“The Stone Pin”

Pastor Geoff Scott

Proper 28 C (24 Pent C) – November 14, 2004

Luke 21:5-19

Christ Lutheran Church

Menomonie, Wisconsin

Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from the Triune God: Father Son, and Holy Spirit.

Today’s gospel is a kind of mini-apocalypse. Jesus talks about earthquakes and famines and plagues. All the stuff we associate with the Book of Revelation and the End Times. “The days will come,” says Jesus that not one stone (of the Temple) will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Scary stuff. What are we to do about it?

But Jesus is trying to scare us. As the summary of this gospel in your bulletin says: “Luke’s presentation of Jesus’ teaching about the last days emphasized the necessity for responsible behavior in the time between Jesus’ ascension and the second coming.”

That’s true as far as it goes. But it does not go anywhere near far enough. “Responsible behavior” to my ear, is not very from “Let’s all be nice”. Jesus is telling us that there is much more at stake in how we live today than being responsible. At the very least, we are being warned of suffering, trials, and persecutions because of your faith. “By your endurance you will gain your souls” is way, way beyond “responsible behavior”.

I would even go so far as to say that our behavior in the time between Jesus’ ascension and the second coming – which includes today Sat/Sun Nov 13/14 2004 – is a vital connection that connects the world that is and the world that is to come at Jesus’ return. Your life and the way you live it matter. It matters not just to you, but to your neighbor and to the Christ who is coming again.

Robert Bly, in a memoir called “Being a Lutheran Boy-God in Minnesota, put it this way: “I learned that the indignation of a solitary man is the stone pin that connects this world to the next.”

I like that term “the stone pin”. It’s unusual. It makes me think of coupling pins, thick, strong cylinders of oak or forged steel -- like for connecting rail cars. But a stone pin? Stone is an ancient material, millions, billions of years old, a nearly original artifact of creation. Sort of like us. An original creation.

I think this story about Bly’s father and a hired hand named Garth Morrison, is a vivid and true illustration illustration of how we are to follow Jesus words in this in-between time as we wait for Christ to come again.

As a boy, Bly grew up on a farm outside Madison, Minnesota about 175 miles due east of the Twin Cities right on the South Dakota border. In late September, when the wheat harvest was in full swing, he would hire men – itinerant workers -- who followed the wheat up and down the Great Plains. These men would sleep in the town park, and early in the morning, Bly’s father would go into town, and if he saw a man whose face he liked, he’d ask them if they could pitch bundles and drive a team of horses.That’s how Garth Morrison, from a small town in Missouri, came to work for Bly’s father and stayed at the farm.

Garth was a good worker and he and the elder Bly got along. But one weekend Garth went into town and failed to appear for work Monday morning. Bly put someone else in charge of the threshing rig and drove to town to find Garth. Asking around, he discovered that Garth had made a date with a waitress at the café, who had agreed to let her walk her home. At 11 p.m., he went to the café to pick her up and probably to his surprise, she agreed. And so they walked home to her parents house

A few words were exchanged, probably a series of misunderstood signals between a southern man and northern woman. He slapped her face. She went inside furious and complaining. Her parents called the sheriff. Garth was from out of state. The sheriff and the judge has a secret court session the next morning – having refused all along to let Garth call my father on the telephone. The judge sentenced him to twenty years at Stillwater Prison. By Sunday noon Garth was on his way to Stillwater, and by Sunday night, the sheriff was back in town. It was always said the sheriff tried to show he was tough on crime just before an election.

Bly’s father, once he got the story from the sheriff, was enraged. He shut down the threshing rig and he and a friend drove to St. Paul to see the Minnesota State Attorney General about the case. The Attorney General agreed that this looked like a gross miscarriage of justice. Bly and his friend then went to Stillwater and talked to Garth to verify his story. He then had Garth transported from Stillwater to the county jail in Madison to await trial.

Bly’s father hired a lawyer and paid for Garth’s wife and infant son to come up from Missouri for the trial. They stayed with the Bly’s, and the wife testified at the trial. Robert Bly remembers to this day, Mrs. Morrison holding the baby on the witness stand.

Garth was convicted of simple assault, and the judge ruled Garth’s time served more than met the punishment for the charge. He was released and the family returned to Missouri.

But that’s not the end of the story. Bly’s father never spoke to the sheriff again for the rest of the sheriff’s life. No small thing in a small town. The spring following the trial, Garth and his wife invited Bly’s father and mother to their small Missouri town for a visit. When they arrived, they discovered that every in town knew Garth’s story. When my father went for a haircut, the barber would not let him pay. And when they went to eat in a restaurant, the owner would not accept their money.

“I learned then that the indignation of the solitary man is a stone pin that connects this world to the next.” The third petition of the Lord’s prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Is our prayer that the world we live in today will experience God’s will as it is in the world to come.

But in Madison Minnesota many years ago, our world and the world to come came unstuck, uncoupled. The elder Bly’s outrage and indignation caused him to act in a most extraordinary and -- to the sheriff, outrageous – manner. Who would go to such length for a stranger who’s not even from around here.

But in his indignation on behalf of the neighbor, Bly slammed a stone into back into the coupling that holds the worlds together. He repaired a rip in the fabric of God’s creation, and reconciling and renewing an entire web of relationships in the midst of a broken world. God’s will is done in this world, the kingdom comes through people such as Robert Bly’s father. People who live in this in-between time believing that we can experience glimpses of the world to come today. And God may even use us to make it happen.

Into Garth Morrison’s story, a story that includes persecution, injustice, prison, family, betrayal by friends – all the things Jesus speaks of in this gospel – the Kingdom appears in many ways. Through a deepened relationship between Father and son, or as Robert Bly put it: “To be able to respect your father is a beautiful thing.” Through a restored relationship as Garth is reunited with his wife and child and his home community. Through a new relationship between Mr. & Mrs. Bly and the people of Garth’s hometown, a relationship of thanksgiving and honor.

Robert Tannehill says of our text, “Luke’s vision of God’s working in the world inspires faithful and effective mission in spite of the world.” That was certainly true for Bly and Garth Morrison.

But it sounds a lot like the Easter story, doesn’t it? Perhaps, we might even look to the cross as a the Great Wooden Pin that couples the suffering of this world to the promise of the Kingdom to come. “You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Let us endure together, and let us be bold to act, like Robert Bly’s father, in righteous indignation for the good of the neighbor. And let us see in that act the Cross where Jesus connected this world and the next until he comes again in glory.

Amen.

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