Remembering Rod--He Was a Friend of Mine

                                                         Rod Davis and my wife, Gayle in Five Points

Bob Dylan sings plaintively: “

He was a friend of mine 

He was a friend of mine

Every time I think about him now

Lord I just can’t keep from crying

Cause he was a friend of mine.”

Rod Davis, who left us much too soon was a friend of a whole lot of us. And though there is enormous sadness in many of our hearts, even in our sorrow, 

there wells up a gratitude because he touched us, he made us feel better about ourselves and loved so, so much.

My friendship with Rod dates all the way back to 1955. We were in college at what was Howard College in Birmingham. I remember sitting in his bedroom in Horton, Alabama while he told me about T.S. Eliot whom I did not know He read passages from “Choruses from the Rock.” 

The desert is not remote in southern tropics,

The desert is not only around the corner,

The desert is in a tube-train next to you,

The desert is in the heart of your brother.”

So he opened a door to a world of books that I did not know. But there was so much more. Even from those early green days I found him kind, quiet, never making a splash—but there, making a difference in all sorts of ways. 

He was quite a spiffy dresser back there. And he had this grey wool suit with time aqua stripes running through it. And with it he wore this aqua and grey tie. And I kept talking about that tie and he kept saying, “There is nothing wrong with this tie.” But I kept talking about that tie. Years later when I was about to get married, he sent me this same tie and said he thought it would dignity to the occasion. 

Years later when he got married I sent the same tie back to him with some kind of a crazy message. I know you still would like to wear this tie at your wedding. No response.

But in the beginning of my first church—way down on Highway Alternate 54 in Kentucky—this are tie came in the mail. Saying he thought it might just add some class as I began my work. And he would send me books back then like Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship with the inscription:”To Roger who knows the truth of this title.” He sent me a book by an author I did not know, The Magnificent Defeat by Frederick Buechner. Rod, at Yale Divinity School opened the door back then to this friend preaching in Philpot,  Kentucky. I think I have read about everything Mr. Buechner wrote, shaping my life in many ways. This came from Rod Davis.

In the sixties, he and his wife spent a night with us in Virginia on their way to teach at a black college, Miles College in Birmingham. Later he went on to teach at John Jay College in New York and in his generosity invited me and some friends to stay in his apartment. Later he invited our family to spend a week there while he was gone. I am not sure he taught at John Jay College. He was a member of the Riverside Church and served on the Search Committee after Bill Coffin resigned from the church. 

Much, much later Dr. Bill Hull, the Chancellor at Howard-Samford, my alma mater  called me and said, “We’re considering Rod Davis for Dean of the College here—what do you think.” I told him if we could get Rod to come he would do wonderful things for the students and the college. So he came back home to Birmingham and students said that he was a legend in his own time. He brought such a rich legacy to the school, during his tenure.  

I was considering  taking a church in Birmingham and he told me, “If you come I will join your church.” And he did. And he helped us immensely.

While he was still at Samford he established the Davis Lectures And through the years he brought great people to the campus. Taylor Branch, Eugene Robinson, Walter Isaacson, Marilynne Robinson and so many others.

He retired from Samford and I was asked to speak at his retirement dinner. And I told the story about a knitted aqua and gray tie that we kept exchanging. 

After we left the church Rod stayed in Birmingham surrounded by many friends and colleagues. He was great asset to the larger Birmingham community. For years he has raised his voice for social justice, and so many issues that touched Birmingham and Alabama and beyond.

About three years ago he started having some serious problems and slowly drifted away. Until a year or so we still talked on the telephone. 

His Memorial Service will be held at the church he loved, The Baptist Church of the Covenant, Birmingham on Saturday, May 13th.

When you lose someone who has been a strong friend the grief is palpable and hard. Yet I remember so very much that friendship meant to me. I hope these words have helped to try to capture the life of a very great man. Many, many others could tell their own Rod stories.

                               Rod Davis, Roger Lovette, Lizette Van Gelder (our teacher), Edward Gibbons

Benediction

“Into paradise may the angels lead dear Rod; at his

coming may the martyrs take him up into eternal rest, 

and may the chorus of angels lead him to that 

holy city, and the place of perpetual light.”

—The Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Easter--Something Happened Here

I've had this picture in my office for years and years. I look at it when I need hope. Maybe it will help you too.

A little boy stood with his parents at the Grand Canyon. He looked out at the vistas, the colors, the vastness and whispered, “Something happened here.” And when it comes to Easter I feel the same way. 

