The Cathedral of Christ the King
Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 12, 2013

Sermon Link: In the World, But Not of It

A few weeks ago, I was going through my desk and found a church directory from Mountain View United Methodist Church. The directory was from 2007 and I was going to toss it but, before I did, I thumbed through it and noticed a name. “I wonder if she is still alive?” I thought. On impulse, I called the church office in Kingsport, TN and, after explaining who I was, asked if the person I mentioned was still alive. “She is,” the secretary shared, “but she is mostly bedridden now.” I confirmed the address of Jean Bridwell and, after hanging up, I wrote a long-overdue thank you letter:

Dear Mrs. Bridwell,

I don’t know whether you remember me or not but, in the mid-late 1960’s, you were my Sunday School teacher at Mountain View United Methodist Church. I am fairly certain that, along with Mike and David, Steve, (last names omitted for this column) and a few other high schoolers, we were quite a handful. Well, Steve was always well behaved, the rest of us not so much.

In fact, I remember, much to my embarrassment, the day that we were so unruly that you gathered up your things and went home in the middle of the lesson. We were upset that we had distressed you and the girls in the class threatened mayhem if we didn’t make it right. So, those of us who were the problem walked to your house and meekly apologized. As always, you were so very gracious. For the most part, I think we behaved after that. You were always loved and respected, even though we may not have properly shown it.

I just wanted to write and say “thank you” for all your time that you spent trying to impart God’s Word to some rowdy students. I, for one, never forgot your care and your commitment. I don’t know if you knew that, for several of us boys, our parents were unchurched. Somehow, we individually managed to find our way into Mountain View, mostly through the Methodist Youth Fellowship, and, even though our folks didn’t come to church, we felt accepted. Mountain View was “our church” and you are one of those people who made us feel like we mattered.

If you ever wondered whether you made any difference in a kid’s life, I wanted you to know that you most certainly did.

With deepest affection and appreciation,
David Epps, Bishop, Diocese of the Mid-South

There are those people, like Jean Bridwell, who make a significant difference to us along life’s way. I suspect that most of them go unrecognized and under appreciated. I certainly know that is the case in my life. I hope, before it is too late, I can let them all know that I am grateful for their influence in my life. Even if the thanks is long delayed.

David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, 4881 Hwy 34 E., Sharpsburg, GA 30277. Services are held Sundays at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. (www.ctkcec.org) He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese (www.midsouthdiocese.org). He may be contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org

Convocation2013Brochure

Convocation2013Poster

I had been on my first summer job after high school graduation for about seven weeks when my dad announced a change. He had arranged, against my will and without my permission, for me to work at a general construction company inside the giant Tennessee Eastman Chemical Products Corporation. I was paid $1.65 an hour to work myself to the point of exhaustion each day. “Next week,” he said, “you will start as an electrician’s helper for King Electric Company.” I would still be working inside the Eastman plant and I would make $1.85 an hour. A small improvement, I reasoned.

The next Monday I reported for duty and presented myself to the King foreman. He had me fill out some paperwork and then wait for the electrician to whom I was assigned. As I waited, I thought that this job had to be better than the last. My father was an electrician for Bays Mountain Construction, most of whose employees also worked inside the Eastman. Dad had even given me an electrician’s tool pouch with some tools in it. At least I was moving up in the world!

Shortly, a man came and stood in front of me. He had short cropped hair, on which sat a red electrician’s hard hat turned around backwards. He was powerfully built with broad shoulders and strong arms. He was, I guessed, in his late 20’s to early 30’s, around six feet tall, and wore a sleeveless “Larry the Cable Guy” type-shirt. In his jaw was about a quarter pound of chewing tobacco. His name was Bob Steele.

“You Bill Epps’ boy?” he asked. I stood up quickly and answered, “Yes sir!” He glared at me for a long moment and said, “I never could stand that man.” He spat tobacco into a trash can and turned on his heel and walked out the door. Frozen in place momentarily, I gathered my wits and headed after him.

For the first week or so, I was Bob Steele’s “mule,” carrying heavy pipe and bales of wire and cable. Slowly, he began to explain what the tools in my tool belt were designed to do. Although he was always a tough taskmaster, he was a fair man and began to teach me how to thread pipe, pull wire, bend conduit, and do other tasks expected of an electrician’s helper. Eventually, he left me to do minor jobs on my own.

He also helped me understand my dad. My dad was an electrician in this same chemical plant that employed 15,000 people and, for the first time, I began to understand what he did every day. I had friends whose dads were residential electricians but Dad and Steele were industrial electricians whose work took place in a massive company.

Sometimes they worked close to the ground and at other times they were perched high in the air. There were times when the work took them into a building that hit high temperatures of 125 F during the scorching summers and there were times when they worked outside in the sub-freezing conditions of a Tennessee mountain winter.

