Jesus and Divorce 3

... Again, we see that these statements by Jesus are far from legalistic rules.  They are statements full of compassion aimed to protect the weak and helpless in society, namely, the vulnerable Jewish wife of Galilee. Of course, God did not want the wife in broader Roman society to throw her husband away either, and so the possibly expanded instruction is equally valid for the audience of Mark as Jesus' instruction was for his audience in Galilee. [1]

A key difference between Matthew and Mark on the question of divorce is the exception phrase in Matthew: "except for sexual immorality." [2] The fact that Matthew brings out an exception highlights the fact that Jesus' teaching in Mark 10 was never meant to be exceptionless but to give the general rule.  Matthew, which the vast majority of experts believe used Mark as a source, brings out the most significant potential exception to the rule--sexual infidelity.

The fact that Matthew and Mark do not mention other exceptions does not necessarily mean that there were no others. Again, the spirit of Jesus in these instructions was not to set up a rule for its own sake but to show compassion on the weak and chastise the pleasure-seeking husband interested only in his own self-gratification. For example, surely it would violate the very purpose of Jesus' instructions to force an abused wife or husband to remain married to a violent spouse.

Of course, just because a man's wife is unfaithful does not mean that he must divorce her. Matthew suggests that sexual infidelity can be a exception to the general rule not to divorce, but surely the spirit of Jesus could forgive an unfaithful spouse. Surely God would be even more glorified by a couple who, after such a significant crisis, could find reconciliation and healing.

Amid all the legalism that has surrounded the application of biblical teaching on divorce, it ultimately comes down once again to the fundamental principle that God is love and that, for Jesus, the lives of real people trumped rules for their own sake. Jesus did not want spouses to harm each other by throwing the other away in pursuit of selfish pleasure. Today he would not want parents to harm their children by ripping a family apart for selfish reasons.

But children can be harmed by some parents staying together as well. Would Jesus want a spouse to stay in a relationship where the other spouse was molesting a child?  Surely the spirit of Jesus would want to save some spouses from harmful situations even if the spouse hasn't crossed the line in sexual infidelity. It is the Pharisees in the gospels who mistake the rules themselves for the principles behind the rules.

Our problem is that we know people make excuses to justify what they want to do. We want to be able to stop them from getting by with it. We want to stop the person who wants to claim an exceptional situation when it is nothing of the sort.  We humans are very good of coming up with good-sounding reasons that are not our real reasons.

God is not fooled. This is key. We want to be able to stop the person making excuses. We want to expose the fraud. We don't want to leave the pretenders to God. We want to punish them now. But God says that vengeance is his (Rom. 12:19). No one is getting away with anything...

[1] If this interpretation of how the oral tradition developed is correct, then we see that God used the tradition at every point to clarify his will on divorce in more than one context.

[2] The key passages are Mark 10:11-12 and Matthew 5:32 and 19:9.

Jesus and Divorce 2

This raises an interesting question of cultural background. It is not clear that a wife actually could officially divorce her husband in Palestine at the time of Jesus. [1] For example, the Jewish historian Josephus says that it was against the Jewish Law for a woman to divorce her husband, although it was possible for elite women to do it under Roman law. [2] The later Jewish collection of oral tradition, the Mishnah (ca. 200), similarly assumes throughout that only a husband could initiate a divorce. [3]

What then are we do with Mark 10:12, where Jesus prohibits a wife from divorcing her husband? It is a difficult question. On the one hand, the time of Jesus has left us such little evidence that we cannot ignore the possibility that, despite all the information we have from elsewhere, it was still possible somehow in Galilee for an ordinary wife to initiate a divorce. Or perhaps Mark is worded imprecisely and refers to a wife asking her husband for a divorce.

However, the more likely suggestion is that the oral tradition of Jesus' statement on divorce expanded as the saying left Palestine. In the Roman world, it was equally possible for wife to divorce her husband as for a husband to divorce a wife. Mark or the tradition he inherited thus would have taken an original saying, which only mentioned the husband divorcing, and expanded it for a Roman audience to include the wife as well.

The original concern of Jesus in Galilee, then, would have focused exclusively on husbands throwing away their helpless wives. This likelihood changes our sense of the original dynamic in the ministry of Jesus considerably. Jesus' teaching, as we would expect, focused on compassion toward the powerless, namely, the wife in Galilean society. Mark 10 appropriately broadens the principle for a different context.

Another curious aspect of Jesus' teaching here, and perhaps quite revolutionary, is the sense that a husband can commit adultery against his wife (Mark 10:11).  The New Testament anthropologist Bruce Malina has argued that adultery at the time by definition was the shaming of a man by sleeping with his wife. [4] Accordingly, a man could not commit adultery against a woman. If a man slept with another man's wife, he was committing adultery against her husband. Similarly, if a married man slept with a single woman, he would not be committing adultery.

If Malina's analysis of ancient Mediterranean culture is correct, then it would have been shocking for Jesus to suggest that a man might commit adultery against his wife by sleeping with another woman. Jesus would be giving a significance to the wife that was unheard of. What we assume when we read these texts--that adultery goes both ways--becomes another example of Jesus' startling care for the disempowered in society and his shocking preaching.

Matthew 5:32 then must also be somewhat tongue in cheek, typical Jesus. A divorced wife will almost have to remarry to support herself. In that sense, the husband who divorces her is forcing her to sleep with another man.  Tongue in cheek, he is forcing her to commit adultery against himself. Obviously Jesus could not mean this literally. He is shaming the man who would do such a thing. The man who divorces his wife, in effect, is forcing her to shame him by sleeping with another man.

Again, we see that these statements by Jesus are far from legalistic rules...

[1] A recent article discussing the issue is Robert Brody, "Evidence for Divorce by Jewish Women?" Journal of Jewish Studies 50.2 (1999): **

[2] Antiquities 15.259.

[3] Yev 14.1; Qid 1.1; Git 4.2, 8.4, 9.10

[4] The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels.

Jesus and Divorce 1

Thanks for all the honor my family felt was given to my father this last week. I felt that the funeral yesterday was an appropriate send off. For me the song, "Jesus Led Me All the Way" was the most tender moment in the service. Great song and not as well known today. I'm tempted to post it here sometime.

Trying to get back to writing.  I'm in a chapter on the ethic Jesus taught. I thought the section on Jesus and divorce might get me back in the groove.
_____________
The picture of Jesus in this chapter thus far has been consistent.  He allowed his disciples to break the Sabbath rule because they were hungry, and endorsed the priest breaking the rules about sanctified bread to feed David. The Parable of the Good Samaritan implies that helping someone in serious need is more important to God than the purity laws for priests. Everything we have seen so far shows that people took priority for him over Old Testament Law and that he made exceptions to the rules when the two came into significant conflict.

We might be a little puzzled at first, then, to see Jesus seem to take an almost legalistic position on the issue of divorce. Indeed, those who see Christianity primarily as a series of dos and don'ts may pay more attention to the words of Jesus on divorce than to the vast majority of things he said. And churches have sometimes played out divorce as something like an unpardonable sin, in effect ostracizing people from full Christian fellowship if they are divorced--sometimes even when they did not initiate the divorce. 

Matthew 19:9 remembers Jesus' words in this way: "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery." In this passage, Jesus' disciples are so amazed at this restriction on divorce that they conclude it's almost better not to marry at all. Their world was one in which the only restriction was that the husband had to make a divorce official. Beyond that, a man could divorce his wife for pretty much any reason.

Apparently, the men of the time took their sense that a man could divorce his wife for any reason from Deuteronomy 24, to which this passage alludes. While Deuteronomy is actually about the remarriage of a divorced wife to her first husband, Jesus' contemporaries debated whether it implicitly gave a man permission to divorce his wife for anything he might find "indecent" in her. The way they put it to Jesus in Matthew 19:7 is that God commanded a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away.

