Our reading from Ephesians tells us: God planned for us to do good things and to live as he has always wanted us to live. That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
From the biography of Bob Childress, The Man Who Moved a Mountain by Richard C. Davids
"Shrouded in the mists of the Virginia Blue Ridge is a place called Buffalo Mountain. On a clear day you can see its rounded summit some five miles west of the Parkway…
Walled in by surrounding hills, the people of the Buffalo lived in a land of Brigadoon, captive to the unchanging ways of generations past. Theirs was a heritage of proud independence—but also of poverty and ignorance, fear and superstition, violence and sudden death.
Then a man name Bob Childress came to live there. He had grown up a mountain man with mountain habits. He drank. He fought ambush-style, with rocks and pistols. He was scarred from many brawls and twice wounded by gunshot. But something happened to change Bob Childress, and the change in him shook and transformed Buffalo Mountain."
That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
The people of the Blue Ridge are strong, independent-minded people, descendents of the Scotch-Irish immigrants who came to the United States from Ireland in the 1700s. The first wave of these Scotch-Irish settled in the lush and fertile valleys of the Blue Ridge, but by the early 1900s, the descendents lived a hard and harsh existence at the top of the mountains, isolated from the more civilized folks of the cities and towns of the Blue Ridge.
Despite their isolation, these clans grew. Women married at fourteen to sixteen and had great numbers of children. The women were strong-willed, some had their children, picked it up, and went right back to whatever they were doing.
That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
These Scotch-Irish of the Blue Ridge brought with them from Ireland and passed on to their descendents their craving for land, their seventeenth century language, their belief in the right to make and drink their own whiskey, and the right to settle their own disputes with a gun. No laws written by men miles away would or could make them tear down their stills or put down their guns.
When there was a dispute, and it could be over a piece of land or a piece of pie, it had to be settled, and the way these mountaineers settled their disputes was with a gun. There are many tales of gun-settling justice.
But the meanest tales of all were about a place called Buffalo Mountain. Davids wrote:
"While the rest of America fought a war of independence, a war between the states, and a war in Europe, the people of Buffalo Mountain lived at war with one another. They tilled whiskey and drank and fought and stabbed—and shot each other with Owlshead pistols. Shot only people they knew well—their enemies, their friends, and their kinfolks. ... Curiously, a man might kill another and then feel remorse and take a gun to anyone who spoke ill of the deceased at his funeral. If they lacked knives or guns they fought with jagged, skull-crushing rocks. Killing was a habit of generations. To argue was womanish. A Buffalo boy didn’t become a man until he came to discard words for action."
Besides liquor and guns, the third reality of life on Buffalo Mountain was the Primitive Baptist church. It was an all-day Sunday show, where the people moved in and out of the church or waited in line to take a swig of water or maybe even liquor. The preachers, all uneducated, superstitious, and passionate would take turns preaching all day long. They held a Bible in their hands, but could not read a word. The Lord supplied the words. They shouted and they prayed, and it gave the religion-hungry mountain people something to talk about all week. Few of the preachers cared if “men came drunk to church, for they themselves believed in drink.” The supreme requirement for a Primitive Baptist preacher was that he had to be uneducated. If he was uneducated, the people believed, then what came out of his mouth was surely from God. If he was educated then surely he might be tempted to preach his own words, or worse, be tempted to preach words from the devil.
In Virginia, on the eastern slop of the Blue Ridge, just above the North Carolina border, in a place called The Hollow, a boy was born in January of 1890. His name was Bob Childress and he was born into whiskey, and guns, and the Primitive Baptist Church.
That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
Bob was fourth-generation Scotch-Irish, born to a big, hard-working man everybody called “Babe.” Bob’s mother was a tall, slim, black haired Irish woman who was sad most of the time. Her name was Lum. Both parents had a morning dose of liquor as they pulled their clothes on and later at the breakfast table, Lum passed the bottle around to the kids because, as “… Her mother told her, it was good for the children and kept away diseases.”
Bob and the other children of the Hollow did have a school. The Quakers built one and the children came for some book learnin’ while they were young. Bob finished the eighth grade before he had to quit. Their teacher, a young woman from Guilford College in North Carolina, had a Sunday school for the children and did her best to change their lives. When they spoke of the despair of their lives, Miss Sally told them, “Why, didn’t [they] … know that the blood of knights and even kings ran in [their]… veins? And in this very country a young man” with fire in his speech had practiced law and changed the country, his name was Patrick Henry. She told them about Daniel Boone and the mountain woman named Nancy Hanks who married Abraham Lincoln.
While Bob’s family was the poorest of the poor in the hollow, there was one thing he knew from early on. He and his eight brothers and sisters knew their mama and papa loved them; they were sure of that.
