Stories, Shalom, and a Church

We pulled up into the church parking lot.  The church marquee had these words.

Join us this Sunday

for guest speaker

Dr. Waymon Hinson

From the Garden to Righteousness

 www.beringfamily.org

 

It was indeed strange. Dr. Jeff Christian, pulpit minister for this church was on sabbatical. Competent speakers had filled his spot on Sunday morning. Now it was to be me. Speaking in public is not generally a problem.  After all, I had been doing this sort of thing all the way back to junior high in my small town church of Christ in Trinity, Texas. Somehow this felt different.

 

Not only did it feel different, it was different. Jeff had known me as an academic sort back in the ACU days when he was an M.Div. student and an earner of the Certificate in Ministerial  Counseling. I'd admired him for a long time and was honored that he and his leaders nodded in my direction. Not only honored that I'd be called up to speak, but called upon to speak and their knowing that the topic would include social justice and black farmers as an illustration of institutional racism in our country from the frame of the garden and shalom to breaking of shalom and how we are where we are now.

This church has been known to "march to its own drumbeat" in the world, so to speak, led by the Lord and His calling upon their life as a body.

 

In preparation for the day, Bering Drive's youth minister, Cynthia Ownby, and I had corresponded. We settled in on Psalm 100 as a call to worship and the Pentatonix version of "Blowin' in the Wind" as the song immediately before I spoke. I was somewhat surprised that this suggestion was taken, but I need not have been.

 

The people at the church were engaging. Charla and I knew some of them. It was nice to see Dr. Amy Fuller and Dr. Dave Fuller. They'd been students and heroes of mine. The church has embraced a gender equality theology and practice to church leadership and worship participation. It was refreshing, very refreshing.

 

Then "Blowin' in the Wind," the tune and the words most of us know, came over the sound system. The words and those beautiful voices brought me to tears.  Could I actually speak after hearing this song since so many of the lines resonate with what I was about to say. Charla knew I was in trouble.

Check out this moving cover here and the words that follow.

 

  

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Only the introduction by Don Edwards saved me.