An Update from New Orleans

First Baptist New Orleans

A former president in his mid-80s is entitled to do whatever he wishes with his time. So it wrinkled my brow to see President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, on their knees affixing boards to a porch in the Upper Ninth Ward this week.

I decided, watching them work, that this presidential couple really believe they are changing the world with these small acts of kindness. Looking around, I saw many of the hundreds of volunteers who graced our city this week pausing in their own work to observe this famous man and woman accomplishing their humble service. These young faces, eyes shining, are portraits and symbols of faith and hope. They come to our city with the express purpose of lifting our spirits, holding up our arms, and joining us in the grunt work that moves our community forward.

Former presidents in their 80s seem empowered to say whatever they wish, as President Carter has demonstrated over high-level objections. They also appear empowered to do whatever they wish. And driving nails to build decent and safe houses for working people is just what this president wants to do.

He and Rosalyn are all smiles as they greet people, grab their tools, and hit the deck with gusto. They request routinely that admirers not interrupt their construction time so that they can get something done.

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I submit that the most wonderful “undiscovered” Scripture verse is Psalm 17:15. It is the final word of a psalm in which the writer is bemoaning enemies who torment his existence, disregard God altogether, and run their lives by gutter ethics. These men, he says, want only what this life can offer. He calls them “men of this world whose portion is in this life,” and says they are satisfied too easily. They are content “with children and leave their abundance to their babes.”

Now, notice the next sentence, and be struck by the contrast of what will satisfy him.

“But as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake.”

I remind our readers–a diverse group if ever one existed–that this is the Word of God, a wonderful insight found in the inspired Scripture, and therefore to be valued as something far beyond the ravings of a beseiged yet hopeful individual. Psalm 17:15 contains a three-fold promise (at least three) of what we may expect after we close our eyes for the last time and thus end our earthly pilgrimage, as the old-timers used to put it.

Last night I drove to the funeral home and stood by the casket of 80-year-old Catherine, a forty-year member of the church I belong to and pastored for nearly 14 years. She was as fine a Christian lady as I have ever met. The mortician and his staff had done well by her, she looked as lovely in death as she had in life, and the family was pleased. But she was lifeless. Today, Catherine’s family and friends shall gather and pay tribute to her life, and remind ourselves of the hope that she held in Christ and we will shed our tears. Because she is gone.

Gone from here, yes, but not “gone.”

Standing at the little podium in that funeral parlor, I might do as I have done before and point to the exit signs above the doors. “It’s an exit from here, but an entrance into the next life.”

I love the line one of our internet friends left on this website this week. When her nearly-one-hundred-year-old uncle died, his wife, a youthful 92, said of him, “He’s in heaven right now. If he isn’t, they might as well plant it over with johnson grass.” (Ask any Alabama farm boy. The most useless vegetation on the planet.)

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Here’s what happened today. That would be Thursday, May 15, 2008.

Dean McKinley Dacus emailed. She started by saying that she came to know the Lord in a youth revival at our church in May of 1968–precisely forty years ago–and that I had baptized her. She was 14 and the only member of her family in church. Her father went to Heaven in August of that year and I did his funeral. So, she’s reminding me of this. As though she needed to.

I said to her (via e-mail of course), “Dean, over these years, I have thought of you so often.” I gave her a couple of reasons that I’ll not put here, then added, “I asked you once, ‘Do you have someone to talk with about these things that are worrying you?’ You gave me an answer I’ve never forgotten. ‘I didn’t before. But now that Jesus Christ is in my life, I do now.'”

Now, put yourself in this pastor’s place and imagine a kid from 40 years ago reconnecting with you. How good do you think that feels? A little foretaste of Heaven.

Dean mentioned that after I left at the end of 1970, Hugh Martin came as pastor of the church (that would be Emmanuel Baptist in Greenville, Mississippi) and how blessed she feels to have had two such terrific pastors in her life at such a young age. I passed that on to my dear brother Hugh Martin up in Philadelphia, Mississippi, so he can connect with her too. (more about Hugh below)

Isn’t the internet wonderful! This generation is the first to be able to do this.

I am constantly being amazed and surprised by someone from the past discovering our website and reaching in to the present and making a connection.

I had an e-mail a few weeks ago from a church secretary in Florida who had found this website. She said, “You might not remember me, but you’ll never forget my husband.” When she told me why, I agreed that she was right about that. Here’s the story.

