The Amen Code
Stories
Object:
Contents
"The Amen Code" by Frank Ramirez
"Gun Stories" by John Sumwalt
* * * * * * *
The Amen Code
by Frank Ramirez
1 Timothy 1:12-17
But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
-- 1 Timothy 1:14
During the early Christian centuries the level of persecution would rise or fall, depending on the zealousness and the energy of the authorities, both Imperial and local. Around the year 303 AD, only ten years before Christianity was made legal by the Emperor Constantine, the Emperor Diocletian sent out a letter demanding that Christian churches be destroyed, their possessions confiscated, and Christian books burned.
He also called for the arrest of all Christians who would not renounce their faith. The quickest way to determine this was simply to require anyone engaged in public business to be ordered to make a sacrifice to a pagan god.
Not much longer after that a Christian named Kopres, writing from Alexandria where he was conducting important legal business, sent a letter to his wife Sarapias, back home in Oxyrhynchus. (Oxyrhynchus, which means "sharp-nosed fish," was a small town in the Egyptian fayum.)
Kopres expresses concern about his mother-in-law's health, and about their children. But he also wants to let her know that things are a little more dangerous than they used to be. (By the way, he addresses his wife as his sister, which was the common form of address in those days).
Kopres to his sister Serapias, many greetings!
Before anything else I pray that you are well in the Lord God.
I want you to know that we got here on the 11th and it was made known to us that newcomers are required to sacrifice, so I made my brother power of attorney. So far we haven't been able to get anything accomplished.
We have been instructed by the Advocate on the 12th that the case regarding the land will be heard on the 14th. If we get anything done I will write to you. I sent nothing since I found out Theodorus himself is coming, but I'm sending you this letter through another quickly.
Write to us about everyone's health, and how (our children) Maxima and Asene are doing. If it is possible let her come with your mother in order that her eye problems might be healed. For I saw others so cured. I pray for your health. I greet all ours by name.
Deliver to my sister from Kopres. 99.*
Now this is not a theological letter by Paul. It seems to be taken up mostly with business matters -- the selling of a piece of property -- and concerns about a mother-in-law's eye problems -- the author refers to her leukoma, or whiteness. And Kopres opens and closes the letter with assurances that he is praying for his loved ones.
One thing interesting about this letter is that it is written on a torn piece of papyrus -- and since Kopres wrote around the tear it was already damaged when he composed the letter. One wonders if the news he had to share was so important he couldn't afford to take the time to find a better piece of papyrus.
For did you notice the chilling words, "newcomers are required to sacrifice"? In order for him to pursue a case at court, Kopres would have had to make a public sacrifice to a pagan god, and that, of course, was impossible for a Christian. His solution -- to ask someone he refers to as a brother, probably a close pagan friend -- to be his power of attorney, show up in court, and make the sacrifice for him.
In this way he was able to conduct his business, remain officially unrevealed as a Christian, and get home safely. Surely there were many people, like his pagan friend, who were aware of his faith, and knew him to be a good person, whether or not he was a Christian, who refused to cooperate with the empire, just as there were many Christians during World War II who refused to cooperate with the Nazis and turn in their Jewish neighbors and friends.
Although we are more familiar with the images of those who publicly confessed their faith and suffered for it, it may have been that family obligations (including an ailing mother-in-law) and simple prudence led him to turn to a friend to cover for him.
All the same, he did proclaim his faith in a simple code. In the ancient world letters were also used as numbers. The Greek letter 'alpha' was 1, the 'mu' was forty, the 'eta' was 8, and the 'nu' was fifty. Add them up and the result is 99. Sound out the letters and you'll hear the result is "Amen." 99 is code for Amen.
Amen, which means "So be it!" was the way Jews and Christians ended their prayers. One wonders if Kopres was saying, Amen, or "So be it!" to whatever might happen on this journey.
A decade later Christianity was legal. The Christian faith survived through the witness of the martyrs, but it also survived because it was kept alive by those who stayed alive. Some Christians who had been imprisoned and tortured criticized other Christians who had not, but there were many who insisted that all must be reconciled. As we make choices about when is the right time to witness, let us bear with each other with patience and forbearance.
