As I've discovered with other males who enter the pastorate later in life, especially males who've been accustomed to being in charge not only of their own lives but of other people's lives, even whole corporations: it must be hard to start all over again at the bottom. It must be something like being Jewish, the apple of God's eye, and then -- like the Apostle Paul -- dropping back to the bottom of the pecking order and having to submit to a hierarchy of fishermen, Lutherans at that. Add to that: being Scotch-Irish and red-haired and born on Independence Day and financially independent. So with Lyon amidst the Christians. He's not easily domesticated. No wonder, like his hero Paul, he must ask the Christ of his Damascus Road, Why me? But again like Paul, he's always back the next morning, either performing oral surgery or pastoring some dying rural congregation, subsidizing some indigent patient's dental bills or supervising the sermon-writing of some seminarian or lay preacher, scaring Dorothy to death by disappearing behind the lines in mainland China on a one-man missionary journey or flying down to South American rain forests to teach the natives oral hygiene. And if like Paul he has trouble explaining his tent-making ministry to the religious authorities he can always move on to the next town (in Lyon's case, Florida) to encourage a new gathering of Christians, clergy and lay, to learn about Crossings. I thought I knew all about that subject but I'm still learning from him, my junior. He's only 73. Most of all I gasp at what Great Connections he has, and so cruciform.

Yes, Dr. Lyon does cavities, all the way down to where that One "who was sin for us" cried The Cry of Dereliction, and all the way back up to where that same One, now risen, raises twelve-year old girls from the dead. Read on.

rwb

Real what? Answer: real faith. The question is, When is faith real? When is it phoney? In the gospel lesson before us (Mark 5:21-43) Jesus says to the woman with the twelve-year hemorrhage, "Daughter, your faith has made you well." (v. 34) To which my skeptical colleagues in the medical

But skepticism isn't the only response, or the worst. In fact, it isn't even the most common, not in America. When Americans are presented with stories like the ones in our gospel lesson -- about the woman with the chronic bleeding or about the dying teenager -- the common reaction, I suspect, is not so much skepticism as gullibility or (to speak frankly) superstition. Americans are chronically religious -- or as I'm inclined to say, superstitious. So we perk up at stories like these, about faith healings. We exclaim,"Now there's real faith for ya': the kind that gets rid of fear and bleeding and dying." We Americans are downright fascinated by stories about faith, especially when it pays off with "real," practical results. Our magazines tout headlines about people who live longer by being religious, survive cancer by praying hard enough, overcome fear by believing sincerely enough. Americans like to say, "I don't know how I could have made it without my faith" or "It was my faith that pulled me through" -- or maybe my mother's faith. You get the impression that what we Americans put our faith in is our faith itself. We believe in our own believing. And if by our believing we can pull off a miracle or two that make monkeys out of the medical profession, all the better. Even physicians are American enough, superstitious enough to get a kick out of that. There's real faith for ya', we say, the kind that gets results, the kind that believes hard enough, the kind that makes fools out of scientists. Right? Wrong!

It is not easy for me to say "Wrong," and be so un-American. I'm writing this piece in mid-summer, in fact during the most American month of the year, July. (My own birthday is July fourth!) It has always been the time for me when I think how great life is. For Americans generally summertime seems to be a metaphor for life. The weather is warm. There is summer food and drink. Parades and picnics and family reunions. Employment is up. So is romance. I was even baptized in July. The line from Porgy and Bess speaks for us all, "Summertime, and the livin' is easy." And this time of the