been assigned. Nathan was not the first (nor the last!) to ask, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46 NCV) And yet, these rough people are the ones Jesus chose.

In TLOTR, Gandalf indicates he chose the Hobbits to take the ring to its doom because they COULD bear it . . . as opposed to every other candidate who would likely succumb to the corruption that comes from possessing such great power.

I don't think we know why Jesus chose the Galileans. But maybe it was for a similar reason. None of the seemingly obvious choices, as it turned out, were really appropriate.

Sometimes, the very person you need is the one the powerful and sophisticated would walk right by without a first glance.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Day of Pentecost (May 19, 2013)

Acts 2:1-21 or Genesis 11:1-9
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:14-17 or Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, (25-27)

Join us at Lectionary Breakfast this Friday morning? As usual of late, we'll gather at 8:00 a.m. at The Egg and I for some good food and great discussion.

No sophistication required ;-)

Enjoy the week!
Steve

The Call (a VERY short short-story)

THE CALL
by Steve Orr

It had been a good call. He looked good. He sounded happy. She liked that.

But then he asked about the kids.

She had thought she might get through the call without having to outright lie. She cut her eyes to the priest. He was carefully looking anywhere else.

"The kids are fine, honey. They're playing outside."

"Missed them, again. This keeps up, they're not gonna know me."

He was smiling. Laughed lightly and easily.

She forced a return smile. Sold it.

Right then, there was a loud THUMP from outside. She looked up. When she returned her gaze to the screen, it was dark. She heard his voice through the speaker.

"Hey! You still there? What happened? The picture is gone!"

Looking left, she saw the priest had his hand on the switch. It was flipped to "Voice-only."

Forcing a laugh, she said, "I'm still here. We have some weather building. I think that may have been a transformer blowing. I guess I'd better go round up the kids."

There was a longish pause. When he spoke, he sounded disappointed.

"I wish you could come here and take me home."

"Me, too, Honey."

"They say I'm doing better. That maybe I can go home soon."

The tears came then, but she managed to keep them out of her voice.

"Oh, Sweetheart! That would be wonderful! I can hardly wait!"

"Well," he finally said. "Guess I'd better wrap this one up. I love you, Honey. Missing you already!"

"I love you more!" She said brightly, letting her voice fill with playfulness.

"Bye."

"Bye."

The priest cut the signal. She stood and walked toward the door. The rustle of the dress seemed to walk beside her as she crossed the pretend Living Room.

"Private?"

"I can't talk right now, Rev. OK?"

A pause.

"OK. But I'm scheduling you for an hour tomorrow, midday. We have to talk about this."

"Oh, Rev. You're gonna get me psyched with all this counseling."

"Nothing to worry about on that count. I counsel everybody. Nobody's going out on a psych."

She stepped up to the door, saw that the red sign was lit: "OUTER DOOR OPEN." She waited until the green "OUTER DOOR CLOSED" sign lit up. But the door opened before she could get her hand to it. Facing her was the Sergeant Major. She pushed past him and headed toward the other door.

He called after her. "How's it going, Private?"

Without turning, she called back, "Same-o, Same-o, Top."

She stopped at the rack and waited, back still turned to the man. She sensed his eyes on her, but busied herself by pretending to check her weapon. She didn't know if he'd seen the tears on her face, but she wasn't going to give him a better look.

Finally, she heard the inner door close.

Alone in the hall, she stripped off the civvies, quickly getting down to her base uniform. She pulled on her gauntlets, settled the cowl and helmet over her head.

She waited on the face mask.

Checking, again, as any good soldier would, she confirmed the panels showed "INNER DOOR CLOSED" before opening the outer door.

The heat hit her like a wall, like always.

She started up the earthen ramp toward the surface. Only then did she begin to seat the mask over her face.

By the time she had it in place, the tears were gone.


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[The challenge was to write a short-story under 600 words. It was to be about someone who found something they had no intention of returning. Sadly, I fail at writing own demand. Nothing for that topic came to mind. The story, above, is what did come.]