That Old Red Truck

To: Chip Foose
Re: Overhaulin' Submission: 1968 GMC Pickup

This truck really embodies a personal story. A family story. Bought new by my great uncle Desmond, a lifelong commercial fisherman on Narragansett Bay, this truck was his daily driver for decades. A devoted husband and model of the blue collar American work ethic, he and his wife Ann never had children; only one another. Both lived into their nineties, and passed on within months of each other. I can still remember the strength in that old man's handshake. Even in relatively brief glimpses, he taught me a lot about genuine manhood.

One of their nephews, my uncle Dave, became in many ways the son they never had. As Ann and Dez advanced in years, my uncle Dave took it upon himself to look after and care for them as they continued to live together, independently, until the day they died. Sometime in the mid-nineties, uncle Dave took notice of the old, tired, GMC pickup parked on the property, having fallen into disrepair and disuse sometime ago. He offered to take it off Dez's hands, and my great uncle agreed.

A career firefighter and casual car enthusiast, uncle Dave took it upon himself to restore the old GMC to what extent he was able, swapping in a salvaged drivetrain, shoring up the body, and shooting it fire engine red. When Dave pulled up to Dez's house in the resurrected truck, Dez of course feigned horror that Dave had ruined "his" truck; grinning the whole time. From that time on, that 1968 GMC became a picture of the relationship between these two men; a physical embodiment of the love and mutual admiration they shared. This became especially significant after 2001, as Ann and Dez passed on, willing the care of their very modest estate to my Uncle Dave. To Dave, that GMC became all that he had left of Dez in this world, and caring for it became a way for him to continue to express his care for his uncle, even after his passing.

In addition to being a genuinely selfless public servant, the other thing one needs to know about my Uncle Dave, however, is that he is one of the automotively unluckiest people I have ever met. Between car accidents and mechanical mishaps, for a car enthusiast, his story has all the makings of an ongoing tragedy. And, for all its personal value, the GMC has never managed to escape entirely unscathed.

Moving to RI for college in 1999, I would visit my uncle, and was always drawn to the fire engine red antique truck in his driveway. It always seemed that there was some project, some part, some need for repair that we could spend the hours chatting about during my visits. Indeed, it was almost always the center of our conversations. In the spring of 2000, I convinced Dave to let me take the truck with me up to NH for my then-girlfriend's senior prom. My excitement at being set loose for the weekend with this treasured vehicle was short-lived, however, as about five miles down the road, that salvaged V8 blew a rod and ground to a halt. Needless to say, I was a bit late to the prom.

A 'new' motor was eventually salvaged and installed, and the GMC limped along for a number of years more. During this time, I was able to redeem that prom debacle by borrowing the truck again - this time successfully - for another weekend: In the spring of 2005, the old GMC was the 'getaway' vehicle for my wife and I at our wedding. That remains a precious memory.

Eventually, though, the truck came to sit for a year or more with some mechanical issue or another, which was costly for the body. Time and disuse were again taking their toll. A few years back, my uncle once again rallied around the cause of Dez's memory, and had the body of that truck completely gone through and reasonably restored. Still working off some variety of salvaged drivetrain, it was running, however, and looked as good as it had in years. As the ongoing vehicular tragedy would have it, though, not two months after that restoration, someone tried, unsuccessfully, to steal the rims off the truck while it was parked in public, unbeknownst to my uncle. He was lucky to have escaped harm when the front wheels spun off at 45mph, mangling the newly restored front end. Back to the body shop it went.

That was a few years back. Now, the truck again sits in my uncle's garage, this time with a blown transmission. I asked him recently if he wanted me to take it off his hands: I just figured he might have been tired of dumping money into it and willing to give someone else a turn. He told me then, though, that for him it was still a powerful reminder of his uncle Dez, and he wasn't ready to part with it just yet. And, he said, for all the thousands upon thousands of dollars that he has invested over the years, he feels like he's never actually had the chance to simply enjoy it; there's just always been something that has managed to crop up and get in the way. For a man that has given so much - for his family and community - it would be such a blessing to be given the gift of that old GMC, done up the way it ought to be done, and ready for him to just… drive.

