Cheesecake Faith

I recently made my first visit to a Cheesecake Factory restaurant. I enjoyed my entrée—Hibachi Steak (certified Angus hanger steak with shiitake mushrooms, onions, bean sprouts, wasabi mashed potatoes and tempura asparagus)—very much.

Since one cannot—or at least should not—go to a place called the “Cheesecake Factory” without eating cheesecake, my good wife and I set about perusing the massive cheesecake menu. We finally settled on the White Chocolate Caramel Macadamia Nut Cheesecake (WCCMNC) because, I mean, why not? We did have to give it some thought, though—they had around forty different varieties of cheesecake on the menu and most of them looked quite delicious. The WCCMNC was, I must say, marvelous.

Usually, though, if I’m going to eat cheesecake, I want plain old cheesecake—nothing extra on it, nothing extra in it—just cheesecake. I am at heart a simple man with simple tastes.

The truth is, though, that I was in college before I ate “real” cheesecake. According to that reputable culinary source Wikipedia, “Cheesecake is a sweet dish consisting of two or more layers. The main, or thickest layer, consists of a mixture of soft, fresh cheese, eggs, and sugar; the bottom layer is often a crust or base made from crushed cookies, graham crackers, pastry, or sponge cake.” Sponge cake? Anyway, “real” cheesecake is a tad heavy.

At least it’s heavy compared to what I grew up thinking of as cheesecake.

You see, my mother served us a “cheesecake” that was not heavy; in fact, it may not have even been cheesecake, although, to be fair, the recipe that she cut out of a newspaper (we still have it) is entitled “Cheese Cake.” Here it is:

Maybe the whipping made the difference. (Mama sometimes seemed to think it did, but I digress.) Anyway, for some reason, her cheesecake was simple and light and fluffy and delicious. It was not “real” cheesecake, but it was good cheesecake. And thankfully, since we have the recipe, it is a cheesecake to which I can sometimes return. I have learned to like the heavier and more complicated versions, but I still like to go back to the simpler cheesecake of my mother and of my childhood. It is foundational for me in my experience of cheesecake.

As I have lived--sometimes thriving and sometimes surviving--I have developed a heavier, more complicated, more informed and more nuanced faith. It has been necessary and helpful. My experience has been deepened and enriched by different ways of thinking about God, about faith, and about life.

A story—one that is too good not to be true—is told about the influential Swiss theologian Karl Barth who, while on a speaking tour of the United States in 1962, was asked by a University of Chicago student if he could summarize his theology in one sentence and Barth replied, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

That White Chocolate Caramel Macadamia Nut Cheesecake was amazing; I look forward to trying other varieties. I am glad that my tastes have matured.

But I never stop going back to Mama’s cheesecake …

Taking the World Series(ly)

It is World Series time and I’m wondering why I don’t care more.

There was a time when every fiber of my being looked forward to the World Series. The first one to which I paid much attention was the 1967 Series—I was nine years old—between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, which is, as it turns out, the matchup that we have this year.

I watched every inning that I could of the classic World Series in the 1970s in which those great Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Oakland Athletics teams were involved. I hung on every pitch of the 1975 contest—the greatest series of my lifetime, so far as I’m concerned—between the Reds and the Red Sox. The ‘80s are a bit of a blur what with seminary, the beginnings of my career, and the birth of our children, but I know that I watched as much as I could. The enduring memories of that decade are the homerun by a gimpy Kirk Gibson of the Dodgers off Oakland’s closer extraordinaire Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 tilt and the earthquake that struck during the Oakland vs. San Francisco Series of 1989; both events shook the world in their own way.

I suspect I’ll watch some of this year’s Series but I’m not planning my life around it. I guess it’s partly because I just have other things I’d rather spend my time doing; after all, with each passing moment life becomes more and more scarce and thus more and more valuable so I’m trying to spend my time creatively and well.

I suspect that the main culprit behind my increasing lack of interest in the World Series, though, is the Atlanta Braves baseball team.

I’m a Braves fan. I started following them when they moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta (something for which our son’s Wisconsin in-laws have never forgiven them) in 1966. With a couple of exceptions (1969 and 1982, when they won the Western Division Championship but were swept in the League Championship Series), for the first twenty-five years of their Atlanta residency, the Braves gave us little hope of a World Series experience. Most seasons they were out of the race by the All-Star break. Most seasons we knew that they were really out of the race before Spring Training began.