Years ago my friend, Temp Sparkman lost his little girl to leukemia. I first read his words in the Crescent Hill Baptist Church newsletter where he was on the staff. I have printed his poem as a handout for many grief groups. This is my gift to us all this Easter:

Was the Grass Ever Green

“Was the grass ever green

Were the sounds of birds really clearly heard

And did we picnic in the park only six months ago

Here in midwinter they seem so far away

The naked trees, the laden skies seem always to have been

And seem out ahead for all time

Were things really ever green

And will spring come back again?

Yes, the spring will return

The gray, dull days of cold will pass

The routine now imprisoning us will be broken up

A new excitement will be awakened by new possibilities

The despair which now engulfs us will subside

A word of hope will come to us

Our presumption that all is lost 

   will be replaced by a new expectancy

Future will become a possibility again

The crush of demands will not dominate us forever

Out of liberation we will learn to choose 

And in our choices to be secure.

The sadness now weighing upon us will be lifted

Joy will speak her acknowledgment of grief

   and will sound her call to us

The cause of sadness will not have vanished

But joy will come in spite of it

We will laugh again

We will sing and dance

We will celebrate the life now given to us.

The conflicts now engaging our energy

   will be worked though

No wind will sweep them from us

And we will survive

Redemption will come of our transactions

Relationships will be rescued and restored 

And where breaks are too deep to be one, 

Healing will come in time, though apart

The tensions tearing at our being will be resolved

We will not be destroyed.

Were things really ever green

And will the spring come back again

Yes, yes as sure as e’re it were here

Yes, yes as sure as God is 

The spring will return 

And it will be green again.”

A Holy Saturday World

 

If we live long enough we will find ourselves here. The morning after death. Quiet. Somber. Everything moves in slow motion. Some of the saddest words were those that said: “We had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel.” 

The rainy season was winding down. The streams were swollen and everything seemed damp. Better days were surely ahead—or at least we thought. But on dark Saturday we have little hope. We have known it—or will. Jesus had said “It is finished” just before he breathed his last. But this Saturday what is finished? The crucifixions? The grief? The utter unfairness of it all. Then and now. We had hoped.

So with enormous sadness they took his broken body down. They pulled out the nails, wiped the blood away, put a linen cloth over his naked body. They hd no place to bury him until Joseph of Arimathea came and offered his tomb. Close to the Garden where he had prayed where the soldiers dragged him away. And they rolled a huge stone to seal his tomb.

All this took place on that Holy Saturday . Everything ran together. Mary holding her son close. Rain—the awful rain. And Judas dead. And the other disciples whispering hoarsely: “We had hoped.” 

It’s still that way. Take any country or village or town then and now. It seems like the end of all the goodness and grace and mercy. Just death. And like those then we know it too. The TV blares, the newspapers cannot write enough of all the out there, social media gone crazy. We had hoped.

But this is where we are—even though this is not the end. The long night will finally be over and the morning light will come. And the birds will sing and the trees will once again be green and somehow, like Noah we will find a dove that will come with an olive branch in her beak and the land will be dry again.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Holy Friday

 

"Even bein' God ain't no bed o' roses"

----The Green Pastures

Today we come to that place where we all must come. That day when darkness settles down on us in the middle of our lives. But not just once but more than the admit. William Inge was right when he wrote there really is a dark at the top of our stairs. But we can’t brush over this day and cosmetize that cross and then rush on to Easter. 

In our time we don’t want to deal with that dark road which is really ours. We don’t want to upset our children with dismal things. Why they might have nightmares. So we look back on that hill faraway but most of us don’t linger there. So we have diamonds in our crosses and some of us put this decoration around our necks or tattoos on our bodies not having a clue to what that day—and this day truly means.

We really do not face the evil, the blood and the gore, and the spittle and the brittle laughter out there. Or the jeers even from the religious leaders that should know better. This was the cross and all four gospels tell this sad story in their own ways.They crammed it full of all the things the eye-witnesses had told them. The dark moments in the garden, the kiss of Judas. Simon of Cyrene forced to carry the cross for Jesus. They say he fell three times dragging his cross up the  hill. And Herod is there and Pilate is there and there blood-thirsty crowd is there. And criminals who will be punished with him are there. And all the scourging and the jeers and the injustice it all does not even come close to capturing that crucifixion. 

And so on our Good Friday we run headlong not into their story but ours too. Thomas Mann once said of great literature, “It is, it always is, however much we say it was.” We know pain. don’t we? And we know a world of unfairness. And we know too, too much about cancer and mental illness and the dreaded Alzheimer’s plus that long sad list of pain and tears.  And we know about those little girls in Nashville or all those other places. No thoughts and prayers—not yet. 