In itself, there is some mercy even in this interpretation. There are places in the world today where a man can put a wife in limbo by leaving her, maybe leaving her in some village far away from where he is, and never officially severing ties from her. Sometimes this sort of thing happens in societies in places of the world where the woman cannot possibly take care of herself.  She might receive no support from her "husband" and yet be unable to find another man to support her because she is still officially married to her husband.

A command to make divorce official for such a woman is an act of mercy. It allows her to marry another man who will support her and her children. Perhaps some at the time of Jesus were interpreting Deuteronomy 24:1 in that way.  If so, then we can at least commend that sort of divorce as an act of mercy.

But surely Jesus' words on divorce, like his other teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, means to get to the root of the issue. A man should not be throwing away his wife in the first place. Although Jesus does not quote Malachi 2, surely it is in the same spirit that Jesus made his statements on divorce. He is thinking primarily of the husband who is unfaithful to the wife of his youth and stops protecting her, instead choosing to divorce her for selfish reasons.

This raises an interesting question of cultural background. It is not clear that a wife actually could officially divorce her husband in Palestine at the time of Jesus...

Funeral Sermon: "A Sermon in Shoes"

Sermon in Shoes

Funeral of M. Lee Schenck

April 2, 2012

Introduction

Most of us here this morning will remember the children’s song, “Sermon in Shoes.”

            Do you know, Oh Christian, you’re a sermon in shoes?

            Do you know, Oh Christian, you’re a sermon in shoes?

            Jesus calls upon you, to spread the gospel news,

So walk it, and talk it. Live it, and give it.

Teach it, and preach it. Know it, and show it.

A Sermon in Shoes.

That’s what came to mind this week as I thought of what kind of sermon would be appropriate for my father’s funeral. It dawned on me that he had already preached it with his life. He had walked the gospel and talked it. He had lived it, and he had certainly given it. He didn’t so much teach it and preach it, but he certainly showed it. My father was a sermon in shoes. As I told several people at the service in Florida on Friday, by God’s grace my father hit the Christian life out of the park.

The Scripture just read seemed highly appropriate.  As Paul writes the Philippians, he is unsure whether he will live or die. But in the meantime, he urges them to conduct their lives in a way that is worthy of the gospel. In other words, he urges them to be a sermon in shoes.  I’m not sure how long it will be before I see my father again, but his life also urges me, urges us all to be sermons in shoes.

A Servant of the King

What is the gospel? It is much more than how to be saved from God’s judgment. In fact that’s the human-centered, often self-centered version, a paltry shadow of the real gospel. The real gospel is the good news of the kingdom of God, the good news that our God reigns and is in control. When a death like my father’s happens, we are reminded of how much we are out of control. But God is still on his throne; God is still in control. Christ is still king and, indeed, part of the good news is that the dead in Christ will one day rise and that my father’s spirit is already in the presence of Jesus.

My father was a sermon in shoes as a servant of the king.  He showed us all what it meant to be a good and faithful servant. We Wesleyans believe in something we call, “entire sanctification.” Some in the past have unfortunately reduced it to having a certain experience or following certain rules. When I’ve tried to explain what it looks like, I’ve sometimes pictured it as a God-given ability to do the right thing and indeed to like doing it. Godliness has to do with the choices we make. It involves doing the right thing for the right reasons especially when you are tempted to do something else.

My father was one of the best sermons on entire sanctification I ever heard. I never once, never once in my entire life, remember a time when my Dad intentionally made the wrong choice when he knew what God wanted him to do. Oh I’m sure there were many times when he misunderstood God’s will. I’m sure there were times where he didn’t realize he wasn’t doing God’s will. But I can’t think of a single time, not a single instance, where my Dad knowingly did the wrong thing.

My Dad gave God his all, everything he knew to give. He did everything to the glory of God to the best of his understanding. He tithed throughout World War 2 even though he considered himself backslidden at the time (by the way, I don’t believe it for a minute). He did it because he believed he would one day get right with God and would have to pay restitution on back-tithe anyway.

He read Scripture every morning. He prayed every day. He knelt in prayer beside his bed every evening and prayed for his whole family by name. His last night when he felt so weak, he still managed to pray, “Lord help our children,” and then later added a prayer for a family member who is currently in danger.  I suspect he was far more exacting of himself in these matters than God was, but it shows his complete surrender and devotion to his heavenly Father.

My Dad loved the church. Christianity for him was not some vague notion of God you have while hiking through the forest. For him you didn’t go to church for what you could get out of it. He went to church because he was a good and faithful servant of the king.

I like to imagine that moment in heaven when God made him feel through his whole being, maybe for the first time, that he was not just a servant, but a son of the king. My mother, my four sisters and I know how thoroughly and completely our Dad loved us. I have never once in my entire life ever doubted that he loved me. The thought never even occurred to me growing up.

But I delight to think that my Dad now knows how much God loves him, that the love he showed his children pales into oblivion next to the love God has always had for him. Some of us this morning need to be better servants of the king than we are. I ask you to listen to my Dad’s sermon in shoes. But others of you are great servants of the king, but need to hear God’s voice this morning saying that he loves you far more as his child than as his servant.  I ask you this morning to hear that good news.

Standing in one spirit, striving as one person

In the Scripture read a few minutes ago, Paul tells the Philippians to walk worthy of the gospel. What does that look like?  Well, he tells them.  It is for them to be unified, for them to stand with one spirit and to strive in the world as one person. We know from later on in the letter that the church had its share of disagreements. It was not one of those dream churches where everyone gets along.

Most of us are willing to stand together as one person as long as that one person looks a lot like us.  It’s much harder to be one with someone who disagrees with you. The temptation then is to dismiss them—they’re not a real Christian. If they were, they’d see it my way.

My father was a sermon in shoes when it came to getting along with real people who just flat out disagree with you. At one point my Dad went through a Dale Carnegie course as part of his job, and I remember him quoting several times the saying that “A man convinced against his will is of the same mind still.”  The saying must have resonated with him and his experience.

Scripture doesn’t put it quite that way, but it fits Scripture. There’s a time to agree to disagree. At some point I have to live my life faithfully and let others stand before God on their own. So many of us can’t let it go. We want to force everyone else to see God our way or to do things our way.

It’s a losing battle.  Even worse, we often cause more damage than good to the kingdom by fighting over what we think God wants. Paul didn’t tell the Philippians who was right and who was wrong in the conflict between Euodia and Syntyche.  He just told them they needed to get their spirits together and be unified. God looks on the heart, and we can be one in spirit even when we disagree over ideas or courses of action.

My Dad never attacked when he disagreed. It is so tempting to call others names when we disagree even over spiritual things. We call others stupid or perhaps a host of other words that I hope have never been said from this pulpit. I remember one time when someone told my Dad he would go to hell if he did something, something my Dad actually thought was what God wanted him to do.

Again, my father was a sermon in shoes. He didn’t respond in kind—he didn’t de-Christianize the other person. He didn’t treat the other person as an enemy. He continued to act in love toward that person and others even though I doubt he felt much like it at the time.

I have thought more than once after letting my mouth fly with my children that my father never did that with me.  This morning I resolve to listen to his sermon, to control my tongue better. I’m taking it as a charge to keep.

My father also lived out one of the most difficult truths of Christianity to grasp, let alone to live. It is the very truth of Christ’s death in the Scripture read a few minutes ago.  Sometimes losing is winning when you choose to lose for the sake of Christ. The Scripture says, “having been found in shape like a man, Jesus humbled himself, having become obedient to death, even the death of a cross.”

In our world today, we prize the victor, the one who stands up to the enemy and blasts them away. There will be a time for final judgment, although it’s on God’s calendar rather than ours. I believe there is a time to protect your family and your land. My Dad was not ashamed to have served his country in the Army. I believe there is a time when it is not loving to another person to let them run all over you, when “love must be tough.”