Then came the most exciting season in Atlanta Braves’ history—the worst to first season of 1991. With young stars in the making like pitchers John Smoltz and Tom Glavine and outfielders David Justice and Ron Gant, with grizzled veterans like Terry Pendleton and Sid Bream, and with role players like Greg Olson and Rafael Belliard, the Braves went on a remarkable run that led to an Western Division championship, a win over a highly favored and frankly, far superior Pittsburgh Pirates squad, and an epic seven-game World Series loss to that year’s other worst-to-first team, the Minnesota Twins. That year began a remarkable run in which the Braves won their division title for fourteen consecutive years. They made four more World Series appearance in the ‘90s, winning the title in 1995.

What an experience it was to have my team in the postseason every year and to have them appear in the World Series in half of the years of the 1990s! I only thought I had been interested in the Series before; now that my team was in it, I lived and died with them during every moment of every contest. But now, when the Braves are not there, which they have not been in a long time, I find myself not being very interested.

That’s only natural, I suppose, but I find it troubling. After all, baseball is a great game—the greatest game, I would argue—so I should care about it for the sake of its intrinsic beauty and grandeur, not just because I have a team in the game. I should love baseball for baseball’s sake. And I do. I just need to reclaim that first love, a love I had for the sport of baseball that rose above the fortunes of my favorite team. I need to refocus on the game at large rather than on my little corner of it; I need to appreciate and celebrate the joy that fans of other teams feel and to understand and empathize with their frustrations.

All of this has implications for how we think (or don’t think) about the Nation, the World, the Universe, and the Church—and our little pieces of them …

Every Breath I Take

Forgive me for reflecting today on my mortality, but I have good reason.

My mother died of breast cancer at the age of 53. My father died of a massive heart attack at the age of 57.

Yesterday (September 24, 2013) I turned 55. Hoo boy. Talk about being stuck in the middle.

For years I’ve been joking about telling the Lord that if I could live to age 60, I’d count everything else as bonus. But I wasn’t joking.

On the other hand, it’s not like I’m necessarily genetically predisposed to check out early. After all, my father’s father lived to be 94 and my father’s oldest sibling, my Aunt Mary, will turn 101 in November.

But still …

Now, some of you are probably thinking, “Hey, Mike—you’re a Christian. You’re a minister. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of dying! After all, aren’t you going to a better place? Don’t you believe what you preach?”

No, I’m not afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens. Yes, I’m going to a better place; I hope it looks like a Caribbean resort or at least like St. Simons Island. And yes, I believe what I preach; that includes the verse that says “Lord I believe; help thou my unbelief.”

I confess to having been afraid in the past. When I was a child, I at times did not want to go to sleep for fear I would not wake up. My mother would say, “Son, what are you afraid of?” I would say, “I’m afraid I’m going to die.” She would respond, “Don’t be silly; you’re not going to die.” And I would think, “Liar!” In hindsight, though, I have to cut her some slack; how do you tell your neurotic nine-year-old, “Oh, Son, odds are pretty good that you won’t die tonight, although I guess, now that you mention it, you could. I mean, the house could burn down or something. You never know. Sleep tight, now.”

I was also afraid that my parents would die. When they left me with my grandparents to go somewhere, I would fret over the possibility that they would not return. My father would say, “Son, what are you afraid of?” I would say, “I’m afraid that you’re going to die.” He would respond, “Don’t be silly; we’re not going to die.”

It wasn’t too many years after he spoke those words that they died. They each left one day and never came back.

And so fear set in, only it was worse than fear; it was fear compounded by a sense of abandonment and betrayal and by an inability to articulate the terror that was churning in me. The result was that I became a rather anemic-looking Hulk; it was anger that triggered the internal forces that in turn transformed mild-mannered Bruce Banner into the raging Incredible Hulk but it was any threat to my sense of security that triggered the fear in me to transform me into a raging coward.

Under those circumstances, life felt like as much of a threat as death did.

It was at times hard to breathe.

One day when I was a boy I was enjoying a tire swing in the back yard of Granny and Papa’s house. I was swinging pretty high when the dry-rotted rope snapped and I came down flat on my back. It was my first experience at having the wind knocked out of me. I remember how desperate I felt as I lay there, gasping for air.

There were lots of times after the deaths of my parents that, when some perceived threat would knock the wind out of me, I would struggle to breathe. My breath would come in great gulps; something in me wanted the air and something in me didn’t. I was afraid of the unknown and of the known; I was afraid of death and of life; I was afraid of not having and of having; I was afraid of losing and of gaining; I was afraid of not loving and of loving; I was afraid of not being loved and of being loved.

