Religion – Rizzo's Rambles and Ruminations

Sometimes Your Second Favorite Pastor’s Name is Harv

In the summer of 2021, my second favorite pastor resigned the pastorate of my home church to take another in Florida. I had known Victor Massey since we were young. Our fathers were ministers together, long before Victor became my second favorite pastor. I said he was my second favorite since my dad, Bucky Rizzo, was a pastor and will always be my favorite. But until August of 2021, Victor Massey was my second favorite.

Then my church had a rather lengthy pastoral search while Pastor Lane Sargent, one of our retired former pastors, served as our interim and my second favorite pastor for about ten months. During that time the deacons prayed to find God’s will for who our pastor should be. Different individuals in the congregation indicated they believed it was God’s will for this one or that one to be our pastor. Yet I do not believe God cares. I do not mean God is unconcerned, but having given us free will he provides us opportunities to make wise choices and will give us wisdom in the process according to James 1:5. I really do not see that there is scriptural support to indicate that God has one particular person selected for every pastoral position or most any other role in the church or government or community or anywhere else. The task is not to ascertain the elusive and secret will of God. Instead, scripture teaches that we are much more responsible for our decisions and the consequences of our choices than we might like, which is why we should pray for wisdom.

With that theological understanding, I prayed for wisdom and when the pastoral vote was taken, I voted for someone whom I felt met the scriptural guidelines of a pastor and would be a good match for our congregation. But that is not who was selected. Instead in March 2022, Harv Turner became my second favorite pastor. Along with Pastor Harv, his wonderful wife Kelley became a part of our church family. Shortly after, his father, a retired minister himself, and his mother joined the congregation. And we are working to entice his son, daughter-in-law, and daughter to move to Sumiton.

I like Pastor Harv, my second favorite pastor. He is personable and a tad high energy. Early on, I noticed that he calls the names of members of the congregation as he preaches. It is a rhetorical device to engage the congregation, a way to connect new faces with names, and sometimes just something fun to do. Mine was one of the names he called, and I began to rib him about it on social media, keeping a tally of how many times he mentioned me. He was good natured and played along.

Recently Pastor Harv ran into me at lunch on campus. (He tried to sneak away, but I caught him.) We shared a meal and a conversation, which ran the gamut. Partly we talked about his experiences as a pastor, his father’s, my father’s, and even mine as a past music pastor. My dad more than once said that pastoring should be one of the most enjoyable jobs in the world, but people – Christians – make it difficult. The Apostle Paul surely knew this, which is why in 1 Thessalonians 5:13 he admonishes “to esteem them [pastors and church leaders] very highly in love for the work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves.” In the conversation with Pastor Harv, I alluded to this scripture. I try to follow it, though I know at times I have failed. But this is the way my favorite pastor raised me.

I certainly hope I demonstrate my love and respect for Pastor Harv, whether he calls my name in his sermons or not. But I think he will keep calling my name. If you are a believer and live in the area but do not have a pastor, come meet mine. His name is Harv. I think you would like him if you met him.

On the other hand, if you are not a believer you need a savior. His name is Jesus. I know he has been calling your name much longer and with deeper love than Pastor Harv has been calling mine. And you would love him if you met him.

I Drink Coffee Now…

My dad’s family is Greek and Italian, two cultures with coffee traditions dating back for centuries.

Greek coffee is strong. It is made in a special pot called a briki. A briki is a small copper pot. Fine ground coffee is placed in it. As the coffee boils, a foam forms at the top of the briki while the grounds settle to the bottom. Greek coffee is meant to be enjoyed slowly and savored.

Americans tend to be more familiar with Italian coffee, particularly espresso. (My daughter will be quick to correct you. “It’s espresso, not expresso!”) Espresso is also made with fine ground coffee, which is then combined with very hot water under pressure. This is what causes that characteristic hiss from an espresso machine.

But a cultural connection to coffee is not why I drink it, although it is amazing what you can find when you Google something.

