The Real Messenger
Stories
Contents
“The Real Messenger” by Frank Ramirez
“The Unforgiving Manure Spreader” by John Sumwalt
The Real Messenger
by Frank Ramirez
Malachi 3:1-4
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…. (Malachi 3:1)
People read mysteries. We watch mysteries on TV. We go to the movies for a good mystery. The genre is one of the most popular. In a way it goes to the heart of the Bible. Whether it’s the books of the law, the prophets calling for justice, or Jesus challenging the injustice of the authorities, we want everything set to rights.
So, whether you’re a fan of Agatha Christie, Nero Wolfe, or one of the innumerable versions of CSI, it’s easy to love a mystery, because deep down inside we believe justice will be done.
The prophet Malachi, whose name means both “messenger” and “angel,” puns on his own name when sharing the word of the Lord, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me. (Malachi 3:1).” In the New Testament, John the Baptist is understood to be the fulfillment of this scripture, the messenger who went ahead of Jesus to prepare the way.
So, who was the messenger who prepared the way for mysteries? Most people would point to Sherlock Holmes, the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the precursor of the modern mystery. Holmes, though not a member of any official law enforcement agency, uses reason, scientific evidence, and logic to determine who has perpetrated a crime. The four novels and fifty-six stories, narrated by the equally fictional John Watson, are the foundation of a vast industry of the many different kinds of mysteries we enjoy in all the various media. Indeed, so pervasive is his influence that some people believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person.
But if you want to know the truth, the real messenger paving the way for the modern mystery story was created by none other than the famed Edgar Allen Poe, better known for his horror stories and his poetry. But Poe was a working writer, ready to try his hand at anything. In 1841, he introduced the world to C. Auguste Dupin, in a story titled “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Like the two stories that followed, this mystery is set in France. Dupin comes from a wealthy family, but through no fault of his own he is reduced to humbler circumstances. However, aside from his intellectual pursuits his needs are simple. Moreover, he is a member of the Legion of Honor.
The stories are narrated by an unnamed roommate of Dupin who, like Dr. Watson, serves as a foil for the master detective’s ruminations. In each of the three cases which Poe wrote, the official police come to Dupin because, though they have all the facts, they cannot come up with the solution to a crime.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a classic locked-door mystery. Two women are found horribly murdered. Theft is out of the question. Two sacks of gold were left behind, untouched. The authorities, with the help of some neighbors, break into the house in response to screams from a mother and daughter, but the murderer is no longer present and with every door and window locked it seems impossible to figure out how anyone got in or out of the building.
Dupin analyzes all the varying accounts, creates a theory that satisfies him, then devises a way for the solution to come to him.
Two other stories followed: “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter,” (1844). Dupin solves, in turn, the murder of a young woman that transfixed a nation (and was partly based on a true crime), and afterwards solves the problem of a letter stolen from the French queen.
In the first Sherlock Holmes story, the novel “A Study in Scarlet,” Dr. Watson compares the reasoning powers of his new companion, Sherlock Holmes, to C. Auguste Dupin. Perhaps it was sour grapes that caused Holmes to respond, “No doubt you think you are complimenting me ... In my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow... He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appears to imagine."
Truth be told, to my mind the real messenger pointing to the modern mystery is none other than the biblical Daniel. In chapters 13 and 14 of that prophetic book in Roman Catholic editions of the Bible, and otherwise found in the apocrypha under the titles “Susanna” and “Bel and the Dragon,” Daniel solves two mysteries.
In the first, Daniel is only a boy when two elders frame the virtuous Susanna when she refuses to submit to their sexual advances by claiming they caught her in an adulterous relationship with an unknown young man. Daniel stops the execution and demands the opportunity to question the two accusers separately, at which point he asks them under what sort of tree they saw Susanna commit adultery. Their stories don’t match, and it is the accusers who are executed!
In the second story, Daniel contests the claim of the Babylonian king that the statue of Bel is a living god because food is laid out before it every evening and every morning the food has been eaten. Daniel sprinkles ashes all around the floor of the God’s temple, and the next morning the footprints of Bel’s priests and their families are revealed!
