Kansas Day

A few years ago, everything that was new and novel came out of California.  But it wasn’t always so.  From the Civil War until the Great Depression, Kansas was the trendsetting state.  It started January 29, 1861—Kansas Day. On that date, Kansas was admitted as a free state.  It set off a tragic chain reaction of southern secession and the Civil War. The precipitating reason? When a territory passed 60,000 people they could apply for statehood.  Congress would designate whether the state was ‘free’ or ‘slave’ in a delicate balance of representation.  Kansans told Congress to get lost.  Bloody Kansas had fought for ten years, ultimately with the people deciding it was to be free.  Moreover Kansas Territory had the audacity to set its own boundaries, from Kansas City to the mining town of Denver.  Congress choked.  That was a month’s ride by horse! How could the state govern itself?  Kansas eventually agreed to go only 412 miles west—2 days by trains which were not in existence yet. Fearing backlash, Congress allowed statehood.

            Trains came in mad construction projects with 4 railroads competing to get to the Rockies first.  Kansas pioneered uniform gauge standards so that cars could be interchanged.  It suddenly linked towns to the world.  And land was free with the new Homestead Act.  But it was treeless and drought prone.  Kansans solved housing with dugouts, good so long as you have no snakes, badgers, or rats.  Soon they moved the dugout above ground in the form of sod houses for temporary shelterwhile the farmstead was built. And they invented post rocks for fencing.

            After the War, Texas had 3 million feral cattle.  But all the rails in the South were destroyed. Texas cattle had an unknown disease, Texas Fever, that would infect other cattle. (caused by ticks)  In 1867, a stockman from Illinois named McCoy got the idea to plant scales at the railroad’s end near Abilene and use a trail from Ft. Worth which a Cherokee trader named Chisholm used.  10 million cattle went over that trail in the next dozen years.  The Chisholm Trail went west of settlements in Kansas and the fordable river crossing of the Salt Fork can still be visited at Pond Creek.  Cowboy culture grew like wildfire in Kansas with 2 yr. olds selling for $2 in Texas and bringing $30 at a rail terminal in KS. It became the 30% return, growth industry before the century. “Cowtown” terminals moved west until by 1880 the Texas Trail linked to Dodge City.  They were rough places when cowboys got paid and drank/gambled it off.  That required law enforcement, not just a local militia as in the east. Just about every well-known gunslinger and cowtown sheriff has come from Kansas.  They called it “Wild West” due to the crazy weather, however, not the violence. Kansas State College became the first land grant college in 1863 and set about breeding new plant varieties, ag products, and range management techniques from the start.  Eventually 36 states set up these A&M colleges such as Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater. Before 1872, there was no barbed wire.  Kansas farmers, mobbed by trail drive cattle, discovered that the Osage Orange tree grows like a spiny shrub and makes a perfect hedge-fence to defend crops.  Hedge rows are still prominent in the central part of the state.  Kansans also grew native trees around farms for windbreaks. The Mennonites came from Russia in the 1880s bringing hard red winter wheat.  It replaced unreliable corn.  Wheat made the best bread and grew perfectly.  Booster newspapermen promoted towns like Emporia’s William Allen White.

            Women’s Suffrage started in Kansas where many women by widowhood or choice were ranchers. Kansans dabbled politically in everything from populism to Eugene Debs’ socialism.  But Kansans mostly claimed the rugged individualism promoted by Wizard of Oz. After the airplane was invented, Kansas and Oklahoma took over development of early aviation with their flat lands and top grade oil products. In 1899, the first Pentecostal church began in Topeka.  That brings us to the Kansas-Oklahoma link, the Land Runs into former Indian Territory.  While the eastern part of OK was Native Americans and Scots-Irish from nearby Arkansas, the last run, about 1/5 of the territory, Sept. 16, 1893, was the northern 76 miles of the state.  Half the 300,000 participants were Kansans.  And that is how most Lutherans came to OK.

            Prohibition and the Dust Bowl demoted Kansas as the Trend State in the 1930’s.  But a lot of its innovation and individualism has rubbed off in Northern Oklahoma. 

New look at Resurrection

The Resurrection has been debated by scholars from all parts of Christianity and from without.  Is there historical basis for this? Turns out, the politics gives it away.  From the days just after the Resurrection, we learn of opposition to Christians from the religious authorities of the temple, the Sadducees.  That’s suspicious.  Sadducees hated the Romans vehemently. Usually any dissident Jew or Rabbi, killed by the Romans, was given lip service or benefit after the fact. Rome was the greater enemy. So what if a few Galileans had a cult? 

