The other night my wife and I watched actor Sam Waterston portray Abraham Lincoln delivering what is called “the Cooper Union speech” on C-Span. Harold Holzer’s recent book claims this 1860 speech actually made Lincoln president.

In preparation for the re-enactment of the speech, I pulled down a biography on Lincoln and read up on the occasion. In the middle of the oration, Lincoln has a line that smacked me right between the eyes. It was so out of place, I could not believe it was coming from a historical figure from over 140 years back. He said, “That is cool.” He did. It’s in there, in black and white.

The context was this. South Carolina was threatening to withdraw from the Union if a Republican was elected president in the election later that year. So, if you elect a Republican, the state leaders said, and we secede, it will be your fault. Lincoln commented, “That is cool.”

I watched as Sam Waterston read the speech and uttered that line. Not a single comment was made in the followup discussion about those three words, but I lay awake that night wondering. Next day, I went through Professor Holzer’s book looking for some explanation, and found none. That’s when I decided to e-mail him.

Continue reading →

I wish I could find that truck driver and give him back that five dollars. Shucks, I’d give him twenty-five dollars just to be free of this memory of the time I did not do my job.

I was a sophomore in college, living that summer with my brother Ron and his wife Dorothy, and trying to scrounge up money any way I could. When I noticed the fellow across the street and how his truck’s lettering on the door was faded, I went into action. “I’ll repaint that on both doors for five dollars,” I told him. Bear in mind, at that time, five dollars was a day’s wages for me.

He agreed and paid me in advance. I brought out my paints and brushes and went to work. I do not recall what interrupted me that day. Probably he had to go to work or something, and I was going to finish it later. But I never did. I moved across town to the campus and put the man out of my mind. From time to time, Dorothy would remind me gently that the neighbor was waiting for me to come back and finish the job. He gave up on me and that was that. Almost.

Continue reading →

Before rendering his verdict, the arbitrator in a church conflict case turned to the men sitting at both tables and said, “I remind myself that these are not sterile decisions I will be rendering. In making judgments about others, we are handling the fine china of human lives.”

Should Paul Hamm return the gold medal for men’s gymnastics, awarded him in error due to miscalculations of some judges? Some Olympic officials seem to think so. When asked why they could not simply award a second gold medal to the rightfully deserving Koreans, one authority replied, “We can’t do that.” Why not? The rules do not allow it. The Americans respond that, if it’s rules you like, Hamm followed the rules and received the medal. Stripping him of the gold might be a simple act to an Olympic judge, but it takes on epic proportions to a young person who has devoted years of his life to arrive at this moment.

Someone should remind the judges in every athletic event, Olympics to little league, that they are handling the fine china of human lives.

Continue reading →

We had this wedding at our church last weekend. Three hundred friends and family members sat in the pews watching eight groomsmen and and equal number of bridesmaids fill the front of the sanctuary. As the organ shook the rafters, the bride entered on the arm of her father and took her place beside the groom in front of me. Then it happened.

“Harry,” I began. “Do you take Bess to be your lawfully wedded wife? Do you promise to be faithful to her in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, so long as you both shall live?”

Harry took a deep breath, looked at Bess and then at me. “Preacher,” he said, “I sure do. Mostly. Bess is a wonderful woman. Any man would be lucky to have her. I will be proud to be her husband. And I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to be true to her. Much of the time. And lots of evenings, after work, I’m coming home to her and I’ll actually spend the night there. Of course, I’ll have my other girl friends, but that’s to be expected. I’m just human, you know. But Bess will be number one with me. Yes sir. And from time to time, I plan to give some money to pay her rent and help with the other expenses. Yes sir, preacher, I do. Sort of.”

We all stood there in shock. I had never heard such a mixed up response from a groom before. I turned to the bride to see how she was taking this. Bess was staring a hole through Harry, like he was the lowest thing on earth. Then she threw down the bouquet, hiked up her massive bridal gown, and strode out of the church, right up the aisle she had just walked down.

The bride’s parents rushed out the door behind her, and the congregation sat there stunned. Harry stood there silently for a long moment, then leaned over to the nearest bridesmaid and said, “Doing anything tonight, Honey?”

Okay, it didn’t happen. I made it up. But I see something like this going on all the time.

Continue reading →

A few days ago, I dropped in on 1943 and stayed two hours.

The venerable Saenger’s Theater in downtown New Orleans has been running vintage movies on Fridays and Saturdays–Gone With the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, Rear Window, and such. Recently, I attended the Saturday 3 pm showing of one of my favorites, “Casablanca.”

“Casablanca” was shot in 1941 and released in 1943. It presents Humphrey Bogart at his strongest and Ingrid Bergman at her loveliest, and deals with the plight of refugees fleeing before the Nazis. Its signature music, “As Time Goes By,” has been voted the number one movie song of all time.

That afternoon, I drove downtown, parked on Canal Street–after making certain that the meter maids had the afternoon off–paid six dollars for a ticket, and settled back into the lush red velvet seats to enjoy this movie the way people saw it over 60 years ago. For over two hours, I was transported back to 1943. Consider…

Continue reading →

“I’m quitting,” said my friend. He had held that job two whole days and now was walking away. “They want me to work in an office with unbelievers and I just can’t function in that kind of atmosphere.”

