Month: March 2021

He was a trusted member of an elite group.  He was trusted with financial responsibilities and was known for caring for the poor.  He had connection with some of the most powerful members in the nation’s capital.  His status was such that he had the seat of honor at his friend’s farewell banquet.

Then shortly afterwards, he handed his friend over to his enemies.

His name was Judas of Kerioth.  In popular culture, he is better known as Judas Iscariot.

Judas Iscariot has long passed from being just a historical figure into being one of those famous names from history and literature.  The names Judas is with Sherlock and Scrooge, Einstein and Edison.  It carries the connotation of betrayal, greed, and backstabbing.  In Europe, his name is mentioned with Brutus, the friend who literally backstabbed Julius Caesar.  In the United States, his name is mentioned with Benedict Arnold, traitor to the American Revolution.

The problem with being a traitor is that to be a notorious traitor, you must have done a lot of good for your side before the betrayal.  Then after the betrayal, your good deeds are quickly forgotten.

Let’s take a closer look at both of these traitors. We may see some startling comparisons.

The Reputation

Benedict Arnold was well respected by George Washington for a reason.  In May 1775, he and Ethan Allan with the Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga. In October 1776, he had built one of the first naval forces and stopped the British advance on Lake Champlain at the Battle of Valcour Island. In September 1777, he was seriously injured in the left leg leading a charge at the Battle of Saratoga.

Judas Iscariot also had the reputation of getting things done, watching the budget, and taking care of the poor.  When Mary of Bethany was anointing Jesus, Judas did the math and argued that the year’s wages spent on the perfume could have been used to help the poor.  (John 12:1-5)  Later, when Judas leaves midway through the Last Supper, most of the disciples didn’t think anything of it.  They just presumed that he was either going to buy supplies or help the poor. (John 13:26-30).

The Bribe.

For Benedict Arnold, he demanded 20,000 pounds to help the British take Fort Arnold.  He used a coded letters and inviable ink to make this contact with British General Henry Clinton.  Judas went directly to the Jewish priest and asked them to make him an offer.  They offered thirty pieces of silver.  Judas agreed.  (Matthew 26:14-15)

The Moment of No Return

For Benedict Arnold, the moment of no return came when General George Washington offered him a command of a wing of the Continental Army.  Arnold was surprised.  He thought that Washington had become one of his enemies.  Then it was Washington’s turn to be surprised, Arnold turned down the offer.  Claiming a bad leg, he asked Washington that be left in charge of command of West Point.  After all one of the forts, Fort Arnold, was named after him.  Puzzled, Washington agreed.  For Judas, the moment came at the Last Supper, where he held a seat of honor next to Jesus.  Jesus turns to him and tells him to act quickly.  Judas walks out of the upper room into infamy.  (John 13:26-30)

The Betrayal

For Benedict Arnold, the betrayal unravels when British Major John Andre is captured by militiamen with a boot stuffed with incriminating information.  For Judas, the betrayal does work according to plan.  He leads the soldiers first to the Upper Room, then finding it empty, he leads to them to a garden, a favorite place that Jesus likes to go and pray.  Walking in the dark under the Passover moon, Judas walks straight up to Jesus. “Greetings, Rabbi!” he exclaims and greets Jesus with a kiss.  Jesus replies, “My friend, go ahead and do what you have come for.” (Matthew 26:49-50 NLT)

The Reception

For Benedict Arnold, after the war he learned that the citizens of England had no use for him.  They considered him a free lancer who sold out to the highest bidder and got Major Andre hung.  Unlike the Americans, the British hadn’t forgotten what Benedict Arnold had done at the beginning of the war.  Following the pattern of complicated Biblical villains, Judas realizes the evil he has done.  In the end, it’s not Peter, James, or John, who comes to Jesus’s defense.  Judas goes to the Jewish priests and defends Jesus.  “I have sinned,” he declared, “for I have betrayed an innocent man.”  Like Benedict Arnold, he finds a cool reception.  “What do we care?” they retorted. “That’s your problem.” (Matthew 27:4 NLT)

The Legacy

Benedict Arnold ending up with only 6,000 of the 20,000 pounds that he had been promised.  Shunned in England, he worked as merchant ship-owner in the Caribbean and Canada.  In 1801, at the age of 60, he died and was buried without any military honors.  Meanwhile Fort Arnold was renamed to Fort Clinton.  The fort fell into disrepair, but the remains be seen at the soccer fields at West Point. Also, visitors to the New York’s Saratoga National Historical Park, can see the unique “Boot Monument” to Arnold’s twice-wounded leg. The marker is dedicated to a nameless “brilliant soldier” who was “desperately wounded” during the Battle of Saratoga.  Like Arnold, Judas ended up with a unique legacy with money, renaming, and fields.  Judas tossed down all the silver coins in the temple and left.  This left the Jewish priests with a moral dilemma, “It wouldn’t be right to put this money in the Temple treasury, since it was payment for murder.”  They finally hit upon a win-win situation.  They used the money to buy a potter’s field to be used as a cemetery for foreign visitors.  Knowing the history behind the field and how it was purchased, the cemetery was known as the Field of Blood. Unable to live with his guilt, Judas hung himself. (Matthew 27:5-8 NLT)

And yet, Judas unwittingly helped set the stage for the Easter Story.  On Saturday morning, the Jewish priests come to Pilate with an unusual request, “Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise from the dead.’  So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day. This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing his body and then telling everyone he was raised from the dead! If that happens, we’ll be worse off than we were at first.” (Matthew 27:63-64 NLT) Besides the unusual request to guard a dead man, how did the priests know about Jesus’s prediction of resurrection?  The only person who could have told them was Judas.  The reason there was a guarded tomb was that Judas told the priests what Jesus had told the disciples:  “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. They will sentence him to die. Then they will hand him over to the Romans to be mocked, flogged with a whip, and crucified. But on the third day he will be raised from the dead.” (Matthew 20:18-19 NLT)

Final Thoughts

Judas will always be one of the villains of the Easter story.  But he’s a tragic villain.  Realizing what he had done, he alone of all disciples came to Jesus’s defense.  And unlike some other Easter villains, he does pull out all the stops to prevent Jesus from being crucified.  But sometimes in life, choices lead to one-way consequences that cannot be reversed.  You cannot unring a bell.