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Last night as I was unloading groceries, my wife threw out two overripe bananas and put in their place the bunch I had just brought in.

Several years ago, Margaret and I decided that in order to keep fresh fruit in the house–at this moment, we have strawberries, blueberries, oranges, and bananas–we would occasionally have to throw out some that had spoiled. Rather than berate ourselves over letting it go bad and wasting money, we agreed to accept this as a necessary result of our determination to eat fresh fruit. We would allow for a certain amount of waste, you might say.

Waste allowance; a spiritual concept.

Not far from where I live, a church has built a fence around the vacant lot next door to the sanctuary. It’s a lovely green expanse, set right in the middle of a neighborhood of middle-class homes in every direction, and now it might as well be located in the next parish. I have not asked anyone why they fenced in the lot but I think I know.

My guess is the neighborhood children were playing there and leaving trash behind them. Kids do that.

The leaders of the church spent several thousand dollars protecting their lawn. In doing so, they shut out the children.

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When Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote his memoirs of those crucial years following the Second World War, he titled them, “Present at the Creation.” Little did he know how true that was, for so much of the political world you and I are still dealing with was brought into being back in those days of the late 1940s.

This morning, I did as I usually do and called my mother on the cell phone. I was in New Orleans and she was on the farm, nearly 60 miles out in the countryside northwest of Birmingham. We greeted each other, exchanged pleasantries, and finally told each other “I love you” and that we would talk tomorrow.

As I ended the call, I found myself thinking what a miracle cell phone technology is. I am a child of 1940, and our family did not even get a telephone until I was in college. A long distance phone call 40 or 50 years ago was a cumbersome, expensive deal.

As a freshman at Berry College–that would be the fall of 1958–the student body was brought into the auditorium one Thursday night for an amazing demonstration. President John Bertrand introduced some gentlemen from the phone company who brought out heavy boxes of equipment and hooked them up. Then, they selected the student from farthest away and brought the girl from Alaska to the stage.

The men asked for her home phone number and—are you ready for this?—they direct-dialed it. They had bypassed the telephone operator. We were enthralled. The student spoke to her mother while we all listened in. We walked out into the night awestruck, knowing we had just visited the future.

Horse and buggy stuff, right? It is compared to this morning’s cell phone call. Long distance has evaporated, and with unlimited minutes, the cost of each call is negligible.

Two hours after the call to my mother, the May 12 issue of The New Yorker arrived. The article titled “In the Air” by Malcolm Gladwell (he wrote “The Tipping Point”) has been on my mind ever since. You’ll find it fascinating, but what I want to share here is only secondarily related to the subject he was discussing.

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F. W. Myers, author of a famous poem called “Saint Paul,” once asked a woman whose daughter had died what she thought happened to her soul. The woman said, “Oh, I suppose she’s enjoying eternal bliss–but I wish you wouldn’t speak to me of such unpleasant subjects.”

In A.D. 125, a Greek by the name of Aristides spoke of “a new religion called Christianity.” In a letter to a friend, he described this unusual faith. “If any righteous man among these Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God; and they escort the body with songs of thanksgiving, as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.”

As a result of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Peter wrote, believers have been reborn to “a living hope.” (I Pet.1:3) Our hope for the future involves a resurrection of our own, followed by an eternity in heaven.

We who follow Jesus are limited by no small ambitions.

The biblical concept of hope includes two elements: desire and expectation. You want it to happen and you have every reason to expect it. God made us for Himself, so in our innermost being we want to live with Him. Jesus promised us that we would, so we expect to do so.

Dottie Rambo was killed Sunday when her bus went off the highway in Missouri. I seriously doubt if any gospel song writer has ever thought as much and written as much and sung as much about Heaven as this wonderful lady. And now she gets to find out for herself. She’s doing a duet with Vestal Goodman along about now, I surmise.

Today, after getting the news, I went to www.youtube.com and typed in “dottie rambo.” Over the next half-hour, I heard her singing of “Mama teaching the angels to sing” and “Build my mansion next door to Jesus” and the like. I was glad no one walked in on me. Heaven is a powerful and emotional subject, particularly since I have a father and a brother there now and anticipate moving there myself one day before long.

I had already been thinking about Heaven, thanks to running across some quotes from C. S. Lewis a couple of days ago.