            Charles Colson, writing about his Watergate co-conspirators says that Watergate proves the Resurrection.  The Watergate 12 knew they were trying to collaborate a lie with criminal consequences.  But John Dean, just two days later spilled the beans on the whole conspiracy.  Within two weeks it had completely fallen apart.  But the Resurrection witnesses were far more in number and held to their story of a risen Christ all the way to their graves, many dying of torture and crucifixion.  That’s abnormal for people trying to slip a lie, Colson noted. People try to save their skin.

            Back to Sadducees.  The Sadducees, wealthy Temple priests, were materialistic and had adopted Hellenistic luxuries. They didn’t believe in life after death, nor angels or spirits. The great issue, publicly and boldly made by the early Spirit-filled church, was that Jesus had risen from the dead and exalted to the sovereignty of the universe. He was demonstrating these great truths by unmistakable signs and wonders of his followers. Josephus, a Romanized outsider Jew, wrote about the politics of the era, and said that the Sadducees tried from the time of Jesus’s death to put down his followers.  Among Resurrection witnesses were Mary Magdalene, some women, Peter and John, two close followers from Emmaus, 500 people on a mountain in Galilee and 11 surviving apostles.  They all told the story that it wasn’t a ghost or a revived person thought dead.  It was Jesus arisen from the dead.  So persuasive were they that 50 days after the crucifixion, 5000 people joined this contingent post-Pentecost.

             The Sadducees had to do something about this gospel, so publicly and convincingly made, or they’d lose both political and ecclesiastical power.  Moreover, the demonstration of the resurrection of Jesus established his Messiahship, and convicted the rulers of sacrilege and murder in putting him to death, so that they were on a sort of public trial for their lives, their faith, their offices, and their political leadership. Yet we also know from obvious fact, they didn't kill off the threat.  Why? Acts tells us how they hauled the disciples in for trial. Stuff like this had to happen. Peter, an uneducated Galilean fisherman, turned the tables on them and prosecuted them (Acts 5).

            How do we know this trial’s verdict?  The Sadducees absolutely had to wipe out this new sect.  But in the New Testament, a Pharisee, Gamaliel, advised the 71-member Sanhedrin not to use capital punishment. Pharisees, more learned of the Torah, dominated the Sanhedrin. Gamaliel, the most honored sage of his time, grandson of Hillel, considered the greatest Jewish Rabbi, notoriously favored tolerance and mercy.  That the leaders of the Christian sect weren’t executed early-on closely validates the Acts account of Gamaliel’s singular leadership.  And so by political inference, historians believe that from the very start, Christians claimed Jesus had risen from the dead.  It couldn’t have been a later myth—the politics wouldn’t have happened this way. (Sadducees would have slyly praised Jesus at first.  Christians would have caved to pressure and likely absorbed. The disciples would not have been scattered.) The disciples were amazingly set free.  Along with Paul, they left footprints of mission work and their names in countries from Spain to India to Georgia to Ethiopia. All those countries have royal records of their first century visits. 

Gliders

I met a pastor at a Lutheran Convocation whose church was called New Ulm in Arkansas.  I’d never heard of Ulm.  “It’s in Germany,” he said, “You’ve never heard of it, because nothing happened there.” I now beg to disagree.

            Nobody is very sure who the first person was who attempted to fly.  Romans had a myth about Iscarus.  A monk, Eilmer of Marmesbury, was reported to have taken a dive off his abbey roof about 1010 AD and broke both legs.  Other accounts sound fanciful. But in the Alpine foothills near Ulm, Germany a certain Hans Babblinger made artificial limbs.   One day, Hans got an idea.  Instead of affixing arms to a person, why not wings?  And being astute, he realized that feathers weren’t crucial.  Bats flew without them.  So he fashioned wings made with cloth on a frame. The day came for him to test his wings in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps where up-currents were common. On that memorable day with his friends standing by as eyewitnesses, Hans jumped from an embankment, and glided safely down. He had experienced glider flight. The year was 1594 and it was well-documented.

            Had this happened in America, he’d have been a celebrity and roundly praised for following his dream.  God puts His guidance in our heads and often this takes the form of a dream. Abraham had ‘em.  So did Jacob, Moses, Hannah, Mary and Joseph, Peter, and Paul.  Luther and Locke talked about how no one should dare stand in the way of someone’s dreams.  You might be standing in the way of God!

            But that’s not the way it worked out.  The King was coming to town.  The Bishop of Ulm and town fathers wanted to put on a show. Hans obliged to demonstrate his “flying” by jumping a cliff above the Danube River.  Tragically, he sank like a stone and plunged into the river. With egg all over their faces, the mayor and bishop began to decry this Babblinger fool who was trying to fly.  The Bishop’s sermon the next week was about how pride leads to a downfall and he mentioned poor Hans as an example.  In shame Hans hung up his wings and never tried to fly again.