My mother and grandmother drank coffee all my life. Well, actually my grandmother took a little coffee with her milk is a more accurate description.

But a family tradition is not why I drink coffee.

I drink my coffee decaffeinated and black with a spoon of local honey. (According to my doctor, the local honey can help with my allergies.) Since my coffee is decaffeinated, I do not drink it for an energy boost. Supposedly there are health benefits to coffee, but that’s not why I drink it. (I could just take the honey straight without the coffee.) And it certainly is not the taste! I cannot stand the taste of coffee.

So why do I drink coffee?

Because I am old enough.

I used to joke that I was not old enough to drink coffee. But this year I had one of those birthdays, you know, that kind that ends with a zero. So I figure maybe now I am old enough.

Zero birthdays mark milestones.

The first zero birthday marks the beginning of double digit birthdays. It is a big, round number that sets you apart from the other kids. With the second zero birthday you leave your teens and begin to move toward adulthood, at least hopefully, though in our Western culture of affluence, at twenty just as at ten most are not thinking about anything or anyone beyond the moment and themselves. They are just enjoying life. They are free with limited responsibilities, and I suppose there is nothing wrong with this.

Of course, by the time the third zero birthday rolls around, you really should not be living in your parents’ basement. You are thirty; you are grown now. Get a job! Somewhere after that second one and definitely by the third, most people are still focusing on themselves but in terms of career and family. The next several zero birthdays seem to come faster and faster and with more responsibility and change.

For example, on my last zero birthday I had just become a single parent with the custody of two young children. (This is when I probably should have started drinking caffeinated coffee because I needed the energy.) Life was busy and very uncertain. In fact, the only certainty was the knowledge that my job was to focus on raising my two children and everything else centered around that. It made differences in my career choices, my friendships and associations with others, virtually every aspect of my life was touched and re-focused on them, and it has been that way for the last decade. I am not complaining. I have said repeatedly that dad is my favorite job. But it is work. There was homework and band practice and recitals and more homework and teacher conferences and homecoming dances and more even homework and first dates and everything that goes with raising children. My involvement in my church and community was focused on helping my children engage and making those areas better for my children. Hopefully, anything I advocated for helped others as well. But the reason I showed up to the band boosters and parent teacher organization meetings was because of Nick and Olivia. Yet now, they are almost grown and on their own, having both now celebrated two zero birthdays.

So as I greeted my most recent zero birthday, it was with the realization that my kiddos were nearly grown and the compelling task of most of my existence was almost complete. Of course, I will always be their dad. You never outgrow your father, even after he is gone. But you do grow into a different relationship with your parents. I recognized my kids were almost there. And in the process, I began to wonder who I was and what was next. Yeah, I know this is a first-world problem, but it is still a problem.

I struggled through it a bit, and then I started drinking coffee because I was finally old enough. In fact, I was several zero birthdays old enough.

About this time, one of my Greek friends shared a picture of figs from a tree that his dad had brought from Greece. His dad had long since passed, but his children, grandchildren, and great-grand children were still reaping the fruits of his labor. I responded to him with a Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.” By the way, I am not old, but it helped me begin to frame my thinking about this zero birthday and beyond.

Similar to the wisdom of this proverb, there is a passage in Genesis that is often lost on those who are not from the Middle East: “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God” (Genesis 21:33). The tamarisk tree is sometimes called a salt cedar. It is well-adapted for inhospitable climates and can grow into a large tree that provides shade from the heat of the sun. But Abraham was not going to sit under the shade of the tree. Even the long life of a Biblical Patriarch would not be long enough for the tree to grow to full maturity to provide shade for Abraham. Instead, Abraham planted the tree trusting God’s promise that the land it was planted in would belong to his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and generations to come. I wonder what Abraham pondered about the fulfillment of God’s promises as he watered and tended the tree as a young sprout.