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Sunday morning, I sampled the worship services of our four Southern Baptist churches still operating in Katrina-devastated St. Bernard Parish, just downriver from New Orleans. I started with Celebration-St. Bernard where Craig Ratliff is pastor, then worshiped with the two congregations meeting at Chalmette High School (St. Bernard BC and FBC-Chalmette where Paul Gregoire & John Jeffries pastor), then on to Delacroix-Hope Church down at the jumping off place, James “Boogie” Melerine, pastor, and ended up at Poydras BC where John Galey is the man.

I felt like the fellow who attended the tasting luncheon put on by the various restaurants around town. He sampled a little of this and a little of that, and when he got home he was full but he didn’t know what of.

It was Mother’s Day, and all the churches were honoring these special ladies. At Celebration, Craig had them come to the altar and the leaders crowded around them and prayed. At Delacroix, Boogie gave them gifts. Not sure if the other churches did anything specific for them.

Boogie preached from Matthew 15:21-28 “The Woman of Great Faith,” John Galey preached on Godly Women from I Timothy 2 (more about that later), and Craig’s sermon was “Don’t Throw Momma From the Train”, based on Proverbs 31. Intriguing title. The bulletin from Chalmette High School did not list sermon subjects.

Only one of the four churches is meeting in its original building. That would be Poydras, although they took great damage and extensive renovations were done. Before Katrina, there was no Celebration Church, St. Bernard Campus. In its place stood the FBC of Arabi. The floodwaters ruined the building and scattered the congregation, so they went out of business, bulldozed the structures, and gave the insurance money to Celebration Church of Metairie to begin a new work there. Previously, Craig Ratliff was the student minister.

The two congregations meeting at the high school–St. Bernard Baptist Church and FBC of Chalmette–saw their buildings ruined in Katrina. A new structure is being erected on the site of First Baptist, but St. Bernard’s building was gutted and seems to be standing wide open.

The Delacroix Hope building was completely blown away by Katrina, with nothing left standing except the concrete block pilings. They’re now worshiping in what used to be Creedmore Presbyterian Church on Bayou Road in the community of St. Bernard. Presently, they’re still in the fellowship hall, and it appears there is still much work yet to be done in the sanctuary.

Hopeview Church where Jeffery Friend was pastor has been converted in the volunteer village for church teams coming in to work with Operation NOAH Rebuild. Further downriver, River’s Edge Church is no more.

Our friends (readers) from outside this area who are unfamiliar with New Orleans should be reminded that St. Bernard Parish took the full brunt of the hurricane and almost no structure in the parish was left whole. You can drive down either of the two major east-west thoroughfares–St. Bernard Highway and Judge Perez Drive–and see entire strip malls still boarded up. Most neighborhoods are only sparsely settled.

All of these churches have lost members and all have gained new members who moved here since the storm. Three of the four I attended this morning had from 45 to 60 in attendance. Oddly, the smallest of the four prior to Katrina–Delacroix–now has the largest attendance, perhaps 60 to 70 this morning.

Couple of funnies….

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A fanatic, they say, is someone who loves the Lord more than you do. Fanaticism is a charge frequently thrown at those of us on the conservative end of the religious spectrum in America today. We defend ourselves from such slander with assurances of our patriotism, our love for everyone friend or foe, and our dead-set ambition to practice the teachings of the Man of Nazareth. In fact, we sometimes say, we wish we were more fanatical about following Jesus than we are.

By that we mean, we wish we loved Him more, took His words more seriously, and were bringing every area of our existence into subjection to Him.

Enter any Southern Baptist church next Sunday–they’re the only kind I have a close familiarity with, so we shall spare all the other brand names here–and you would be hard-pressed to find more than a half-dozen church members over-zealous in their Christianity. Most are like the rest of us, in a never-ending struggle to find the balance between this present world and the next, the physical and the spiritual.

Almost everything we write on this website about basic Christianity–loving, praying, studying the Bible, tithing, etc–is directed toward the great hordes of church members who, on a scale of one to ten, would rate themselves five or under in their dedication to Christ.

The following, however, we direct toward that small group of church members who, on a dedication scale of one to ten, come in at about eleven or twelve.

From the intriguing Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, today’s lesson, boys and girls–you A students, you valedictorians, Phi Beta Kappas, over-achievers and perfectionists–has your name all over it.

1) Ecclesiastes 7:16 “Do not be overly righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?”