Some years from now, when Uncle Dave is done enjoying it to his satisfaction, it's understood that that old GMC will find it's way to my garage. And, on top of that, my younger brother and his wife just gave birth to their second child earlier this year - a son. They named him Desmond, in honor of my great uncle. If I have my way - and with a little help? - that old GMC pickup will live to see its fourth generation. I'm a bit biased, of course, but that just strikes my as a story worth telling, and a vehicle worth "Overhaulin'". I hope that you might share the sentiment.

Dawn

"But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

[2] The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
[3] You have multiplied the nation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
[4] For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
[5] For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
[6] For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
[7] Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this."

(Isaiah 9:1-7 ESV)

Advent is a season of tension – of waiting and anticipation. A season defined by darkness, but by that sort of darkness that lives in a state of tangible expectation of the light that is about to break forth.

This time of year in New England, we know a lot about darkness. These days, I wake up, get dressed, walk the dog and drive to work in the dark. It’s dark again before I get in the truck to come back home again. As challenging as this routine can be – facing the alarm, getting out of bed and preparing for the day in total darkness – there’s a certain blessing in it. Namely, that I get to be awake to witness that moment each day when the darkness of night gives way to the dawning of a new day.

On my way to work each morning for the past few weeks, as I head over the General Sullivan Bridge and look east, I can actually watch the turning of the tide. The horizon just quietly begins to glow, and the darkness that had been there just moments before is replaced, in what seems like an instant, with the glorious colors of the breaking dawn. By the time I park my truck at the job site, the darkness of the previous night is all but a memory: it’s a new day.

This is what the prophet Isaiah describes here in chapter 9: this passage that Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, is recorded as quoting at the very outset of his earthly ministry. It’s a story of hope and expectation. Of the promise that, no matter how dark and broken and lost things may appear in our world today, the dawn is indeed coming. Isaiah speaks of the waiting of Israel for the birth of their Messiah. In Advent, we remember and join Israel as we wait in expectation for our saviors’ great and glorious return… That true and final dawning of Heavens’ new day.

In the season of Advent, we remember that we are a people who are to be defined by Hope, and the knowledge that, no matter the present darkness, the tide has already turned. The new day of Jesus is already accomplished, and just over the horizon. And very soon, the struggle and heartache and tension will be but distant memories as we find ourselves caught up in the eternal embrace of Jesus, our savior and our God.

"Dogmatics" Reflection: Part 3 - Speaking of the Church

“We ought not to be concerned on account of this impossibility, for on its own account we are relieved of all responsibility. What ought to concern us is that again and again we so obstinately tend to look to ourselves instead of to Jesus Christ. In Him everything has happened for and to the Church, that it might be true that its proclamation is the Word of God, And it can only be a question of our not resisting the Holy Spirit who says just this to us, and who will uphold us in all circumstances through all the actual human accomplishment or failure which is visible in the Church. It is only when we hold fast to this truth that we can survey this sphere and exist in it with neither frivolity nor despair, and therefore critically, in readiness both to decide and to act. That there is a Word of God for the Church… and again that beneath the Word there is a genuine human authority and freedom in the Church: that is something that must first and foremost be apprehended, accepted and reckoned with. This… is not to be understood abstractly… but concretely: as the Church for which Jesus Christ has provided we are now able to struggle manfully against the great human impossibility."

– K. Barth, “Church Dogmatics” I.2, p. 749

It is here, as the conversation of “Dogmatics” turns the Word of God as it comes to be made manifest in the life, work, and proclamation of the Church, that Barth and I – I believe – come to understand one another in a new way. We’ve talked about the nature of revelation: we’ve spoken of God’s work in history and of Jesus - we’ve spoken of prophets and apostles and of scripture. But as a pastor and preacher it is here, as we begin to discuss the manner of God’s speaking in and through the Church, that the force and scope of Barth’s logical consistency throughout our conversation comes more clearly into focus. It is here that his Christ-centeredness shines through in the concreteness of application. It is here that Barth’s great Christocentric vision is offered as the rightful foundation of – and therefore, as a great gift to – the Church in the midst of its present-ness and locality in our own day and age.