(*Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2601, translated by the author)
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids, and Breakdown on Bethlehem Street.
Gun Stories
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 14
They have all gone astray, they are a like perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one O that deliverance for Israel would come.
-- Psalm 14:3, 7a
Bob Blackburn, one of my UM clergy colleagues in Wisconsin, asked the following question about guns on our clergy e-list last week: "Now that it is legal in Wisconsin to carry a concealed handgun, I am curious to know if any of you are doing this!"
Bob's inquiry is timely. I think his question to pastors might be a good place to start a dialogue about guns with lay persons in a sermon. Here are some thoughts that come to mind as I think about what I might say in a sermon about this issue.
You may have heard that gun violence has reached epidemic proportions in Milwaukee this summer. Twenty-three people were wounded by gunfire during the week of August 2-9. Seven died.
An incident similar to the "stand your ground" cases in Florida and in other parts of the US occurred two weeks later. A bar owner shot and killed a young man in a robbery attempt. He wounded another and missed a third as they held him and his customers at gun point. No charges were filed against the bar owner who killed the 23-year-old man. "What are you going to do? You're going to protect yourself and your customers. I have no regrets of doing it and I'll do it again," the bar owner said. The bar was open for business the next day and the following Sunday the owner offered a concealed carry class that was attended by a hundred people including the Milwaukee County Sheriff.
"People who shoot someone in self-defense should be able to get their guns back within 48 hours of being cleared of criminal charges," Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. told the crowd... "They're taking his freedom away to possibly have to act again tonight... If Andy would have reached for the phone instead of his firearm, we might have been out here today for a memorial service for Andy."
Clarke drew national attention recently for radio spots in which he encouraged residents to arm and defend themselves. He stressed that he didn't mean to indicate that people shouldn't call police, only that they should be prepared to take matters into their own hands first because police can't be everywhere and don't show up right away."
"It's really a textbook example of proper use of deadly force and proper aftermath. The owner pulled a gun from underneath his bar, defended himself, and his customers," Nik Clark, the Chairman and President of Wisconsin Carry, told FOX6 News.
The bar owner who shot and killed a would-be robber made a personal decision to have a gun concealed under his bar. He made a personal decision in the heat of the moment, as guns were being pointed at him and his patrons, to shoot and kill rather than take the chance that he or his customers might be shot. The odds are that if he had given these three armed men what they wanted no one would have been hurt. Still there is no telling what they might have done and he might well have prevented a massacre.
What would I have done? Let's take that to a hypothetical extreme. Let's say that I have made a decision to keep a loaded gun underneath the Bible in the pulpit -- and that some Sunday morning when I am preaching an armed person walks into our sanctuary and points a gun at me or some of you -- and that fearing that several people may be killed and wounded as in other church shootings in our community, I take out my gun and kill the intruder. To some I would be a hero and to others what I had done would be viewed as a betrayal of what it means to be a peace loving follower of Jesus.
To be clear about my personal view, I must tell you that I do not have a gun and I hope I would never shoot one in defense of myself or others. This is a matter of personal faith with me and I am aware that it is quite different than the prevailing view in our culture. Let me be clear that it is a long, prayerfully considered witness on my part. I believe, as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi believed, that violence of any kind always begets more violence. I try to put my complete trust in God in every situation. I believe that non-violent resistance to evil, as witnessed in King's and Gandhi's movements, is the only way to bring peace to the world.
(Is this something that I will say in a sermon in my church? Would it be too provocative? Would it hinder my future ministry with those who strongly disagree with my understanding of God's word? These questions remain unresolved for me.)
Here is what I did say in a sermon on gun violence a number of years ago. I am looking at these excerpts of that sermon as I prepare to preach on the topic again in light of these recent tragedies.
Someone wrote that the novelist, William Faulkner, was a "mythmaker who could differentiate between facts and truth." "Facts," he said, can be looked at from different angles, but the truth is unassailable." One of the unassailable truths of this wonderful metropolitan area where we live, this beautiful city by the lake with all of its many cultural and economic opportunities, is that children, youth, and adults die here almost every week because guns of all kinds are available to everyone, including children.