Way back in 2009, I was contemplating about the betrayal.  Jesus referred to Judas being his friend.  Only our friends can betray us.  That’s why it hurts so deeply.  And yet, I wish that instead of going to the priests, Judas went to his friend.  Even then, at the foot of the  cross, Judas would have discovered how much Jesus loved him, Judas, his friend.  And so here’s a few lines that I wrote to capture that dynamic.

My good friend

You come and dine with me

After you plot behind me

Come to the table and break a roll

As your betrayal breaks my soul

My good friend

My good friend

Does our friendship have a price

Can you place a value on life

You counted the coins, but not the cost

Gained the world, but your soul is lost

My good friend.

My good friend

I can see past your sin

We can be brothers again

Don’t play the game that no one wins

Don’t let your life end

My good friend.

Trying to let you live

Dying just to forgive

My good friend

He was a frustrated royal.  As a prince, he grew up in the shadow of his royal parent who was famous on the world stage.  In turn, he became infamous for his having an affair and breaking the heart of a beloved princess, only to divorce her and be remarried to a scandalous woman.  Yearning to be king in his own right, he belatedly realized that his subjects had no love for him and had already turned their attentions and affections to the next generation of royals.

His name was Herod Antipas.

Unlike his father King Herod the Great, Herod Antipas was not a major player on the world stage.  King Herod the Great had gotten to the job of “King of the Jews,” because his pal, Mark Antony had personally recommended him to the Roman Senate.  Later, Herod the Great had wisely warned his pal Mark Antony that his new girlfriend, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, was bad news.  When Mark Antony and Cleopatra had been decisively defeated in battle, Herod the Great befriended the winner, the future Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, and kept his job.  As “King of the Jews,” Herod the Great was known throughout the world as the builder of modern Jewish Temple – that strange temple that Jews thought was a gateway to the one true God.

When Herod the Great died, the Kingdom of the Jews was divided between his various sons.  But soon afterwards, Caesar Augustus decided that he would rather have a Roman in charge of the important areas of Judea and Samaria.  Much to his chagrin, Herod Antipas found a Roman governor ruling the lion’s share of his father’s kingdom, while he had the title of being only a Tetrarch of the rather minor province of Galilee.  Following his father’s footsteps, Antipas began major rebuilding projects in Galilee.

However, the reckless ruler soon made international headlines for all the wrong reasons.  He managed to create family drama and a foreign policy crisis in one fell swoop.  First, he stole his brother Phillip’s wife, Herodias.  Herodias also happened to be Herod Antipas’s niece.  I’m sure that made for an interesting and complicated family reunion.  In doing so, Antipas’s first wife, the beautiful princess from the next-door kingdom, returned home, to a very angry King Aretas IV.  Thus, while King Herod the Great had the reputation for being the great temple builder, his reckless son Herod Antipas had the reputation of being a homewrecker.  Later, King Aretas sent his troops to fight against Herod Antipas to avenge his family’s honor.  When Herod Antipas was badly beaten, his Jewish subjects said that it was divine punishment – not for the sins of theft and adultery – but for the murder of John of Baptist.

Both the Jewish historian Josephus and the gospel writers record how John the Baptist was leading a riverside revival at the Jordan River, calling upon the Jewish people to repent of their sins and make way for the true Messiah.  John the Baptist didn’t pull any punches and challenged Herod Antipas to send Herodias back home to her first husband.  So Herod Antipas locked up John the Baptist in the dungeon.  But once again, we have a Biblical villain who is quite complex.  Herod Antipas would actually visit the dungeon to listen to John the Baptist.  Perhaps being surrounded by a bunch of yes men, he found John the Baptist’s honesty and courage refreshing.  Perhaps being without a moral anchor himself, he found John the Baptist’s integrity unusual and interesting. (Mark 6:17-20).

Naturally, the now Mrs. Herod Antipas (Herodias) did not share her husband’s admiration for this wild-eyed frontier preacher and began plotting a way to dispose of him.  The opportunity presented itself when Herod Antipas was having a birthday bash.  Herodias’s daughter, Salome, performed a dance that greatly pleased Herod Antipas.  He was so pleased that he promised her anything.  After comparing notes with her mother Herodias, Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist.  Herod Antipas groaned.  He knew that it was unethical – executing a prophet for the whim of a dance girl.  But he did not want to appear weak in front of his birthday guests.  Instead of having the moral courage to refuse her request and give her a bag of gold, he reluctantly ordered John the Baptist to be beheaded.  His birthday party ended with a dancing girl, prancing and dancing with a platter that held the head of John the Baptist. (Mark 6:19, 21-29).

Having added prophet killer next to international adulterer to his resume, Antipas badly needed a way to redeem himself.  The crafty fox soon found a way to impress both the Jewish priests and the Roman Emperor Tiberius, thanks to the bumbling of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.  According to the Jewish philosopher Philo, Governor Pontius Pilate had placed some shields dedicated to Emperor 
Tiberius in his palace in Jerusalem.  The Jewish priests objected.  They felt the shields had pagan overtones.  Pilate refused to remove them.  So Herod Antipas wrote a letter to Emperor Tiberius asking him to intervene.  Tiberius was furious at Pilate and ordered him to relocate the shields to a more appropriate location outside the Holy City.  Pilate was in trouble in with the Emperor and angry with Herod Antipas.  Herod Antipas, however, was now recognized as being a defender of the Jewish faith – a good steppingstone to reclaiming the family title of “King of the Jews.”