Yes, for all the mind-bending complexity of Barth’s dogmatic logic and rhetoric, it is here, as we discuss the Church, that Karl and I begin, perhaps, to see eye – to – eye. Because, for all the undeniable humanness and brokenness and imperfection in the Church inasmuch as it exists as an all too human enterprise – a brokenness with which, unfortunately, Barth would be all too familiar as a first hand witness of the acquiescence of the German church to the whims of the Nazi state – Barth refuses to allow this perspective to be that which defines the truth of the Church and its essential nature. His Christocentrism simply will not allow him to do so. The strength, clarity and consistency of his theology will suffer no absolutizing of any reality or perspective apart from that self-revelation of God to mankind which culminates in the person/event of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus that we find the God who is free for us, and through Jesus that we are given the gift of our own freedom for God. It is in God’s own communication of Himself in Jesus that humanity is given the means – the vocabulary and voice - by which we are able to engage in the impossible calling of the Church to the work of the proclamation of this God in and to our world at all. Because the revelation of God is and can only remain His SELF revelation, the Church which is called into existence in and through Jesus Christ for the purpose of God’s continuing witness and revelation in the world can never be defined at all by the varying degrees to which our human efforts fall nearer to or farther from the fulfillment of this calling according to our own resources or on our own terms. For all the inescapability its humanity – its incarnational essence - the Church exists in, through, and for Christ, and its reality is therefore rooted in Christ in such a way that we can only speak of the Church constructively after apprehending its genuine nature as defined, not by our humanness – but by the will, vision, purposes and accomplishments of Christ on her behalf. Simply put, Barth presses us to understand that we come to know the Church as she truly is not by gazing at our own humanity, or upon the flawed humanness of its present form, but by setting our eyes upon Jesus himself, the God by whom and for whom the Church exists at all.

Barth has no reluctance to speak about the humanity of the Church, and in doing so to speak of our responsibility in the midst of Gods call upon us as those within it. He is, however, eminently concerned that, before we turn our conversation to the human expression of the Church and to our role and responsibility within it, that we have first done the work of establishing the proper foundation for all of our speaking. Barth’s pen spills thousands upon thousands of words in the service of ensuring that we have landed upon the right set of presuppositions for our conversation. Namely, that when God is rightly spoken of by human beings, this is no less than a present miracle of the Holy Spirit breaking through the impossibility of human apprehension of the eternal God to enable God to speak His Word through the vehicle of human proclamation which constitutes the call - the very “raison d’etre” - of the Church. And furthermore, that every purpose and work of the Church centers on the event, the person and the completed work of Jesus Christ on behalf of the Church, such that, understood rightly, every work of the Church is really only to do after Christ, imperfectly and incompletely, that which He has already done in the world perfectly and completely. As such, our responsibility as the Church consists not in producing some new great work on God’s behalf, or accomplishing on our own that which Christ has heretofore left undone. It is, rather, to press ever more deeply into the realization of all that has already been accomplished for us; to apprehend the greatness of Christ’s salvation of us and to grasp ever more fully the breathtaking reality of God’s purposes for us as the Church: to look beyond and through the humanity of the Church to set our eyes upon who we truly are in Christ in such a way that our humanity is itself transformed more and more into His likeness and our lives brought into truer alignment with His great and glorious will. For Barth, this is the essence of human freedom: namely, the freedom of Humanity for God in and through Jesus Christ.

In the end, perhaps there is nothing newer, truer or deeper being spoken here than what the Apostle Paul himself said to the Philippian church in Phil. 3 in his own rebuttal of human self-confidence and achievement:

“If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

This passage of scripture has always spoken to me in a profound way, and this is perhaps why I resonate with Barth here, as He holds to his Christ-centered understanding of reality to the point that every other perspective, claim and achievement is relativized by comparison. For me, this passage perhaps illuminates how Barth understands what it means to be the Church: a community of people, “pressing on (together) to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of (us)”.