But according to Jesus, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. The rule is to love your enemy, to pray for those who persecute you. The rule is not to repay evil with evil. The rule is not to act in judgment toward others. The rule is to show your strength by not responding in the same way your enemy attacks you.  Jesus won by doing God’s will with strength of spirit, even when they beat and destroyed his body in the most shameful way they knew.

My father was that sermon in shoes.  I don’t know if anyone ever thought he was weak because it wasn’t his way to fight back.  But if anyone did, they were wrong beyond anything they could imagine. My father lived out that proverb that says, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” My father lived out Jesus’ instructions to turn the other cheek.

I’m sure it wasn’t always easy for him. The Schenck family isn’t known for holding their tongue or being meek and mild. That just shows how much strength it must have taken for him to be that sermon in shoes.

Putting Others First

One verse in the Philippian passage particularly fits my Dad. It says, “Let everyone consider not only their own interests, but also the interests of others.”  I’ve never met anyone who thought my Dad selfish or stingy. Quite the contrary, my mother said more than once growing up that we would never have a lot of money because my Dad always gave it all away. Some of you have already heard that in my Dad’s car the day he died was a letter to one of my sisters with a check in it to help her with her income taxes.  “Generous” and “selfless” are two adjectives that come immediately to mind when people think of my Dad.

I can only remember once or twice when my Dad actually let me pay for his meal, let alone my own meal. When I was in school he said he’d let me pay after I got a job, but the day never came. “Don’t be too proud to accept a little help,” he would say jokingly. I let my mother pay for the shoes I’m wearing today for his funeral in honor of the never-ending love he showed his children through his generosity.

Last summer when my mother was very weak, he waited on her hand and foot so much that he practically forgot to eat himself. My sister Patricia had to start watching to make sure he was eating.  He lived to serve others, and he consistently put the needs and desires of others above himself. I know one of the frustrating things for my brother-in-laws and my wife is the difficulty my family seems to have at deciding what to do or where to go eat. In other families, the problem would be the stubbornness of people who want to go different places. In our family, the problem is that no one wants to go somewhere the others don’t want to go. 

That is my father’s legacy. “In honor preferring one another” was my father’s watchword and song.  

Again, my father was a sermon in shoes. What does Paul tell the Philippians? “Have the attitude that Christ Jesus also had: although he had the status of God, he did not consider equality with God something to exploit, but he emptied himself, taking the status of a servant.”

This is how we become unified in spirit. This is how we get along with each other and strive together as one person. We do it by considering others first and ourselves second. Sure, there is a time to stand up for yourself. There is even a time when it is not in the other person’s best interest for you to let them take advantage of you.

But imagine what the church would be like—let alone the world—if people truly put themselves in the place of others and tried to look at things from their perspective. What if we truly lived out love of our neighbor by doing to others the good that we would want them to do for us?  It would change the church. It would change the world.

My Dad lived that way. When he visited our house, he wanted to help us with something we needed done.  He would vacuum or want to mow the yard, even when he was beginning to get frail. He would try to fix whatever I predictably hadn’t gotten around to fixing. The day before he died he exhausted himself trying to help my sister Patricia and others with a pitch-in dinner following a concert at church.  He was one of the last ones to eat when most of the food was already gone. It’s easy to be generous with your money, if you have it. It’s much harder to be generous with your self and your time.

In his selflessness perhaps more than anything else, my father was a sermon in shoes.

Conclusion

As I’ve reflected on my Dad’s life, it’s occurred to me that on those occasions when I am at my best, I am being the way I remember my Dad being all the time. When I wait that extra second before losing it with my children, I’m being the way I remember my Dad being all the time. (mind you, I don’t know if my sisters have a slightly different memory) 

When someone attacks me or unchristianizes me because they don’t see things the way I do, and I hold my tongue (or fingers on the internet), I’m being the way I remember my Dad being all the time. When I do something helpful or selfless for someone else that I wouldn’t really have had to do, I’m being the way I remember my Dad being all the time.

Pick any one of the summary statements in the Bible about how to live, and there will be examples in my father’s life that illustrate them.  “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength”? Yes, I remember that sermon my Dad preached in his shoes. “Love your neighbor as yourself”? Yes, I remember that sermon my Dad preached in his shoes. “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God”?  Yep, I remember that sermon in his shoes as well.

We will honor my father today the most—and more importantly, our heavenly Father—if we follow his example and live out the rest of our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We will conduct ourselves worthily if we are good and faithful servants of the king, if we live together in one spirit and strive for the gospel as one person, and if we look not only on our own interests but also on the interests of others.

Do you know, Oh Christian, you’re a sermon in shoes? Then walk it, and talk it. Live it, and give it. Know it, and show it. A Sermon in Shoes.

Memories of My Father 8

Memories 1
Memories 2
Memories 3
Memories 4
Memories 5
Memories 6
Memories 7

And the final post...
______________
My father always had some April Fools joke. He would get you when you were groggy and just waking up. The only one I remember is when he told my Mom and me that someone had stolen the car in the night.

As we drove back home from Florida these last two days, a number of memories came to mind. There was the final room sweep when we were leaving a hotel, just to make sure we hadn't left anything. There was his writing down the odometer reading each time he filled up with gas and the calculation of gas mileage.

But my final post is about his final days. I consider my father's last year or so as a physical gamble that he ultimately lost. I don't know what the alternative scenario might have looked like. He had some blockage in his carotid, but the memories of my Uncle Maurice's botched catheterization loomed large in my parents' minds. Apparently Maurice's aorta wall wasn't strong enough to stand up to the process.

Last summer was the first time I had a hint that something was up, and when I began grieving. My father has always been a walker. When I was in my teens and twenties at the peek of my physical shape, I could hardly keep up with him when he was walking at full speed. When he visited, we would walk to the gas station to get a coffee and an Indianapolis Star.

This last time was different. Tommy, Dad, and myself were going for a little walk. We had only gone a couple blocks when his back started hurting and we turned back. He put Ben Gay on the "muscle" in his back. Come to find out that he had been doing this for some time. My wife Angela immediately suggested it might be his heart.

It was with great difficulty that we got him to go to a doctor, and he was not even happy about my sister Debbie's insistence that he get a chest x-ray. His chest was clear and the doctor simply pointed out that his heart murmur caused by a leaky valve would only get worse (I guess it's called mitral valve prolapse). He had passed up on fixing it some ten years ago. Since this state can cause an arrhythmia, where the heart gets out of beat, and since my Dad died of V-fib, I suspect this is what ultimately caused his death Monday.

Four weeks ago today, on a Sunday afternoon, my father became violently sick. My sister Debbie called and asked me to pray. I was so grateful that he survived that episode. It allowed me time to talk to him on the phone the last three weeks of his life nearly every day. It allowed my sister Juanita and Sharon to visit with him along with most of their families.

My step-daughter Stefanie and father-in-law both were able to visit him. On the phone, he was so cheerful and optimistic. My family and I were even going to be with him and Mom today in Florida, had he made it one more week.

No one seemed to realize the severity of his situation. You can tell from the pictures that he was weak. We learned subsequently that he was having trouble lifting a gallon of milk. These were all signs. He had some significant sneezing two week ends before his death. He should have gone to a doctor.

But we can't know the other story line. Would he have spent his final days in a hospital and died on an operating table? What a terror that would have been to him. Or would they have fixed the valve and given him another ten years? In the moments when the EMTs were working on him, I hoped that maybe this might turn out to be a blessing in disguise, forcing him to get things fixed.

It was not to be. Although I mourn the loss of my Dad, he lived an incredible life, as I hope I have shown. He knocked life out of the park. He passed all the markers. He finished his course; he kept the faith.

As deaths go, he had a good one. He drank his cup of coffee, sat down with my mother, ate half a McDonald's sausage biscuit and after a few moments of pain, he slipped into eternity.

When the funeral director asked my brother-in-law Dennis for my Dad's address, he said Hallelujah Avenue. We have enjoyed pictures of my father socializing with family and friends in heaven. And if there is such a thing as heavenly coffee, I know my father has already had quite a few.