So now I drink coffee, my version of a tamarisk tree. It reminds me that between now and the next zero birthday to keep doing what I have been doing. From the outside, it probably will not look all that different. I will still work to improve my community. I will remain involved with the local school system, to the delight or dismay of the school administrators. I will continue to communicate with my elected officials. I will participate in my church, hoping to make it better, not just for me or even my kids but for generations yet to come.

Realizing my life and my work is not just about me helps me take this zero birthday in stride. I do not mean to aggrandize. After all, I am just drinking coffee, planting trees, and trusting in the promises of God.

Merry Christmas 2022

Christmas Memories

I have a vivid memory of riding down Highway 78 with my grandfather in his 64 Impala listening to Christmas carols to the illumination of the emerald green dashboard light.

I remember racing Evil Knievel action figures down the stairs with my cousins at my aunt’s and my uncle giving us all silver dollars in Christmas cards.

I remember as a child gathering on Christmas with my great-grandmother’s family and as a dad spending Christmas at the Chattanooga Choo Choo with my kids.

I well recall shinning silver tinsel trees, electric candles in the windows, Santa pictures at Pizitz, paper chain link garlands, nativity displays, mistletoe, wassail, fruitcake cookies, baklava, and after the Church Christmas pageant brown paper bags filled with oranges, apples, and nuts.

This year from my family to yours, may you make Christmas memories to cherish for years to come!

The accompanying photo titled Weihnachtspyramide, 2022, was taken in Cullman, Alabama, of the largest Christmas pyramid in the United States.

Merry Christmas 2021

“Christmas Gifts”

Silver bells ringing, chestnuts roasting, reindeer prancing
Sleigh bells jingling, lords a-leaping, sugar plums dancing
A one horse open sleigh to ride; Church bells to play their old familiar carols
A Red Ryder to shoot your eye out; Pa rum pum pum pum a drum to tap
A whistle and a ball and a whip that cracks
Angels we have heard on high
And a crutch in the corner with no owner
Tannenbaum, holly, mistletoe
Fruitcake, nutcracker, snowman
One spear, three spikes, five wounds

(The accompanying photo titled An Old Fashion Christmas was taken in U.G.White Hardware in Athens, Alabama.)

Hymns

Over the last year, I’ve dusted off my trumpet. (Actually, I bought a new one. Thanks, Pastor Roger Daniel, for letting me try yours and, Scott Berry, for letting me buy one of yours.) And I’ve dusted off my composition and arranging skills, or at least I’m trying to. This arrangement of “Crown Him With Many Crowns” and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” is a product of that. For the time being, this computer generated version will have to suffice until I can get a “real” recording made. (Pat Bowden and Cheryl Crauswell, thanks for the feedback on the piano accompaniment.)

I love hymns! I love to sing them and to play them. Unfortunately, the church tradition I grew up in used what is traditionally called gospel or convention or camp meeting songs but precious few traditional hymns. I was introduced to the vast corpus of traditional hymns of the Church in high school by two people. One was my high school choir director Marla Wilson. (I was introduced to the quadratic equation and pressure on the trapezius muscles by her husband Jerald, which is a story for another day.) The other was my band director and now long-time friend Allen Bailey.

My senior year in high school, I was in Teen Talent, a talent competition hosted by the Church of God (Cleveland) to foster participation in the arts as a means of worship and ministry. Allen arranged “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us” and “The Church’s One Foundation” for trumpet and piano and accompanied me. I fared well in the various levels of competition, but the real win was in getting to know these hymns that remain two of my favorites.

Not to make this a music class, but hymns for the last few centuries tend to be strophic, syllabic, and homophonic. This is a generalization. Different church traditions adhere to or diverge from it. Of course, the primary purpose of hymns is praise and worship of God. I recall Dr. David Horton’s (Lee University) discussion of traditional hymns, how they extoll or proclaim the attributes of God or make affirmations of faith. Generally speaking, they tend toward a more corporate than individual expression of worship. Also, they are chock full of theology, much more so and much more sound than gospel songs or contemporary worship choruses. In fact, Dr. Timothy George of Samford’s Divinity School recalls his days of seminary and how various professors would parse the lines of the hymns and joined in or refrained from singing certain verses because of their theological content. I fear today we too often glibly sing along to contemporary church music because of the catchy rhyme or repetitive hook but give no thought to the Biblical validity – or lack thereof – of the lyrics. But hymns provide the depth of Biblical truth set to tune.