A few weeks ago, in one of our peaceful suburbs, two young boys, both less than thirteen years old, were discovered playing cops and robbers with real loaded guns, one a .38 caliber handgun. Last week a fourteen-year-old boy was held up at gunpoint as he was riding his bike home from school. It happened only a few blocks from the church in front of the home of one of our members. The police arrested two teenaged youth and confiscated a loaded .45 caliber pistol.
Where do they get the guns? And where do they get the attitude and the values (or lack of values) that allows them to pull the trigger of a gun pointed in the direction of another human being?
Seventeen-year-old Shayla Johnson was shot dead last month as she drove through the Burger King parking lot. Shayla's mother said she couldn't believe it when a guy at the scene called and said her daughter had just been shot in the head. She said, "I thought he was playing, because sometimes people play on the phone." So she told him she didn't believe him. Then he put Shayla's friend on the phone and she started screaming and crying. (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
It breaks my heart to tell that story. I can hardly bring myself to think about it, much less say it aloud.
Where do they get the guns?
The National Rifle Association has a slogan that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." That is a fact, an indisputable fact. It is an act of free will when a human finger pulls the trigger of a gun. But it is also an unassailable truth that having a gun makes it easy to kill. Too easy.
Unlimited access to guns of all kinds is an American tradition, an American attitude that we need to transform so our children will not have to live every day in fear for their lives. In a recent Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article, one Milwaukee public school teacher told of coming back from a vacation and asking a boy in her class how his vacation was, and hearing his matter-of-fact and unemotional response, "I survived."
I come from a family of hunters and sports enthusiasts. Having guns, all kinds of guns for hunting deer, rabbits, squirrels, turkey, pheasants, ducks, and geese is a cherished right, a way of life where I grew up in Richland County. But I would give up that right and all of the joys of hunting in a Wisconsin minute if it would save one more child from dying of a gunshot wound on a Milwaukee street. I say that not as a pastor, not as a member of a clergy association, but as a scared parent. I am frightened -- more than I have ever been frightened in my life -- that the next time the phone rings it will be someone telling me that one of my own children has been shot.
My teenage son called home late one Saturday night, a few weeks ago, to tell us that he had been delayed because he had to talk to the police about an incident involving broken glass and cuts on his face. He had been riding in the backseat of a car with friends when someone in another car yelled an obscenity at a big guy on the street. The big guy thought the obscenity came from the car my son was in. He came up to the car and put his fist through the window next to where my son was sitting. My son suffered some minor abrasions on his face. He and his friends reported the big guy to the police, and he was apprehended and is being appropriately charged. I breathed a sigh of relief when my son was safely home, because I knew it could have been much worse. It could have been a bullet that came through the window.
At some point in my sermon on guns I think I might share some the Principles for Bible Study that Bishop Richard Wilke and Julia Wilke quoted in their introduction to the Disciple Bible Study series. They are taken from Dick Murray's book Strengthening the Adult Sunday School Class.
"No Christian has a monopoly on understanding either God's word or the words of scripture. This includes biblical scholars and the most unlearned Christian. All of us must listen to one another as we seek to understand the richness of God's gifts.
"We must assume everyone has Christian integrity and not accuse one another of being unChristian, no matter how unusual the opinions.
"We must further assume that we will arrive at different understandings of portions of scripture and that will not disturb God as much as it will some of us.
"While we accept our differences, we do not feel that these differences are unimportant, or that they should be ignored or treated as if they did not matter.
"Different biblical understandings can remain among us, but we can still be warm Christian friends. In fact, as we grow to better understand our differences, we can grow in our appreciation of one another."
Then I might remind people of what I say about my preaching at every new member orientation: "My hope when I preach a sermon is not that everyone will come to think and believe as I do, but that what I say might be a catalyst for their own thinking as they work out the practical implications of their faith with God's help. Their discernment of the Spirit's leading may be different than mine and that is okay with me. In fact that is our United Methodist way. John Wesley taught us to 'think and let think.' "
Are we heirs of John Wesley when we think about carrying guns -- concealed or unconcealed?
