King David Returns To Jerusalem (Illustration by Amy Zaleta Martinez)
Dear Friends,
I’ve not prepared a new essay/homily for this week, but rather this extended letter (a slight memoir, if you will), bringing you up to date on my new one-person play, The Odyssey of King David.
Recently, I was asked that proverbial question—why? —why are you doing, at eighty-years of age, a new show on the iconic King of Israel? In part, here is the answer: This coming Sunday, I’ll be the lector reading Scripture from 2 Timothy at All Souls Anglican Church in Indianapolis. All Souls is a part of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA is the acronym), a relatively nascent body of orthodox believers who broke away, primarily, from The Episcopal Church, USA, some sixteen years ago, with now over 1,000 ACNA congregations in the US, Canada, and Mexico. God is always doing “a new thing,” isn’t he? Debby and I have been attending All Souls now for six months, and this will be my first, “upfront” participation in the service, the longest, I think, I’ve ever gone to any church without overtly taking part. But it’s exactly as I’ve wanted—a time to rest and replenish quietly within a small but growing group of gracious, Spirit-filled believers. They have been a blessing and inspiration to me. And any Vicar that goes out late on a Saturday night to get packets of hot chocolate for your “special-needs daughter” and the “little ones” of the church is my kind of pastor!
As I prepare for the reading, I’m already moved by Paul’s Epistle to Timothy, whose verses I’ve quoted several times on The Church’s One Foundation. A portion of the text from 2 Timothy reads as follows:
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry (2 Timothy 4:3-5 ESV).
I was sixteen when I first heard that call to “do the work of an evangelist”—and shortly thereafter was anointed at the alter by the elders of my local Nazarene church. I soon began toting my red Bible to high school (making me something of an oddball) and led the Youth for Christ Club (as it was called in those days) my senior year. That summer, after wining the Youth for Christ Preacher Boy’s Contest (a somewhat embarrassing title, no?) up at Winona Lake, Indiana, I enrolled at Olivet Nazarene College (now University) in Kankakee, Illinois, but was soon leaving the country on a Youth for Christ Teen Team, singing and preaching our way for five months through southern Europe, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and multiple countries in Africa. It wasn’t long after returning stateside until the “wicked ways of the theatre” (as my father called it) lured me to NYC and then to Hollywood for nearly fifty years. “Thanks be to God”—a renaissance of faith at thirty brought me back to that early calling—“do the work of an evangelist”—and after shows on the Wesley brothers (John & Charles), on Fanny Crosby, Phineas F. Bresee, on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and twenty or so other film and theatre productions in the religious genre, an older King David looking back on his tumultuous yet anointed life seems most appropriate for this “dramavangelist” in his eightieth year. A crown and a cane are all I essentially need, and by exploring the story of David, we will discover the story of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his “loving kindness” for us—a love which “never fails” and “endures forever.”
Several of you, our subscribers to The Church’s One Foundation, have already contributed and are helping me put the play together—finalizing the script, producing an audio-play recording of it, and preparing it for theatrical presentations around the country. If you’ve not done so already, would you consider a donation today to help me reach my goal of $15,000? Thanks to the generosity of 37 donors thus far, we’re two-thirds of the way there, and if just half of our subscribers would make a small donation, we could reach our goal.
To give, open the link below and follow the simple directions found at “Donate now.”
Your gift will be a blessing, as are you, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, for assisting me in “doing the work of an evangelist” and in “fulfilling my ministry.” I am grateful. And so…
Pressing On!
Amen
David—God’s restored broken vessel. (Illustration by Amy Zaleta Martinez)
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