Memories of My Father 7

Memories 1
Memories 2
Memories 3
Memories 4
Memories 5
Memories 6

Now Memories 7
______________

My father's first funeral in Lakeland went very well. I'm very thankful to God that everything worked out so well. The District Superintendent of Florida said a few words, as did Jim Wiggins from SWU, as did the President of the 563 Ordinance Company. My brother-in-law Dennis gave a good sermon with a moment to renew/begin a walk with God. My Dad's favorite singer in the Lakeland church sang.

There were about 150 people there, I believe. The fact that there is a final funeral in Indianapolis on Monday helped it not feel like the final goodbye.

Today I want to reflect a little on my father as a churchman. I missed the Wednesday evening church service in Lakeland. The thought went through my head several times that my Dad would have gone, even under these circumstances. He was incredibly faithful and felt horribly guilty if he didn't do whatever he thought his duty was.

The last time I was with him in person was at the Schenck reunion last summer before we went to Germany. He had planned to go up to Frankfort Camp Meeting from the reunion to hear his nephew Tom give his testimony. Instead he stayed longer to be with my family and others, but I know he felt a little guilty for staying. He gave us the Schenck wave outside as we left to go to the airport to go to Angie's family reunion.

Duty was a major element in my Dad's life. He always did what he believed was the right thing to do. There was no selfishness. Certainly when it came down to a choice, he would do what he thought was right no matter what his preference. He was the embodiment of what "entire sanctification" looks like, in my opinion.

It would be hard to find someone more faithful or loyal. You might disagree with him on some issue, and I'm sure many on the countless boards he served did.  I'm sure I would too today on many things. But there was no animosity. There were no enemies. If his side of a decision lost he abided by it.

My guess is that he was a bit of the letter of the law when it came to things like the Wesleyan Discipline. I grew up with that sense of reverence for the rules of my church and at one point no doubt considered them the best codification of the Bible around. Eventually I would realize that these documents were written and voted on by people like me--and usually people with a lot less training than me. I came to read it as a document produced in a historical context. I came to realize how small my denomination is in the vast scheme of things. The Discipline will always be a work in progress.

But my Dad certainly didn't look at it that way. The Discipline contained all the traditions he had grown up with as the Christian faith. My Dad was a delegate to every General Conference of the Wesleyan Church since it was formed except the last one. Most families go on vacations to the beach or some exotic spot. My Dad used all of his vacation time for Frankfort Camp Meeting, District Conferences, and General Conference every four years.

I enjoyed those trips, though. We went to places like Wichita, Kansas. On that trip we were able to take a side trip, I believe to South Dakota to see my sisters Juanita and Sharon, who were working at Brainerd Indian School. My sister Juanita would go on to be a missionary to the Philippines and would eventually marry Saturnino Garcia's son. We went on a trip there, probably my Mom's first real trip out of the country.

I spent a lot of time in the car with my parents over the years. There were the yearly trips to Frankfort Camp in Indiana from Florida. There were trips to Brooksville Camp in winter, District Conference in the summer, sometimes Hobe Sound camp. If I remember a lot of things in these posts, it's in part because of all those trips.

I think my father must have been on the church board of every church he ever attended in his adult life--Northside in Indy, Ft. Lauderdale First, Faith Wesleyan in Lakeland. He went to a board meeting in Lakeland the night before he died.

He was on the board at Frankfort Pilgrim College when it closed (he voted against closing). When it then folded into United Wesleyan College, he was on that board (not when it closed ;-). He was then on the board of Southern Wesleyan College, and I wonder if I would have ended up going there if he hadn't.

He loved those trips and those meetings at SWU. Even when he was emeritus, he felt horribly guilty if he couldn't attend the meetings. I would tell him that it was now entirely a matter of his pleasure, not his duty.

My Dad read his Bible faithfully to a fault. He read Our Daily Bread every morning. I was surprised to see that he was working through Bonhoeffer's God is in the Manger when he passed--not his usual fare.  He tithed beyond faithfulness.

He was incredibly faithful to pray. Every night we would kneel beside the bed or in the living room and pray for everyone in the family. The night before he died he was too weak to name everyone. But he still knelt and got out, "Lord, help all the children." He was very concerned these last days for a family member in a dangerous mission area. I guess after their prayer was done, he later prayed for him in bed.

My Dad's faith was simple. Faith for him was about living a certain way. Because of where he came from, I wouldn't expect it to be much different. He did the things he believed God wanted him to do and he did them with complete commitment.

As I studied and began to see following Christ more in terms of attitudes and principles, he once asked me with some concern, "What is it that you don't do?" Of course we weren't talking about murder or adultery. We were talking about the many duties of the American revivalist tradition.

But my Dad had the right attitudes and he had the right principles. He may have approached them as dos and don'ts, but he lived them with the right heart. While the Christianity of others in my tradition became an empty shell of legalistic religion, my Dad lived the rules out with a love for his neighbor.

Tribute to My Father, M. Lee Schenck

My family and I have used many adjectives this week to describe my Dad: “generous,” “selfless,” “caring,” “compassionate,” “funny,” “faithful,” “loyal,” “hard working”—these are just a few. We’ve had countless calls, emails, visits, and comments about my Dad this week and they were all very similar—what an incredible man he was, what a delight, what a neighbor. He was a godly God, an example to follow. I would say he was a man with the heart of Jesus, a man after God’s own heart. My mother would like to say thanks for the wonderful out-pouring of love since my Dad was promoted to heaven.

Some of his neighbors are here. They’ve shared with us what a delight he was and what a positive impact he had on their lives. You’ve heard tributes from his friends in the army, Southern Wesleyan University, and the Florida District. The story is always the same, from the woman who cut his hair to the cashier at Cracker Barrel, who was so sad to see him go. He made an impact anywhere he went. I’ve thought time and time again since his death that if anyone would ever see any good in me, that was what my Dad was like every day.

My Dad was indeed generous and selfless to a fault. You could hardly pay for your own dinner if you were eating with him. My sister Juanita’s husband Eddie was boasting in triumph after his visit two weeks ago that he had managed to pay for all his meals. (Of course, my wife wonders if a check will show up in Eddie’s mail in a few days)

The day he died we found a letter in his car ready to mail to my sister Sharon with a check in it to help her with her income taxes. He used to give us all blank checks when we left home for wherever in case we had an emergency. As a young man I can remember my mother saying more than once that we would never have a lot of money because my Dad gave it all away. Last year when my mother was so sick, my Dad was so concerned for her health and taking care of her that he almost forgot to eat himself.

My Dad was funny. He used to embarrass me when he would make corny jokes to waitresses and cashiers in check-out lines. After a meal, a waitress might ask if everything was okay. Then he might say something like, “Well, there is a problem,” and a troubled look might come over her face. “The food is all gone,” he might finally finish.

My Dad had a host of endearing characteristics and rituals. He had coffee every morning—and pretty much any other time of day as well, a practice I’ve personally tried to emulate. He went to McDonalds even on his final morning. There was something fitting about his heart waiting to go out of rhythm until he had finished his last cup of coffee.

He loved pens. Before I got my act together, he always used to tell me he didn’t understand how someone as educated as me didn’t carry around a pen. My Dad, on the other hand, carried a “pocket secretary” everywhere he went, with full calendar, addresses, phone numbers, notepad, and of course a pocket for Staples coupons. In other words, he carried a smart phone around with him fifty years before it was invented.

He loved watches. He loved stop watches. He took from the army his sense that if you’re on time, you’re late. He was organized. He was good with numbers. We used to race to see who could add up the individual bills at Morrison’s Cafeteria the fastest and then see if we got it right at the cashier. It made him a great District Treasurer for thirty years, a good board member for the Wesleyan Investment Foundation, and he was on the finance committee of the Southern Wesleyan University board.