That is a personal decision for each one of us.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller in the Milwaukee area. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
*****************************************
StoryShare, September 15, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 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 Amen Code" by Frank Ramirez
"Gun Stories" by John Sumwalt
* * * * * * *
The Amen Code
by Frank Ramirez
1 Timothy 1:12-17
But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
-- 1 Timothy 1:14
During the early Christian centuries the level of persecution would rise or fall, depending on the zealousness and the energy of the authorities, both Imperial and local. Around the year 303 AD, only ten years before Christianity was made legal by the Emperor Constantine, the Emperor Diocletian sent out a letter demanding that Christian churches be destroyed, their possessions confiscated, and Christian books burned.
He also called for the arrest of all Christians who would not renounce their faith. The quickest way to determine this was simply to require anyone engaged in public business to be ordered to make a sacrifice to a pagan god.
Not much longer after that a Christian named Kopres, writing from Alexandria where he was conducting important legal business, sent a letter to his wife Sarapias, back home in Oxyrhynchus. (Oxyrhynchus, which means "sharp-nosed fish," was a small town in the Egyptian fayum.)
Kopres expresses concern about his mother-in-law's health, and about their children. But he also wants to let her know that things are a little more dangerous than they used to be. (By the way, he addresses his wife as his sister, which was the common form of address in those days).
Kopres to his sister Serapias, many greetings!
Before anything else I pray that you are well in the Lord God.
I want you to know that we got here on the 11th and it was made known to us that newcomers are required to sacrifice, so I made my brother power of attorney. So far we haven't been able to get anything accomplished.
We have been instructed by the Advocate on the 12th that the case regarding the land will be heard on the 14th. If we get anything done I will write to you. I sent nothing since I found out Theodorus himself is coming, but I'm sending you this letter through another quickly.
Write to us about everyone's health, and how (our children) Maxima and Asene are doing. If it is possible let her come with your mother in order that her eye problems might be healed. For I saw others so cured. I pray for your health. I greet all ours by name.
Deliver to my sister from Kopres. 99.*
Now this is not a theological letter by Paul. It seems to be taken up mostly with business matters -- the selling of a piece of property -- and concerns about a mother-in-law's eye problems -- the author refers to her leukoma, or whiteness. And Kopres opens and closes the letter with assurances that he is praying for his loved ones.
One thing interesting about this letter is that it is written on a torn piece of papyrus -- and since Kopres wrote around the tear it was already damaged when he composed the letter. One wonders if the news he had to share was so important he couldn't afford to take the time to find a better piece of papyrus.
For did you notice the chilling words, "newcomers are required to sacrifice"? In order for him to pursue a case at court, Kopres would have had to make a public sacrifice to a pagan god, and that, of course, was impossible for a Christian. His solution -- to ask someone he refers to as a brother, probably a close pagan friend -- to be his power of attorney, show up in court, and make the sacrifice for him.
In this way he was able to conduct his business, remain officially unrevealed as a Christian, and get home safely. Surely there were many people, like his pagan friend, who were aware of his faith, and knew him to be a good person, whether or not he was a Christian, who refused to cooperate with the empire, just as there were many Christians during World War II who refused to cooperate with the Nazis and turn in their Jewish neighbors and friends.
Although we are more familiar with the images of those who publicly confessed their faith and suffered for it, it may have been that family obligations (including an ailing mother-in-law) and simple prudence led him to turn to a friend to cover for him.
All the same, he did proclaim his faith in a simple code. In the ancient world letters were also used as numbers. The Greek letter 'alpha' was 1, the 'mu' was forty, the 'eta' was 8, and the 'nu' was fifty. Add them up and the result is 99. Sound out the letters and you'll hear the result is "Amen." 99 is code for Amen.
Amen, which means "So be it!" was the way Jews and Christians ended their prayers. One wonders if Kopres was saying, Amen, or "So be it!" to whatever might happen on this journey.
A decade later Christianity was legal. The Christian faith survived through the witness of the martyrs, but it also survived because it was kept alive by those who stayed alive. Some Christians who had been imprisoned and tortured criticized other Christians who had not, but there were many who insisted that all must be reconciled. As we make choices about when is the right time to witness, let us bear with each other with patience and forbearance.