But your parents’ love does cannot change the realities of life, and Bob Childress grew up to be a gun-toting, liquor-drinking, gambler, and got all the free liquor he wanted, because he was the best story teller in the hollow. He was a man, like the other men of the Hollow, who worked hard, fought hard, and played hard.
Bob in his own words from the book,
"The year I was twenty I was hardly ever sober, not even in the morning. I was miserable and sick to my soul for days I didn’t eat a decent meal. My cousin and I got to whipping out our pistols and daring men to shoot us—hoping sometimes they would. Once a man did yank out his gun and hold it in both hands, aim, and fire at me from less than ten feet way. I wondered why I felt no pain… [then] I realized he was so drunk he missed, … twice I went out into the woods and put my pistol to my temple but each time I put it down. I can’t tell you why."
I can tell you why, though, God had plans for Bob Childress—that is why he sent Christ to make us what we are
Bob continues,
"Then one day, after playing cards and drinking for hours, I found myself six miles from home outside a little church. I never did know how I got there. But I could hear singing. I went in and sat down. It was a Methodist church… revival. … when the altar call was given, something inside urged me to go forward to the rail. … I felt no sudden revelation, only a sense of peace. For the first time in my life, it seemed, I rested… that night I slept like a child, … Next morning I left my pistol off. I didn’t seem to want it."
"That week of revival didn’t change me into a new man, but it gave me the first real peace in my whole life. For the first time I had felt a power stronger than the power of liquor and rocks and guns."
That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
Bob Childress went back to school at 21 to finish his schooling, but fell in love and married. He became a hard-working man who supported his wife.
There was a moment of epiphany in Bob’s life. In 1912 he read in a paper that “The Scotch-Irish mountaineers are more ignorant than vicious, victims of heredity and alcohol…” He pondered this for awhile, thinking that there was a whole world out there, and most of those people thought the drinking and the fighting was strange. He told his wife he would never drink again.
And he didn’t. He became a man who worked harder than he had ever worked before. He and Pearl would drive around in their buggy all day on Sunday visiting churches, two Methodist and a Quaker friends meeting. He thought a lot about religion. He had learned from Miss Sally that religion was, “the way you talked, the way you worked, the way you helped your friends and neighbors—and even your enemies. It wasn’t something you only thought about on Sundays. It was … the way…” people helped each other no matter what. It was doing right.
Bob became a blacksmith, lost his first dear wife to the flue, kept his two children, refusing to let them go just because he was a widower, eventually married another fine woman, and settled in. But his spirit wasn’t settled. He helped people whenever he could, visited the sick, and even preached a little at a small church. He was called to the ministry, but he was, he said, “too dry for the Primitive” Baptists, not religious enough for the Methodists, and not educated enough for the Presbyterians.
But a seminary trained Presbyterian minister Rev. Roy became his friend and encouraged him to finish his high school education. By the time his first son started to first grade Bob began high school and he would lift his son up on the saddle of the mule and head to the local school house. After a year they told Bob they had taught him all they could.
Bob didn’t stop with high school. He moved his family two hundred miles to Davidson College in North Carolina and they struggled, getting by on very little. And all the while, Bob was helping people living out his religion. After a year of college, Bob felt such a strong urge to go to seminary that he had his friend Rev. Roy take him to Union Theological Seminary at Richmond. He was a man in his thirties, poor, a wife, five children, and no college education. Of course they said no, but Bob asked if they would allow him to attend classes without being enrolled.
The President of the seminary said it was unusual, but, yes, Bob could attend without being enrolled.
You and I can barely understand how difficult it was for Bob to attend classes, read the material, ask questions, suffer the embarrassment of his mountain education, and the amusement of his classmates ten years younger. During his first year, every other weekend, he would drive over to Mayberry and preach, traveling into the mountains with his old, beat up car and drive back to Richmond just in time to go to class on Monday.
But after the first year, everyone, his teachers, the President of the seminary, all recognized his earnest desire to become an educated preacher. For his remaining years he had scholarships and a place for his family to live. When he graduated the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond wanted to call him, but he already knew, he was going to go back to Buffalo Mountain and bring God’s message to his people.
God planned for us to do good things and to live as he has always wanted us to live. That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
There is no time to tell you all the good things that Bob Childress lived out in his ministry on Buffalo Mountain. He did, literally, change the culture of the mountain folk, which was, as you can guess, no easy task. He planted six churches around the mountain and on Sundays he would preach at them all.
Hundreds of pages have been written about his work on the mountain. When he died, a worn out country preacher still in his fifties, hundreds and hundreds of people braved a blizzard to attend his funeral.
It just so happened that on the same page of the newspaper that had a pictures of all the churches Bob planted and a story paying tribute, there was one, and only one other story on the page. It was about the Carol County Sheriff who had destroyed a still up in the mountains.