In the case of this latter story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle borrowed Daniel’s device and had Holmes leave cigarette ashes on the floor of an apparent invalid’s room to prove that when no one else was around the man walked perfectly well!
* * *
The Unforgiving Manure Spreader
John Sumwalt
Philippians 1:3-11
“And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless.” (vv. 9-10)
Forgiveness is hard. Sometimes it seems impossible.
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” we used to pray at the little white Evangelical United Brethren Church in Loyd, WI, when I was a little farm kid. I knew about debt. Dad had borrowed $10,000 to buy the farm, a fortune in 1957. I doubted then that “we” would ever be able to pay it off. And of course, the debt grew by the thousands every year as Dad bought new machinery, added on to the barn, put in the barn cleaner and the silo unloader, and one day bought another farm.
If only I could have known then that there would come a time when he and Mom would retire debt free on the 25 acres that was left of those two farms. I will never forget the day we were sitting in his room at Pine Valley Manor, a few months before he died, and I told Dad how proud I was of him and Mom for starting with nothing, raising four kids, seeing them all graduate from college, and retiring with something to show for it. But I never forgot the burden of that debt which affected everything we did and didn’t do on the farm. It was a nagging worry that every farm family knows too well.
In 1968, we EUBs merged with the Methodist Church to become the United Methodist Church. And suddenly, instead of “debts” and “debtors” we were praying “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I knew about trespassing too. It is what was on the signs Dad posted all along the creek and the line fences: “NO TRESPASSING!” He was very protective of all “our” land. If someone stopped and asked permission to fish or hunt Dad was always glad to say yes. I think it was the principle of the thing for him, a matter of showing respect. And, yes, if you didn’t ask, and he caught you fishing he would chase you off the property and sometimes more. So, I was taken aback, but not entirely surprised, one day when I heard a neighbor tell about a time when a city guy paid the ultimate price for unsanctioned fishing.
Just after I retired from full time ministry in 2013, when Jo and I moved back to the farm, I served two nearby churches part-time for a couple of months. One afternoon I stopped by the Lime Ridge church. Several guys from the men’s group were working on the wheelchair ramp, which runs up to one of the side doors. We got to talking about dad and one of the men talked about the time this city guy parked a white Cadillac in the gate to one of our corn fields, put on his fancy waders, and then went fishing without asking permission. Dad came upon the obstructive car as he was making his way to the field with the tractor and manure spreader after cleaning out the pig barn. Maybe if the car hadn’t been blocking his way, and maybe if it hadn’t been a Cadillac, Dad might have let him off with a warning. But there was no grace to be had that day on Sumwalt farm. Leonard turned around, backed the spreader up to the caddy, and gave him the whole load.
Years later, I learned yet another version of the Lord’s Prayer in churches I pastored that had former EUB and former Methodist members: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” It was the compromise version for blended congregations that had both “debt” and “trespass” practitioners. “Sins” is as accurate a translation as “debts” and “trespasses,” but somehow it felt heavier to me. Now we were letting each other off for the “whole load.” Does any mere mortal have the authority to do that? Over the ages church leaders, the official spreaders of the gtospel and the makers of rules about how forgiveness is to be given or withheld, have taken conflicting positions.
The late Brennan Manning said that he was hearing confessions one day as a priest when a young man poured out his heart to him. He told a sordid story of substance abuse, sexual misconduct, and multiple marriages. He fell on his knees weeping, looking for a way back to the consolation and challenge of the faith in which he had been raised. And Brennan said that he began to think through the complexities of canon law as it related to this man’s situation, about the annulments and applications and hearings that they would have to undertake to restore him to good standing in the church.
And in the middle of working all of this through in his head, Brennan said that he looked down at this broken person in front of him, and he saw him through the eyes and with the heart of Jesus. And then Brennan says that he just gathered that man up into his arms and whispered in his ear, “Welcome home son...you are beloved of God.” And later, when Brennan thought about all the church rules that he had broken and the ecclesiastical trouble that he would most certainly be in for his actions, he prayed — “Dear Jesus, if it’s a fault for being too kind to a sinner, then it’s a fault that I learned from you. For you never scolded anyone…who came to you seeking understanding and mercy.”