He was disciplined and hard working. Even this past Sunday he wore himself out trying to help Patricia with the lunch during and after the concert. I would say my Dad was principled but not legalistic. He had a strong sense of duty and incredibly high standards for himself. He was much less demanding of others. He never stopped kneeling to pray even when his body was most exhausted at his last. I felt bad Wednesday night that I didn’t come over to the prayer meeting service because I knew my Dad would—and in times past he might have struggled with whether to go home to put on a tie.

He was at church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and any other time the door was open—and he was usually one of the first ones there. While most families take their vacations to go to the beach or the mountains, my Dad’s time off was always given to camp meetings, district conferences, and General Conference every four years. A sign of his devotion to God was the fact that he didn’t watch TV on Sunday because he felt he would inevitably spend all day watching football instead of thinking about God.

When he disagreed with others, he disagreed well, I thought. He wouldn’t have been his father’s son if he didn’t have strong opinions at times, especially in his younger years. But he didn’t make enemies, and he didn’t keep enemies. He always chose unity over division, the love of Christ over the cold shoulder. He was a model for me in conflict. He was not afraid to say what he thought even in a charged room, but he didn’t attack others when he said it, and he didn’t stop talking to them after the conversation was over.

My father was forgiving. I have been very thankful to God for this last month. My sister Debbie and her family were here about a month ago and saw my Dad. About three weeks ago my sister Juanita was here with most of her family and Sharon was here with most of her family and saw my Dad. And of course my sister Patricia and her family enjoyed my Dad every week, as did those of you from this church.

About three weeks ago on a Sunday night I got a phone call from my sister Debbie to pray. My Dad suddenly got violently sick and later told my Mom he had felt like he was going to die. It was a long night for me wondering if I would get a call in the night that he had passed.

But he didn’t. He made fairly quick improvement. I made one of those gambles we make in life. Do I fly down? He seemed to be okay and we planned to come see him this weekend—my wife Angela, Tom and Sophie. My step-daughter Stefanie was able to visit him on her Spring Break.

I’m so glad that I got to talk to him and Mom these last three weeks almost every day. It is an amazing thing to be able to say that you have never once questioned your father’s love for you. Compared to other parents, his scoldings barely counted as raising his voice. If he were to pop down this morning after a cup of heavenly coffee, he would say, “Don’t worry about it Kenneth. I know you love me.”

That’s the way our father was. A verse several in the family have remembered him telling them in times of challenge is Philippians 1:6: “he who began a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Although death took my father before Christ returned, God certainly did both begin a good work in my Dad and God was faithful to perform that good work in him up until the day he died.

If you ever see any good in us, remember, that’s what our Dad and our husband was like every day. If you ever see one of us do something selfless or generous, think of my Dad. If you see any one of us work hard or be faithful when others took the easy route, think of my Dad. If you see any of us do an act of kindness or compassion, if you see us forgive or work for reconciliation, think of my Dad. That’s what he was like every day.

Memories of My Father 6

Memories 1
Memories 2
Memories 3
Memories 4
Memories 5
______________
I want to say a few things about my Dad's work. He worked for General Motors for thirty years, first for Motors Insurance Corporation (MIC) and then at the end for GMAC which absorbed it. It was a pay cut from Tasty Bread at first, but it had promise of a future. My Dad excelled at whatever he put his hand to do and GM was no different. If WW2 had not come up, he had a scholarship to go to school to become a draftsman. But instead he became an insurance adjuster.

My Dad was good with numbers. We used to race when we would eat out at Morrison's Cafeteria in Fort Lauderdale to see who could add up the individual tickets they gave to each person as they came through the cafeteria line. It was a fun game to see if we came up with the same number the cashier came up with when it was time to pay.

I've mentioned that he was District Treasurer for thirty years. When I went to college, I quickly gave up keeping as finely balanced a checkbook as he kept. He was on the board of Wesleyan Investment Foundation for several years, and when he was active on the Southern Wesleyan University Board of Trustees, he was on the finance committee.

Even when he became an emeritus, he was quite keen to continue going to the SWU board meetings, in part as a sense of duty.  I wonder if it also in part was so that he didn't feel like he was becoming useless. He had great rituals. The garage has a good stock of towels, toilet paper, and plates. He loved to take that paltry coupon on paper towels to get a few cents off. And he loved Staples.

He loved pens. Although I now carry pad and pen almost everywhere I go, at one point he repeatedly would shake his head at me and say something like, "I don't understand how an educated person like you doesn't carry a pen around."

He loved watches. He always kept me in good supply. The watch he was wearing when he died had a special hand that he kept on California time where my sister Juanita lives. Of course he used the stop watch on his digital watches constantly to see how long trips took.

He carried around a "Pocket Secretary" for as long as I remember. It had all the usual accouterments of a calendar, addresses, phone numbers, a pad of paper, and of course a pocket for coupons. He always wore a suit to church as a matter of duty, and the Pocket Secretary was bound to be in his coat pocket.

I always wanted to be as organized as he was, but it's only been in the digital age that I've begun to move in that direction. You have to find your own way on these sorts of things. What works for one person doesn't always work for another.

Both in Indiana and then in Florida, my Dad spent a lot of time on the road driving from place to place as an adjuster. He used to have a Polaroid camera in the trunk of his company car to take pictures of car damage. Those company cars were nice too. We always had one nice car because of his job.

Sometimes there would be a hurricane or flooding that would take Dad to New Orleans or somewhere they needed larger numbers of adjusters to assess damage. I remember that it was always a financial treat because of the overtime. Even then, my father would not work on Sunday. I was just understood.

My Mom wondered if he might have moved up the ladder more if he had participated more in the social life of GM. My Dad obviously didn't drink and wouldn't have blended in well at a corporate party. Still, after I went off to college they were flying him up to Atlanta to work during the week and flying him home for the weekends. Sometimes my Mom would go with him.

I have only memories of having memories of the move to Florida. I know about where the hotel was on A1A where they initially put us up.  I know that someone, I think my oldest sister Patricia, got horribly sun burned on a preparatory visit before moving.

The two story house we finally moved into was in Wilton Manors and my Dad only paid 25,000 for it at the time. It's now worth probably a half a million. It initially had a wrap around screened porch but my Dad had half the porch filled in so he could have an office, I think. I remember him working well into the evening on paper work from his day.

We used to joke about the old song, "When you coming home Dad, I don't know when." As a father now, I know my Dad was incredibly faithful to make time for me. We did play catch. He did come to all my games. It was always in good fun that I joked about him not having a lot of extra time to play.

Then of course when I went off to college he would joke, "When you coming home son..."  Even last week he hinted at the line on the phone. You can't beat yourself up about these things. I knew I needed to see him soon, and we got within a week of making it happen. I'm just thankful for being able to talk with him briefly on the phone nearly every day these last three weeks. He was cheerful and optimistic, and exactly as I'll always remember him.

Memories of My Father 5

Memories 1
Memories 2
Memories 3
Memories 4

Now Memories 5
____________________

I suspect that my father was ready to settle down after he got back from the war. My mother, Helen Shepherd, knew his sister Frances from Frankfort Pilgrim College, where Mom's dad taught and my Mom was finishing up college. She went home with Frances one weekend to help with the music at a "Rally Day" at my grandfather Dorsey Schenck's church.

My mother is an excellent pianist and can play most anything by ear once she gets a sense of the tune. She could also sing although she was quite shy in those days. While she was there one Sunday for Rally Day, she saw a picture of my Dad in his military uniform and the thought crossed her mind, "I wonder if I would ever date him" (even though she was kind of seeing someone else at the time). My Dad was not yet home from Germany. Not long after returning he would ask her out and after two months of dating, asked her to marry him.

Since they didn't believe in jewelry of any kind, he gave her a cedar "hope" chest as an engagement present. Mom thinks it might have been the night he asked her to marry him that she picked up the tip he left on the table and gave it to him outside, thinking that he had forgotten his change. Obviously my mother's family did not go out to eat!