In a world of suffocating consumerism, entitlement, and self-centeredness, there is something of the Gospel here that would be unto us life itself, if we could only come to take hold of it.

Reflections on Barth's 'Church Dogmatics' - Part 2

“That the lame walk, that the blind see, that the dead are raised, that sinful and erring men as such speak the Word of God: that is the miracle of which we speak when we say that the Bible is the Word of God. To the comprehension of this statement there belongs, therefore, the recognition that its truth consists in the removing of an offence which is always and everywhere present, and that this takes place by the power of the Word of God. This offence, like the offence of the cross of Christ, is based on the fact that the Word of God became flesh and therefore to this very day has built and called and gathered and illumined and sanctified His Church amongst flesh. This offence is therefore grounded like the overcoming of it in the mercy of God. For that reason it must not be denied and for that reason, too, it must not be evaded. For that reason every time we turn the Word of God into an infallible Word of God we resist that which we ought never to resist, i.e., the truth of the miracle that here fallible men speak the Word of God in fallible human words – and we therefore resist the sovereignty of grace, in which God Himself became man in Christ, to glorify Himself in His humanity.”
– K. Barth, “Church Dogmatics” I.2, p. 529

It is here, at the point of Barth’s understanding of the revelation of God as we find it in scripture that we come, I believe, to the heart of the inescapable complexity within his overall theological paradigm. It is also here, consequently, that Barth makes himself anathema to those within conservative evangelicalism who – in some ways rightly, and in some ways perhaps over-defensively – suspect that Barth’s programme constitutes an undermining of and wholesale revolt against the inerrancy, infallibility, and hence the authority, of scripture as it has been traditionally understood. What is profoundly interesting about this rhetorical conversation is that in it, Barth would not at all understand his position as constituting a “lower” view of scripture at all; rather, quite the opposite. Barth would argue that an understanding of scripture as the Word of God which comprehends that work of revelation as occurring through, and in spite of, the thorough humanness and natural error of the authors of scripture, actually more fully appreciates the miraculous nature of God’s self-revelation through such means and therefore proves itself to be an indeed ‘higher’ view of this work of revelation than an understanding of scripture that requires that it’s human authors be miraculously (or ‘magically’) prevented the possibility of error, and hence in some way actually removed from their own humanness, in the act of writing.

To those of us coming to Barth from outside the theological streams of historical European, enlightenment, protestant liberalism, this line of thinking is so foreign that we are hard pressed not to simply dismiss it off hand as irredeemably and dangerously unorthodox. Indeed, I myself am not entirely sure what to do with it at this point. In the end, for those of us for whom the primacy of scripture is paramount, it may very well need to be dismissed as such. However, even if we are to dismiss this particular – and again I say, central – aspect of Barth’s thinking as erroneous, we must be ever careful not to do so simply off hand. The “greatness” of Barth as a theologian lies in the manner in which all thoughtful theology that follows him must do business with him; once encountered he cannot be circumvented, but must be conversed with. And, if in the end we determine that we disagree with Barth, we will be much better Christian thinkers for having had to wrestle with understanding precisely the point at which we have found it necessary to part ways with him.

It is clear to me that to understand Barth one must wrestle thoroughly with his doctrine of scripture, as disconcerting an experience as that may very well prove to be. And this is important for, if it is disconcerting, it is because Barth here seems to brush up against a profound and sublime understanding of God’s revelation; an understanding that takes the sovereignty, objectivity and miraculous grace of God’s self-revelation – and, specifically, the paradigmatic miraculous-ness of the incarnation of God - with utmost seriousness and genuine piety. It is not Barth’s intent to play fast and loose with the doctrine of scripture, but to deepen our appreciation of the miracle of revelation beyond mere parrot-talk of inerrancy and infallibility. And, as post-modernity comes of age around us, and with it the inherent skepticism of categorical assertions of this sort, those of us who hold to the primacy and authority of scripture must become fluent in these conversations of nuance and tension, or otherwise risk wholesale retreat from engagement with the seeking world around us.

At this moment, I am fairly certain that I cannot follow Barth here. I am further convinced, however, of the importance of learning how to understand and articulate why, exactly, that is.