New Testament Reading-Mark 6: 1-6
I decided that for my sermon today I would address three of the suggested topics and questions that I received from church members in the past couple of weeks. As it so happened, this past week I was deep down in the vaulted basement archives of the Fort Vancouver Library when I stumbled across a story that I believe could serve as an inspiration for addressing these three matters. Thus, this morning I will be sharing with you the story I found, and then at the end I will tell you the three sermon suggestions.
The story begins in the small town of Bottleneck, Washington back in the early 1900s. Some of you have maybe heard of Fort Bottleneck which preceded it. The big controversy in Bottleneck was over their fire fighting brigades. There were six of them, and they all competed with each other. Whenever a fire broke out, they would all run to get there first, so that they could be the ones paid for the job. Sometimes a fire brigade would even send a runner ahead of them who would place a barrel over the fire hydrant so that no other brigade could take on the fire.
The brigades, however, did not fight all fires. They fought only the ones at the buildings that had a special mark in the shape of a fireman’s axe on them. These were the buildings that had paid for fire insurance. Uninsured buildings were simply left to burn. As you can imagine, the poor and moderate income citizens of Bottleneck often had to watch their homes go up in flames. In fact, some were not even lucky enough to watch. Every year dozens of Bottleneck citizens died in fires.[i] Sometimes even the people who lived in the insured buildings would die as well. The owners would wait until the last second to call for the brigades. If it all possible, they wanted to avoid paying the extra costs they would have despite their insurance.[ii]
As you might guess, not everyone liked the fire insurance companies. In fact, the majority of Bottleneck citizens favored having no fire insurance companies at all.[iii] They favored having the city hire brigades who would serve on behalf of everyone. A few of them even went so far as to study such radical alternatives. They found that other towns like New London, New Ottawa, and New Melbourne all had city-run fire departments that covered any and every building on fire. What researchers discovered in these towns amazed them, without the insurers acting as middlemen these government-run fire brigades had less bureaucracy, lower costs, fewer deaths and destructive fires, and more efficiency.[iv]
One city councilman in Bottleneck was brave enough to support having a single fire department. His name was Councilman Hope, and while he was campaigning for office, he declared that there should be a system whereby every house would be in and no house would be left out. He argued, however, that such a system would not be feasible until his party took control of not only the council but also the mayor’s office.[v] As it turned out, Councilman Hope eventually became mayor himself and his party took over the council.
Nevertheless, by the time he got into this higher office, the newly elected Mayor Hope no longer supported the idea of having a single fire department. Fire insurance was a problem, but one could not simply do away with it altogether. The whole economy of Bottleneck would be ruined if they made any sudden changes like that. Moreover, as many knew, Mayor Hope had to protect himself. If he came out in favor of a single fire department, more people might begin to think that perhaps he wasn’t a real “Bottlenecker.” Real “Bottleneckers” believed in letting everyone fend for themselves when it came to fighting fires. To make matters worse, rumors were circulating that Mayor Hope was not even born in Bottleneck. He was born in New London.
The thought of having a fire department that gave universal coverage threw a number of people in Bottleneck into a frenzy. The flames were stoked by a bombastic columnist at the Bottleneck Gazette named Chuck Meanbough, an evangelistic preacher named Clyde Brimstone, and the behind the scenes provocateurs of the Fire Insurance companies. They had a number of Bottleneckers up in arms over the threat of a possible fire department. As one Bottlenecker said, “I don’t want the government deciding whether or not they are going to send a fire brigade to grandma’s house. They could let the house burn and then grandma would go up in smoke.” Soon a group of Bottleneckers had signs in their yards that said, “Don’t kill Grandma.”
It seemed like things would never change, but while the frenzy continued in some of the papers and pulpits of Bottleneck, a group of concerned citizens came together at First Congregational UCC of Bottleneck. There were two leaders in the group: Pastor Sandy Watkins and Coach Nick Parsons. For Watkins, it was a difficult decision to get involved. She not only had to contend with claims that she was not a true Bottlenecker, she also had to contend with claims that she was not a true Christian. Every true Christian knew that God was against having a fire department that provided universal coverage. God would never have been able to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone if there had been a fire department.
One night Pastor Sandy called up her good friend Coach Nick to talk about what to do. Coach Nick was the football coach for the Bottleneck Bruisers. He was a perpetual optimist even though his team had gone 0 and 12 the previous season. Pastor Sandy told Coach Nick how demoralized she felt. She believed that God would want everyone’s home to be protected from fires rather than just people who had money, but how could she ever contend with someone like Reverend Clyde Brimstone. She confessed that she even had relatives who would rather listen to Brimstone than her. At Thanksgiving time, she would always avoid talking about the latest fire victims because she just didn’t feel like she could deal with all the emotional rantings she would have to hear for the rest of her vacation.