But once again, a Jewish prophet came along.  Herod Antipas began hearing reports of another prophet who was gathering large crowds and working mighty miracles.  Then things got even more interesting when he learned that Joanna, the wife of his manger Chuza, had been healed by this prophet. (Luke 8:2-3).  Rumors swirled that he was one of the old prophets, perhaps Elijah.  Another theory was he was John the Baptist – raised to life.  “I beheaded John,” Herod wondered, “so who is this man about whom I hear such stories?” And so Herod Antipas was eager to meet him. (Luke 9:7-9)

The prophet was Jesus of Nazareth.  And he was no fan of Herod Antipas.  In fact, Jesus might have made a veiled criticism of Herod Antipas by comparing, or contrasting, him with John the Baptist.  He once asked the crowds, “What kind of man did you go into the wilderness to see? Was he a weak reed, swayed by every breath of wind? Or were you expecting to see a man dressed in expensive clothes? No, people who wear beautiful clothes and live in luxury are found in palaces. Were you looking for a prophet? Yes, and he is more than a prophet.” (Luke 7:24-26 NLT)

Just before Holy Week, Jesus was even more direct about his thoughts about Herod Antipas.  Some of the Pharisees came to Jesus to warn him that Herod Antipas was looking for him, to kill him.  Some commentators find the Pharisees to be insincere.  I don’t.  I think that these Pharisees were fans of Jesus and were afraid that history would repeat itself.  Jesus doesn’t run or back down.  Instead he sends a message to Herod Antipas:

“Go tell that fox that I will keep on casting out demons and healing people today and tomorrow; and the third day I will accomplish my purpose. Yes, today, tomorrow, and the next day I must proceed on my way. For it wouldn’t do for a prophet of God to be killed except in Jerusalem!  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me.” (Luke 13:32-34 NLT)

This message must have pricked Herod Antipas’s ears.  This prophet was heading to Jerusalem for Passover, just like Herod Antipas would.  Perhaps their paths would cross in Jerusalem.

In Luke 23, we read that early on Friday morning, Herod Antipas and his soldiers were probably partying when a delegation arrived.  The Jewish priests had asked Governor Pontius Pilate to rubber stamp their death sentence of a certain man.  Pilate, however, had reopened the case, and then when learning that the accused was from Nazareth of Galilee, decided that Herod Antipas would be in a better position to judge him, after all he was Herod Antipas’s subject.  Who is this man, Herod Antipas must have asked.  Jesus of Nazareth, they replied.

Herod Antipas couldn’t believe his ears.   After searching all over Galilee for this prophet, he was brought to him in handcuffs in Jerusalem.  Antipas began asking Jesus questions, but Jesus refused to answer.  It was a study in contrasts.  John the Baptist was a wild looking man, dressed in camel skins, who wouldn’t shut up.  Jesus was a calm looking man, dressed liked a humble carpenter, and refused to speak.

Here is one of the strange crossroads of history.  We have Herod Antipas of royal birth who desperately desired to be King of the Jews.  He’s now holds in his hands the fate of Jesus of Nazareth, of humble birth, who desired no political position, but is now charged with the crime of proclaiming himself, King of the Jews.

The Jewish priests thought that surely Herod Antipas would agree with them.  After all, he was the defender of the faith.  But the crafty fox had other ideas.  He already had one dead prophet on his resume; he didn’t need another one.  No need to turn his subjects against him, again.  But he didn’t want to completely alienate the Jewish priests either.  So even though he found Jesus to be not guilty, he decided to send Jesus back to Pontius Pilate, but not before he had his fun.

“Then Herod and his soldiers began mocking and ridiculing Jesus. Finally, they put a royal robe on him and sent him back to Pilate.”  (Luke 23:11 NLT)

For Jesus, it was also a study of contrasts.  John the Baptist was a man of moral courage.  Herod Antipas really was “a weak reed, swayed by every breath of wind.”  If he thought Jesus was truly innocent, he should have set him free, then and there.  If he thought Jesus was truly guilty, he could have him thrown in the dungeon or at the worst beheaded him – a much more humane way to die than the torture of Romans’ crucifixion.  Instead, Herod Antipas acted like a bully and mocked Jesus, even to the extent of placing one of his royal robes on him.  Herod Antipas was also the “man dressed in expensive clothes” that Jesus had referred to earlier.

So Jesus was sent back to Pilate and ironically served as a peace offering between the two rival rulers.  From that day forward, they were allies.  (Luke 23:12).

But history was not finished with Herod Antipas.  With the ascension of Emperor Caligula, Antipas found himself in exile in Spain.  In the end, it would be the next generation of Herods to reclaim the old family title of King of the Jews.  His nephew and brother-in-law King Herod Agrippa would be received with great acclaim in Jerusalem having a royal Jewish mother and a best friend in Emperor.  Meanwhile, Antipas would be remembered mainly as the beheader of John the Baptist.  Even in villainy, his father overshadowed him.  King Herod the Great will always be remembered as the villain in the Christmas story, while his son Antipas is barely remembered for his villainy in the Easter story.

It’s been one year since the COVID-19 pandemic changed our world, and Keith Church has certainly experienced several changes during this time. Our church historian, Sally Ealy, asked that we chronicle this historic time in the life of our congregation. We would like to trace the events of the past year as we have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic according to the different “ships” of the church – worship, fellowship, discipleship, partnership, stewardship and leadership.

