What is the meaning of this?

I have been reading and enjoying David Stokes’ “Apparent Danger.”  It retells the story of Pastor J. Frank Norris, the 1920’s lightning rod pastor of First Baptist Church in Fort Worth.  I didn’t realize Fort Worth had such a national stage 90 years ago.

It is a story about the coming to power of a city, a pastor, some businessmen, a newspaperman, and some government officials. If you live or have lived in Fort Worth, you might recognize some of their names: Meacham, McClean, Amon Carter.  We see their names on our buildings and our little airport.

As these fellas worked their trades, some engaged in public denunciation of one another.  They seemed to be interested only in the advancement of their own prestige, and their lashings culminated in the murder of a lumber company owner.  What a bummer.

It is sad, really, that men acted that way.  I wonder how much of our current city problems are rooted in the words and decisions that these people meted out.  I wish that some of them had exhibited more character.  More than that, I am saddened that perhaps the worst offender in the group was Pastor Norris, the evangelical.

Let me say that some of these men did wonderful things, like supporting and developing hospitals, the YMCA, and schools and so on.  And we all must ask ourselves the question, “How would I have behaved if all that money and power were available to me?”  Unfortunately, it is the salacious stuff that makes for better reading, and sells books.

If we look at and ponder history, and we have an accurate view of human nature, it shouldn’t surprise us that the events in Fort Worth in the 1920’s took place.  To put it simply, we humans value our own peace, security, and affluence more that we value one another.  Getting to the heart of the matter, we worship ourselves, and we hate God.  It has been our story for millennia, and probably will always be.

That sure is a bummer.  It means we will keep on hurting each other.  It is why the garden events make so much sense.  “Choose for yourselves,” the Lord said (my paraphrase), “between life, and your own knowledge and enhancement.”  We chose the latter fruit, and bad things have been happening to us ever since.

But where is the meaning for those Fort Worth power people, or for us when we enter into the same activities, albeit on a smaller scale?  It is absent!  Those men, who revolved the world around themselves, are dead and gone.  None of their self-aggrandizing remains.

But let me say that there is a place where self-absorption leaves, and life begins to grow.  That is in hospice, where, for the dying humans, there is no prestige to build, or affluence to acquire.  There is only peace to be made with others and with the One.

Ironic, isn’t it.  The very thing we don’t want to talk about, death, brings real life to those around it.  There is real meaning here.

It is the story of the Nazarene, whose power not even gifted, amoral pastors, speaking “in Jesus,” can destroy.  That story is of a unique Man, born to literally save the world from itself, not by might, but through suffering, service and death.