For a wedding present, Dad gave her a Kimball piano.  They were married on July 9, 1947, about 4 months after they got engaged. While they were dating and some thereafter, my Dad worked for his older brother Vernon delivering cakes early in the morning. Dad always thought of Vernon as somewhat of an entrepreneur, perhaps a gift he inherited from Dorsey.

Since my Dad would be up delivering cakes at 4am in the morning, he sometimes fell asleep on dates. After they were engaged, he would fall asleep with his head on my mom's shoulder parked out in the country somewhere, maybe by some corn field. Sounds suspicious!  But knowing how innocent my mother is, I know for certain you couldn't have sold popcorn to that event.  You might, however, have easily done some research on the sounds crickets make!

He was in Indy (I think 65 now runs over where his grandfather's house was at that time), and she was in Frankfort. She didn't have a phone so he wrote letters in between visits. When they were finally married at Frankfort First Pilgrim, they had a double wedding with some friends of my mom's.  A neighbor of my Mom suggested they might save on expenses if they went in together.

The day of the wedding, my Mom felt like they needed some more flowers.  She had no car, so she walked around to some friends whom she thought had pretty flowers in their yards and asked if she could have some. By the time she got to the wedding she was so tired it was an effort to walk down the aisle.

They drove all the way to Whiteland that night, getting there about midnight. Mom's brother Paul followed them down to Dad's house to make sure they had enough money for their honeymoon. They went on for about a week in Mississippi and Louisiana, visiting one of the places he had been during the war like Fort Polk in Jackson, MI. They went on to a Pilgrim Holiness camp meeting in Pineville, Louisiana, where they were asked to sing and did.

After they got married, they set up home in the apartment over grandpa Dorsey's store. Dad helped in the store in addition to his morning routes. After the better part of a year he started working for Tasty Bread, delivering bread in the morning. This left him exhausted at times, difficult to wake up, my mom said.

They lived there for four years. During that time Patricia and Juanita were born. Then they moved to Evanston Avenue, where Sharon was born.  My mom's brother Paul was married by then and moved there as well, not far from the old Northside Pilgrim Church, whose congregation would eventually found Trinity Wesleyan in Indianapolis.

From Evanston Avenue they moved to Crestview, where Debbie was born. Then to Preston Drive on the very north edge of Indy, just south of Carmel. What was once country is now bustling and continuous city.  Each time they moved, my uncle Paul and his wife Betty moved nearby too.

I was born while they lived on Preston Drive.  I have only the faintest memories of Preston Dr., but I remember that Dad would walk with me out to a fire hydrant at the entrance and we would have deep talks. I was only three or four, but I'm sure they were deep. I would get hair cuts in that neighborhood, although my first one was in Frankfort.

When I was still four in 1971, General Motors moved my Dad to Florida, where I would grow up.  They lived in Wilton Manors, within Fort Lauderdale, until in the year 2000 they finally moved to Lakeland to be closer to family.  Patricia's husband Dennis had pastored in Lakeland since the late 70s, after being our pastor in Fort Lauderdale for a number of years in the mid-70s.

My Dad was eternally devoted to my Mom. After her back issues and then after a really rough spell she had last summer, he sometimes spent so much time thinking of her that he forgot to eat himself. He was having occasional bouts of disorientation from time to time, and no doubt forgetting to eat didn't help.

A fond memory of my step-daughter Stefanie is last year when she and a friend surprised him and my Mom.  They showed up at the front door out of the blue in Lakeland during Spring Break. My Dad had been in a deep sleep and didn't recognize her and her boyfriend at first. He was so embarrassed after he finally put it together. Mom kept saying, "Let them in, Lee. Let them in." We all had a good laugh about it afterwards, and it remains a great memory.

My Mom has commented this week how much he waited on her. Thankfully she has regained a good deal of her physical strength from last year. And her mind is sharp as a tack.

Memories of My Father 4

Memories 1
Memories 2
Memories 3

And now Memories of My Father 4:
___________________
Before I move on, I want to go back to talk a little bit more about what I remember of my Dad's World War 2 days.  He was drafted in the Army in 1943 when he was 17 years old. He could still remember his serial number when he died. He had already graduated from Arsenal Tech High earlier that year. In later years he went to at least one reunion of Tech High and could occasionally be heard to sing the first line of its fight song: "Glory to Tech High." I don't remember him ever getting past the first line.

Because he had to help work in his Dad's store, he didn't get to participate much in after school activities. I believe he tried out for the baseball team but it was a moot point in the end. As a good Hoosier he loved basketball, but of course it wasn't nearly as much the rage when we moved to Florida in 1971.

But Dad faithfully signed me up for Wilton Manors baseball in Florida and I did a year or two in Farm League, and maybe three in Little League. He came to every game as far as I can remember. When I did track and cross country in high school, he again came to almost every meet. Faithful and loyal are definitely adjectives that have been mentioned these last 48 hours.

After he was drafted, Dad did Basic Training for three months down south in Jackson, Mississippi at Fort Polk. Then he was at Camp Livingston in Louisiana.  I remember him saying that when they went out on bivouac, they were afraid of snakes and would zipp themselves up tightly at night so snakes wouldn't crawl in with them to get warm. I remember him talking about how the trains zig-zagged around so they couldn't easily be found out and bombed.

He talked about how his Dad drove up north of Indianapolis in blizzard like conditions to bring him home around Christmas of 1943, I think. I can't remember if it was as far north as Kokomo but it was quite a drive and Dad was very thankful to his dad for it. He remembered this Christmas event as a memorable time when his Dad did something significant for him as an act of love.

Dad was in the ordinance corp. He started out in Patton's 3rd Army. Some of that first group (the 563) had a chance to go to college on a certain program at one point, and Dad was disappointed at first that he wasn't one of the ones chosen.  He had wanted to study drafting and actually had a scholarship when he was drafted. But then everyone in that college group was suddenly shipped out.

Some of his friends in that group died just after the Battle of the Bulge (this was after Dad had left the company).  They were in the back of a truck next to a river in Belgium around New Years and the driver drove too close and the truck flipped in. 12 of the men in the back drowned, in part because of the frigid waters. Dad had told this story in general, but I got the full story from Carl Petty, President of the 563 Ordinance Company, at the Lakeland funeral.

In these last years he went to many reunions of the first group he had been with. In fact, one of his closest army friends (and a jokester), Tom Mitchell, knew someone in the Kentucky legislature in the early 90's when I was at Asbury and got both him and me officially pronounced Kentucky Colonels, just like Colonel Sanders. I'd be prouder of the fact if they hadn't misspelled our name "Schneck" on the certificate.

Not long thereafter Dad was chosen to be part of a new seed company formed in the new 4th Army. I think he was a Master Sergeant at that time over an ordinance company.  He would end the war as a Sergeant Major, the highest rank of an enlisted man. He could have gone on to become an officer, but he was done at that point and wanted to get back home.

Like so many soldiers, he sent money home for his mom to spend. I think it took three weeks for the boat to make it across the Atlantic to England, probably in early 1944. They sailed from Fort Dix in New York.  I believe he had a friend there, a nurse named Patricia. Dad liked the name...

He said the boat also zig-zagged across to avoid German U-boats. He was stationed in Cheltenham when in England.

Then as I've mentioned they moved to Nancy, France, which is where I think he was when Hitler killed himself. He was there a year. Then they moved to Mannheim, going through Luxembourg.  Dad was in Mannheim when the war was finally over for good after VJ Day. They were scheduled to go to the Pacific arena when the war ended.

There's a stretch of road just south of Gainesville, Florida where you come down from a higher point down into a flat stretch of land. Dad always said it reminded him of the Plains of Westphalia in Germany. And sure enough, in our 1995 trip through that area, Mom and I saw exactly what he meant.

I regret that we never made it to Normandy on either of our trips to Paris together. The first was in 95, just after the 50th anniversary of D-Day.  The second was around 2002 with Angie and her parents. Thankfully he was spared the worst of the war.