Worship

On Wednesday, March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. The following evening, Holston Conference’s Bishop Mary Virginia Taylor issued an email urging congregations to suspend in-person worship services for at least the next two weeks in an attempt to stem the spread of the virus. The following Sunday, March 15, 2020, Keith’s pastors David Graybeal and Andrew Lay recorded a worship service from the prayer chapel which we posted on the church’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. This was the beginning of the church offering online worship, which we have offered every Sunday since, even while we have held in-person services off and on. During the summer, we also began offering our worship services through a local telephone number (423-205-2211) for those who do not use computers. Online worship seems to be here to stay.

As the virus began to spread and case counts increased across the country, the initial two-week suspension of in-person worship was extended indefinitely. We conducted our Holy Week and Easter services all online. The Palm Sunday service was recorded from the outdoor memorial prayer garden. The Maundy Thursday service was conducted from the parsonage on Zoom. With the permission of Bishop Taylor, we offered online Holy Communion, truly a first for Keith Church and its pastors in which we invited participants to have their own bread and juice available as we led them through the liturgy. For our Good Friday service, we invited a number of church members to video themselves reading parts of the story of the Passion of Christ. For our online Easter Sunday service, we invited Jay and Susan Carter and Connor Solsbee to offer their testimonies to how they have experienced the presence of the Risen Christ in their lives. 

The attendance at our online worship services those first few months was far above our normal attendance in person. For example, we had nearly 2,000 views of our Easter service. While those attendance figures would decline as the months progressed, our online worship presence has continued to provide a vital connection to our congregation for our church members, their family members living elsewhere, and other friends and guests from the community.

Once it became clear that we would be conducting worship online for the foreseeable future, Rev. Andrew Lay quickly became quite adept at video editing and production. Using the technology that was literally at hand – our smart phones and tablets – we pre-recorded our worship services which he then edited with intros and transitions. He also tutored Rev. David Graybeal in the art of video production so that Andrew and his wife Ally could enjoy their wedding weekend and honeymoon. They were married in the sanctuary on May 23, 2020, with just their close family present. A small reception was held in the side narthex, where a special vending machine for the #NewLAYweds provided the potato chips.

Andrew created a beautiful Mother’s Day tribute video with photos of church members and their moms and families that we included in our worship service for that morning. Our online Pentecost worship service featured footage from the fire from 1947 that burned down the previous church. Some of the sermon was recorded on the site of the former church. These are the kinds of things that online worship allows.

In May, we formed a Regathering Team composed of some trustees, staff members and other church leaders – including two epidemiologists, Laurel Wood and David Reese – to start planning and preparing for a safe return to in-person worship. Our business administrator Lea Ann Arbuthnot and our custodian Randy Burger promptly purchased cleaning supplies, gloves, masks and other necessities for the church. We also received 300 free cloth masks from the health department. Randy also thoroughly cleaned throughout the church. Our Director of Communications Alex Barlok created clever and punny signs to place at the entrances to pews we would not be using.

In June, the Holston Conference’s Covid task force developed an extensive set of guidelines for churches to return to offering in-person worship. These guidelines included requirements for wearing masks, maintaining safe distances, and keeping attendance records in case of the need for contact tracing. Our regathering team met several times over Zoom to adapt these guidelines for our church. We started off with outdoor worship for a few Sundays in June and July. Our chair of Trustees, Austin Fesmire, painted circles in the grass behind the Gathering for people to sit at safe distances. But then, following the metrics of the Harvard Global Health Institute that the conference recommended, we returned to online worship as local case numbers began to surge. We were able to return to outdoor worship again in August and to indoor worship in late September when we offered one combined worship service in the Gathering, where we were able to spread the seating safely apart. After planning to move to two indoor worship services for Advent, we had to suspend in-person worship again in November and return to online worship only throughout December and into the new year due to the holiday surge. 

The Hanging of the Greens service, during which we prepare the sanctuary for the season of Advent, is a longstanding and beloved tradition at Keith Church. We gathered video footage from the very first service in 1985, along with the services from 2000 and 2010, and compiled them into a special, hourlong “Hanging of the Greens Through the Years” video which we dedicated to the memory of Linda McGill, one of the originators of this service who passed away in December 2019. Several church members commented how good it was to see faces and hear voices from the past. Special thanks to Austin Fesmire for his help in transferring the old video cassettes into digital format. We also shared the recording of the Chancel Choir’s 2010 Christmas cantata.

On the evening of December 21, we shared an online “Longest Night Service” that recognized the various losses we’ve experienced this year and yet also anticipated the arrival of the light that shines in the darkness, which the darkness has not overcome (John 1:5).

On Christmas Eve, we opened up both the sanctuary and the Gathering for folks to come in two families/households at a time for prayer and Christmas Communion. Several people said it was the first time they’d been back inside the church since March. Like our online Easter service, our online Christmas Eve service featured testimonials from some of our frontline workers like Suzanne Hornsby, who is a nurse at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, and Michael Conar, who is a physician assistant in Cleveland. They are the equivalent of the first-century shepherds who were the first to receive the news of the Savior’s birth. We also welcomed guest instrumentalists from John Burroughs’ family to share some beautiful arrangements of our favorite Christmas carols.

In early January, Rick Lay brought to our attention a tradition from England of “chalking the door” on the 12^th night of Christmas as a way of praying God’s blessing upon all that takes place within the walls of the churches, homes and businesses. He thought since we couldn’t gather inside the church, we could nonetheless gather outside the church. So on January 5^th, several gathered outside the sanctuary doors and chalked various signs and symbols of God’s blessing upon our church. This event coincided with the annual Live Nativity, which was postponed from Christmas Eve because of the snow and cold. Becky Smith continues to arrange both volunteers and animals for this holiday tradition.

In mid-January, our county’s cases dipped below our threshold for in-person worship (a running 7-day average of less than 27 new cases in McMinn County), and we moved to offering two worship services on Sunday mornings, one in each worship space. Our Director of Children’s Ministries, Katie Belk, set up some tables along the sides of the Gathering for families with young children, with crayons and coloring sheets. These tables have been very popular with our families, since we haven’t been able to provide a nursery. 