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 5, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“The Real Messenger” by Frank Ramirez
“The Unforgiving Manure Spreader” by John Sumwalt
The Real Messenger
by Frank Ramirez
Malachi 3:1-4
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…. (Malachi 3:1)
People read mysteries. We watch mysteries on TV. We go to the movies for a good mystery. The genre is one of the most popular. In a way it goes to the heart of the Bible. Whether it’s the books of the law, the prophets calling for justice, or Jesus challenging the injustice of the authorities, we want everything set to rights.
So, whether you’re a fan of Agatha Christie, Nero Wolfe, or one of the innumerable versions of CSI, it’s easy to love a mystery, because deep down inside we believe justice will be done.
The prophet Malachi, whose name means both “messenger” and “angel,” puns on his own name when sharing the word of the Lord, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me. (Malachi 3:1).” In the New Testament, John the Baptist is understood to be the fulfillment of this scripture, the messenger who went ahead of Jesus to prepare the way.
So, who was the messenger who prepared the way for mysteries? Most people would point to Sherlock Holmes, the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the precursor of the modern mystery. Holmes, though not a member of any official law enforcement agency, uses reason, scientific evidence, and logic to determine who has perpetrated a crime. The four novels and fifty-six stories, narrated by the equally fictional John Watson, are the foundation of a vast industry of the many different kinds of mysteries we enjoy in all the various media. Indeed, so pervasive is his influence that some people believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person.
But if you want to know the truth, the real messenger paving the way for the modern mystery story was created by none other than the famed Edgar Allen Poe, better known for his horror stories and his poetry. But Poe was a working writer, ready to try his hand at anything. In 1841, he introduced the world to C. Auguste Dupin, in a story titled “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Like the two stories that followed, this mystery is set in France. Dupin comes from a wealthy family, but through no fault of his own he is reduced to humbler circumstances. However, aside from his intellectual pursuits his needs are simple. Moreover, he is a member of the Legion of Honor.
The stories are narrated by an unnamed roommate of Dupin who, like Dr. Watson, serves as a foil for the master detective’s ruminations. In each of the three cases which Poe wrote, the official police come to Dupin because, though they have all the facts, they cannot come up with the solution to a crime.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a classic locked-door mystery. Two women are found horribly murdered. Theft is out of the question. Two sacks of gold were left behind, untouched. The authorities, with the help of some neighbors, break into the house in response to screams from a mother and daughter, but the murderer is no longer present and with every door and window locked it seems impossible to figure out how anyone got in or out of the building.
Dupin analyzes all the varying accounts, creates a theory that satisfies him, then devises a way for the solution to come to him.
Two other stories followed: “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter,” (1844). Dupin solves, in turn, the murder of a young woman that transfixed a nation (and was partly based on a true crime), and afterwards solves the problem of a letter stolen from the French queen.
In the first Sherlock Holmes story, the novel “A Study in Scarlet,” Dr. Watson compares the reasoning powers of his new companion, Sherlock Holmes, to C. Auguste Dupin. Perhaps it was sour grapes that caused Holmes to respond, “No doubt you think you are complimenting me ... In my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow... He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appears to imagine."
Truth be told, to my mind the real messenger pointing to the modern mystery is none other than the biblical Daniel. In chapters 13 and 14 of that prophetic book in Roman Catholic editions of the Bible, and otherwise found in the apocrypha under the titles “Susanna” and “Bel and the Dragon,” Daniel solves two mysteries.
In the first, Daniel is only a boy when two elders frame the virtuous Susanna when she refuses to submit to their sexual advances by claiming they caught her in an adulterous relationship with an unknown young man. Daniel stops the execution and demands the opportunity to question the two accusers separately, at which point he asks them under what sort of tree they saw Susanna commit adultery. Their stories don’t match, and it is the accusers who are executed!
In the second story, Daniel contests the claim of the Babylonian king that the statue of Bel is a living god because food is laid out before it every evening and every morning the food has been eaten. Daniel sprinkles ashes all around the floor of the God’s temple, and the next morning the footprints of Bel’s priests and their families are revealed!