We must face our own horror. And our own Herod's and Pilate’s and pious religious leaders. And all those homeless and the poor on food stamps.  We know about the waste of life that should not be taken away—slow or fast. The list of our sorrows is long. Clergy abuse of little children. Women abused and hidden behind those suffocating Scriptures that keep them in line. We know about money, money, money and power that is strangling us to death. What of those 20 states who’ve passed cruel laws that punish the transgenders and their parents. We don’t have enough time to write them all down. But that man of sorrows knew so much. Like us. And he was nailed to that tree—where even God seems to be silent.

It was not all dark. There were women that stood weeping and the thief who agonized but saw even there a goodness. Or that young man who lifted a spear  of sour wine  to Jesus’ parched and bleeding lips. We cannot forget that other Joseph who offered his own tomb. We cannot leave them out. Nor should we.

Somehow God was there that terrible afternoon. And like Jesus we forget that sometimes our own bitter cup cannot be taken away. This is not the time for happy-clappy tunes or jubilation or even preaching it’s Friday but Sunday’s comin’. Oh yes, its is—but not now. Not today. We have to stare at our own Via Doloroso—our way of sorrows.

We must not try to forget all the injustices out there today. Even in the dark at the top of stairs—a kindly light may just come.

Thanks be to God for Good Friday. Then and now.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Holy Maundy Thursday

There hangs on the wall by my desk a wonderful picture of this wonderful sculpture of the Loving father and his prodigal son. The old man’s arms are around his broken boy. The son despite all he has done and not done—he feels love and acceptance and forgiveness.  

Churches all over the world meet this Thursday night. And we have followed that terrible journey that led to a table and unleavened bread and wine to the washing of feet. His followers sitting there with a lump in their throats  hearing Jesus say he would be leaving them. He knew what they did not know—soon, too soon there would be the place of the skull and the terrible cross. 

Around that table he gave them a last will and testament. And so they called this night maundy, which meant mandate or command. Judas had slipped away. Simon proudly pledged that he would never, never do what he thought Judas must even be doing that very night. One gospel said they all forsook him and fled. Not only Judas or Simon but all for them around that table. 

Jesus said the strangest thing to those all-too-human -disciples. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you.” With all their flawedness he gave them their orders—they were to love one another. 

And we know the rest of that story. Terrible things would be done over and over in the name of Jesus. And yet still after all these years the words are still our center piece: Love one another. Looking back on our tortured history one preacher said, “The church has dirty under-drawers.” And not only the church but all of us have fallen short of what we are to be. 

The church today as in every age is having a hard time. People—especially the young—have drifted away. Some call them the nones. They wearily threw in the towel or just do not care. Many reasons but we think of clergy abuse of children and adults. The coverups. A whittling down of Jesus’ mandate. No wonder they feel like the whole Sunday thing is a sham.  For they have not seen in us Christians—anything but love. How do the transgenders or their parents must feel today. Or the parents of those nine year old they buried this week. Or those immigrants think that find our doors shut. Or the poor living in old paper boxes. You won’t find many of these in church on this Maundy Night. 

So that picture on my wall is not just a loving father and a prodigal. It’s us he has his arms around. All of us. I give you a new commandment, he said: love one another. No exceptions.

I don’t have any answer to all our troubles. The Democrats. The Republicans. The political nones. But I do know it wasn’t only Pilate or Judas or Herod or Simon—but we have all forsook him and fled. 

We still have a mandate folks. Love one another. God knows how hard it is—but still after all these years our charge has not changed. No wonder they named this holy night Maundy Thursday.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Holy Wednesday--Passover Time

 

One summer at Princeton Carlyle Marney leaned over the pulpit and told 200 preachers, "Boys, if they ever find out Jesus was a Jew we're going to be in bad trouble." And we Christians often forget that Jesus was trained in the Synagogue. He followed all the Jewish rituals.  And on his road to the cross, so near--like his fellow Jews he observed Passover one of the greatest days of their faith. He remembered this was the time when they looked back, back to those suffering slaves in Egypt. And they prayed and prayed and the muddy waters of the Red Sea did not stop them. They learned there was a power greater than anything the world could throw at them.They walked to the other side of the water to a freedom they had only dreamed of. Though their wilderness journey would last years and years they kept going looking for that place of freedom they had been promised

And so every year on Passover they would light the candles and sit quietly around a table and usually the father would ask: "Why is this night different from other nights?" And once again as their forebears asked the same question someone would say: "It was the day when God's people moved from slavery to freedom." And though their year had been bad and suffering was seemingly everywhere they still would light the candles and remember their story. God was with them. God would always be with them. And even during those dark Nazi days when they were placed in concentration camps and millions of them were killed even there furtively they would keep Passover. 