Since December 1946, there has been a service at 10:35 a.m., but our Worship Team decided to jockey our schedule to offer one sanctuary service at 9 and one service in the Gathering at 11. This was to allow our worship leadership staff to cover for each other in case any of us needed to isolate or quarantine, which some of us have had to do. As of March 2021, this is still the schedule of services we are offering. Pre-Covid, our average worship attendance across three services was around 300. We are still close to that number when you add the online viewership to our in-person congregation of approximately 100.

We are currently planning to offer two sets of worship services at 9 and 11 in each space on Easter Sunday this year, along with the community’s sunrise service at 7 and an outdoor service at the Mayfield Farm at 2 prior to the Easter egg hunt. This will be a total of six Easter Sunday services folks can choose to attend. We hope that these additional services will allow us to safely accommodate the number of worshipers we hope will come to church on Easter. We pray this Easter will continue the ongoing resurrection of our ability to worship safely together.

Fellowship

The church’s ability to enjoy fellowship together has been severely constrained during the pandemic. For so long, we have not been able to meet together in person, and fellowship meals and potlucks have been suspended due to safety concerns. The Adult Fellowship group, for example, which had been meeting at least monthly since the 1940s, has yet to return to meeting together. Some of the women’s circles have been meeting on Zoom and some have begun meeting in-person again. But this has been the most challenging “ship” to keep afloat throughout this pandemic.

However, we have made some intentional efforts over the past year to address this fellowship challenge at the church. The week after we entered quarantine, we developed a Covid church contact list which identified a number of our more vulnerable members and those living alone that the staff and small groups used to reach out to them to see if we could assist with groceries, medications, chores or anything else, and simply just to check in with them to see how they are doing. We also conducted two online surveys of our church members in the spring to check in with them to see how they were doing physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually, and to gauge their readiness to return to worship and other activities. These surveys had strong levels of response in the congregation. In the fall, the staff divided up the entire contact list of 821 households for the church and had made an effort to reach out to everyone by the end of November. 

The week after the pandemic began, we started sharing video devotionals on email and social media throughout the remainder of the season of Lent. We continued to provide informational and devotional videos periodically for the next several months. We also ramped up our communications with the congregation and community through our church’s emails and our social media presence. Alex created a banner and signs along the church front that said “Love God/Love Others/Love Always” on one side and “Do no harm/Do good/Trust God” on the other. She also upgraded our email software to Constant Contact. Andrew revamped our website to help folks stay as informed and connected as possible. We increased the posts on our Keith Church blog with submissions not only from the pastors but also from Tim Womac, Austin Fesmire and Jeff Walker. Alex coordinated the Advent Photo of a Day and Favorite Scripture Verse posts on our social media. 

Our prayer group began meeting again in the summer on Zoom. Though small in number, this group of pray-ers sends cards to the different folks we remember in prayer every Wednesday morning. The Wesley Sunday school class also sent candles and cards at Christmas to those in our congregation and community who had lost a loved one during the year. We regularly hear from folks who let us know how much our prayers mean to them.

During the summer, Mark Reedy, our Director of Youth and Young Adults, formed a kickball team that competed in the city recreation league. Not only was it a lot of fun, but it also provided a time of safe fellowship outdoors for some of our youth and younger adults, and it was also a visible presence of the church in the community. Mark handed out some humorous superlative trophies at the end of the season. He also took the youth to play frisbie golf a number of times at the regional park this summer.

Laurie Kaminske delivered flower bouquets to a number of church members on behalf of the Jewell Circle and then poinsettias during Advent. For World Communion Sunday in October, we arranged for staff and volunteers to deliver individually packaged communion sets to approximately 40 of those members at the porches of their homes. We also took Christmas Communion to several of these same people again the Sunday before Christmas. We also took packets of ashes and a cross to several households in advance of our online Ash Wednesday worship service in February. We are currently planning to take Holy Week Communion to members’ porches again soon. These are all opportunities for us to safely check in with these members, to pray with them, to bring them Upper Room devotionals and to make sure they were receiving the church’s communications in a way that worked for them.

Discipleship

Through our small groups and Sunday school classes, we have also sought to foster a sense of community and to address the isolation that our church members have experienced.

When the pandemic began, we were right in the middle of the season of Lent, and we had to conclude our Lenten Bible study on God’s grace in the musical Les Miserables through Zoom. Our Bible studies reactivated during the summer, continuing on Zoom. The summer Bible study followed our sermon series through the book of Acts and was a key component in Andrew’s Making Disciples project, which will be part of his application for ordination this coming fall. We continued to offer midweek studies on the gospel themes in the musical Hamilton as well as a fall video study on the intersections between science and religion. In February 2021, we moved to offering a hybrid Wednesday night Bible study of the Gospel of Luke, meeting both online and in-person.

Some of our Sunday school classes and sermon-based small groups have continued to meet, on Zoom, by conference call or in person when they could. Our confirmation class had almost completed their course. They met a couple of times last spring by Zoom but will “re-Zoom” meeting this spring and conclude their confirmation journey. Our youth group has met a number of times outdoors at the church and in other settings and has started meeting inside again. 

Our children’s ministry has offered Sunday school classes on Facebook Live and has recently returned to meeting in-person on Wednesday nights. This past summer they conducted Vacation Bible School for several children on the Wednesdays during the month of June. In December, the children presented an outdoor Luminary Nativity in the front of the church during which they read portions of the story of Jesus’ birth in a kind of “Stations of the Creche.” Several church members and community friends participated.

We also hosted online book discussions that addressed some of the racial tensions that our nation experienced this past year. We discussed Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility in May, United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon’s Fear of the Other in June, and Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry’s Love is the Way in February.