In the case of this latter story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle borrowed Daniel’s device and had Holmes leave cigarette ashes on the floor of an apparent invalid’s room to prove that when no one else was around the man walked perfectly well!
* * *
The Unforgiving Manure Spreader
John Sumwalt
Philippians 1:3-11
“And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless.” (vv. 9-10)
Forgiveness is hard. Sometimes it seems impossible.
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” we used to pray at the little white Evangelical United Brethren Church in Loyd, WI, when I was a little farm kid. I knew about debt. Dad had borrowed $10,000 to buy the farm, a fortune in 1957. I doubted then that “we” would ever be able to pay it off. And of course, the debt grew by the thousands every year as Dad bought new machinery, added on to the barn, put in the barn cleaner and the silo unloader, and one day bought another farm.
If only I could have known then that there would come a time when he and Mom would retire debt free on the 25 acres that was left of those two farms. I will never forget the day we were sitting in his room at Pine Valley Manor, a few months before he died, and I told Dad how proud I was of him and Mom for starting with nothing, raising four kids, seeing them all graduate from college, and retiring with something to show for it. But I never forgot the burden of that debt which affected everything we did and didn’t do on the farm. It was a nagging worry that every farm family knows too well.
In 1968, we EUBs merged with the Methodist Church to become the United Methodist Church. And suddenly, instead of “debts” and “debtors” we were praying “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I knew about trespassing too. It is what was on the signs Dad posted all along the creek and the line fences: “NO TRESPASSING!” He was very protective of all “our” land. If someone stopped and asked permission to fish or hunt Dad was always glad to say yes. I think it was the principle of the thing for him, a matter of showing respect. And, yes, if you didn’t ask, and he caught you fishing he would chase you off the property and sometimes more. So, I was taken aback, but not entirely surprised, one day when I heard a neighbor tell about a time when a city guy paid the ultimate price for unsanctioned fishing.
Just after I retired from full time ministry in 2013, when Jo and I moved back to the farm, I served two nearby churches part-time for a couple of months. One afternoon I stopped by the Lime Ridge church. Several guys from the men’s group were working on the wheelchair ramp, which runs up to one of the side doors. We got to talking about dad and one of the men talked about the time this city guy parked a white Cadillac in the gate to one of our corn fields, put on his fancy waders, and then went fishing without asking permission. Dad came upon the obstructive car as he was making his way to the field with the tractor and manure spreader after cleaning out the pig barn. Maybe if the car hadn’t been blocking his way, and maybe if it hadn’t been a Cadillac, Dad might have let him off with a warning. But there was no grace to be had that day on Sumwalt farm. Leonard turned around, backed the spreader up to the caddy, and gave him the whole load.
Years later, I learned yet another version of the Lord’s Prayer in churches I pastored that had former EUB and former Methodist members: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” It was the compromise version for blended congregations that had both “debt” and “trespass” practitioners. “Sins” is as accurate a translation as “debts” and “trespasses,” but somehow it felt heavier to me. Now we were letting each other off for the “whole load.” Does any mere mortal have the authority to do that? Over the ages church leaders, the official spreaders of the gtospel and the makers of rules about how forgiveness is to be given or withheld, have taken conflicting positions.
The late Brennan Manning said that he was hearing confessions one day as a priest when a young man poured out his heart to him. He told a sordid story of substance abuse, sexual misconduct, and multiple marriages. He fell on his knees weeping, looking for a way back to the consolation and challenge of the faith in which he had been raised. And Brennan said that he began to think through the complexities of canon law as it related to this man’s situation, about the annulments and applications and hearings that they would have to undertake to restore him to good standing in the church.
And in the middle of working all of this through in his head, Brennan said that he looked down at this broken person in front of him, and he saw him through the eyes and with the heart of Jesus. And then Brennan says that he just gathered that man up into his arms and whispered in his ear, “Welcome home son...you are beloved of God.” And later, when Brennan thought about all the church rules that he had broken and the ecclesiastical trouble that he would most certainly be in for his actions, he prayed — “Dear Jesus, if it’s a fault for being too kind to a sinner, then it’s a fault that I learned from you. For you never scolded anyone…who came to you seeking understanding and mercy.”
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 5, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