Things, I am glad to be able to say, have changed over the years. Oh, I’m still afraid sometimes, but I tend not to live in fear; I still feel an anxious pang sometimes, but I tend not to be overwhelmed by panic; my breathing still gets a little labored at times but I can barely remember the last time that I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

What has made the difference?

Grace, mainly.

The grace of God, certainly; I have struggled since 1977 when Dr. Robert Otto assigned our “Introduction to Christian Thought” class at Mercer University to read Living by Grace by William Hordern to overcome my tendency to find it hard to believe that God loves me just as I am and that such a God will care for me all the way through life and into death. At long last, I can say that God’s grace has largely won out over my fears; I have found it possible to rest in God’s love and to trust in God’s grace. When I fail to trust, I find myself relying on God’s grace to make that all right, too.

The grace of my good wife has made a huge difference, too. I will not embarrass her by saying much more about that, but it is a fact that for years she was the embodiment of God’s grace that kept me sane by giving me hope through her unconditional love.

The grace of experience has helped as well. By God’s grace I have lived long enough to live through enough, to learn enough, and to grow enough that I’ve been able to give up some of my childish ways. It has felt good over the last few years to be, at long last, an adult.

I am told that on average a human being breathes 5,256,000 times per year which means that since Dr. Henry slapped me into action on September 24, 1958 at the Lamar County (GA) Maternity Shelter I have drawn some 289,000,000 (that’s 289 billion) breaths. I now regard each and every one of those breaths as a great gift.
I can remember some times when I was very aware of each breath because I was struggling to take it. Now, I am trying to be aware of each breath in a different way—I regard each breath as an opportunity to pray.

This is my practice: when I am in a position to be able to think about it, with each breath in I pray “God, thank you” and with each breath out I pray “God, help me.” My hope is that this practice will lead me to a point where each and every breath will be, either consciously or sub-consciously, such a prayer.

One day I will draw my last breath. I wonder if my last prayer will be “God, thank you” or “God, help me”?

While either one would be appropriate, I think it will be both …

A Prayer of Thanks As I Turn 55

O God,

On this, the 55th anniversary of my birth, I give you thanks.

Thank you for …

…Champ and Sara Ruffin who loved each other and through whose love you created and nurtured me;

…Dr. George Henry who helped make sure that I got here safe and sound;

…the good people of the Midway Baptist Church, located outside of Barnesville, Georgia on City Pond Road, who showed me how to love you and to love others;

…those teachers at Gordon Grammar School and Lamar County High School who gave me a lifelong love of learning;

…the professors at Mercer University who prepared me for life and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who prepared me for ministry;

…Dr. & Mrs. Howard P. Giddens who became my parents after my parents had to go;

…all of the friends I’ve had along the way who came into my life and who have allowed me to enter theirs;

…the medical professionals who have helped to maintain my health and, when necessary, to restore it;

...the people of the First Baptist Church of Adel, Belmont University, The Hill Baptist Church of Augusta, and the First Baptist Church of Fitzgerald who have honored me by allowing me to serve alongside them;

…Debra Kay Johnson Ruffin who has loved me unconditionally for so long;

…Joshua Lee Ruffin and Sara Katherine Ruffin to whom I am Daddy and of whom I am so very proud;

…the late-arriving but much appreciated lifeline of guitar playing and songwriting;

…the grace that has given me every moment I have had and every moment I ever will have; and

…the sense that has never left me—although it has been stronger at some times than at others—that you are with me, that you care about me, and that you are guiding me.

Amen.

He Had a Nightmare that Day

On Wednesday, August 28, 1963, he watched and listened as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to those participating in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

He had a nightmare that day.

He had a nightmare that society was changing in ways that were irreversible.

He had a nightmare that little black children would be going to school with little white children.

He had a nightmare that there would be no more places and privileges reserved for white folks.

He had a nightmare that day.

He had a nightmare that he would not be guaranteed higher standing because of the color of his skin.

He had a nightmare that there would no longer be people on whom he was assumed to have the right to look down.

He had a nightmare that all people would be regarded as people.

He had a nightmare that day.

He had a nightmare that “one nation” meant “one” and that “liberty and justice for all” really meant “for all.”

He had a nightmare that every person really was God’s child.

He had a nightmare that for others to have a larger piece of the pie could mean that he would have a smaller piece.

He had a nightmare that day.

He had a nightmare that people of different races might start marrying each other and producing children.

He had a nightmare that his assumptions would be proven wrong and his prejudices would be exposed as sinful.

He had a nightmare that people who were on a lower rung than he was on the socio-economic ladder would be able to climb as high as him and maybe even climb past him.

He had a nightmare that day.

He had a nightmare that he would be judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.

