Reflection on Afghanistan, COVID and Leadership

Everything about Afghanistan has confirmed my strong conviction that sacrifice, duty, and leadership count. God bless the families of fallen service men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice and those who have paid the last full measure of devotion. The latest casualties strike at the core of what makes America great because their mission was humanitarian. They were there in Kabul to rescue and evacuate. May their memories encourage us, and inspire us to be like Jesus who gave his all so that we might live, and in life itself was willing to wash the disciples’ feet.  Lord, have mercy, we plead and pray.

Lord, give strength and comfort to all those who have given of themselves in all of our battles, especially against illnesses like COVID, injustice, terrorism and every infraction against the Golden Rule. Help our teachers, parents, nurses, doctors, caregivers, hospice workers, firefighters, police, EMS, first responders, last responders, and, of course, our brave service men and women who serve in harm’s way. All of these are for whom the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” are eerily appropriate today.

That charge at the 1854 Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War by the British was heroic, but disastrous because of miscommunication, but they did their duty nevertheless. It reads:

Theirs was not to make reply,

Theirs was not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

Duty, honor, and sacrifice are the by-product of leadership in families, schools, churches, and town halls on up to the highest reaches of government. We are a chain, only as strong as the weakest link, and the crucibles we’ve been facing have proven the mettle of our leaders and found it either worthy or not. The history books are the final arbiters. There will be applause and pundits in the meantime. The best leadership is gauged not by polls, but purpose.

For instance, I have been reading about Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., often called, “The Toughest Man in World War II.” He and his family were keen on purpose. His father was President Theodore Roosevelt of San Juan Hill and Roughrider fame who proposed that prudence demands that freedom-loving people, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” President Teddy Roosevelt’s youngest son, Quentin, was shot down and died in World War I. Another son, Kermit, served in World War I and II. Son, Archie, retired from the military after being shot in the knee in World War I, but insisted on coming back for World War II. He served in the Pacific Theater, was wounded again and received the Silver Star with three oak-leaf clusters. Ted, Jr. led the D-Day invasion as a part of the first wave at Utah Beach.

Why so much dedication to fight for their country? Their father, President Teddy Roosevelt, modeled and instilled a mindset of duty and military obligation. So, no wonder Ted, Jr. was the highest-ranking American officer on the invasion beaches. He was warned against it, but he replied that his troops needed him.

One author, K.S. Bruce, sums it up with this account: “Imagine it is D-Day, June 6, 1944, and you are a young private hitting Utah Beach in the very first wave, into the teeth of the German army, against a rainfall of enemy gunfire, artillery shrapnel and gore. You are filled with fear, and there on the beach in front of you, stands an old man. An American brigadier general – bull-frog voiced, pop-eyed, 5-foot-8 inches tall and directing the troops with his cane. Calm as a man can be in combat, he is Ted Roosevelt, Jr. At age 56 with bad arthritis, he had volunteered to be on the landing boats in order to give the young troops reassurance and to arm them with his same fortitude and courage, and he did exactly that. When he realizes he and his men are a mile from their designated drop-off point, he calmly looked at a map while dodging bullets and opined, ‘We’ll start the war from here.’”

Now, how’s that for leadership? In 5 weeks, he would be dead from a heart attack, but not without first leading his men ashore. His own son, Quentin, named after Ted, Jr.’s brother who was killed in World War I, was also in the first wave on D-Day, only to die some time later. How many invasions had this privileged son of a President been in that he, no doubt, could have escaped? Basically, all of them. As a combat officer in the 26^th Regiment of the First Division (The “Big Red One”) during World War I, Ted, Jr. helped lead the Americans into France. In 1941, he was back again to help lead the same regiment in the amphibious invasion of North Africa in World War II. He battled into Sicily, and he was with the Fourth Division at D-Day.