Partnership

The main outreach arms of our church in the community are to children through our Keith Children’s Academy and our Nourish One Child ministry. It was unclear throughout much of the summer whether or when the KCA would be able to reopen. Many of the academy’s families and prospects found other childcare arrangements while we awaited guidance from the conference. Finally, in August, we received authorization to reopen our programs. Tracey Hicks, the director of the KCA (who celebrated her 25^th year as director this year) worked hard to staff and fill the classes as much as she could. The program has continued to safely provide quality Christian preschool education and childcare to families in our community. We hope to return to being fully operational again this coming school year. KCA also received a grant through the Tennessee CARES Act that helped with the purchase of tablets for the teachers and students to use, vacuum cleaners and other important supplies.

Our church’s Nourish One Child ministry, which provides weekend food for children in the city school system, was considered an essential outreach and so they continued operating throughout the spring and again in the fall as schools reopened. They also provided family food bags at Christmas with assistance from United Grocery Outlet. We serve over 250 children through this ministry.

The United Methodist Women collected donations in May and provided $2700 in Food City gift cards to our essential workers at Starr Regional Medical Center as a way to express our gratitude and appreciation for these front-line workers. Morgan Fesmire also arranged for snacks for the ICU waiting area.

We offered a drive-thru Blessing of the Backpacks for children in our congregation and community at the start of the school year. We also hosted a drive-thru Trunk or Treat on Halloween weekend that both the volunteers and the visitors seemed to enjoy so much that we may just keep doing it that way! We also conducted our annual Blessing of the Animals virtually this year and invited photos of pets and their people, and several friends from the community participated. We also collected items for the Humane Society.

Our Outreach Team fed the McMinn High School football team, coaches and cheerleaders again this year, serving them at the school cafeteria instead of the church’s fellowship hall. Both our community Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve meals were offered this year, but by drive-thru pick up only (no deliveries or indoor dining this year). Still, about 325 meals were safely prepared and served at each holiday by the crews of volunteers led by Allyson Kirkland at Thanksgiving and Morgan Fesmire on Christmas Eve.

In November, we hosted an online presentation by church member Meg Paisley and one of her colleagues at Health Connect America Kellie Nesmith on “19 Ways You Can Support Your Mental Health During COVID-19.” It was full of practical, helpful things we all can do to stay as healthy and whole as we can during these difficult times and especially during the holidays.

During December, Alex created some colorful and festive thank-you cards for church members to take to local businesses to let them know we appreciate their presence in our community and are praying for the health and well-being of their business at the year end.

An Al-Anon recovery group continues to meet at the church. They started meeting again outdoors in the summer and then returned indoors in the fall. This ministry has proven essential as the pandemic has been especially challenging to people on the journey of recovery.

Our Boy, Cub and Girl Scout groups have also continued meeting at the church, and we appreciate our partnership with them in their ministries of cultivating a commitment to community service and civic pride among the children in our community.

Leadership

One of Keith’s pastors was quoted in a national newspaper this year. Pastor Dave was quoted in a New York Times article “Coronavirus Was Slow to Spread to Rural America. Not Anymore” on April 8, 2020 as saying, “Some of the petty things that would be in the news and on social media before have sort of fallen away. There’s a sense that we are really in this together. Now it’s ‘How can we pull through this and support one another in this social distancing?’” Both of our pastors have worked with the staff and church leadership throughout this pandemic to help us all pull through this and support one another as best we can.

Following the conference’s guidelines, throughout the spring and summer of 2020, the office was closed for business as our staff worked mostly from home. Carter Runyan, our finance chair, encouraged us in April to apply for the Payroll Protection Program forgivable loan from the federal government. The Church Council approved it, and Lea Ann quickly completed the paperwork for that application. We received nearly $110,000 to support the church staff as well as the Keith Children’s Academy. This was a welcome buffer against the potential financial impact of the church’s not meeting in person for worship for so many weeks. It enabled the church to retain our full staff without having to cut hours or positions. We are so grateful for our talented, creative and devoted staff. The church office reopened for regular business with abbreviated hours in August, and then was fully open when the KCA reopened in September.

At our annual Charge Conference in October, our church leadership mostly rotated another year forward, continuing to serve in the capacities in which they had been serving. Keith Church has long been blessed with spiritually gifted, dedicated and discerning lay leadership, and we have especially leaned on their leadership through the “liminal season” that this pandemic has placed us in.

Stewardship

The church’s stewardship includes both our physical property and our financial resources. The pandemic has provided an opportunity to refresh and update some of our physical properties. Thanks to some donations and some reserve funds, we were able to purchase and install video cameras, computers, cables and other equipment in both of our worship spaces which now allows us to livestream and record our worship services. Special thanks to Austin Fesmire, Andrew Lay, Josh Stephens, Mark Reedy, and David Bailey who have worked over the past several months to perfect our production capabilities.

Scottie Mayfield handcrafted a handsome new altar, side tables and United Methodist cross and flame for the Gathering worship space. We also placed new Christian and American flags in the sanctuary in honor of the mothers of Buddy and Dixie Liner.

The side narthex entrance to the sanctuary was refreshed with a new coat of paint, new carpet and furniture this summer. Keith Bester and Rob Davis devoted their time, talents and energies to that project. We are also currently in the process of updating the children’s hall that includes the nursery and toddler areas with new paint and new flooring for a much more fun and inviting atmosphere for our families with young children.

Financially, thanks to the consistent generosity of the congregation, the church has weathered the pandemic in good shape thus far. We received approximately 95% of our 2020 budget ($692,5000 out of $725,000) and we ended the year with a small surplus of $6800. However, our budget for 2021 has been decreased by $100,000 to $625,000, which reflects the life changes or losses of a number of members who have died or moved. Our Stewardship Team is exploring ways to continue to cultivate the kind of generosity among our congregation that will not only allow individual lives but our life together to flourish and to thrive.