Davids wrote,
“Bob would have been the first to laugh at seeing that news item alongside the account of his life, and the first to admit that a man’s work is never done.”
There are so many things wrong with our world. Here in the District and in the surrounding metropolitan area we have hungry children going to school with worn-out clothes, and sad-looking faces. There is the homeless, there are the hungry, disabled people who depend on organizations like Food For All to eat, there is the marginalized who work yet have no benefits, no health insurance, some not even a decent home to live in.
There are so many things wrong with our world. There are all kinds of wars for all kinds of reasons.
There are so many things wrong with our world. In the Twenty-first century, there are people who live on one cup of rice a day and people who spend ten dollars a day for Starbucks latte.
What’s wrong in our own personal lives? In the midst of our modern comforts, we are challenged; of that, I have no doubt. We are challenged by loss and grief, by lost opportunities and lost love, by misplaced loyalties and betrayals. We are challenged by mistakes and wrong decisions. We are even challenged by the abundance of our lives.
The question we must ask ourselves, not are we living up to our potential, but are we living up to the potential that God has in mind for us.
God planned for us to do good things and to live as he has always wanted us to live. That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
As a church we say we want to create a loving community for the worship and service of Jesus of Nazareth. If someone, say an organizational expert, were looking at our mission statement would that expert see us live out that mission?
If God were looking at our church, what would God see? Are we a loving community that makes Jesus’ ministry real for people?
There is always going to be something that could hold us back. Bob Childress had a hundred things that could have held him back from becoming the minister God wanted him to be. What is holding us back as a church community, what is holding us back as individuals?
Bob Childress came to understand that religion is the way you talked, the way you worked, the way you helped your friends and neighbors—and even your enemies. It wasn’t something you only thought about on Sundays. It was … the way…” people helped each other no matter what. It was doing right.
Are we living our religion?
Blessed be and amen.
The Readings
Ephesians 2:4-10 (Contemporary English Version)
But God was merciful! We were dead because of our sins, but God loved us so much that he made us alive with Christ, and God's wonderful kindness is what saves you. God raised us from death to life with Christ Jesus, and he has given us a place beside Christ in heaven. God did this so that in the future world he could show how truly good and kind he is to us because of what Christ Jesus has done. You were saved by faith in God, who treats us much better than we deserve. This is God's gift to you, and not anything you have done on your own. It is not something you have earned, so there is nothing you can brag about. God planned for us to do good things and to live as he has always wanted us to live. That is why he sent Christ to make us what we are.
Psalm 27
by Cheryl Ann Toliver
The world's gone mad!
Our God-given reason is overthrown
By our animal craving for blood.
My own desperate prayer for reason
Is stifled by overwhelming fear.
I see only the destruction our madness will bring in its wake
- misery, poverty, hatred, despair, evil, chaos -
As the 21st century's first decade disintegrates into insane war.
All that is good - morality, kindness, mercy, patience, compassion,
self-control, forgiveness, wisdom - seems lost, forsaken.
We reject the Spirit's power to act in our lives,
Exposing humanity's ugly wretchedness without God's grace,
And thus, we have damned ourselves.
How have we come to this hell?
When did we set out on this "inevitable" path?
Why can we find no other way?
What has blinded us to your grace, O! Holy God?
Where, O! Lord, is your salvation from this mad darkness?
Who but Thee can save us from ourselves?
I hear you cry out to us, Lord -
"Don't be molded by the world, be metamorphosized!
Let your reasoning be completely, utterly new,
So you can comprehend what is good through my eyes.
Then you'll understand that you need to bless those you hate,
Instead of inciting more evil and anger and hatred
By seeking to repay the evil done against you with more evil.
You can only overcome evil with good.
Goodness is the only weapon that can destroy evil.
It's the only cure for your insanity and unending cycles of hatred and vengeance."
So few hear you, Lord God.
Yet, in my despair, I hear your words of comfort -
"I am your hope, your salvation, your fortress.
Why are you afraid?
Evil may assail you, lay siege and make war against you,
But it will fail.
I am your shelter from trouble on the high ground.
You will one day walk before your enemies without fear or shame."
So, Almighty God, Holy Lord,
In the midst of the world's madness, whatever terror is to come,
You are with me.
You say, "seek me", and I do seek Thee.
I will seek your grace amid our human wretchedness and evil
And I will yet live to see your good triumph.
Now help me to wait for you, Lord God.
Help me to be strong, to not be afraid, in the overwhelming madness,
So I may endure the coming metamorphosis.
Cheryl Ann Toliver grew up in rural Idaho and small-town Colorado, had her first experience of encountering Jesus as a child of 7, and has been writing poetry since she was 11 years old. She has been in California for the last 19 years, working as an editor of a legal index database. Copies of her poetry book Visions, are available for no charge or a small donation. Contacting her at: c.a.toliver@sbcglobal.net