Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: I Corinthians 9:24-27, I Corinthians 10:23, Isaiah 40:3
August 22, 2004
I find it fascinating that in the very same week St. Christopher has been called into question by the Roman Catholic Church, I should be standing up to preach a sermon inspired, in no small part, by a love affair that many of us have with the automobile. For St. Christopher has long been revered as the patron saint of drivers. His statuette sits perched atop many a dashboard. And, if you can locate the remnants of that two-toned brown Ford Fairlane….stick shift….early fifties edition….on which I first learned to drive in the parking lot of the local A&P food store, you will find a St. Christopher medal pinned to the headliner. Where my father put it. Not because he was Catholic. Or even religious. But, in the phrase my father used to describe his benign acceptance of most things having to do with faith: “Hey, it can’t hurt.”
So, did it work? Did St. Christopher protect us? Well, we never crashed the car….totaled the car….or died in the car. So maybe it did. Or, more likely, having St. Christopher above us (pinned to the headliner, I mean) served to remind us to slow down and keep our eyes on the road. Which helped us look after our own protection. And which was the best thing St. Christopher could have done for us, given that Catholicism seriously questions whether he ever existed or was merely a figment of the church’s overly-fertile imagination.
All of which kindles the memory of my high school buddy, Matt Max. Matt was a very good Roman Catholic boy who replaced St. Christopher with a mini-statue of our Lord. Then Matt drove his bomb of a car with the windows rolled down, singing at the top of his lungs:
I don’t care if it rains or freezes
Long as I’ve got my plastic Jesus
Sittin’ on the dashboard of my car.
Well, Jesus walked everywhere (so far as I can tell). There may have been one ride on a donkey in utero. There was a second ride on a donkey, Palm Sunday. And no, I don’t have the faintest idea what Jesus would have driven, given money enough and choice. A twelve-passenger SUV, one suspects. Biblically speaking, chariots are as close as the Bible comes to horseless carriages. And when Isaiah wrote “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” hewasn’t referring to a four-lane ribbon of concrete with on and off ramps.
No, cars are not the Bible’s thing. Cars are our thing. Especially locally, where we make them…. buy them…..live or die off them (sometimes in them)….drive and race them….occasionally polish and restore them….seasonally ogle and admire them….and, on weekends like this, come dangerously close to making idols of them. But oh, what fun it is.
I’m no grouch. Were I forty years younger, fresh from divinity school….fueled by the desire to be a social reformer….ready to bludgeon the excesses of pop culture with a hammer called The Gospel….I would suck lemons for a couple of days and then find a laundry list of things to critique about the automobile and our romance with it (and in it).
· I would zero in on the connection between cars and crime, covering the waterfront from vehicular getaways to drive-by shootings.
· I would lament the role of the automobile in Detroit’s urban decay, noting that the decline of our beloved city accelerated dramatically when high speed expressways were laid down so that people who worked in the city no longer had to live in the city.
· I would cite statistics about everything from drunk drivers and environmental pollutants to the inverse relationship between the rising price of foreign oil to the diminishing value of the American stock market.
· Or I would talk (like an informed psychologist) about the narcissism of teenagers who figure that “cool” is something you can borrow if, on some terribly important day in your life, you can be seen driving the right car or riding in the right car….it being a relatively small jump, even now, from “notice my wheels” to “notice me.”
But like I said, I’m no grouch. I seldom suck lemons. And for the last ten years, I, too, have cruised Woodward….searching the oldies-but-goodies station in hopes of hearing, just one more time:
And she’ll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-Bird away.
Did I tell you I had a T-Bird once? It was long after they were “cool,” mind you. But that’s the story of my life. I still have to pay some attention to what, as a preacher, I can and cannot drive. I’ll admit that the Sebring convertible was close to the edge….although I loved it and, since the lease expired, miss it. The Cadillac is over the edge. But it isn’t mine. It’s my stepfather’s and he enjoys riding in it. The Jeep is just right for a preacher. It holds lots of stuff and hauls lots of people. It’s wonderfully practical and totally utilitarian. “But does it have to be red, Reverend?”