We have had several of our church members who have contracted the COVID-19 virus, some who have been hospitalized, and some who have had family members and friends who have died from complications from the virus. One of our church members, Melissa Rhodes, who grew up in the church and was a devoted volunteer in our children’s ministry and active participant in the adult fellowship, died in January. A section of the children’s wing will be named in her memory when it is renovated.

This pandemic has taken its toll among us in a number of ways, and we will no doubt see its ripple effects and reflect on its impact for many years to come. But as we sing in one of our hymns, “O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” God has been faithful to Keith Church for nearly 200 years (since 1824), and God continues to offer hope for today and tomorrow. We trust that Keith Church will continue to rise to meet both the challenges and the opportunities presented by our navigating this pandemic season and that we will continue to strive to fulfill our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ who make a difference for him here and around the world.

Recently, I read about two bills in two different states, and I was struck by the irony of the situation.

First in my home state of Tennessee, there is House Bill 786.  It increases the penalties for those committing crimes with firearms.  It would also change the law to where citizens would not need a permit to carry a firearm.  My own sheriff, Joe Guy, with whom I have worked with (on library boards, folks, not the chain gang) was quoted as saying, “We want to support this type of bill, but with some regulations pertaining to basic firm safety training basic firearms safety training just like what is also required by our state hunters’ safety course of which I am an instructor.  We want people to be safe and to have some free training to operate and carry firearms safely in public and sheriffs are willing to provide that for free.”

I suspect that the voice of reason here will be criticized.  Regulations?  It’s a right!  It’s a second amendment right!  But hold the phone a second.  What does the second amendment actually say?  Drum roll please.  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  We’ve focused so much on the second part -the right to keep and bear Arms – that we’ve forgotten about the second part – “well regulated.”  Thus, we’re creating a society where you have to wait for eternity to get your driver’s permit, but no waiting involved to walk around with a firearm like you’re in Dodge City.

Meanwhile on the midnight train to Georgia, we have SB 241.  According to CNN under this law, “voters would need to be 65 years old or older, absent from their precinct, observing a religious holiday, be required to provide constant care for someone with a physical disability, or required to work ‘for the protection of the health, life, or safety of the public during the entire time the polls are open,’ or be an overseas or military voter to qualify for an absentee ballot.”  That’s a mouthful.   CNN explains that, “the bill aims to undo a 2005 Republican-backed law allowing no-excuse absentee voting.”

Another CNN article explains that the bill “includes several measures that restrict voting access, including a ban on automatic voter registration, a limit on Sunday early voting days and ballot drop boxes, and a number of restrictions and ID requirements for absentee voting.”  The limit on Sunday voting has been seen as a slap in the face to our brothers and sisters in the black churches who are heavily involved in voter participation.

So question: Why is it that when it comes to the right to bear arms, we are so eager to remove the few guardrails there are, but when it comes to right to vote, we are overeager to put up all sort of barriers?  Is it fear that we might get gunned down at the Dollar General and that the “graveyard” shift might show up and vote?

Now here’s where the voting bill gets very interesting: “The bill also prohibits free food and drinks from being served to people standing in line to vote.”

Say what?!  What kind of “free” country is this where I can’t hand a slice of pizza to somebody who has been waiting for hours to vote?  And how is that anyway Christian?  We have four gospel accounts of Jesus, and the one miracle story is found in all four of them is……Jesus feeding the 5,000.

So we have Jesus telling us blessed are the peacemakers, and we are very eager to carry our “peacemakers” without any proper training.  And then Jesus is feeding the hungry….and we want to outlaw feeding hungry voters.

Sounds like a serious case of two rights and a wrong.

We are approaching closer to closer to Holy Week when we remember the last week of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  This annual drama begins with a joyful Palm Sunday and leads to a reflective Holy Thursday, a somber Good Friday, and a silent Holy Saturday.  Like any good drama, we have several villains.  But these villains are very complex characters with mixed motives.  So every week in March, we will visit some of the bad guys of Holy Week, thus the title, March “Badness.”

In this blog, I want to focus on the “bad guys” at Jesus’s last press conference.  At his last press conference as recorded in Mark 12, Jesus is fielding questions from a variety of Jewish political and spiritual parties who are not his biggest fans.

First, the Pharisees and some Herodians ask Jesus if it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar.  That was a loaded question.  If Jesus said yes, he was a traitor to his Jewish people.  If he said no, he was a Roman rebel.  Hello crucifixion.  But Jesus turns the table by asking them to show him a coin.  (Sidenote: why is it that Jesus never carries money with him?  Doesn’t he know what the prosperity preachers on tv say?).  He asks, “Whose image is on this coin?”  In our culture, it would be like me holding a one-dollar bill and saying, “Washington” and Jesus replies, “Then Tim, render unto Washington what is Washington’s.  And render unto God what is God’s.”  You see, as a human being, I’m created in the image of God.  I give Washington my tax money, but I give God my life.

So who are the Pharisees and Herodians?  The Herodians where Jewish people who were campaigning for a return of the Herod family to rule the Jewish people.  King Herod the Great was not loved by the Jewish people, but he did pull of a massive upgrade to the Temple and for the most part respected the Jewish beliefs in Jerusalem.  So the Herodians reasoned that a bad Herod was better a good Roman like Pilate, who would probably be a pagan.