I do remembering him feeling like he wasn't right with God when he was in the war. But he sent his tithe back home just the same knowing that he would get right with God eventually, and he didn't want to have to pay back tithe as restitution then.  I know he went to Paris on leave at least once when he was in France. He probably went to see some 1940s black and white movie, horrible sinner that he was.

One story I always found funny was he and his friends teasing French girls. In their sweetest voices they would say something like, "If you aren't the ugliest thing I've ever seen." He said they would just smile back at them, since of course they didn't understand English.

My Dad never had a knack for languages. He remembered a few French phrases, "tout de suite" (immediately) and "ça ne fait rien" (it doesn't matter). Mind you, it was horribly hard for me to track them down because of his pronunciation. Sunday after Sunday growing up he would slaughter "buenos dias" trying to greet Rev. Carlos Gonzalez, a Columbian minister who attended our church in Fort Lauderdale.

Funeral Arrangements for my Father

In case anyone has not heard the funeral arrangements for my Dad, there will be two funerals:

Friday, March 30 in Lakeland, Florida

• at Faith Wesleyan Church
• viewing from 10-11am
• funeral at 11am

Monday, April 2 in Indianapolis, Indiana

• at Eastlawn Wesleyan Church
• viewing from 9:30-11:00am
• funeral from 11-12:00
• committal at Memoral Park Cemetery off Washington St. thereafter

taken by Shirley Duncan last month after church

Memories of My Father 3

Memories 1
Memories 2

Now Memories of My Father 3
_____________
My father liked to go out to eat. The cashier at Cracker Barrel today was so sad to hear of his passing. It is Tuesday, the day that meatloaf is the special.

My Dad liked a host of foods that few others seem to like. He liked liver for example. I remember him eating braunschweiger as a child, which I personally didn't mind. I had asked him on Skype from Germany recently if he thought he liked these things because his mother cooked these sorts of things for him as a child. I wondered if it was German background, since the Germans know 1000 ways to cook an intestine. He thought it was possible.

Dad liked sausage and bread.  He was almost half way through a McDonalds sausage biscuit when his heart went out of rhythm Monday. With his mom's good Dunker background no doubt, he liked breads. One of the treats was when he would make corn shell tacos, often on a Saturday for lunch.

So perhaps it was no surprise that he discovered he had diabetes at about the age of 50. Unlike so many, he stuck to a diet religiously. In fact, after his first week on an insulin pill the doctor took him off.  We were at a hotel for Brooksville Camp Meeting around 1972 when his blood sugar dropped so low that he went dizzy in the night and hit his head on the TV in the room.

I sense I am a lot like my Dad in his enjoyment of going out to eat. Don't invite me over to your house. Dad was a very friendly person as I think I am, but I suspect that deep down he was an introvert. He didn't like going over to visit people because that was pressure.

One fun thing about my Dad had to do with eating out on Sunday. It was a good old Pilgrim Holiness tradition not to "merchandize" on the Sabbath.  In other words, you didn't eat out on Sunday because it caused someone else to have to work and Nehemiah decried those who bought and sold things outside the city wall on the Sabbath.

But there was an exception--if the "ox was in the ditch," as my grandfather (I think) used to say quoting Matthew 12:11. And when you were traveling, that was an exception. I honestly think my Dad enjoyed being able to eat out on Sunday when he was traveling. There were times when they would visit our house when my wife Angie wanted to cook but I could tell my Dad preferred to go out. Why waste a legitimate opportunity to go out?

We didn't watch TV on Sunday either.  My Dad felt that if he let himself watch TV on Sunday he would watch football all day rather than worship. In my teens he would occasionally make an exception for the debut of Star Wars after Sunday evening church.

My Dad was also quite strict with the TV, especially in the early days, about my sisters not watching violence.  Of course the violence then was cowboy shows.  I guess my oldest sister Patricia would try to turn the volume down when a shoot out was coming. One favorite story is when she didn't catch a shot one time.  Being proactive, she went running to intercept Dad before he got there.  "It was in self-defense," she pleaded lest the TV get turned off.

If someone think my father strict, my grandfather was even more. In those days it was considered sinful in many Pilgrim Holiness churches even to own a TV. My grandpa may not have come to visit for a while because of a small black and white TV. Some had a philosophy of giving others a good "letting alone," no doubt following texts like 2 Thessalonians 3:14.

(Incidentally, I remember the late David Smith who taught at Frankfort Pilgrim College talking about some fellow professors showing up at his trailer having heard that he had a TV. He shewed them away by saying they'd be over to look in their homes next if he let them search his.)

I was either not yet born or not aware of my surroundings when my Dad got into some of these conflicts. He apparently was willing to bear some disapproval, although I think it did bother him. But I also know it wasn't my family's way to flaunt our "freedom" either. My mother always tried to dress my sisters appropriately when visiting my grandparents.

My Dad also took some flack for going along with the merger of the Pilgrim Holiness Church to form The Wesleyan Church. One family member told him he'd pray for his soul if he went with the merger--movement toward liberalism and a one world religion, I suppose. I don't think it sat too well with Dad.

I like to say that my father was strict but not legalistic. What I mean is that he had more rules for himself than most others, but he didn't do it for the rules sake. He did them because he thought they were what God wanted him to do. Legalism is when you like rules for their own sake.

Memories of My Father 2

continued from Memories 1
___________
My father was an early riser. Growing up I don't remember ever beating him up in the morning. He got up, made coffee, shaved most of his years of course with a straight razor as there was no other option. In high school he always had a bowl of cereal waiting for me for my groggy morning. It's only been since I've been married that I fell into this pattern myself.

I don't know if he was always a morning person. I have wondered from time to time how the army might have shaped his habits. Early to rise, very keen to be on time. His stopwatch was one of his idiosyncrasies. He would time how long we had traveled, stopped of course for the rest park. He didn't like unplanned side trips, unlike my mother. I do this sometimes with things, imitating something I always found fun about my Dad.

In terms of Myers-Briggs personality types he was a "J" who kept things in order. He wasn't an ogre about it, which is the perfect kind of "J."  He had the benefits of orderliness without the aftertaste.  He was someone who could do taxes for some of my sisters. He was the District Treasurer for the Florida District of the Wesleyan Church for thirty years.

I remember the huge four inch thick ledger he kept on all the churches in the district by hand. Then of course in the electronic age he switched to doing the budget on the computer. I vaguely remember the year he entered all that data. He would use Quicken from that point on.

He was a "J," so I'm sure he annoyed some churches and District Superintendents who would have liked a more flexible "bank" for a treasurer. But he had a constant override. He may not want to deviate from the plan. He might not want to take that detour down Stinking Creek Road in Tennessee. But you knew he would. There might be a little grumbling to himself. "Helen, we want to get to such and such a place by nightfall."

But you knew he would. There would in fact be no stopping him from doing whatever or going wherever from that point on, even if you changed your mind and told him that you didn't want to go there any more. And usually he was glad he did deviate in the end. My son Tom reminds me of him a little in that respect.

So the cereal bowl would always be there waiting in the morning. It was common for him to make small talk with me as I ate the cereal with closed eyes, having just stepped out of the shower and dressed. Sometimes he would ask two or three times something or another, "Did you sleep well?" When I would finally say, "YES" a little louder than normal, I would then apologize. "Sorry for raising my voice."

He'd drop me off at the high school, give me a kiss on the cheek and then go off to work. It's a ritual I've repeated now with my own children. It was only in high school that he was able to do this, maybe because it began before eight. In elementary and middle school it was always Mom.

My father grew up in a strict home. I seem to recall him talking about having to sit out a square dance at School 51 in Indy because they didn't believe in dancing. I also remember him talking about being a bit embarrassed when his Dad would show up in a butcher's apron because his younger brother Maurice was in trouble again. His Dad owned a corner store more than once, although during the Depression he had to sell it and go to work himself as a butcher.