Hey, that’s in the Bible. I didn’t make it up.

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According to the news reports from every direction, perhaps 100,000 residents of the small Southeast Asian country of Myanmar, formerly Burma, were killed by the recent Cyclone Nargis. It pushed into the lowest, most vulnerable section of the country with a storm surge that left only death and devastation in its wake. Over 2 million are said to be homeless. Meanwhile, the military junta ruling the country is blocking aid.

Those who know Myanmar say the ruling army is under the control of a group of poorly educated generals who are dead-set on keeping tight controls on the country lest the nations coming to help end up putting ideas in the minds of the people. Presumably, that would be ideas like liberty and free enterprise. Self-determination. Responsibility. Compassion.

Compassion seems to be in short supply with that bunch. Their only concern appears to be for themselves and their control over this nation that rivals Haiti in our hemisphere for the title of poorest-nation-on-the-planet.

We’re told that so far–this is being written on Friday evening, six days after the cyclone hit–only a tenth of the neediest people have been reached with supplies necessary for life.

I appreciate the patience and perseverance of outside governments and agencies like the Red Cross that are trying to comply with the red tape and regulations being imposed by the generals before being approved to help their people. One wonders if the governments of the world could not simply rise up and say “enough of this foolishness” and land a few hundred planes at once and dare anyone to try to stop them as they fan out into the needy areas with food and supplies.

I mean, do we just let people die because the leaders who stole the country are unfriendly to outside help and unwelcoming to strangers?

On a different scale, every veteran pastor of any denomination knows this frustration. It’s not just us Baptists, although it is most definitely us. It’s a human problem, not just a religious one, although it is that, too.

Someone or a small group of someones have seized control of a church and insist on calling the shots. The fact that their congregation is needy and others want to come in and help matters little to them, particularly if the cost for receiving help is that they would lose control. They turn a cold shoulder to offers of assistance and prefer to let the church struggle and die rather than losing authority.

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We graduated in May of 1958 from the Winston County High School in Double Springs, Alabama. We were all so glad for that long-anticipated event to arrive, once it was over we quickly scattered in our own directions without a thought to the fact that we were seeing some of our classmates for the last time. We had no way of knowing that in a few short years our school would burn down or that by the 50th anniversary of our graduation, over one third of our members would no longer be living.

There is a reason only older people attend class reunions. They know.

The recent graduates are still in college somewhere or serving Uncle Sam or trying to get established in low-paying jobs and can’t afford the trip back home. But mostly they don’t come to reunions because they haven’t figured it out yet.

They think they have forever. They think of the rest of us as oldsters, like ancient relics of a previous civilization that has no bearing on the world they live in today. They have no idea that the time between now and their fiftieth will seem like weeks. They will still be looking upon themselves as the younger generation when suddenly their twentieth reunion will be announced in the newspapers.

If they’re like me, the twentieth will be the first reunion they attend. And if they’re really like me, they will open the door and look in that room, taking in all the bald heads and unfamiliar faces, and decide this can’t be my class and walk on down the hall looking for the real class. They will soon realize there is no one else in the building and that this is their class.

That’s the moment when they start to grow up.

Their real education begins then. Everything up to that moment has been prep school. Today is the first day of class. This school does not let out for the rest of their lives.

As I see it, here are the lessons they begin to learn and the lessons that were firmly entrenched by the time of our fiftieth last Saturday afternoon in Double Springs.

1) Old friendships are pure gold.

Lynn Pope and I shared one of those old-fashioned double desks at Poplar Springs Elementary in the school term of 1951-52. A two-room affair run by a husband and wife, three grades in each room, this school had changed very little from the days my mother attended its predecessor a mile down the highway. Next year, Lynn and I moved on to Double Springs for junior high. He is the sole classmate with whom I shared seven years of schooling.

We thought of Double Springs as “town.” We were rural and most of the others in the class were “town,” as though of another species. The truth is most of our class members were bused in from outlying areas of the county the same way we were. There were 100 of us at the start of the seventh grade. Six years later, we were just over 50 strong, the 50th graduating class of that school.

If you can imagine having fifty or more brothers and sisters, that was us. We did just exactly what siblings do, too–we fought and argued, we laughed and went on trips and played games, we teased and cried and worked alongside each other. Over the years, we came to learn that these are the dearest people on the earth.

2) People are precious.

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