As Jesus' days grew darker and he knew where his rocky road would lead he took his disciples to an upper room to observe Passover. Surely his faith must have said God is with me--and God will lead all these all-too-human disciples too me through whatever was out there. And we know the Lord's Supper grew out of that remembering. 

So we are really one with our Jewish brothers and sisters. We are all beset by many things--inside and out. Yet our challenge is to hang on to that slender thread of faith and go on. And the gift that the Negro slaves gave us were those spirituals we still sing:"Were You There," "Swing low sweet chariot," "Deep River,","The LonesomeValley," "Go Down Moses," "All God's Chillun' got Shoes."

So on this Holy Wednesday let us remember once again the troubled waters we have crossed and that old "I will be with you" keeps us coming back on the hardest of our days.

That stubborn kept Jesus going all the way to the finish line and that faith will lead us too.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Holy Tuesday--In-Between Time

 

THEN

Palm Sunday seemed to be so far away. There were rumblings everywhere. Jesus kept saying Be alert. Pray, brothers and sisters, that when the hard days come you will get through them.

The dark warnings troubled them now. Watch for what? He had said we would make it through. Sounded scary at the least. They knew this Holy Tuesday what Rome could do. They had seen the cruelty of those that should have known better—their leaders—the religious ones. 

The power of cursed Rome seemed to be everywhere. And the roads many days had been lined with cross after cross after cross. Men screaming in pain. Dying while mothers and fathers and wives and sometimes children gathered there. They could not believe it had come to this. 

Jesus had begun his walk up that terrible hill where the blood had dried and pain and death were not far behind. Yes, they could believe the crowd that spat on him, hurled stones and laughed their fool heads off as their Lord stumbled and fell. We knew how the end would go up there where the soldiers already gathered with that mound of splintered wood and nails and cloth to wipe the blood from their hands. 

They knew the end and all those hopes and dreams for a better life, a better world would be no more. What would happen to them. Dear God, what would they do.

It was only at the week’s end that they could hardly believe Simon and those women who came running, running saying over and over that he was not dead. Jesus was alive. 

And suddenly their grief shed most of its power and hope, that wonderful hope came surging back. They did not know what this Resurrection would mean. Or all the stories they pieced together later would mean, but many of them would find surprises in their hard lives they did not expect.

NOW

So like them we are at that in-between stage. There is dark at the top of our stairs. Fear. Worries on top of worries. Heart-breaking things like the loss of a wife, the death of  child, enormous disappointments looking back on what was and will never come again. 

And even today with all its craziness we remember that first Easter and all the strange joy it brought. And how despite Rome still in charge and nightmares of Judas still warm and hardly enough to eat—they went on and told the story and believed it as well.

And this Easter despite our own way of sorrows, and all the heavy things we carry—hopefully we will be surprised at those did those first half-believers. Maybe Easter is not just another Easter. Colored eggs, cute bunnies and a little more finery than we usually wear. Crowded churches and Easter lilles everywhere. 

Maybe is really a to-be-continued story for us too. Not knowing that on some Emmaus Road of our own despite the crutches and walkers, the grief and the pain and really wondering if this could be true—doors we thought were closed forever,  slowly cracked and then opens to enough light that, like them our hearts will burn within us at the surprises we have not yet reckoned with. 

—Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

It's Holy Monday and Our Hope is beginning to Fade

 

It was only yesterday, they told me and I squeezed into the crowd to see Jesus of Nazareth ride into Jerusalem. We yelled our hearts out. It was the day we will always remember—or so we thought. But here it is Monday. The palm branches we waved were tossed aside and some are beginning to wither. We found the garments we had thrown at his feet, bundled them up ragged as they were and headed for home.

The warm, wonderful sounds of the alleluias are still with us. But word came that he went into the Temple and turned the tables over and scattered the animals and the merchants. We also heard our leaders, Scribes and Pharisees—learned men—mumbled and whispered dirty things about him. Little did we know that these doings—his and theirs—were only a prelude. 

 If Jesus is the king we sought then where is the power and strength every king has? And why did he say so little about our Jewish leaders? He didn’t defend himself. In fairness maybe that will come. So even on Monday we began slowly to doubt. We even heard that some of his disciples like the Pharisees murmured and wondered. 

Holy Monday. How fickle yesterday’s crowds were. Maybe us too, just a little. If King Jesus is who we hear he is—where is the thunder and the clouds? Where is the sunshine? Why do I not feel as hopeful as I did yesterday.

God knows we need someone to change all this blood and gore and Rome, cursed Rome who really have chains around us all. We live in fear always.  Surely he will change all of this.

It’s Monday and somehow it just isn’t as clear as it was yesterday.  

 --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com