For his bravery on Utah Beach, General Ted Roosevelt, Jr. was awarded the Medal of Honor. His father, President Theodore Roosevelt, also received one for his leadership and bravery on San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. They, along with Arthur and Douglas McArthur, are the only father and sons to ever both win a Medal of Honor. Ted, Jr. is buried in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, alongside his younger brother, Quentin, who was killed in World War I. Leadership’s ripple effect spreads far and wide. Its lack does, too.

Oh, how we need leaders today. God help all of those trying to do their best to emulate duty, honor, and sacrifice in our battles both at home and abroad: in classrooms, boardrooms, family rooms, hospital rooms, and in the continued fight against all that is not of God everywhere. May it be said of us, we pray. Amen.

Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., seen in Ste. Mere-Eglise on July 12, hours before he died of a coronary thrombosis. Arthritis caused him to walk with a stick. The 4th Infantry Division commander described him as “the most gallant soldier and finest gentleman I have ever known.” (US Gov)

Teaching Honesty and Back to School

This week our Children’s Director, Stephanie Lord, and I were thinking about when to have our “Backpack Blessing Sunday,” and it knocked me for a loop to realize that we are that close to school starting back. Although I have been enjoying the countdown to college football, I really feel for the school teachers whose summer break is about to end. With all they deal with, it’s been too short!

Colleges and universities will crank up and have their convocations soon, too. Students and faculty will gather to officially start their academic year. For 12 years I attended the summer convocation at Emory University where I taught two courses: “Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit” and “United Methodist Discipline and Polity.” Teaching those courses was always a welcome rejuvenation of theological discourse and critical thinking about God.

Attending convocation always gave me a chance to think about an important word: Honesty. Needless to say, plagiarism is a rampant form of lying in academia. The internet and Wikipedia make it too easy to copy/steal someone else’s work. Honesty, therefore, is a good word for us to ponder before school starts, especially with the added political jockeying going on between Donald Trump and John McCain; i.e., “Who’s telling the truth?”

There’s a connection between honesty and academic convocations and it’s all in the hoods. The convocations that I have attended have exhibited a rainbow of different academic hoods. The various colors represented a person’s field of expertise via the outer velvet’s color, and the person’s alma mater was visually represented in the hood’s interior. My doctoral hood, for instance, has red velvet on the outside signifying theology and blue and gold inner trim denoting Emory’s school colors.

This practice goes back centuries. Hundreds of years ago people didn’t wear hats. They wore hoods, and they wore many different colored hoods. The color of a person’s hood signified their occupation. If you were a minister, you wore one color of hood. If you were a medical doctor, you wore another color of hood. You could tell, therefore, a person’s occupation by the color of hood they wore.

The problem with that, of course, was that some people tried to pass themselves off as somebody they weren’t. So, they wore a false hood. This is where we get the word “falsehood.” Today we think of a falsehood as something that isn’t true. It is any kind of dishonesty. A person’s honesty is of utmost importance. Lying erodes everything. Teachers promote intellectual honesty by requiring students to do their own work, or, when using information not new with them, to offer appropriate citation. If a pastor or anyone in any profession doesn’t do his or her own work, falsehood will undermine the whole of that person’s efforts. Without honesty, there isn’t much of a foundation for anything in a person’s life.

People can say wedding vows, but without honesty they don’t mean much, do they? Children can say that they love their parents, but love without honesty has little or no respect. People can say that they have done their best to put in quality time and effort at work, but the proof of their shoddy work ethic is quickly apparent if the end-product has problems. Falsehoods are found out! From the beginning of Christianity, the church stood for honesty even if it meant martyrdom. Early Christians could not say they believed in Jesus as Lord and kneel to Caesar as god, too. Honesty often means either-or rather than both-and! That’s a hard pill for our anything-goes society.

Honesty, therefore, requires a choice, a putting off of falsehood, a false hood. We get to choose every day which hood we’ll wear. Will we be honest, have integrity, or live a lie? A heart patient visited his cardiologist for his two-week follow-up appointment. He informed the doctor that he was having trouble with one of his medications. “Which one?” asked the doctor? “The patch,” the man replied, “The nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours, and I’ve run out of places to put it!” The doctor was flabbergasted. He had the patient quickly undress. The man had over fifty patches on his body! The patient didn’t understand that each time he put on a new patch, he was supposed to remove the old one.