Finally, some of those tunes and verses stretch back hundreds and hundreds of years. The melody of “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” dates back to the early Baroque. (Today, most are probably familiar with Bach’s chorale setting of the melody, but Hans Leo Hassler is actually responsible for the melody that is used for German and English settings of the hymn.) The lyrics date back to a Latin hymn Salve mundi salutare from the Middle Ages that speaks of the physical sufferings of Christ during the crucifixion. Therefore, when we sing this hymn we are singing a melody from 500 years ago during the heart of the Protestant Reformation with lyrics from the Middle Ages during a time of suffering and uncertainty when some fifty percent of Europe died from the Black Plague. Yet, this is more than an exercise in history. It is a recognition that the same pepituary death of Jesus 2000 years ago unites us as His Body, across time, geography, language, and culture.

I still respond to the camp meeting songs I grew up with and see validity in worship choruses, both of which are a more personal expression of praise. But if these are the appetizer and dessert, the hymns are the main course, musically and theologically. If you participate in a worship tradition that uses hymns, don’t sing them dispassionately but do so with fervor and listen to the lessons of the faith contained in their lines. If you do not use hymns in your worship, may I invite you to consider adding them and join with your brothers and sisters in Christ who have sung hymns for hundreds of years to declare His majesty and love.

Buon Natale 2020

And when we have all known the bitter bite of cold
The pain of separation
The longing remembrance of loss
The horror of alienation,
Then may we learn the warmth of the love of Christ
That reunites, restores, and reconciles
Through manger, cross, and empty tomb.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been fortunate to engage in several arts events sponsored by the Walker County Arts Alliance, which has given me the inspiration and opportunity to explore my interest in photography. During that same period, my kids have gotten licenses and now chauffeur themselves around, which has given me a tad more time to pursue my photographic endeavors. Oh, and last but not least, my mentor Alice Wilson has given me ample direction and feedback to help me improve. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting better and having fun doing it. Of course, all of that rambling preamble is simply to say that for my Christmas card this year I got creative and used some of my own work.

The photo accompanying the blog, titled Winter Woods (2009), is one I made several years ago and used this year for the cover of my Christmas card, and the Christmas Meditation is one I included in the card.

No, I’m not about to start creating cards for Hallmark. In fact, I really hope my words reflect the opposite of the too sweet sentiment of Hallmark fare. The photo was for fun. But the meditation is about something more important.

The love of Christ is not a warm fuzzy that rolls around at Christmas and vanishes by New Year. When we truly encounter His love, we will not remain the person we were. To learn of the love of Christ is not just to hear of it, but to be changed by it. We will not do the selfish and self-destructive things we did. Instead, we will live out the new life he gives.

My prayer this Christmas is that you learn of the love of Christ and allow Him to change you from who you were to a new person in Him.

How much polish does God’s altar need?

During the initial stay-at-home orders associated with the COVID outbreak, there were a number of things that went around social media “to keep us busy.” Now that my college is fully virtual for the foreseeable future, believe me, I’m busy! Teaching online takes lots more time. But I digress. One of the activities keeping me busy at the time was the twenty-day music challenge. The idea was to post one album cover per day for twenty days. Each album cover was from an album that was significant to me. So the twenty-day music challenge had me digging into some music deep in my memory and record bin. I even pulled my vinyl out of storage. But replaying some of the albums, I returned not just with nostalgia but a more seasoned musical ear. It was interesting and enlightening.

Since much of my musical life was in church music, I returned, hopefully, with a more mature theology also. My son, who is interested in church music, and I often discuss current songs, their musicality or lack thereof, and their theology. I had those same conversations internally also as I returned to the music of my youth. (Stop laughing, yes, I was young once.)