And I’ll never forget my weekend with Gary Valade’s Viper (I wrote about it in Steeple Notes) when people would speed up or slow down just to look at me. Which was heady stuff….until I spotted my fourth police car in three miles, also speeding up or slowing down just to look at me. Which put a real damper on what that car could have done, given the wide open section of North Woodward. I don’t know what I’d have given for that kind of attention when I was seventeen. My right arm would have been too much to ask. But had there been a surgeon handy….
Roger Wittrup (my psychologist friend) called to tell me that men rekindle memories by recalling cars, while women rekindle memories by recalling homes or significant events in the lives of their children. Picture a husband and wife trying to tell another couple when they went to California. After much brain wracking, they arrive at the same answer. He, by remembering the year he bought the Chevy. She, by remembering the year she had Bobby. Which Roger told me after I’d already played Automotive Jeopardy on the cover of Steeple Notes (“Cars of My Life for $500, Alex.”).
But I digress into nostalgia, too long I fear. Although that’s what the Dream Cruise is, is it not? A much-hyped, week-long digression into nostalgia. This is a sermon, by God (hopefully, for God). So I’d better make something of it. Fast.
Which is no longer how I drive. Fast, I mean. Explaining why I can no longer qualify to race in the Faster Pastor event at the Oglethorpe Speedway in Savannah, Georgia. Now in its fourth year, it’s getting bigger and bigger. Pastors claim that for twenty laps (or whatever), they have absolutely no intention of turning the other cheek. Competitively, I have the instincts for it. Physically, however, I lack the reflexes for it. They tell me it has a stewardship angle, given that the winners go home with money for their churches. So if we’re a little short next year, I have every intention of sending Jeff and Carl to Savannah (Lynn and Rod, too).
But it is a “speed” story that transitions me into my point. It’s several years old now, dating back to when Kris, Julie and I went to visit Dave and Ann Tenniswood in Germany. This was the same trip that sowed the seeds for our wonderful partnership with Methodists in the Czech Republic. But this wasn’t in Czech (where we trained and taxied it). This was in Deutschland (where we Autobahned it). In a Mercedes, no less (a car with power to go….on a road with room to go….coupled with permission to go). So at one point while I was driving, Dave asked if I wanted to open it up and see what it could do. Looking back on it, I translated Dave’s question into a discussion of my manhood, as in: “Did I want to open it up and see what I could do?” So I pondered it momentarily and inched it up gradually, until I crested the 150 mark on the speedometer.
It occurred to me that the poles and trees were flying past me at a mighty clip. Then I began doing some mental mathematics around the issue of braking distances, should braking be required. Finally, adrenaline stepped aside to make room for caution. And I eased up on my foot, creating a more respectable distance between pedal and metal. Whereupon I steered back into the slow lane, joining Germans who were crawling along at the snail-like speeds of 90-110.
“So what did it feel like?” the reporter from the Eccentric wanted to know. Which stymied me for a moment, given that it wasn’t a feeling I had etched into the hard drive of my psyche. It felt fast. It felt good. It felt risky. Heck, I’ll admit it, it felt manly. Finally I came up with a word. Not a word, but an image. It felt, ever so fleetingly, like living on the edge. Truth be told, I don’t know what that means. Because the phrase “on the edge,” when pushed to its outer limit, means exactly that….the outer limit. As in life’s outer limit. Which, I suppose, is also death’s inner limit.
I wasn’t there. Nor would I have wanted to have been there. In part, because I have an incredibly powerful life wish. And in part, because there were other people in the car. Which explains why I told the reporter that while “the edge” is a great thing to experience, it is not a very good place to live. The Autobahn was abundant in possibilities. But my life, then as well as now, was awash with responsibilities.
I don’t know Rev. Jim Wilson. All I know is that he races his ’78 Monte Carlo in the Faster Pastor event. He says he doesn’t scare easily, fueled as he is by faith. “The thing about us pastor-drivers is, if something were to happen to us, we all know where we’re going.” Well, that’s confidence for you. That’s also stupidity for you. When the apostle Paul talks about being a “fool for Christ,” I don’t think that kind of bravado is what he has in mind.
That’s because the word “control” shows up big in the Pauline lexicon. To the Galatians, Paul suggests there are nine fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)….love being the first, self-control being the last. Not because last is least. But because self-control regulates the other eight.
And for those of you who like lists, II Peter lists, not nine fruits, but seven virtues (II Peter 1:5-7). You guessed it. Self-control is among them.