He had a nightmare that his church might no longer be a gathering of only people who looked and thought like he did.

He had a nightmare that a quality education might cause some folks to think they were smarter than he was.

He had a nightmare that day.

He had a nightmare that somebody he regarded as beneath him might become his boss.

He had a nightmare that black and brown folks might want to live in a house as nice as his and maybe even in his neighborhood.

He had a nightmare that one of them might even get to live in the big White House.

He had a nightmare that day.

He had a nightmare that fifty years from that day, his children and grandchildren would not fear what he feared.

He had a nightmare that fifty years from that day, progress toward justice, freedom, and equality would have been made.

He had a nightmare that fifty years from that day, Christians would have come to live up to the ultimate meaning of their Scriptures and Americans to the ultimate meaning of their founding documents.

He had a nightmare that day …

Are You a Fragment of the Cross?

A few days ago, archaeologists announced that they had made a significant find in the ruins of a church that had been built in the year 660 in present-day Turkey: a small stone coffin containing a wood fragment that was in the past venerated as coming from the cross of Jesus Christ.

That such an object was so venerated is not unusual; fragments that supposedly come from Jesus’ cross are still around today, including at the Shrine of the True Cross in Dickinson, Texas. According to legend, in the fourth century Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, traveled to Jerusalem, located the cross of Jesus, and had pieces of it kept in Jerusalem and distributed to Constantinople and Rome. Fragments then made their way to locations throughout the world.

There is no way to know whether the fragment found in Turkey, or any of the other fragments or any other relic—think of the Shroud of Turin--for that matter, are in fact what some of the faithful believe them to be.

When I read the story about the find in Turkey, though, I couldn’t help but imagine the folks in the lab on CSI or Bones or NCIS—it would be a real kick watching Abby from NCIS deal with it—checking the fragment to see if it contained some of Jesus’ DNA. The problem would be that we don’t have any known examples of Jesus’ DNA or any known physical descendants of Jesus—Dan Brown’s entertaining fantasy in The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding—to which the experts could compare what they found on the cross fragments.

When you stop and think about it, though, Jesus does have close kin who are alive right here and right now; that would be you and me and all others who are his sisters and brothers. We share his spiritual DNA—we are members of his family and he of ours; God dwells in the Church and the Church dwells in God.

Here’s the hard question: if Abby from NCIS could conduct a test on us to determine how close kin to Jesus we really are, what would it show? How many markers—how much love, how much mercy, how much grace, how much forgiveness, how much service, how much sacrifice, how much humility, for examples—would we share in common with Jesus? The good news is that by the grace of God, by the work of the Spirit, and by the practice of Christian disciplines like worship, solitude, prayer, and study we can continuously grow in those characteristics that define a brother or sister of Jesus.

Physical DNA test results are what they are; spiritual ones can improve.

Thanks be to God!

Mustard Evangelism

[This is my church newsletter column for this week.]


July 21 was National Ice Cream Day. Today, July 23, is National Hot Dog Day. The first Saturday in August, which this year falls on the 3rd, is National Mustard Day.

You have to love summer.

I propose we have a day when we eat hot dogs with mustard followed by ice cream! And there’s no day like today …

Speaking of National Mustard Day—it was established in 1991 by the National Mustard Museum which was at the time located in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin but which you can now visit in beautiful Middleton, Wisconsin, which just happens to be where our son Joshua and his wife Michelle live. We’ve been to Middleton three times and each time we have made a pilgrimage to the Mustard Museum.

It’s a cool place.

The museum is downstairs; there you can enjoy all sorts of exhibits about the history of mustard and view over 5500 types of prepared mustard from all fifty states and more than seventy countries. You can even watch a film about mustard in the MustardPiece Theatre! They have a great store upstairs where you can sample and purchase hundreds of different mustard products—my favorite of the dozens I’ve sampled is Wisconsin’s own Lakeside’s Horseradish Mustard.

As I have matured in my condiment understanding, I have come to understand, along with the good people of Chicago (where I once spent three days) that mustard is the perfect condiment for a hot dog but that ketchup has no place on one. Of course, you may like ketchup on your hot dog and that is fine; we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

There’s probably a lesson in that about how we should think about the disagreements we have with the way that someone else experiences and expresses her or his faith.

Anyway, if you’re ever in the Madison, Wisconsin area, I really hope you’ll visit the National Mustard Museum. I like it and I like you and I think you would like it.

And I hope you will, as we are encouraging you to do, invite someone to come to church. After all, you love the Lord and you love your friends and you are sure that they would love the Lord, too. So invite them because you love them …