I hear now the nuance and ever so slight deviation from Biblical truth in well-framed and well-intended songs that I grew up listening to. Now to be fair, song lyrics are often analogy or glosses of scripture. So it isn’t fair to overly criticize them. (And I split the infinitive on purpose – This is English, not Latin). Gross error cannot be ignored, but near misses may be the nature of encapsulating a message in a pop song genre or even a hymn, though hymns generally do a better job.

On the other hand, error, even slight, for the sake of art would not have passed muster with our American (OK, English transplant) Puritan forebears in their Bay Psalm Book. In its introduction, they for the sake of truth over artistry boldly proclaimed that “God’s altar needs not our polishing.” While a caricature of the Puritans is that of backward and ill-educated, in fact, many were well-educated, enough so to take on a translation of scriptures from Greek and Hebrew to create songs for their new home in America. But they refused to sacrifice doctrinal purity for the sake of meter or rhyme.

So what’s my point?

Lots of things, including we old timers need to get the musical log out of our own eye before we criticize the youngsters… although our music was clearly better.

But more importantly for believers, if you’re getting your theology exclusively from your songs, you’re courting disaster. Instead, be a Berean Christian. Read the Word, search it, study it, know it, and “hide it your heart.” Why hide it in your heart?

That’s an allusion to a passage of scripture. Look it up! Then go back to singing, but not before.

Forsake Not Assembling Together, especially if there are pork chops with gravy

I had lunch today with a long-time friend who had come up because of the death of another Christian brother. As we broke bread, actually chips and salsa, I shared some thoughts that had been running through my head for several months regarding “not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together” (sorry, I think in KJV). Of course, the current situation with the COVID virus and prohibitions on public gatherings has sparked more than one social media conflagration about whether churches should hold services or not. And I’ll sheepishly confess I have been caught up in the machinations, going so saw far as to use the term whack-a-doodle. Yeah, that was mature of me. Anyway….

My thoughts really have little or nothing to do with whether my local congregation will hold worship services this Sunday or next. Instead, they go back to an article I read by a minister some months ago. In it, he discusses Hebrews 10:25. He commented that even when he took his family on vacation he made sure that they were in a worship service somewhere. While there is nothing wrong with this, I’m not convinced that’s exactly what the writer of Hebrews had in mind.

I attend worship services weekly at my local church. We have numbers of gifted teachers who spend hours in preparation for their classes and deliver lessons that uplift and edify. My pastor’s sermons are biblically sound, culturally relevant, and frequently entertaining. The music pastor and his wife are the most musically gifted couple I have ever met, and they lead a choir and band that I would stack up against anyone. The services are powerful and moving. But for me, the most spiritually nourishing time, if you’ll pardon the pun, is the fellowship supper we share on Wednesday evenings.

Turning to scripture for a moment, consider the Acts 2:46 description of the gatherings of the first believers. They met daily at the Temple, probably observing the Jewish times of prayer, and in homes sharing meals with gladness. Far from the austere stereotype many have of believers, these first century brothers and sisters delighted in each other’s company. This, likewise, is how I delight in the Wednesday evening fellowship suppers.

I like seeing Michelle’s beautiful and welcoming smile when my kiddos and I walk in.

I enjoy verbal jousting with Wayne, the guy who keeps the kitchen humming. His dad Marvin and my grandfather were friends. In fact, his dad was instrumental in my grandfather hearing and responding to the gospel. Rita, his sister-in-law, and Pam work the serving window. Pam’s daughter Autumn was my work study when she was eighteen or nineteen. She was and is THE gold standard for being a conscientious young adult. This year I had her daughter in one of my college classes. She is a sweetheart like her mom.

I enjoy chatting with Lisa. We’ve known each other for about ever. Her dad was a minister with my dad. Back in the day, I served with her late husband as his music pastor. Our sons are about the same age and friends. We share memories, the struggles of single parenting, and hopes for our children’s futures over loaded baked potatoes or meatloaf.