Our new life in Christ requires taking off the old, and putting on the new. That takes honesty! Whether you’re headed back to school as a teacher, student, or administrator, or simply going about your daily life keeping score on the golf course or paying your bills, please take off your falsehoods and allow Christ to dress you in new clothing, in the truth! A life of honesty may be difficult, but it’s even more difficult to live a lie!

 

My Mother’s Train

I stopped Sunday afternoon at a Hallmark store to purchase a Mother’s Day card for Cindy. There was plenty of time to peruse them because I was between preaching, visiting a clergyperson in the hospital, and the last event of the day which was our District Pre-Annual Conference Orientation. After selecting an appropriate card I found myself looking at other items that might be an appropriate Mother’s Day gift for her.

Before it dawned on me that whatever I bought would just be another thing to pack for our upcoming move I noticed some rather odd items. The most unique and troubling gift was a mug with this phrase emblazoned on it: “If I were a Mormon fundamentalist I would want you as my sister wife.” I know that official Mormons have done away with the practice of having multiple wives, but I’ve seen too many ads for weird television shows about guys and their plural marriages to think that the phenomenon has disappeared.

It’s interesting that none of these shows are about women with multiple husbands, but that’s for sociologists to figure out. There’s a lot that I don’t know, but one thing for sure is that a mug with this “sister wife” stuff on it would NOT be a good idea for a Mother’s Day gift. As the saying goes, “My Mamma didn’t raise no fool!” and Cindy has been doing a pretty good job of shaping me ever since!

My mother was a great person. She taught me right from wrong, how to value every person no matter their faults, how to be accepting, and exhibit unconditional love. She wasn’t perfect. Who is? She came close, though. She was a spit-fire who didn’t mince words. She was fun and had the best laugh. She had wounds that she mostly kept hidden. She loved her family immensely. Her integrity was impeccable. What you saw is what you got and I am grateful for her constant and consistent example of being a Christ-follower.

Integrity is a powerful word and is sorely needed in our mixed up world. “Integrity” comes from French for “in touch,” literally meaning that a person with integrity has a solid core around which their entire lives revolve. They’re not two-faced. You can take what they say to the bank. They may have many spokes on the wheel of their life but there is a hub that is unshakeable.

Wow, am I thankful for a Mother with integrity! In this wishy-washy world of jello-like values, we need more people who know right from wrong and do what’s right. There’s part of the rub and takes me back to the weird mug at Hallmark. It’s hard to figure out what’s right and wrong nowadays. I think I would be better able to fend off the temptation to loosen my values if I asked whether my Mom would approve or not. I’m thinking that “W.W.J.D.?” and “W.W.M.D.?” (Jesus and Mother) are pretty synonymous for me.

I try to use the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to help me discern right from wrong as well: Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason. The Bible is God’s inspired Word and definitely primary. Tradition is what the church has taught over the centuries. Experience is both personal and corporate in nature. Reason is self-explanatory though most of us have seen so-called logic used to prop up the irrational. Frankly, Scripture and Tradition are most reliable for me personally, and if making life choices was analogous to a train then the engine would be the Bible followed by Tradition with Experience and Reason following next. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that Experience ought to be the caboose and come dead last.

Elevating Experience over Scripture is an awful hermeneutic! Our culture puts Experience first. God help us if the Church does the same. When I use Experience as the highest bar of what’s acceptable and right it usually results in self-centered failure. Our culture’s promotion of Experience as the rule of behavior is like the excesses of the Roman Empire, and we know what happened to it. When I promote Experience over the other three of the Quadrilateral I know that I am not doing what my Mother would do.