(*Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2601, translated by the author)
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids, and Breakdown on Bethlehem Street.
Gun Stories
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 14
They have all gone astray, they are a like perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one O that deliverance for Israel would come.
-- Psalm 14:3, 7a
Bob Blackburn, one of my UM clergy colleagues in Wisconsin, asked the following question about guns on our clergy e-list last week: "Now that it is legal in Wisconsin to carry a concealed handgun, I am curious to know if any of you are doing this!"
Bob's inquiry is timely. I think his question to pastors might be a good place to start a dialogue about guns with lay persons in a sermon. Here are some thoughts that come to mind as I think about what I might say in a sermon about this issue.
You may have heard that gun violence has reached epidemic proportions in Milwaukee this summer. Twenty-three people were wounded by gunfire during the week of August 2-9. Seven died.
An incident similar to the "stand your ground" cases in Florida and in other parts of the US occurred two weeks later. A bar owner shot and killed a young man in a robbery attempt. He wounded another and missed a third as they held him and his customers at gun point. No charges were filed against the bar owner who killed the 23-year-old man. "What are you going to do? You're going to protect yourself and your customers. I have no regrets of doing it and I'll do it again," the bar owner said. The bar was open for business the next day and the following Sunday the owner offered a concealed carry class that was attended by a hundred people including the Milwaukee County Sheriff.
"People who shoot someone in self-defense should be able to get their guns back within 48 hours of being cleared of criminal charges," Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. told the crowd... "They're taking his freedom away to possibly have to act again tonight... If Andy would have reached for the phone instead of his firearm, we might have been out here today for a memorial service for Andy."
Clarke drew national attention recently for radio spots in which he encouraged residents to arm and defend themselves. He stressed that he didn't mean to indicate that people shouldn't call police, only that they should be prepared to take matters into their own hands first because police can't be everywhere and don't show up right away."
"It's really a textbook example of proper use of deadly force and proper aftermath. The owner pulled a gun from underneath his bar, defended himself, and his customers," Nik Clark, the Chairman and President of Wisconsin Carry, told FOX6 News.
The bar owner who shot and killed a would-be robber made a personal decision to have a gun concealed under his bar. He made a personal decision in the heat of the moment, as guns were being pointed at him and his patrons, to shoot and kill rather than take the chance that he or his customers might be shot. The odds are that if he had given these three armed men what they wanted no one would have been hurt. Still there is no telling what they might have done and he might well have prevented a massacre.
What would I have done? Let's take that to a hypothetical extreme. Let's say that I have made a decision to keep a loaded gun underneath the Bible in the pulpit -- and that some Sunday morning when I am preaching an armed person walks into our sanctuary and points a gun at me or some of you -- and that fearing that several people may be killed and wounded as in other church shootings in our community, I take out my gun and kill the intruder. To some I would be a hero and to others what I had done would be viewed as a betrayal of what it means to be a peace loving follower of Jesus.
To be clear about my personal view, I must tell you that I do not have a gun and I hope I would never shoot one in defense of myself or others. This is a matter of personal faith with me and I am aware that it is quite different than the prevailing view in our culture. Let me be clear that it is a long, prayerfully considered witness on my part. I believe, as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi believed, that violence of any kind always begets more violence. I try to put my complete trust in God in every situation. I believe that non-violent resistance to evil, as witnessed in King's and Gandhi's movements, is the only way to bring peace to the world.
(Is this something that I will say in a sermon in my church? Would it be too provocative? Would it hinder my future ministry with those who strongly disagree with my understanding of God's word? These questions remain unresolved for me.)
Here is what I did say in a sermon on gun violence a number of years ago. I am looking at these excerpts of that sermon as I prepare to preach on the topic again in light of these recent tragedies.
Someone wrote that the novelist, William Faulkner, was a "mythmaker who could differentiate between facts and truth." "Facts," he said, can be looked at from different angles, but the truth is unassailable." One of the unassailable truths of this wonderful metropolitan area where we live, this beautiful city by the lake with all of its many cultural and economic opportunities, is that children, youth, and adults die here almost every week because guns of all kinds are available to everyone, including children.