Out there on the Autobahn, where there were no controls externally, I had to come up with my own controls internally. Which reminded me of my favorite Pauline admonition, when he says to the Corinthians: “All things are lawful; not all things are helpful.” Then, as if to reinforce his point, he says it again (with an ever-so-slight modification): “All things are lawful; not all things build up.”
When you’re young, a car is your ticket to freedom. You can go anywhere with it. You can do anything in it. Nothing could be worse than having your daddy take the T-Bird away….or having the state take the T-Bird away….or having the finance company take the T-Bird away. Unless it’s turning ninety and having sonny take the T-Bird away. But the moment you get a little freedom, you have got to cultivate a little discipline….or the T-Bird (and all the wonderful things the T-Bird represents) is going to be taken away.
Moments ago, I told you I learned to drive in an A&P parking lot. Which wasn’t quite true. My initial instruction took place in a fenced-in driver’s education course at Mackenzie High School….where the course had parameters and the cars had governors. You couldn’t drive far. You couldn’t drive fast. And you couldn’t drive in traffic. Which was why my father took me to the parking lot. But I’ll never forget that Sunday afternoon when my father said: “Enough of this parking lot. Take it out on Oakman Boulevard, son.” Where there were neither parameters nor governors. Unless you call my father a “governor.” And it wasn’t all that long before there was no longer my father, either.
Sooner or later, friends, they take down the fences and they take away your fathers….and you can go as fast as you want or as far as you want, with whomever you want for as long as you want. Which is when you realize Paul had life’s wide-open Autobahn in mind when he said that while all things might be lawful, not all things are helpful. For it is in the midst of life’s incredible freedom that you have to decide for yourself what’s helpful and what’s not. Then, if you lose the T-Bird, it’s pretty much your own fault.
I have not read Bill Clinton’s recently-published memoir. Not that I won’t. It’s just that I haven’t. But I understand it contains some soul-searching reflections on his involvement with Monica Lewinsky (which, as you will remember, did serious damage to both his marriage and his presidency). Apparently, in trying to separate the “why” of his affair from the “who, what, when and where” of his affair, I am told he came down to a rather simple explanation. “I did it because I could.” In other words, he cruised into the intersection of availability and opportunity. And without a real reason to say “No,” he said “Why not?”
Which is what a lot of us do….cruise into the intersection of opportunity and availability and, without a real reason to say “No,” say “Why not?” I can’t tell you the number of times I have veered into the fast lane on the expressway and passed a string of cars….not because I needed to….not even because I wanted to….but because I could. Which always leads Kris to comment: “You know, every stretch of open highway doesn’t necessarily have your name on it.”
Fortunately, I have more control in other parts of my life. Which has less to do with self-discipline than with self-surrender. For long ago I said: “My life is not for me to do with as I please.” And that single statement has made all the difference.
Who did I say it to? Who didn’t I say it to? Over the years, I have said it to one board of ministerial examiners, four Pastor-Parish Relations Committees, seven bishops, one woman and two kids. But before I said it to any of them, I said it to Jesus Christ.
“My life is not for me to do with as I please.” I am talking about my own personal method of cruise control. You don’t need Jesus on the dashboard when you’ve got Jesus in the driver.
Note: This sermon was occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise. For those reading this sermon outside the state of Michigan, the Dream Cruise might be a source of puzzlement. But it is second only to Christmas as a cultural event in our area. I could even call it a pseudo-religious event (albeit with tongue in cheek) because the awe and adoration it engenders is the kind usually reserved for objects of great devotion. Fully 40,000 classic automobiles drive up and down Woodward (or are displayed street-side) while a couple of million other people participate in related events for several days preceding Cruise Day.
As a part of this year’s festivity, our multi-talented associate pastor, Jeff Nelson, designed an outdoor service in our parking lot (6:00 Sunday evening) complete with cruise music by the Praise Band, classic cars on display, and the opportunity to listen to the service on an FM station on one’s car radio.
Conversations with the car buffs tried to ascertain the actual speed at which I drove the Mercedes on the Autobahn. Several suggested that the speedometer was probably calibrated in kilometers. But Dave Tenniswood claims that while the speed was measured in kilometers, the actual number was above 200. And Dave was there….praying.
