Submitted by rlp on Mon, 06/23/2008 - 11:48.
The following is one of the last public prayers of Carlyle Marney, a roaring and robust, liberal (his word) Baptist who was the pastor of First Baptist of Austin and then went to Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. He died in 1978.
It is out of respect for Baptists like Marney that our church has remained Baptist, in spite of the fact that we take a beating for it. Many people show up at Covenant Baptist Church, expecting something that we are not. They generally don’t come back. One man almost ran to his car after I pulled out a rosary in my Sunday School class. And I suspect that many people see our name and pass us by, people who would have found what they needed here. For some reason I feel okay with that process. It feels like trusting. Be who you are and trust that the people who need you will find you. We were not called to be a powerful and influential church. And if we were any bigger we would have to have some sort of real administration, which would be a shame.
My love for the scriptures and for Baptists like Carlyle Marney have made me loathe to give up our name to mean-spirited fundamentalists who either don’t know our history or only live in 30 to 40 year chunks of it. So yes, we’re Baptists like Marney was. We’ll take whatever reputation that comes with that. With Christianity, really, you’re so busy trying to live that you don’t have time to worry much about what people think about your name. Your life speaks or it doesn’t. That’s all.
So this is a prayer Marney prayed from the pulpit just a few months before his death. I don’t know if this prayer exists in any book in print. I found it in a commemorative book called “Marney,” put out by Myers Park Baptist Church after he died.
If entering now the zenith of my brief arc around and within creation I should enter God’s grand hall tomorrow, called to my account for myself, I should offer this confession and defense if indeed I could do more than call down. But if able to give vocal response at all, I should say this, “Thou knowest, dear Lord of our lives, that for fifty of Thy/my years in ignorance, zest, zeal and sin I lived as if creation and I had no limit. I lived and wanted as if I had forever, without regard for time or wit or strength or need or limit or endurance and as if sleep were a heedless luxury and digestion an automatic process. But Thou, O Lord of real love did snatch my bit and ride me into Thy back pasture and didst rub my nose in my vulnerability and didst split my lungs into acquiescence and didst freeze my colon in grief loss and didst press me into that long depression at the anger I directed against myself. And Thou didst read over my shoulder my diary of that long journey when I did melt before Thee as a mere preacher. Thou didst hear.
Hear now my pitiable defense. In all my sixty years I killed no creature of Thine I did not need for food except for a few rattlesnakes, a turtle or two, two quail I left overlong in my coat and three geese poisoned on bad grain before I shot them in Nebraska, plus one wood duck in Korea. In all my years I consciously battered no child though my own claimed much need to forgive me. And consciously misused no person. Thou knowest my aim to treat no human being as thing, never to hate overlong, to pass no child without catching his or her eye and my innermost wish to love as Thou doest love by seeing no shade of color or class.
And Thou didst long ago hear my cry to let me go from Paducah. Thou knowest my covenant with Elizabeth in our youth and Thou knowest it has been kept better than my covenant with Thee and wilst Thou forgive? Indeed Thou hast.
Hear now my intention with grace as if it were fact. I do and have intended to be responsible in creation by covenant and where I have defaulted do Thou forgive. Forgive Thou my vicarious responsibility for all the defection from Thy purpose of all Thy responsible creatures and accept this my admission of utter dependency on Thy mercy.
Naked I came into the world, how I am dressed at the conclusion makes no difference. A pair of jeans or a Glasgow robe, it makes no difference. Meantime, well I mow, I cut wood for winter, I clean drainage ditches, I preach what is happening and look to see what God will do in the earth. I watch out always for babies and little rabbits in front of my mower and old folks nearby and black snakes worth preserving, and little puppies on the road, and the young-old who stutter and laugh and can’t hear too. The cry of us all, “Come Lord Jesus, come.
rlp
.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