So, this Mother’s Day I am grateful for a Mother with integrity whose values were on solid footing. Her train had the cars in order. The Bible was first. Christian Tradition was second through a good church and family. Reason was honed in the milieu of a good Methodist school. Experience was put in rightful perspective as the last arbiter of right from wrong. As we anticipate Mother’s Day let’s answer very carefully, “What Would Mother Do?”

Never a Low Sunday or Day!

The Sunday after Easter is often anti-climatic because the throngs that filled the pews last week have dissipated. It’s called “Low Sunday” because church attendance has dipped so drastically from the week before. How do we keep up the enthusiasm when Easter comes and goes?

The answer lies in the fact that every Sunday is a little Easter. Early Christians moved from Judaism’s worship on the Sabbath, Saturday, because Jesus rose on the first day of the week. The first day of the week is not only appropriate because of its theological emphasis on Jesus’ resurrection, but also because it’s during the work week that our faith faces the largest obstacles.

Easter faith is needed more than once a year, or even once a week. Our credo needs to be: “Never a Low Sunday!” or “Never a Low Day!” if we truly believe in the grace and power of Jesus! To worship the Living Christ is to put Jesus first day in, day out. A victorious life depends upon constant faith and faithful dependence upon Christ. To keep Easter is to let Jesus set us free from the sins that hold us.

A couple sat in a pastor’s office preparing to be married. It was the second marriage for both. The pastor asked, “When did your relationship with God become very real and personal?” The bride-to-be’s answer was profound. She said, “It was following my divorce, during a low period in my life. I was running with the wrong crowd. One morning at 3 am, I found myself in the parking lot of a place I did not want to be. I said, ‘That’s it. I’m tired of this lifestyle. Lord, I confess that my own sin has fouled up my life. I believe you loved me enough to die for me and rise again for me so that I can be forgiven. Please forgive my past. I want to be your child from now on.’” She said that she felt an immediate release, as if a huge burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She became a new person in Christ.

Each of us has a past, some more sordid than others. Unless it is faced and resolved, it will haunt us and pull us down every time. Easter can continue if we will let God heal us. Each of us has our own particular list of sins. But none is too short to dodge judgment, and none is so long that Jesus can’t forgive. According to a story I heard, Sam Snead, the great golfer, was playing a round of golf with the baseball great, Ted Williams. Ted said, “Sam, you’ve got it made. You just tee the ball up and hit it. The ball is dead still. But I have to stand in a batter’s box and face an incredible array of fastballs, curves, and sliders. The ball is moving, maybe 90 miles per hour. That’s why my sport is tougher than yours.” Sam Snead thought about that then said, “Yeah, but you don’t have to play your foul balls.” That reminds me of Bubba Watson’s incredible hooking golf shot last Sunday from the foul ground in the woods off of #10 at the Masters during the play-off.

What do we do with our foul balls? How do we fix our mistakes? The answer for the Christian is through forgiveness. Jesus forgives us if we confess our sins. He sets us free. He empowers us through the Holy Spirit to begin new lives. He gives us the supernatural ability to say, “No!” to sin.

Our faith puts God first in true worship. Then God changes us into God’s likeness. Did you hear about the three people who were asked the question, “What is integrity?” One man, a philosopher, answered, “Integrity is how you act when no one else is watching.” The second person, a business person, said, “Integrity means that when you shake hands on a deal, no written contract is even needed.” The third person, a politician, looked this way and that and said, “What do you want it to mean?” The third person could have been any profession especially as I think of Coach Bobby Petrino’s lack of truthfulness with his family, the Arkansas Athletic Director, and others in the last few days. His self-proclaimed one-person motorcycle wreck, which we now know included a female staffer with whom he was having an inappropriate relationship, finally sunk him.

As much as we would all want to distort God’s standards to mean what we want them to mean, God has a set standard. When we couldn’t meet that standard, Jesus came to save us. Now through faith and the Holy Spirit we can be made children of God, redeemed and set free from sin! Easter’s hope of redemption is needed every day for all of us! I’m counting on it!