I learned about taking pride in a job well done and I began to see my father and Bob Steele as “industrial artists,” creating something where nothing had existed before. Every morning I took increasing pride on strapping on my tool belt and putting on the red hard hat that marked me as a member of the electrical profession.

I finished out my summer, turned in my hard hat, and went to college. It was much later that I learned that Bob Steele and my dad were actually good friends. Dad had placed me in the hands of a man he considered to be one of the best and Steele, for his part, was determined that he would do a good job for Dad and teach me a few things. At the end, I was proud to have been an electrician’s helper, proud of what my dad had chosen to do with his life, and proud that, for a few months during the summer of 1969, I had been a “man of Steele.”

David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, 4881 Hwy 34 E., Sharpsburg, GA 30277. Services are held Sundays at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. (www.ctkcec.org) He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese (www.midsouthdiocese.org). He may be contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org

Friday, April12 at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Selma, founding patriarch , Archbishop Randolph Adler, conferred a special blessing on his successor and current patriarch, Archbishop Craig Bates.  To learn more and to listen to both Archbishop Bates’ sermon and Archbishop Adler’s  prayer of blessing go to Reconciliation Service in Selma.

The Cathedral of Christ the King
Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 5, 2013

Sermon Link: What Do You Want From God?

As I made a visit to a local hospital early the other morning, a vaguely familiar scent filled my nostrils. It was the smell of concrete—fresh concrete, as in “new construction.” Sure enough, the hospital was constructing an addition which requires lots of concrete. Sniffing the aroma, I was transported back in time.

A few days before I graduated “summa cum barely” from Dobyns-Bennett High School in 1969, my father informed me that my summer vacation days were over. Since I played football in junior high and senior high, I never felt like I had a real summer vacation since it always included lots of sweat and two-a-day practices. So, I was looking forward to a full summer vacation–swimming pools, the beach, girls, etc.– before college. It was not to be.

My dad, without my consultation or permission, arranged for me to have a general construction job with P. C. Cooper Construction Company and I became one of 15,000 employees working at the Tennessee Eastman Chemical Products Corporation in Kingsport, TN. It was hard, brutal, dirty, pick and shovel, post hole digging, wheelbarrow, menial labor work. I thought I had sweated in football practice but it was nothing compared to eight hours a day in the grueling summer sun feeling like a slave building the pyramids in ancient Egypt. I was a very junior employee and a “college boy,” which is what I was often called by the long-term employees. I wondered how in the world these men got up and did this work day after day. One man, who had been on the job for 22 years and was 40, but looked 60, made $4.25 an hour. It was after a few weeks of this work that I decided I would, for sure, go to college.

A good deal of the work involved digging foundation trenches (by hand) for new buildings or additions. That’s where the new concrete, massive amounts of concrete, came in. There was a smell to it that was not unpleasant –but it was distinctive. That, and the smells of the chemicals being manufactured, filled the air at “The Eastman,” as everyone called the company.

What I mostly remember about my tenure at P. C. Cooper is being tired all the time. We had an hour for lunch and two 15 minute breaks a day. I found that, if I ate my lunch in fifteen minutes, I could lie under a tree and nap for 45 minutes. I also found that I could also nap briefly during the 15 minute breaks. At 5:00 p.m., I would drag myself through the gate, drag myself into the car, and go home and drag myself on to the sofa and take a nap. I quickly came to understand the saying, “Thank God, it’s Friday!”

My father’s purpose, I think had several components:

1. He wanted me to do a man’s work in a man’s world. He came up the hard way and did not want to shield me from it. He wanted me to respect the “working man” and the contributions made by such men.
2. He wanted me to appreciate the value of a dollar. Or in my case, of $1.65. Suddenly, the cost of things—dates, movies, dinners—was measured, not in terms of dollars, but in how long I had brutally labored in the scorching heat to earn that movie ticket or that meal for my girlfriend or that gallon of gas.
3. He wanted me to go to college, which he never had the opportunity to do. Dad worked on a farm, left for the navy during the waning days of World War II, came home, got married, had kids, and scrambled and scratched to pay the bills until he finally completed an apprenticeship as an electrician in his mid-30’s. I think that he believed that the best incentive for me to go to college was to realize that life without a degree might be far harder than life with a degree.

If those were his goals, he accomplished every one. Still, after all these decades, just a whiff of newly poured concrete brings back a ton of memories. And, truthfully I am glad that Dad made me work that summer at The Eastman. I am also glad I went to college.

David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, 4881 Hwy 34 E., Sharpsburg, GA 30277. Services are held Sundays at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. (www.ctkcec.org) He is also the bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-South (www.midsouthdiocese.org). He may be contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.