Here’s the story on Ulrum, the news I hadn’t heard. That little church where we sang and prayed and such wonderful fellowship was the home to a ton of horrors, theological horrors. What happened there—when Dominie DeCock stepped up on the pew and delivered a sermon even though there the civil authorities wouldn’t let him ascend the pulpit--was the birth, after a fashion, of an tiny American denomination dominated by wooden-shoed people. That denomination is my ecclesiastical home, has been for all of my life, as it has for a goodly number of the pilgrims on this trip. That’s the good news.
The word from Ulrum—from a woman who lives next door and has, of course, no first-hand sense of what actually happened than we do, is that when, 175 years ago or so, armed civil authorities used to come to that church, they did so because there were fist fights--fist fights, in the name of Jesus.
Now I’m enough of a story teller to know that in the almost years since the afscheiding, which some define as a senseless brawl, those neighbors who live today in the ancient shadow of that mostly unused 15th century church shape their story of their church’s beginning in a different way, a way that emphasizes not the righteousness of the faithful, but their theological madness. She told us that, not that many years ago, there were still four struggling Reformed churches within spitting distance of DeCock’s church, four Dutch Reformed churches just down the road, each of them more sure than the other of their own purity, even though they all claimed allegiance to the same doctrinal pedigree.
Today, there’s only one, and not all that many members. Today, in the Netherlands, lots and lots of people have simply given up on church.
It’s hard to know what to feel about such things. St. Boniface lost his head bringing the gospel—the Roman Catholic gospel—to Friesland, the gospel the Reformers literally hated. Today we worshipped at an English-speaking church in the Scots tradition, where the only stained glass in the place celebrated the church’s own ties with the American Puritans, who left Holland when they watched their children lose their brand of the faith. Left Holland for America, for Plymouth Plantation. Read the whole story for yourself from William Bradford. There’s a great story here, but it’s not always sweet. Not at all.
In each of our lives there are a thousand stories, really.
Meanwhile, somewhere in California, Harold Camping, who was once upon a time CRC and therefore has some roots himself in the Ulrum church, must be licking his wounds because we’re now 24 hours post-apocalypse, the event he forecast for yesterday.
What do we do with his silly story?
Really, it’s a glorious thing to discover your roots. Today we passed a big green highway sign that said “Oostburg,” almost indistinguishable from a couple that stand a mile or so west of Lake Michigan, in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, the town where I was reared. In the 1840s, some folks named that town after the one here we passed today in western Zeeland.
In fact, not all the far from here, a whole mob of Dutch folks decided to leave Zeeland for Wisconsin, mid-1847. They left, got to within eyesight of their destination when the ship they were in, the steamer the Phoenix, blew up. Hundreds aboard that ship faced a choice they never expected—to die in flames or die in icy cold lake water. Only thirty survived. No one knows exactly how many perished.
The stories of our lives are a mixed bag almost beyond imagination. The stories of our families are rich with glory, but, if you kick around a little, also too frequently caked with mud.
It was a joy to worship today at that English-speaking church, even if the sermon was, by my estimation, a bit thin, but then I’m an old guy. Basically, that young preacher said the story of God and his people, our story, is the greatest love story ever told. He was charming, really, full of energy and blessed with a great sense of humor. He started with Mr. Harold Camping in fact, said he sat down and wrote him a letter and said, “Why don’t you stop being weird?”
But the message lacked meat, not to mention potatoes, maybe especially for me, a man who’s gone through the wringer lately with Ulrum and Boniface and breath-taking ancient cathedrals. He’s not wrong—it is the greatest love story ever.
I’m not about to argue. Who can? Who could? But lining God’s love up with Romeo and Juliet is something akin to lining up an old grudge with Dachau. “The greatest love story” makes a really fine t-shirt, but when you take the time to look in a mirror, “the world’s greatest love story,” right as rain as it is, just doesn’t rich anywhere close to the whole truth.
Here’s what I’m thinking: the wonder is, he loves us at all. That’s the wonder, really. The wonder is, he cares. All we like sheep, all right? All we like sheep. And he keeps coming after us, the shepherd, I mean, the hound of heaven.
And somehow some of us—I don’t know why and I don’t know how—insist on believing that me and you and all the schaapjes in the world actually and truly have a shepherd, and a really good one. And that good shepherd somehow loves us, grabs our tails and drags us back—after lopped heads and fisticuffs and just about every maudlin version of self-righteousness known to man.
