Monday, January 8, 2024

It is the 8th of January 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A very happy Monday- to everyone, even Michigan fans… (but not Dodger fans, not yet). So- I get this question a lot- and I’ve answered it in various ways (I think twice now in 5 years), and it has been a while, and the person who sent me the note is a long-time listener, so if he’s asking, I think it’s fair to give it another crack.

JT Writes:

Hi Dan!

I’d like to know if your podcast closing “The rumors of grace…is going to be ok” come from anywhere else specific or if it was inspired by something specific, beyond, you know, the truth of scripture.  The closing line never gets old and I always listen all the way through it.

From near Dayton Ohio, where everything was invented, including the first drive up ATM. A guy who worked on that project used to be a client of mine, and I used to use that ATM. (It’s gone now).

I used to love the drive-up banks with the space-aged tubes and me and my sister and I would try to be seen by the teller, hoping they’d put a lollipop in the fancy whooshing space tube.

So- the end of it: “Everything is Going to Be OK” comes from my old podcast. Some of you know me from that, and more of you know me just from this. That old podcast- with some good stuff, also reminds me that as people have given me grace as I have changed, I, too, should extend the same grace. Nonetheless, on a down day, I was recording with my old partner and said at the end of a show- flippantly- “How do we wrap this up? Uh, everything is going to be ok?” I said it as a cliche. And then realized- wait? What if the simplest, most cliche thing might- in Christ be the greatest statement of them all? And it became the tag for that show for years. It ended in 2019- I had to come up with a new idea- and that’s how we got to this show. And for the very first episode, I knew I wanted a sign-off- something that never changed- that said- “it’s even better than we can imagine”.

The “everything is going to be ok” was, for me, also tied to the great sociologist and theologian Peter Berger. He has a book called “A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural”- the idea that there is something in creation that points beyond itself to goodness- a good creator. He uses, by analogy, a child waking from a bad dream or in the midst of a storm who- knowing nothing else calls out to his mother. Let me read from Berger:

“It is she (and, in many cases, she alone) who has the power to banish the chaos and to restore the benign shape of the world. And, of course, any good mother will do just that. She will take the child and cradle him in the timeless gesture of the Magna Mater who became our Madonna. She will turn on a lamp, perhaps, which will encircle the scene with a warm glow of reassuring light. She will speak or sing to the child, and the content of this communication will invariably be the same—“Don’t be afraid—everything is in order, everything is all right.” If all goes well, the child will be reassured, his trust in reality recovered, and in this trust, he will return to sleep.”

I have lived a life needing to be told this at so many junctions. By itself, it might be a lousy cliche, but inside the house of faith, it means that the good news really is true. I vowed never to have that part of the show (or any of it) “canned”- I say the whole show as you hear it and conclude with the final phrase because I have to say it myself. Recently, in Minnesota, a dear woman came to hear me teach and asked, somewhat sheepishly, if I could say it. And, as is often the case when I say it in front of people, I always get choked up. And that so many of you write to me telling me what it means to hear that- thank you. As for “the redemption of all things,”- I do not suppose anything else (besides using the kind of language we get in, say, Colossians)  than when I get to glory and understand what there is and why and how, I will say with everyone else- praise be to God in his wisdom- it is indeed very good.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary- and oh man, what a day to get this passage- as good of news as I could find packed into a few verses- from Romans 4:

Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

“Blessed are those
    whose transgressions are forgiven,

    whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the one

    whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 8th of January 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who, to the best of my knowledge, has never edited out some silly thing I make up about him in the sign-off- He is the ever faithful and dutiful- my man- Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man rooting for Washington tonight- send the old Pac-10 out in style- I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.