CYBERCOLUMN by John Duncan: Hope radiates

Posted: 6/22/07

CYBER COLUMN:
Hope radiates

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old oak tree in July, pondering past events and thinking of our nation at grief in America—grieving families in the loss of soldiers, grieving church members who have lost loved one, and still feeling the grief of long-forgotten, at least by most, of the Virginia tech tragedy of last spring. How soon we forget, but grief never forgets.

Really, though, I find myself thinking about the power of the teacher-student relationship. My mind cannot even fathom the events of Virginia Tech—the horror, the funerals with sad songs, or the grief that like an ocean wave will not, for some, go away. It will roll in waves, ceaselessly. Walt Whitman wrote two magnificent lines in his poem, Memories of President Lincoln: “With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and unbared heads.”

I find myself on this hot summer day looking out beyond the old oak tree. The bluebonnets have sung their glory as spring has passed. Not too far from here new roads, construction and the yellow flashing lights of construction blink and signal progress. And school is out, for most, but summer school is in (my own daughters are attending summer school): teachers teaching students the basics, reading, writing and arithmetic. Socrates, Plato and Joseph T. McClain would be proud.

I have thought about the terrible tragedy of Virginia Tech—the blood, the pictures, the anger, the death, the vigils with countless torches lit, and the sea of faces, those who unnecessarily lost their lives, the grieving families on the journey of long lament and even the family of the killer who will live with a mark of the beast the rest of their lives. I think of pastors, speaking at funerals trying to explain the unexplainable with comforting words from the Shepherd’s Psalm with images in fields of green and stories of how Christ lost his Son in a bloodbath and how life takes a sudden turn and you do not know where to turn and so Christ turns to you in the sacred silence and mysterious mess of life unpredictable. What do people do without God? Christ? The Holy Spirit who hovers as a comforter? I hear the voices of pastors, “God was there. He is here now. The Lord is my Shepherd, valleys and a rod and a staff and light in the dark and countless torches lit amid a sea of faces.” In the sea of faces, mothers, fathers, students, they still weep, the countless torches reflecting glistening tears on running cheeks in the shadows of death unplanned.

I also hear the voices of skeptics: Where was your God? I agree with C. S. Lewis, “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.” I know, I do not always understand C. S. Lewis either, but he is right: If there is no God and no meaning how would you know there were no God and no meaning since part of the meaning we gather in life comes from the contrasts: dark, light; atheist, Christian; death, life; student, teacher; wicks on candles snuffed out, glowing candles in the wind, with countless torches lit in the sea of faces. If only the skeptics would look into the sea of faces. If only skeptics would peer into the torches lit and find light.

For one, I am thankful for the Shepherd in a moment like this time in history on planet earth. I believe in God more than ever. I need the grace of the Shepherd’s care in valleys deep and utter gratitude to the Shepherd’s love on the mountain. Two, I keep thinking of the students and teachers and the teacher-student relationship, especially the one student who lost her professor in the rampage and uttered, “I will miss my brilliant professor.” I even wonder what she is doing this summer. Summer school? Camp? Weeping with willows on long summer nights?

For all we like to take credit for, we are products of the teacher-student relationship: parent to child, boss to employer, trainer to trainee, teacher to student. Of all the crazy things I am thinking about, words bouncing back and forth in my mind like a ping pong ball, are those words, “I will miss my brilliant professor!”

I once had a professor who has since passed on whom I miss. His name was Dr. Joseph T. McClain. He taught Greek and Bible at Howard Payne University. He loved running and sports, especially any team from Oklahoma, boomer sooner and the pride of an Okie from Muskogee and all that. He also pastored a church in Shelby, North Carolina and wrote me letters and said things like, “Don’t get any tar on your heels.” He had strong opinions about politics, school, education, and even my own life. He once told me emphatically, “Don’t graduate from college in three years! Don’t do it!” I did it any way and thought later that maybe he was right. He once sent me on a mission trip to Wyoming and sent me to the hardest church, a new church start to preach a revival where on the first Sunday I preached to three people. The pastor apologized because only him, his wife and son showed up. He admitted later that his other son stayed home and slept.

Dr. McClain said he sent me there, “To see what you’re made of.” He loved Bible verses like, “He who humbles himself shall be exalted. He exalts himself shall be humbled.” He longed to teach me the way of Christ, the way of discipleship, and the way of Biblical study in Greek language which like a farmer he aimed to plant as seeds in my heart. His teaching seeds bore fruit and now some 25 years later I still hear his voice deep in my soul.

All told, he taught me Greek and how to interpret the Bible and he loved A. T. Robertson’s commentaries full of word pictures and he gave me books from his library, always signed, “To my Faithful and Most Able Co-Worker with Love, Joseph T. McClain 12/25/81.” A good teacher will guide students through a maze of discovery like walking a corridor and opening doors and windows full of new adventure. A good teacher makes learning electric, pulsating with lightning and thunder and heightening the senses like the warning from an approaching storm. A good teacher invokes discipline. “Study a little every day,” McClain would say. A good teacher helps you see what you often do not see in your inner self and calls out that self to be shared and cheers you to grand heights. A good Christian teacher offers insight into the way of Christ and into the way of developing the mind of Christ.

I miss my brilliant professor. Oh, how I miss him. He did all of that for me.

Matthew (8:19-27, NIV) records an exchange between teacher and student-disciple: 19 Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 21 Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” 23 Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” 26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. 27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

Here I am under this old oak tree. Summer sizzles. Fields of green offer praise. Countless torches glow in the sea of faces. And I am thinking of the teacher student relationship most vital: Jesus to his disciples, Jesus to his followers, Jesus to people in the twenty first century like me. So here is what I think: If we took more seriously the relationship between teacher-student and as disciples of Jesus allowed Christ to teach us as his students, maybe, just maybe there would be less violence, more peace; less darkness, more light; less wandering, more meaning; less hopelessness, more hope; less sadness, more joy.

Jesus had a rag-tag group of followers, sons of thunder and fishermen and women and bad people gone good under the grace of God and good apples made better under the glory of God’s goodness. Transformation took place one on one, face to face, heart to heart, soul to soul. I pray for the grieving and pray for the church of Jesus to cling to the heart of Christ, discipleship, reclaiming, in the words of Dallas Willard a church culture of discipleship because the church of America tends toward churches full of “undiscipled disciples.” 

Once in a children’s musical in our church, the recurring them in the musical was, “Stop! Look! Listen for Christmas!” My prayer is that in more recent events we will stop, look and listen for Christ, that we will see ‘the countless torches lit and the sea of faces” and look into Christ’s face to hear, in the words of Matt Redman in his book Facedown, “the intimate whispers of God.” Under this tree the wind rustles the leaves. A cool breeze blows. An ant crawls nearby. A bird catches the upward current of the wind.

And hope radiates, a Torch brighter than torches lit and one Face stands out amid the sea of faces, the Shepherd who stands in a field of green with arms open wide, speaking in an intimate whisper, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” I stand. I speak. I move toward the Shepherd a field and say, “I am coming, Lord. I am coming.” I see beyond the Shepherd torches lit and the sea of faces and I fall facedown in awe. I weep. And I look up; Christ weeps and grieves for the sea of faces. And the wind blows. And the wind blows. And the wind keeps blowing.

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines. You can respond to his column by e-mailing him at jduncan@lakesidebc.org.

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