            Now here is the interesting thing.  We have no pictures of what Babblinger’s wings looked like but based on descriptions, he had some kind of wooden framework and had bowed the cloth over the frame like a bird does its wings when it lands.  He was not that far away from a hang glider, aircraft engineers think.  The bowed upward shape gives a frizbee its gliding ability.  A glider is somewhat like a parachute with horizontal motion.  So what happened above the Danube River that day? When air is heated on a cliff face, it produces lift.  The cold water of the river did the opposite and the downdraft plus no controls made Hans plunge. But had he continued experimenting, we don’t think he was that far away from a successful glider —259 years ahead of time.  The first glider was invented by Sir George Cayley of Britain in 1853.  A German, Otto Lilienthal perfected controlled glider flight in the years after that.  The Wright Brothers installed an engine on their successful glider that became the first powered flight.  In 1905, Daniel Maloney, an American, demonstrated the first controlled high altitude glider flight by detaching his glider from a balloon at 4000 feet.  Pilots continue to learn about airplane dynamics by flying gliders.  The Air Force Academy trains young pilots extensively with gliders with the intent that they could save themselves should their craft lose power. Hans wasn’t the last guy who plunged into a river.  Among those who did was a former AF Academy Glider Instructor, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who is probably best known as the guy who piloted “Miracle on the Hudson” by glide-landing a US Airways airliner on the Hudson River January 15, 2009. His picture hangs in Doolittle Hall of the Air Force Academy.

            And as Robert Fulgram wrote, “Ulm is mostly a tourist destination today.  And how do people get there?  They fly.”  Follow your dreams and entrust them to God.

1819

200 years ago, in 1819, James Monroe was President and should be more known for trying to repatriate Africans than for his Monroe Doctrine.  The American Colonization Society organized an effort beginning in 1816. A few freemen wanted to go back to Africa, and Monroe assisted Liberia colony’s beginning after supporting a law in Congress for its establishment.  Many Virginia slaveowners were torn between their tobacco raising and the injustice of slavery for this labor-intensive crop.  But the truth was that many slaves in America lived better than their free African ancestors.  When they returned to West Africa, they immediately set themselves up as a ruling caste over the local Africans. (a source of civil war ever since)  And they were now Christians, not pagans. The economy was poor as well—rice, sorghum, and millet. Most slaves in USA realized the scheme wasn’t good, that they lived even better here than as free there.  So when James Madison tried to manumit 16 able-bodied young slaves, they refused consent (a consent to sale was conditional in many slaves service).  He had to sell them to a relative for $6000. 

            1819 saw the first really bad recession in America, up to now an agricultural country which raised its own standard of living from the soil.  But farmer-inventors made new farm tools to replace the old wooden, hand carved tools.  The iron plow, the horse rake, cotton gin, speed drill, grain harvester, and threshing machine made US farm products cheap and plentiful for Europe, but recession-prone.  During the bounty, slave prices went from $50 to $1000. Thus slavery became more valuable in America and freedmen less common while Liberia languished.

            The Americo-Liberian settlers did not relate well to the indigenous peoples who attacked their settlements.  So what happened was a replay of Indian policy in the new world—bush people were shut out of government and citizenship, were set up with schools and missions and demands for assimilation until 1904.  Nonetheless, Americans held hope for the little country with a Republican system like USA.  Abe Lincoln was a big supporter of Liberian Independence in 1847.  Rubber extraction was developed, but competition with European colonialism drug the economy down.  Then USA built much infrastructure during WW II and has continued aid and expertise. 

            Lessons in this? First, freedom must be accompanied hand in hand with a system for an effective economy. Second, when two very different cultures meet, it usually ends with a winner and subjugation, just as when Bantu people 2000 years ago genocided most of the other races of Africa via agriculture.  Third, government can’t fix everything.  Morals and gracious faith, strong families, work ethic, innovative, law-abiding people are indispensible.  Next time, America goes to war in some place like the Middle East or Latin America, it needs to ask hard questions about the underlying culture and how that will win or lose the peace. Finally, if you let your culture be overwhelmed by people without appreciation, you lose your culture.  Take note,open borders lovers.

Jesus as a boy

History is His Story

Epiphany Sunday.“What do we know about Jesus when he was a child?”  Standard answer: we know nothing except for his Temple visit when he was 12 found in Luke 2:41ff.  But from life in the first century and his parables, we learn a lot.