Dorsey Schenck, my father's father, was a doer, not a thinker. He was an entrepreneur and a church planter. I guess there was a little awkwardness once when my mother's father was grading some of his work toward ordination at Frankfort Pilgrim College, where my mother's father taught.  Dorsey could lift a whole engine out of a car on a pulley--of course they weren't as complex as they are now.

I remember my grandfather Dorsey letting me shoot the b-b gun he used to shoot squirrels away in his back yard on Dequincy Street. I missed the target and shot out a lamp several feet away.  He died in 1974 so I must have been about 6 or 7 at the time. After his death, my Dad's mother always called me "Boy" and I wondered if she knew my name (I was grandchild #31). Mom and Dad thought she did.  She died in 1977.

Both my Dad's parents died at the age of 75, interestingly, while my Dad made it to 87. It was his heart, in the end, that gave out. He knew he had a murmur but didn't want to risk having it fixed. My uncle Maurice had died on the operating table having a blockage opened over ten years ago, but the aorta wall was apparently weak and the surgeon punctured it at Ball State Hospital. My Dad (and Mom) had no interest in chancing any surgeries to clear blockages or fix leaky valves after that.

That funeral of my Uncle Maurice, some time around the year 2000, was one of the first times I saw my Dad helpless. There was nothing he could do for his brother. I had never really thought of him in those terms before. To me, my Dad was smart and in control. He could find his way around any city, to any destination. In any crisis he knew what to do. He knew how to use a map. He was a planner.

The first chink in my Dad's directional armor I remember was our first time in Europe. I was working on my doctorate in England in 1995 and was headed to Tübingen, Germany for two months. My parents took the opportunity to visit Paris and go to Germany with me. It was my father's first time there since the war.

He had been stationed in Nancy, France in the final days of the war, then in Mannheim, Germany, just after the war ended I believe. We did not stop at Nancy because we were on a train, but rented a car to drive around Mannheim as I recall. There wasn't much familiar, although I believe there was still an auto factory where my Dad had worked. I remember him saying that there was still a sniper in the factory when they first arrived.

I remember being amazed at the "two layer" effect of the houses in Mannheim. The first floor might have one date of construction and be in one style. The upper floors might have a post-1945 date and be in a different style. We bombed Mannheim to oblivion during the war.

I may also have seen traces of the changed situation as my father visited a quite different place than when he was there before. Last time he was here the Allies were in charge and had moral authority over the fallen land. Now it was a post-reunification miracle in the making, although it was about to have a serious economic bump before the miracle fully took off. It seemed to me that he needed to make a minor adjustment in his thinking to think of Germany as a free country that could actually be good.

We went to Munich on that trip. We also went to Berne, Switzerland, where my Dad I believe had once gone on vacation from when he was in the Army. To get there from Munich, we traveled by train through Zurich and stopped there briefly. This was all done on Eurail pass. I remember our surprise to realize that the train from Munich to Zurich passed briefly through Austria, for which we did not have a pass. Dad had to pay for three tickets for that short stint across.

I regret that he never made it to Berlin. In my first Fulbright in Tübingen he and mom came over to visit us for a while. Angie's father was also with us. We went to Munich again that time and went up to see Nuremberg with a rental car with him and mom to see where the war trials had been. We went to Dachau where the concentration camp had been.

His directional anxiety was in crisis mode that visit.  As a son who prided himself in my father's ability to find his way around any part of a city or the United States, it was noteworthy that he was uncomfortable being dependent on someone else to find his way. In 1995 he still could get his bearings pretty good. When both Angie's parents and my parents went to England and Paris with us around 2001 it was different. He was very anxious when I was not around to speak at least a little French.

I regret that they weren't able to come visit us this last time in Germany. Dad would have gladly come, but Mom's back was very bad in the Fall. I had debated flying down to see him these last two months, especially when he had an incident three weeks ago. But he recovered fairly quickly and we were coming to see them this weekend. Thankfully, I was able to talk to him on the phone almost every day these last three weeks. He was his cheerful, optimistic self.

Memories of My Father 1

One of the things that saddens me about a death is the loss of memory for those who remain. I often tried to remember the details of my father's life, but my cursed memory has forgotten much. I believe my sister Sharon did some videoing of my father's reminiscences in recent years.  But I thought I would record some of my memories of his memories, and memories of my own as well.

My Dad was born in Thorntown, Indiana on October 24, 1924 to a preacher/church planter in the Pilgrim Holiness Church, Dorsey Schenck.  His mom was Esther Elma Miller Schenck, who was of Dunker descent (we always said "DUNKERDS," but I've never seen it spelled that way). My cousin Tim recently discovered a 1930 census indicating that Dorsey's grandfather had been born in Holland and thus that my grandfather's family was Dutch.

It explained the pronunciation "SKANK." If we had been German, it surely would have been "SHANK." Ironically, I suppose my grandmother was the one who was actually German.

My Dad had shared memories of his childhood from time to time. His father's father, Samuel Schenck, died when he was only 8 of a ruptured appendix.  Actually died in the hospital that my youngest children Tom and Sophie were born in--St. Joseph's Hospital on the northwest side of Kokomo. My dad had some basic memory of his farm north of Frankfort. We actually tried to find it once but he wasn't totally sure. Both Samuel and his wife Pearl Dorsey are buried in the Hope Cemetery of the United Methodist Church out in the country north of Frankfort.

My Dad loved to visit his mother's family, I think in Camden, Indiana.  They were Dunkers who wore black suits with straps and long beards. They had black and white cars by the time I was born. His grandfather on that side was Amsy Miller and grandmother Salome Wise Miller. I remember his saying how much he and his cousins (e.g., the Mohlers) liked running around the house. I got the impression it had twists and turns that made it a child's dream.

I also got the impression that the Miller side of the family liked to play practical jokes, and it has always been my impression that the Dunkers had a wry sense of humor. One event I remembering him mentioning was how they would say, "Think fast," and throw a jar of molasses across to the other. At least on one occasion, it broke all over the place.

My Dad was a funny guy, I always thought. In my youth he would regularly embarrass me at restaurants by his comments to waitresses. "Was everything all right?" she might say.  "There is a problem," he might respond. "It's all gone." More than one waitress looked at him gravely, not getting it.

While I'm on the subject, it was almost impossible to pay for your own meal with him, let alone his. Some of my brother-in-laws became somewhat successful, but I rarely was able. When I was in school he would say, "I'll let you pay when you have a job."  But the day never came.

In fact, it was almost a fault that he could hardly accept a gift.  He would say, "Don't be too proud to accept a little help."  Generosity is certainly one of the first adjectives I think of when I think of him. He didn't have much to give, but he would give away almost everything he had, especially to his children.

He did have a strict side.  He could hardly not have had one growing up Pilgrim Holiness. I remember a story about one day in Ft. Lauderdale when he was working on A1A as an insurance adjuster for MIC (Motors Insurance Corporation, which eventually became GMAC). A man who had clearly had a little too much to drink came into the office off the street and asked my Dad for money.

"What you need is to sober up!" my Dad responded righteously.

"Thank you for those kind words," the man answered back.  It made my Dad feel awful. I don't remember if he took the man to get something to eat after that...

A Good Day for Eternity

My father woke as every day,

cheerful, come what may.

He no doubt shaved, put on his clothes

and headed out to play.

A coffee and a paper

            were the morning fare each time,

So why not on this final morn

            begin the daily rhyme?

A sip or two with mother

            before eternity,

The perfect end and beginning

            for a noble life to free.

My father was a great man,

            far greater than I’ll be.

His love I never questioned

            nor his generosity.

He always thought of others first,

            and even when he grumbled,

You knew he could not help but do

            the selfless and the humble.

His love for God you could not doubt,

            no deed was out of sync

With the life he thought that God desired

            —he didn’t have to think.

A coffee with my mother

and time to visit God.

I’ll sleep now for a moment,

            take a little nod.

Don’t be too sad, I am at rest,

I leave this world in peace.

My life both here and elsewhere,

            you know will never cease.