A few weeks ago, in one of our peaceful suburbs, two young boys, both less than thirteen years old, were discovered playing cops and robbers with real loaded guns, one a .38 caliber handgun. Last week a fourteen-year-old boy was held up at gunpoint as he was riding his bike home from school. It happened only a few blocks from the church in front of the home of one of our members. The police arrested two teenaged youth and confiscated a loaded .45 caliber pistol.
Where do they get the guns? And where do they get the attitude and the values (or lack of values) that allows them to pull the trigger of a gun pointed in the direction of another human being?
Seventeen-year-old Shayla Johnson was shot dead last month as she drove through the Burger King parking lot. Shayla's mother said she couldn't believe it when a guy at the scene called and said her daughter had just been shot in the head. She said, "I thought he was playing, because sometimes people play on the phone." So she told him she didn't believe him. Then he put Shayla's friend on the phone and she started screaming and crying. (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
It breaks my heart to tell that story. I can hardly bring myself to think about it, much less say it aloud.
Where do they get the guns?
The National Rifle Association has a slogan that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." That is a fact, an indisputable fact. It is an act of free will when a human finger pulls the trigger of a gun. But it is also an unassailable truth that having a gun makes it easy to kill. Too easy.
Unlimited access to guns of all kinds is an American tradition, an American attitude that we need to transform so our children will not have to live every day in fear for their lives. In a recent Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article, one Milwaukee public school teacher told of coming back from a vacation and asking a boy in her class how his vacation was, and hearing his matter-of-fact and unemotional response, "I survived."
I come from a family of hunters and sports enthusiasts. Having guns, all kinds of guns for hunting deer, rabbits, squirrels, turkey, pheasants, ducks, and geese is a cherished right, a way of life where I grew up in Richland County. But I would give up that right and all of the joys of hunting in a Wisconsin minute if it would save one more child from dying of a gunshot wound on a Milwaukee street. I say that not as a pastor, not as a member of a clergy association, but as a scared parent. I am frightened -- more than I have ever been frightened in my life -- that the next time the phone rings it will be someone telling me that one of my own children has been shot.
My teenage son called home late one Saturday night, a few weeks ago, to tell us that he had been delayed because he had to talk to the police about an incident involving broken glass and cuts on his face. He had been riding in the backseat of a car with friends when someone in another car yelled an obscenity at a big guy on the street. The big guy thought the obscenity came from the car my son was in. He came up to the car and put his fist through the window next to where my son was sitting. My son suffered some minor abrasions on his face. He and his friends reported the big guy to the police, and he was apprehended and is being appropriately charged. I breathed a sigh of relief when my son was safely home, because I knew it could have been much worse. It could have been a bullet that came through the window.
At some point in my sermon on guns I think I might share some the Principles for Bible Study that Bishop Richard Wilke and Julia Wilke quoted in their introduction to the Disciple Bible Study series. They are taken from Dick Murray's book Strengthening the Adult Sunday School Class.
"No Christian has a monopoly on understanding either God's word or the words of scripture. This includes biblical scholars and the most unlearned Christian. All of us must listen to one another as we seek to understand the richness of God's gifts.
"We must assume everyone has Christian integrity and not accuse one another of being unChristian, no matter how unusual the opinions.
"We must further assume that we will arrive at different understandings of portions of scripture and that will not disturb God as much as it will some of us.
"While we accept our differences, we do not feel that these differences are unimportant, or that they should be ignored or treated as if they did not matter.
"Different biblical understandings can remain among us, but we can still be warm Christian friends. In fact, as we grow to better understand our differences, we can grow in our appreciation of one another."
Then I might remind people of what I say about my preaching at every new member orientation: "My hope when I preach a sermon is not that everyone will come to think and believe as I do, but that what I say might be a catalyst for their own thinking as they work out the practical implications of their faith with God's help. Their discernment of the Spirit's leading may be different than mine and that is okay with me. In fact that is our United Methodist way. John Wesley taught us to 'think and let think.' "
Are we heirs of John Wesley when we think about carrying guns -- concealed or unconcealed?
That is a personal decision for each one of us.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller in the Milwaukee area. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
*****************************************
StoryShare, September 15, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 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.