I’ve known Johnathan, our young adult pastor, his entire life. His dad and my Uncle Allen were extremely close growing up, and over the last four years, Johnathan and I have grown close. He’s my accountability partner. Since I am a single adult Christian, I hold myself accountable to him, and he inserts humor when he checks on me. His wife Tammie is mission focused! I like to pick at her, telling her that she’s one of only two people in this world I’m afraid of. (My Aunt Susie is the other.)

I enjoy chatting with David, a new friend, who should have his own food-on-the-go blog. The man knows food and how to enjoy life! He knows sorrow, too, a type of sorrow we share.

Finally, my pastor and his wife eat with the congregation. He’s not a celebrity; he’s one of us.

Lest it seem I’m viewing life through stained glass colored lenses, I’m not buds with everyone. Sometimes we have disagreements. (Remember my whack-a-doodle comment. Yes, I’ve repented for it.) We may disagree, but we’re still family. We love each other, even when we don’t like each other so much.

THIS is “assembling together.” This is communion and community. This is where iron sharpens iron. It is also where wounds are bound and healing takes place. This is where we share our joys and sorrows.

Though it is important to spend time together in corporate worship expression, it is equally and maybe more important to share our lives intimately with each other, to strengthen and support each other, “especially as the Day approaches.”

Oh and yeah, pork chops with gravy are my favorite.

To Sing or Not to Sing: A Theological Conundrum

My son Nick is graduating high school and looking toward college and career. While he is not likely to go into music as a vocation, he is considering taking music classes and using his musical talent in church music. He’s already active in our local church’s music ministry and is musically gifted…. plus he practices, which is vital. But, that’s a conversation for another day. Anyway, we have been having discussions about appropriateness of music, lyrics, etc., for different worship settings. Those conversations with my son have me reflecting on an event in a church service from a few years back.

When working on my master’s degree in music at Samford University, I took a course in its Beeson Divinity School. I was required to take two courses outside of the school of music. I chose an education course, a mistake, and a religion class with the head of the school and a fantastic instructor, Dr. Timothy George. In one of the classes, he recounted how in seminary as a student he noted that in chapel professors would not sing on certain verses of hymns because they disagreed theologically with the content of the verse. As an aside, this says something about hymns. Hymns, true hymns, are traditionally storehouses chocked full of theological “stuff,” which is one reason among many that I bemoan that my church tradition actually sang few historic hymns of the church and why I fret that even those churches that once included them have begun to drop their hymns by the wayside. But this is not about my regret at the dearth of hymns. It is, however, about bad theology set to catchy tunes.

A few years back I found myself in a church service where Dr. George’s anecdote came home to me in a visceral way. As I was participating in the congregational singing, the worship leader led a song that troubled me. Two things stood out. For one, it used the first person pronoun I ten times in the chorus. (Now, to be fair, it was a contemporary praise chorus, so it’s not like it had that many different words in it anyway). Still, as the song progressed I found myself unable to join in singing, not unlike those seminary professors who found themselves faced with a theological impasse. I could not go forward. I would not sing the lyrics.

Two things about the lyrics troubled me. First, the emphasis on I seemed at odds with the idea that we were engaged in corporate worship. Of course, I understand that individually we must have a relationship with Christ. But the emphasis was not about an individual relationship with Christ but sounded more about me… my… mine. This was reinforced, not only by the profusion of first person pronouns, but by the remainder of the lyrics.

My son, fifteen years old at the time, was in the same service. After church, he said something about how the song bothered him because of the emphasis on being so blessed and blessed every day and everyway sounded to him too much like Joel Osteen (his words, not mine). It was very much a sentiment that “I’m a winner. No worries. It’s all going to be rainbows and sunshine.” I cannot help but wonder why no one has set Romans 8:36 to music for a contemporary praise chorus: “For your sake we are killed every day, and we are accounted as sheep for slaughter.” (For the record, Romans 8:36 quotes Psalm 44:22, so it has been set to music at least once by our ancient Jewish forebears.)