Coach Nick sympathized with her and told her about the angry parents he had to deal with sometimes. They wanted to blame him for the team not winning and their kids not performing well. “Sure, I talk with the parents,” he said. “I listen to them, and I even try to find common ground. Both of us want what is best for their kids, but in the end, I have to be the coach of my own team. I have to set my own goals and focus on reaching those. I can’t always be looking over my shoulder.” They sat in silence for a second and then Pastor Sandy said, “I need to start setting my own goals. I can’t always worry about what Clyde Brimstone and his followers will say, but where do I start? How do I begin setting my own goals? We are not going to get a fire department for everyone tomorrow.”
Coach Nick then said, “Every season I want to make it to a bowl game, but I know the only way to get to a bowl is to take it one game at a time. Actually, I have to take it one practice at a time, even one play at a time. Otherwise, it all becomes either one big fantasy or something that feels completely overwhelming.” Pastor Sandy felt a lot better thinking about it that way, but she still didn’t know where to begin. She felt powerless. That is when Coach Nick asked her who her team was. It dawned on her in that moment that her first goal would be to bring together a team of like-minded people so that they wouldn’t feel alone and they could gain strength and support from each other. Coach Nick volunteered to be her first team member. Soon they had six members from Pastor Sandy’s church on the team.
Even with her team, Pastor Sandy at times felt like the prophet rejected in her own hometown and among her own kin. But then, Sandy remembered what Jesus did right after the Bible says he was rejected in Nazareth. Jesus commissioned the twelve disciples to cast out demons and heal the sick. “Just think,” Sandy said to Nick, “if Jesus had given up on people after being rejected by those who knew him best, the Christian faith would never have gotten off the ground.” Nick agreed and said, “All we need to do is start commissioning disciples to go out into the world and trust that our faith will begin to ripple outward.”
That weekend is when things first began to truly turn around in the small town of Bottleneck, Washington. On Sunday, Pastor Sandy began commissioning members of her church to cast out the demons of hysteria, so that one day all of Bottleneck could be equally protected from the fires of hell-not the ones in the next world, but the ones right in their own neighborhoods. As it turned out, that weekend Coach Nick also managed to get his team to have some faith. They won their first game of the season. Their faith did not cause them to win all their games, but the Bottleneck Bruisers still managed to squeeze into their first bowl game in years. A few years later Bottleneck would have a fire department that gave universal coverage. They also had a championship football team. There ends this remarkable story about the possibilities of faith and the power of a few committed and commissioned individuals.
As I finished reading this story in the lower reaches of Fort Vancouver Library, I thought about the struggle of health care for everyone. I thought about how we can respond to our Christian brothers and sisters who think we progressive Christians aren’t “real” Christians. And, finally, I thought about whether or not the Huskies will recover from an 0 and 12 season and win enough games to get into a bowl.
In the year ahead, may faith, mercy, and justice prevail in all three of these arenas. Amen.
[i] Interestingly, when it comes to the current state of health care in the United States, there is a striking parallel to Bottleneck, Washington’s problem with deadly fires. It is estimated that 20,000 people die every year in the United States due to lack of medical care. Katha Pollit, “Healthcare We Can Believe In,” The Nation, (August 12, 2009), <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/pollitt>.
[ii] While the actual historical record of fire fighting in Bottleneck, Washington is hard to determine with 100% accuracy, the account given in this sermon is remarkably similar to Wikipedia’s entry on the “History of Fire Fighting.” See: <http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting>.
[iii] Similar to support for a government fire department in Bottleneck, Washington, polls repeatedly show that the majority of U.S. citizens would prefer a single-payer system. Roger Bybee notes, “A January CBS/NY Times poll showed 59 percent for a single-payer system described in vague terms. Business Week reported on a more specific question in a 2005 pool, which found ’67 percent of all Americans think it’s a good idea to guarantee health care for all U.S. citizens, as Canada and Britain do, with just 27 percent dissenting.” See Roger Bybee, “Obama’s Health Plan: Far Short of “Transformational,” Z Magazine, (July 2009), <http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/21873>. Noam Chomsky discusses the history of Health Care public opinion in the United States at: Noam Chomsky, “Health Care,” ZNet, (April 12, 2009), <http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/3116>.
[iv] Similar research has been done regarding alternative Health Care models. Brief discussions of alternative models and their benefits can be found at the following:
Paul Krugman, “The Swiss Menace,” The New York Times, (August 16, 2009), <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html>; Noam Chomsky, “Health Care,” ZNet, (April 12, 2009), <http://www.zcommunications.org/zvideo/3116>.
[v] Similar to Councilman Hope, Barack Obama once delivered a speech as a state legislator in which he argued for a single payer health care system which would have “everybody in, nobody out.” Obama argued that the only way to get such a system would be for Democrats to take back Congress and the presidency. See the speech on YouTube at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE>.