Always On The Field

Christmas is just around the corner and I’m pondering “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” I love the movie “Elf” and the last scene when Jolie sings about Santa and he shows up with Will Ferrell in tow. Listen and you’ll hear… “He knows who’s naughty or nice, he knows who’s been bad or good, so you better watch out…” Well, in good old South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford dodged an impeachment effort and will be slapped on the wrist with just a censure; and who’s not tired of Tiger Woods’ silent treatment. I like listening to Sports Radio and enjoy the banter of 107.5 “The Game.” They have been going back and forth on the whole Tiger saga. One of the commentators suggested what I did not want to hear about Tiger: his off the field behavior is no big deal if it doesn’t affect his on the field results. My answer: Malarkey!

We’re always on the field in the game of life. Integrity means everything about us is connected to a common core, no loose ends or loose cannons allowed. There has to be consistency in our public and private lives or else not only do we end up on Santa’s Naughty List but God’s. It’s Advent season and the Judge is Coming so I better watch out and remember I’m always on the field.

Hoods: Charge Conferences & Commencements

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Hope is what I thought about when I saw this rainbow last week. I have to go back to Candler’s summer COS graduation in a few weeks and we have our Columbia District set-up meeting on August 9 to get ready for annual Charge Conferences. Commencement and set-up meetings have a lot in common. Both of these events, plus Charge Conferences, present a fresh start, to commence living in a new way. I hope it’s in honest ways. Too many people have skirted by in university classrooms by saying only what they think a professor wants to hear, and too many clergy simply go through the motions of Charge Conferences without telling the whole truth. This is unacceptable.

 

Think about this in the context of graduation’s hooded academicians. At any graduation there are a rainbow of different academic hoods. The various colors represent a person’s field of expertise via the outer velvet’s color, and the person’s alma mater is visually represented in the hood’s interior. My doctoral hood, for instance, has red velvet signifying theology and blue and gold inner trim denoting Emory’s school colors.

 

This practice goes back centuries. Hundreds of years ago people didn’t wear hats. They wore hoods, and they wore many different colored hoods. The color of a person’s hood signified their occupation. If you were a minister, you wore one color of hood. If you were a medical doctor, you wore another color of hood. You could tell, therefore, a person’s occupation by the color of hood worn.

 

The problem with that, of course, was that some people tried to pass themselves off as somebody they were not. So, they wore a false hood. This is where we get the word “falsehood.” Today we think of a falsehood as something that isn’t true. It is any kind of dishonesty. A person’s honesty is of utmost importance. Lying erodes everything. I want to promote intellectual honesty by requiring students to do their own work, or, when using information not new with them, to offer appropriate citation. If a clergyperson doesn’t do his or her own work, falsehood will undermine the whole of that person’s ministry. Without honesty, there isn’t much of a foundation for anything in a person’s life. Charge Conference forms and Academic Integrity statements help keep us honest!

 

People can say wedding vows, but without honesty they don’t mean much, do they? Children can say that they love their parents, but love without honesty has little or no respect. People can say that they have done their best to put in quality time and effort at work, but the proof of their shoddy work ethic is quickly apparent. Falsehoods are found out! From the beginning of Christianity, the church stood for honesty even if it meant martyrdom. Early Christians could not say they believed in Jesus as Lord and kneel to Caesar as god, too. Honesty often means either-or rather than both-and!

 

Honesty requires a choice, a putting off of falsehood. A heart patient visited his cardiologist for his two-week follow-up appointment. He informed the doctor that he was having trouble with one of his medications. “Which one?” asked the doctor. “The patch,” the man replied, “the nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours, and I’ve run out of places to put it!” The doctor was flabbergasted. He had the patient quickly undress. The man had over fifty patches on his body! The patient didn’t understand that each time he put on a new patch, he was supposed to remove the old one.

Our new life in Christ requires honesty! Life in Christ demands that we take off our falsehoods and allow Christ to dress us in new clothing. A life of honesty may be difficult, but it’s even more difficult to live a lie! Hope springs eternal like the sign of the rainbow.