I have to wonder, where is our sense of sacrifice for the sake of Christ and the gospel? How would our brothers and sisters facing persecution and martyrdom at the hands of Islamic extremists in the Middle East or at the hands of a communist government in China respond to the I-I-I-am-blessed-and-blessed-the-best songs that we glibly sing? Or what of Hus, Polycarp, or the Apostle Paul? What would they who willingly laid down their lives say about our we-are-all-winners-everyday theology?

I wonder if they would sing along or remain mute.

L’Dor V’Dor

I was at the college recently chatting with my colleague Jimmy and his English class. I don’t recall the specifics, but he commented something jokingly to the class about Dr. Rizzo’s great-great grandfather. Knowing I’m something of a family historian, he confessed he was trying to stump me. So I rattled off about two hundred fifty years of one of my family lines: my father Fredrick “Bucky” Rizzo, his dad Fred, his Nicolo, his Matteo, his yet another Nicolo, and his yet another Matteo, and finally back to the 1700s to Calogero Rezza in Contessa Entellina, a small village in the mountains of Sicily that was settled in the mid 1400s by Albanian refugees fleeing Islamic armies. (Like I said, I’m the family historian.)

But the significance of generations struck me in a different way last Sunday when I saw two smiling faces singing during the altar service.

My pastor, Victor Massey, had preached from the book of Ruth. (Incidentally, if you’ve never heard my pastor preach, you should. He’s good.) In the closing of his sermon, he referenced Ruth 4:21 & 22: “And Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.”

The David mentioned is King David, who was the first king of Israel and the ancestor of Jesus. But there’s much more to unpack. Salmon’s wife was Rahab, the woman who hid the Israelite spies in Jericho and in doing so saved herself and her family. Of course, Ruth was the wife of Boaz. She was a Moabite, descended from the incestuous relationship of Lot and one of his daughters, yet because of her faithfulness to her mother-in-law after her father-in-law and husband died, she ultimately became the wife of Boaz. Both women, who otherwise were outside of the covenant between God and Israel, nonetheless, became ancestors of Jesus the Messiah. Their actions not only affected their lives, but their families and successive generations.

L’dor V’dor is the Hebrew term that translates “generation to generation.” As Pastor Massey expounded on the passage, I couldn’t help but think about the idea of generation to generation, particularly as I noticed those two smiling faces singing together. The two smiling faces belonged to my son Nick and my cousin’s daughter Ashlyn. Both Nick and Ashlyn do, indeed, have beautiful smiles. Both have also dedicated their lives to serving the Lord, leading worship in song each week at the Sumiton Church of God. In that moment in my mind’s eye, however, I saw not only their smiles but envisioned the generations that came before, all a part of this one congregation.

Nick and Ashlyn share great-great grandparents Travis and Gladys Burton, who were members of the Sumiton Church and served faithfully some seventy plus years ago, which is a conservable part of the congregation’s history of just under one hundred years. Counting Ashlyn’s beautiful kiddos, there are now six generations of my family who have been part of this congregation – L’dor V’dor! Of course, you can’t bequeath salvation like you can a farm or a car. Still, it is each generation’s responsibility to pass on the faith, to live an example, to teach the scripture, from generation to generation.

What would have happened if one generation had failed in the charge? That’s something, frankly, I don’t want to think about because the potential consequences are too disconcerting. At the risk of invoking syrupy echoes of “Will the Circle be Unbroken,” I cannot emphasize too much how this is a charge that is our responsibility to the next generation, whether family or friend.

So from Boaz, to Obed, to Jesse, to David…

Or the Apostle John, to Polycarp, to Irenaeus…

Or from Travis and Gladys, to my Grandfather Buel and his brother Lowell, to my mother and her cousin June, to my cousin Kevin and me, to our children and grandchildren and generations to come…

L’dor V’dor!