The Pharisees were the teachers among the common people.  They kept God’s law and encouraged the Jewish people to obey God’s law.  Unfortunately, they have received a bad rap.  In Christian circles, we automatically associate the word Pharisee with words like hypocrite and legalistic.  And that’s not, wait for it, “Fair, you see.”  Apparently, Jesus was constantly being wined and dined by the Pharisees.  I’m not sure Jesus was the best person to give the dinner toast, but he was there.  Just before Holy Week, it’s the Pharisees that warn Jesus that Herod Antipas was looking for him.  It was Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who came to Jesus at night looking for answers.  And it was Nicodemus and his friend Joseph of Arimathea who buried Jesus.  Later, it was a Pharisee teacher, Gamaliel, who warned his colleagues to leave the early Christians alone, because “If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown.  But if it from God, you will not be able to overthrow them.  You may even find yourselves fighting against God!” (Acts 5:38-39 NLT).  One of his students was none other than the future Apostle Paul!

Now, the Pharisees were not in total agreement about everything. One of their major debates was about marriage and divorce.   The students of Rabbi Shammai believed that a husband could only divorce his wife for a serious sin.  The students of Rabbi Hillel said a husband could divorce his wife for burning the toast.  Therefore, Jesus was asked to weigh in on the matter of marriage and divorce, and he looked past the law of Moses to go way back to Genesis Chapter 1 to the idea of one man/one woman and that everyone is created in the image of God.  Then he noted that Moses had to create these divorce laws, not because it was God’s perfect will, but because of the reality of the situation.

So Jesus would have shared with the Pharisees a love of God’s law, a belief in a bodily resurrection (not just dying and going to heaven), and accepting all the Jewish Scriptures in our Old Testament.

And that put him in opposition to the Sadducees.  At this last press conference, the Sadducees are asking if a lady who was married multiple times, because her husbands kept dying (hopefully, she wasn’t a black widow), then how many husbands would she have in this so-called Resurrection?

The Sadducees were the old-school, conservative priests.  Their political power was in Jerusalem and rippled from there to the outside.  They were not a fan of the Herods.  They prefer to deal with the Romans.  And the Sadducees only considered the first five books of Moses to be the basis for their theology – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  Because of this very narrow selection of scriptures, the Sadducees did not believe in these newfangled ideas of angels, life after-death, or a Resurrection.  (Which as punster Dave Graybeal notes that was why they were “sad, you see”!).  After all, the idea of a Resurrection was more clearly spelled out in later books like Daniel, “Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace. Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever.” (Daniel 12:2-3 NLT).  I remember growing up in a Southern Baptist church where a lady would occasionally sing a song “Lazarus, Come Forth.”  And it has one bad lyric, “The Pharisees wondered about what just had happened.  How could one lived who had died?”  That wasn’t fair, you see, because the Pharisees did believe in Resurrection.  The Sadducees did not.

So at his last press conference, Jesus tells the Sadducees that Resurrection people will be like angels; they won’t be married.  While they may sound strange to newlyweds that was probably really good news in a world of arranged marriages.  But then Jesus does them one better.  He reminds the Sadducees that “God isn’t the God of the dead.  God is the God of the living.” He then applies it to the book of Exodus, to that famous scene where Moses speaks to God in the burning bush, and God says, “I am the God of your ancestors.  I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”  Not I was, but I am.

I can imagine the Sadducees being irritated that Jesus had used Moses against them.  And I like to think the Pharisees were nodding their heads and thinking, “Why didn’t we think of that?” for that was a major source of disagreement between the Sadducees and Pharisees.

Interestingly both Sadducees and Pharisees made up the Great Sanhedrin the great Jewish legislative body/supreme court.  It was the Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus to death and sent him to Governor Pilate.  Ironically, when the Apostle Paul was hauled in for his trial, he pulled out his Pharisee credentials and shouted, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, as were my ancestors! And I am on trial because my hope is in the resurrection of the dead!” (Acts 23:6).  The result was that the Pharisees instinctively came to Paul’s defense, and a fistfight broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees.  It got so violent that the Roman officer decided that he better take Paul to a safer location.

Quick side note: there was also a fourth group, Essenes, who lived out in the desert.  They thought the world was corrupt, the Messiah was coming, and they were going to keep themselves.  Some scholars believe that John the Baptist may had been an Essene while growing up.

As I look at these four groups, it’s easy for me to condemn them.  But the problem is they sound more than a little familiar.

The Essenes who believed that the end of the world was near and withdrew from it reminds me both of our Amish friends and of the “Left Behind” crowd who don’t worry about the environment, or social justice, or people going hungry, because, after all, Jesus is coming soon.  (I would take the opposite approach: Jesus is coming; get busy!)

The Herodians who believe that a certain political dynasty would be the best fix for all the political and religious problems reminds me of Christians today who believe that this politician or that politician will fix all of America’s problems.

The debate between the Sadducees and Pharisees over which books were “real scriptures” remind me of how Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians all disagree on the status of the books known as the Apocrypha.  That’s really embarrassing when you think about it.

The interdebate among the Pharisees about the how, when, and where the law of Moses applies, uncomfortably reminds me of that Methodist crowd as we debate scripture.  Their debates about scriptures and divorce has echoes with our debates about scriptures and marriage.  The different schools of thoughts based on teachers reminds me of our different debates with proper adjectives like Wesleyan, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Augustinian.

In other words, some 2,000 years later, our society still suffers from similar divisions that split the Jewish people in Jesus’s day.  So question: If Jesus did walk the earth today as he did 2,000 years ago, what would happen?  I strongly suspect that history would repeat itself.  The various political and religious groups would finally find something that could agree on: Jesus has to go.  Those powerful entities would destroy him.  Oh, they probably wouldn’t try to strap him in the electric chair.  They would only seek to undermine him and ruin his reputation.  But against those odds, Jesus would once again find his flawed, but faithful followers.

So as we approach Holy Week, what group are you part of?  Can you see the flaws in your group?  Can you see the goodness in other groups that you disagree with?  Does your allegiance to your group blind you to seeing Jesus for who he truly is?

Perhaps those questions should remind us the last question that Jesus fielded that day, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”  And Jesus answered, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

There shouldn’t be any debate about that.