First observation is that Joseph is poor.  He is by occupation a ‘Tekton’, Greek for ‘builder’.  That gets translated “carpenter” in most earlier translations, including Luther’s Bible.  Tekton was probably more like a stonemason than a woodworker, although some have suggested a handyman.  They found building work where they could and worked for farmers for food as well.  As landless peasants, intermittent work made them least well-off of the society. Mary was said by Polycarp (John’s understudy and early Christian Father) to have been 16 when she had Jesus and Joseph was 40.  Poor  Joe had to save up for years to get a decent dowry.  He was alive when Jesus was 12 making him about 52.  Anybody older than 49 was said by Hebrews to be ‘elderly’.  So it is likely that Joseph died soon after the story of Jesus in the Temple.  Jesus has extraordinary sympathy for families where their breadwinner has died like when Lazarus died (Luke 10), leaving behind two unmarried sisters who couldn’t earn a living like men. See also the Widow’s Mite story during last week of his life.  Poverty may also explain why such a promising youth as Jesus wasn’t bat mitzvahed (learned to write with ink) at age 16, becoming a scribe.  He warns scribes/Pharisees about their attitude repeatedly (See Matt. 23:1). Jesus could read and write of course because he wrote in the dirt when a woman caught in adultery was brought to him.

            He had to earn a living for the family as the oldest son, probably during  his early teens.  But he had worked with his dad since the earliest age. Could he build?  You betcha!  He knew some builder secrets.  In Matt. 7 and Luke 6 he tells about a wise man who built his house on a rock and a foolish man who built on sand.  This might not make sense to someone raised in a temperate climate.  In the desert the standard surface is “desert pavement” which looks like gravel.  It is stone that has fractured into gravel by heat/cold. This is not close to desired fields and creeks, but there are also rocky ledges around fields.  A rain is often a flash flood and sand indicates where they occur.  Who is foolish enough to build on sandy areas?  Fly over Las Vegas suburbs and trace the dried stream beds!  Jesus shows in the Rejected Building Stone, he understands that a rough-hewn stone vs. a cornerstone is just in the tooling of a blemishless stone.  

            Could Jesus farm?  His parable of the sower occurs in all three synoptic gospels (See Mark 4:3-20) wherein he knows what happens to seed that falls into all types of conditions. Plows in those days were crude pointed sticks drawn by a donkey.  Then in Mark 4:26-29 he talks about darnels in wheat.  In Mark 13 he talks about how to take care of an old fig tree (figs usually bear like crazy so a barren fig is unusual).  In the prodigal son story, he knows how to survive on pig  fodder, the sort of thing a poor family would do in extreme famine conditions.  In the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18), he clearly knows all about tending sheep, in the Weeds (Matt. 13) he knows all about how weeds grow, and in New Wine (Matt. 9, Luke 5) he understands the way poor folks made wine in skins—as compared with Greek vats and barrels to age after fermentation. And he knew all about mustard seeds, and how crucial daily bread was.

            Thirdly, most peasant farmers farmed their own subsistence land and had no hired men.  But Jesus grew up as a hired man’s son and probably hired himself out as well.  His stories show a well traveled guy looking for work and understanding of what managers were looking for.  Jesus clearly is well-versed on the hiring and firing for not just agriculture, but also in the trades.  And he knows debt as shown in the unforgiving servant story of Matt. 18.  In the parable of the Wise Master (Luke 12), he understands business and commerce of the time intimately and in that same chapter he describes a rich fool who tries to store what won’t last. In the parable of the Talents and the Pearl of Great Value, he shows keen insight into business risk-taking, an understanding still lost on people today outside of business.

            It is written that Jesus had 4 brothers and according to some early Christian writers Mary had as many as 8 children.  Jesus’ insights into the parable of the Ten Virgins (Matt. 25) shows he understood well the village weddings and female banter where half the young girls forget to carry enough oil for their lamps. In the Two Sons (Matt. 21) he clearly knows what it is like to interact with an obstinate or devious brother.  And in the Banquet (Luke 14) he catches the poignancy of the relief of a life of hard labor by getting invited into the great feast.  His love of children and his parable of the kids playing ‘marketplace’ reflects, not a loner, but a child who grew up with many peers, brothers and sisters.  As the Wedding at Cana shows, Jesus was well-versed on the responsibility of being the family decision maker.

            So what do we have in Jesus?  What does this resume show? I think an extraordinarily responsible young man, hard working, and a peasant who understood from life the mysteries of faith.  His parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector shows not just his insights into the desperate faith of a tax collector and the pride of a Pharisee, but also his intense heart for the real meaning of Jewish faith.  He is the peasant kid who ‘got it’—from God’s judgment in the coming age to His Mercy, from how faith makes your handling of money to the way it affects your prayers.  And he was able to transmit his message, not just to other common folks of his day, but right down to us today. “light of the World” in more ways than one.