He still loves us.
How can that be?
I don’t know.
But he does.
Really.
Nothing’s really changed, Harold Camping. Nothing for either of us. He still loves us.
I don’t know why, but I know he does.
The word from Ulrum—from a woman who lives next door and has, of course, no first-hand sense of what actually happened than we do, is that when, 175 years ago or so, armed civil authorities used to come to that church, they did so because there were fist fights--fist fights, in the name of Jesus.
Now I’m enough of a story teller to know that in the almost years since the afscheiding, which some define as a senseless brawl, those neighbors who live today in the ancient shadow of that mostly unused 15th century church shape their story of their church’s beginning in a different way, a way that emphasizes not the righteousness of the faithful, but their theological madness. She told us that, not that many years ago, there were still four struggling Reformed churches within spitting distance of DeCock’s church, four Dutch Reformed churches just down the road, each of them more sure than the other of their own purity, even though they all claimed allegiance to the same doctrinal pedigree.
Today, there’s only one, and not all that many members. Today, in the Netherlands, lots and lots of people have simply given up on church.
It’s hard to know what to feel about such things. St. Boniface lost his head bringing the gospel—the Roman Catholic gospel—to Friesland, the gospel the Reformers literally hated. Today we worshipped at an English-speaking church in the Scots tradition, where the only stained glass in the place celebrated the church’s own ties with the American Puritans, who left Holland when they watched their children lose their brand of the faith. Left Holland for America, for Plymouth Plantation. Read the whole story for yourself from William Bradford. There’s a great story here, but it’s not always sweet. Not at all.
In each of our lives there are a thousand stories, really.
Meanwhile, somewhere in California, Harold Camping, who was once upon a time CRC and therefore has some roots himself in the Ulrum church, must be licking his wounds because we’re now 24 hours post-apocalypse, the event he forecast for yesterday.
What do we do with his silly story?
Really, it’s a glorious thing to discover your roots. Today we passed a big green highway sign that said “Oostburg,” almost indistinguishable from a couple that stand a mile or so west of Lake Michigan, in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, the town where I was reared. In the 1840s, some folks named that town after the one here we passed today in western Zeeland.
In fact, not all the far from here, a whole mob of Dutch folks decided to leave Zeeland for Wisconsin, mid-1847. They left, got to within eyesight of their destination when the ship they were in, the steamer the Phoenix, blew up. Hundreds aboard that ship faced a choice they never expected—to die in flames or die in icy cold lake water. Only thirty survived. No one knows exactly how many perished.
The stories of our lives are a mixed bag almost beyond imagination. The stories of our families are rich with glory, but, if you kick around a little, also too frequently caked with mud.
It was a joy to worship today at that English-speaking church, even if the sermon was, by my estimation, a bit thin, but then I’m an old guy. Basically, that young preacher said the story of God and his people, our story, is the greatest love story ever told. He was charming, really, full of energy and blessed with a great sense of humor. He started with Mr. Harold Camping in fact, said he sat down and wrote him a letter and said, “Why don’t you stop being weird?”
But the message lacked meat, not to mention potatoes, maybe especially for me, a man who’s gone through the wringer lately with Ulrum and Boniface and breath-taking ancient cathedrals. He’s not wrong—it is the greatest love story ever.
I’m not about to argue. Who can? Who could? But lining God’s love up with Romeo and Juliet is something akin to lining up an old grudge with Dachau. “The greatest love story” makes a really fine t-shirt, but when you take the time to look in a mirror, “the world’s greatest love story,” right as rain as it is, just doesn’t rich anywhere close to the whole truth.
Here’s what I’m thinking: the wonder is, he loves us at all. That’s the wonder, really. The wonder is, he cares. All we like sheep, all right? All we like sheep. And he keeps coming after us, the shepherd, I mean, the hound of heaven.
And somehow some of us—I don’t know why and I don’t know how—insist on believing that me and you and all the schaapjes in the world actually and truly have a shepherd, and a really good one. And that good shepherd somehow loves us, grabs our tails and drags us back—after lopped heads and fisticuffs and just about every maudlin version of self-righteousness known to man.
He still loves us.
How can that be?
I don’t know.
But he does.
Really.
Nothing’s really changed, Harold Camping. Nothing for either of us. He still loves us.
I don’t know why, but I know he does.
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