I suspect it’s not that at all. Jack’s problem is he cannot take a job and stay with it.

You and I live in a culture of quitting. People try marriage, find it hard, and quit. They try jobs and find them difficult and walk away. They take up diets and discover they were expected to exercise their body and their common sense, and they quit. They take up fitness programs for a few weeks, then quit. They start to church and they quit.

Half the members on the average church roll of our denomination rarely darken the doors of the church. What happened to them? They quit.

Eugene Peterson wrote a book on the Psalms with the intriguing title of “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.” That line is a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche who wrote, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is…that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

What he calls “a long obedience in the same direction,” the Bible calls variously steadfastness, faithfulness, and perseverance. It means to get on the road and stay there. To hang in there. To keep on, keeping on, as the old folks used to say.

Continue reading →

From the Times-Picayune:

Saturday, August 07, 2004

By Bruce Nolan

Staff writer

Give the Rev. Joe McKeever a few idle minutes, especially in a public place — ideally, a restaurant after he’s placed his order — and out come his black felt-tipped pen and a sheet of his glossy sketch paper. In a few strokes — voila! — the waiter. Or the two kids with Grandma in the next booth.

It’s usually an ice-breaker.

In Baton Rouge once, McKeever sketched a caricature of his waiter on a paper tablecloth that so engaged the young man he called over the rest of the staff to be done, one by one.

“When it was over, they bought me dinner,” McKeever said.

Continue reading →

I took my Alabama visitor to dinner in downtown New Orleans the other evening. On the way, I said, “Anyone can take you to Commander’s Palace or the Windsor Grill,” two of the most renowned eating spots in this city. “But I’m taking you somewhere no one else would think of.”

We ate at the Praline Connection.

Now, this city boasts two establishments of that name, one situated near the convention center and housed in a barn of a building with a stage where gospel choirs entertain for Sunday brunch. But I took my friend to the original Praline Connection, the one on Frenchmen Street, two blocks from the French Market. You park on the street in a crowded residential neighborhood, taking care that it’s an actual parking space, and hoping the car will still be there when you return.

In the intersection in front of the restaurant door, a crowd had gathered around a wrecked car. People were talking to the young woman at the wheel. I said to a bystander, “What’s going on?” He said, “Anne Heche. They’re making a movie.” Oh. That’s always fun to watch. You see it a lot in New Orleans. The driver was Miss Heche’s stunt double as it turned out.

Continue reading →

The first time Carl Hubbert came to our church, he filled out a visitor’s card inviting us to call. That week, I sat in his apartment and welcomed him to Kenner and First Baptist Church. I asked, “What kind of work do you do?” He said, “I sell candy for Russell Stover.” I did the same thing you would. I said, “Got any samples?”

He opened the door to a spare bedroom where boxes of candy were stacked to the ceiling. “Take as much as you like,” he said. “It’s dated. After Valentine’s Day, we have to remove this from the stores. It’s still good, but we aren’t allowed to sell it.” I left Carl’s apartment that night loaded down with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates.

A year or so later, the company got smart and opened an outlet in our city to sell the candy Carl had been giving away. For a while, he was easily the most popular man in town. Once he brought boxes of candy to place on the lunch trays of the entire student body of our school. I’m not sure what the parents thought, but that was one cafeteria meal the kids raved about.

Continue reading →

I found this list the other day, written perhaps a dozen years ago. As a veteran of 42 years in the pastorate, I have made my share of mistakes and have compiled a lengthy list of regrets. See what you think of these twenty things I wish I had known early in my ministry.

1. To take care of my family first.

2. To say no without feeling guilty.

3. How to be quiet.

4. How to introduce someone to Jesus.

5. How to get a sermon from a text.

6. How to lead a worship service.

7. How to do a funeral and feel good about it afterward.

8. How to do weddings and give young families a head start.

9. To say ‘I don’t know’ when I didn’t.

10. To apologize quickly and simply without rationalizing or justifying.

11. How to find a mentor.

12. How to help my wife feel good about what I was doing and to find her own role.

13. How to work with the deacons.

14. How to preach without imitating the last good preacher I heard.

15. How to counsel the troubled.

16. How to take criticism without losing my confidence.

17. How to respond to troublemakers the way Jesus would.

18. How to choose staff members wisely.

19. How to be prepared for temptation ahead of time.

20. How to give up jobs in the community to church members so I could stick with my own priorities as pastor.

Take the first one on my list, looking after my family. I have painful memories and my wife carries a scar on her soul from the time we moved from our seminary pastorate 300 miles north into the Mississippi Delta to a larger, more challenging church. I walked out and left her in our new home with boxes to unpack, pictures to hang, and a dozen other chores–and her with two little boys, ages 1 and 4–while I went to the hospital to check on church members. It was a misplaced sense of duty on my part. “It’s a bigger church,” I rationalized. “I have to hit it at a run.”

Continue reading →