The Events of Sunday, December 5, 2010

          It felt so luxurious, so opulent, sleeping so late. I emerged from the RV at 7:00 to a crisp, windy December morning. The others were all up by 8:00, so we ate breakfast at 9:00, and departed for church just after 10:00. My eagle-eyed wife had spied signs on our shuttle route for Riverdale Church. Some quick internet research confirmed that this would be a fine place to worship. The sanctuary is huge, seating perhaps a thousand, but the crowd today was just a couple hundred. The worship team was large: seven vocalists, a small choir of eight, and ten instrumentalists, including trumpet, French horn, flute and clarinet. We were glad that the song selection included some Christmas carols.

          Head pastor Brian Mentzer delivered the sermon. At the start, he seemed to be reading to us in rather stilted language. But as he moved into the text, the message seemed to take on a life of its own. Not an easy passage, he spoke from the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1. In this genealogy, Matthew seems intent on bringing out the most embarrassing parts of the story. And this, Brian asserts, was precisely the point Matthew was trying to make: that Jesus comes to this people with a messy past, to people with issues and every type of trouble, and even so, he loves us and wants to be involved with us. Our natural human inclination is to try to earn God’s approval, to do good in order to merit his favor. But it simply cannot be done. God insists in Scripture that his favor is not for sale, that it is only available as a free gift. What seemed to be just a list of names and begats turns out to be quite a bit more. This was a wonderful message, and we are glad to receive it.

          After church, we did some grocery shopping and had a quick lunch. Then we took the subway downtown and explored the Smithsonian American History Museum. There probably is some profound organizational scheme to this museum’s layout. That scheme is beyond my powers to comprehend, for it seemed to me a random hodge-podge of exhibits. We liked several of them. My favorite was the antique musical instruments, featuring four Stradivarius instruments, as well as a beautiful five-stringed ancestor to the guitar. We got a kick out of an exhibit featuring Julia Child’s TV cooking innovations. One hall focused on American culture in 1939. In the extensive timeline of scientific progress, where we again saw our buddy DuPont featured as the inventor of nylon and other polymer materials. In the robot hall, we found a vehicle named Stanley. It was Stanford’s entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a contest of driverless cars (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge).

          Hungry for dinner, we took the subway to Union Station where we enjoyed a variety of international foods. Then we boarded the Old Town Trolley for our “Monuments by Moonlight” tour. Our driver and guide’s credentials impressed me: he wrote articles for National Geographic and Economist, as well as reporting for some area newspapers. He was lucid and well-informed in both history and current events. Like some other tour guides, though, his enthusiasm lacked credibility. For example, in the first minutes of the tour, he described a dozen destinations as REALLY INTERESTING. So I began to question his discernment. Nevertheless, he had some good insights, and he took us to some beautiful sites. We stopped and explored the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, as well as the Marine Corps War Memorial (aka the Iwo Jima Memorial). Our favorite though, may have been the Korean War Memorial. The statues of 19 soldiers, walking in scatter formation in the dark, softly lit from below, seemed eerily realistic. I wish I had taken some photos there. Our trolley tour ended at 10:30, but it was nearly midnight when we returned to the campground. It was a day full of new sites and new insights.