to return to your place in the text.To read endnotes, click on the the note number, then click on the
But to be honest, my own life is not so much an example of
Murphy's Law as it is of Gumperson's Corollary. J. P. Gumperson
was a teacher at the University of New Hampshire.(1) He noticed
things. For example, Gumperson noticed that you can drop a half-lighted match out of a car window and start a forest fire and yet
not be able to light the dry logs in your fireplace with a whole
BOX of matches and the entire Sunday edition of the Greensboro
News & Record. Or that the children can be exposed to chicken
pox twenty times in a row and not get them and yet come down with
them without any exposure at all the night before the family is
set to leave for vacation. You can fertilize a whole lawn and
nothing comes up except the grass which grows between the cracks
in the driveway. Gumperson put all this together in his now
famous law which runs like this: "The probability of something
happening is in inverse proportion to its desirability." Hear it
again: The probability of something happening is in inverse
proportion to its desirability.
They say there is no telling how far Gumperson might have
gone except for his untimely death in 1947. He was walking along
the highway on the left, facing the traffic as one is supposed to
do, and he was hit from behind. It seems an Englishman happened
to be visiting the country.
Think of the church. Of all the institutions in history,
none would seem to fit Murphy or Gumperson any better. For
example, film projectors always work BEFORE the meeting. Members
living 15 miles away will be 15 minutes early; members living two
blocks away will be 15 minutes late. Church furnaces and air
conditioning systems break down ONLY on Sundays. Saying "Let us
pray" causes babies to cry.
But on a more serious note, as we look back through the
centuries, IMPORTANT things have gone wrong constantly - it seems
that what the Lord has wanted for and from the church have indeed
occurred in inverse proportion to their desirability.
Think about it. The Lord has wanted us to have joyous,
happy lives, but the church has made people miserable with
narrow, inhumane legalisms to try to keep folks in line. The
Lord has wanted us to show peace to the world but the church has
sponsored murderous crusades, inquisitions and witch hunts - the
meanest, most nasty fights in society are the ones which occur
within congregations. The Lord has wanted us to show the world
how barriers can be broken down, but the church has done
everything it could to keep women, the poor, the disadvantaged,
and any racial or ethnic minorities out of any position of real
leadership. We continue to look foolish in our handling of
questions concerning human sexuality. The list could go on and
on. Anything that could have gone wrong, it seems, HAS gone
wrong. And one wonders why Christ continues to put up with us.
Scientists tell us that you and I do not generally think in
words; we think in pictures. Perhaps that is why nowhere in the
Bible do we ever find a definition of the church. Instead, what
we find are pictures - images that help convey to us what the
Spirit would have us understand about this divine fellowship. We
found one in our scripture lesson: "the bride of Christ." But
with all the problems, all the things that have gone wrong, we
would have to admit that, at the very least, the Lord married
beneath Himself...probably the ugliest bride in history.
Let me share a parable with you.(2) A man married. He met
the "woman of his dreams" and proposed to her. Things went well
at first. He told his friends that his new wife was "all I ever
wanted in a woman." She was beautiful, intelligent, witty. His
friends observed that here was a "marriage made in heaven."
Unfortunately, the initial bliss was not to last.
Gradually, in day-to-day living, he began to notice certain
imperfections in his new wife. She was beautiful, but not
always. Sometimes, say before eight in the morning, she was
downright unattractive. She could look stunning for great
parties and social occasions, but marriage meant that he had to
look at her before she got her make-up on. Yes, she was
intelligent, but there were rather large gaps in her knowledge.
She knew a great deal about a few matters, but there were many
areas of interest about which she was as ignorant as the day she
was born. This displeased him greatly. He knew that, one day,
she would embarrass him by making some ill-considered statement
in public at the worst possible time, thus revealing to the whole
world her intellectual imperfections - Murphy's Law.
Marriage was proving to be different than he had thought.
It had been fun to be with her on a Saturday evening, dancing the
night away. But marriage was not like that all the time.
Marriage was Corn Flakes for breakfast, and someone sleeping
beside you with large curlers in her hair; it was disagreements
over finances, visits from her relatives, and that grotesque lamp
that she bought for the living room. That was marriage.
He still believed in love more than ever, still longed for
the perfect partner. He continued to cling to the idea of
marriage - that was fine. But the reality was different. Sound
familiar? Who knows in how many millions of homes that scenario
has been played out?
That, no doubt, is the experience that Christ could describe
in his relationship with his bride, the church. Murphy's Law,
Gumperson's Corollary, have been active with a vengeance. But
the Lord who loved us enough to give himself for us would have us
know that, no matter how badly we fall short of the ideal, he
will never give up on us. He forgives those failings, all those
things that are continually going wrong. On this day, he comes
to his bride, ugly though she often may be (and all the more
noticeably so in the midst of Lent), and invites her - you and
me...the church - to share his table. "Blessed are those who are
invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb." Nail-scarred hands
are outstretched in invitation saying quietly, "Come...all you
who labor and are heavy-laden...burdened down by all the things
that have gone wrong, and continue to go wrong...all who
sometimes feel ugly...you belong to me and nothing that goes
wrong will ever change that. Come...and I will give you rest."
Amen!
1. I was first introduced to Gumperson's genius by Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman in an address to
the annual Bible Conference at Massanetta Springs, VA in 1987 2. Will Willimon, What's Right with the Church, (San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1985), pp. 1-2
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