The Clearing
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"The Clearing" by Keith Hewitt
"Julia Gilbert Changes Love Feast Among the Brethren -- Twice!" by Frank Ramirez
"Is It Finished?" by Larry Winebrenner
What's Up This Week
As we contemplate again the powerful events of Holy Week, we must look deep inside ourselves and face what lies within our hearts. What do we ask of God and of each other? Are we prepared to respond to the life-saving gift that God has given us on the cross? Are we prepared to recognize that God answers our prayers -- just not on demand, or in the manner we expect? In this edition of StoryShare, Keith Hewitt spins a powerful tale about a traveler who has an unexpected encounter that changes his perspective about the gift of life and about our tendency to question how God takes it from us. Then Frank Ramirez and Larry Winebrenner offer some insight into the motivations of two very different characters: Julia Gilbert and the high priest Caiaphas.
* * * * * * * * *
The Clearing
by Keith Hewitt
Psalm 116
The plank road from Fort Neshotah to Joliet had seen better days. In fact, it had seen better years. There seemed to be more rotted planks than not, to the point that actually using the road was nearly as treacherous as riding across the often-spongy ground alongside it, and probably only marginally faster. Jamison Lee kept a watchful eye on the road as his horse plodded along, apparently unconcerned at the prospect of sticking a hoof through some bit of soft wood and breaking a leg.
It had been a thriving thoroughfare for seven or eight years, before the state road was carved through the countryside a few miles north. After that, faced with the choice of going an hour out of the way or using the plank road and paying a toll, most of the thrifty farmers and tradesmen in the two counties had chosen the free road. The War Between the States had driven a stake through its heart -- the owners abandoned it once the maintenance costs outstripped the tolls paid by travelers. After that, nature began the tedious process of reclaiming that which had been taken from it.
Still, for a man who needed to travel the fifty miles or so from Fort Neshotah to Joliet and be alone with his thoughts, the old plank road was just the ticket.
As long as he could see where he was going…
The sun was still above the horizon, but not by much. The road was getting harder to see, with shadows camouflaging holes where the road had rotted through. He just missed one the size of his hat, tugging his horse to one side to avoid stepping in it at the last moment. The horse snuffled indignantly and turned its head to look at him out of the corner of his eye. Jamison nudged it with his knee and muttered, "Just keep your eyes on the road." Disgusted, the horse turned back to face the road, shaking its head once in a mighty twitch.
Should have left a little earlier, Jamison mused, and he pulled out his watch, flipped the cover open, and tilted it toward the waning light. I've got maybe an hour of light, and about four hours of ground to cover -- and no lantern. Even using a lantern to ride by would have been chancy on this road -- but he might have thought about it, at least. He thought back over the last week and decided that there would be little or no illumination to the night -- it was definitely a waning moon.
Well, it's not like you haven't spent a few nights under the stars. He straightened up, raised himself tall in the saddle, and looked around. There was mostly marsh grass to his south, with clumps of brush here and there. To his north there was open land, but the last cultivated stretch was a few miles behind him. But there, almost abreast of him, was a stand of trees that would offer some shelter. Better than sleeping out in the open. He reined up, gently this time, and clucked softly, nudged his horse with his left knee. The beast clopped to a halt and looked back at him as if to ask if he really meant it.
"You heard me," Jamison answered sternly and nudged him again. The horse snuffled in response, delicately walked over to the edge of the road, and stepped off. With man and horse watching the uneven, grassy terrain closely, they made their way slowly toward the trees. In fairly short order, though, they had crossed the open ground and were in among the trees. Jamison dismounted then and walked ahead of them, one hand wrapped securely in the reins, the other resting on the worn leather holster flap of the Cold Navy pistol on his left hip. He stumbled over a fallen branch hidden in shadow, and thought he heard his horse chuckle in his ear.
They had gone about thirty or forty yards -- passing up a couple of likely spots -- but something seemed to be calling to Jamison from further in. And there it was suddenly -- the trees thinned out, faded to open space -- a clearing in the woods. Jamison stopped abruptly and was bumped from behind as the horse walked into him, then stopped on its own.
It was a sight so incongruous that his mind refused to accept it at first. And then when it did, the whole picture sprang into being, at once obvious and strange. On the far side of the clearing was what looked like a miniature church -- a chapel with white clapboard walls, a proportionate steeple at the front, and even a small bell -- but the building could not have held more than a handful of adults. There were beds of flowers planted around it, and they seemed large in comparison to the building they surrounded.
At the front, tending an oval patch of petunias next to the two steps that led up to the door, knelt a man. His head raised as Jamison's horse whinnied softly and he looked back, then he slowly stood up and stood there, garden trowel in one hand, a stringy green weed in the other. He studied Jamison for a few moments, then smiled. "Evenin'," he said cordially.
"Good evening," Jamison said automatically, still cataloging the whole sight. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."
The man tossed the weed onto a small pile of its siblings and wiped his face with that hand. "Not at all," he answered. "Can I help you?"
Jamison hesitated. "Uhh… I was just looking for a place to bed down for the night. I'm on my way to Joliet, and we seem to have run out of daylight."
"I see. We don't get many folks down this way anymore." The man leaned down, stuck the trowel in the dirt, and stepped toward Jamison, extending his hand. "My name is Josiah."
"Jamison," Jamison answered, stepping forward to shake hands. "Jamison Lee."
"Pleased to meet you." Josiah glanced back toward the building, then back to Jamison. "You seem pretty taken with the chapel here."
"Sorry," Jamison apologized, without knowing why. "It's just… beautiful. And unexpected, out here."
"It's not mine," Josiah explained, answering a question that hadn't been asked. "I'm just taking care of it for a friend of mine. Albert Schwalbe built this chapel about thirty years ago." He nodded back toward the building. "Kept it up ever since. It's kind of a labor of love."
"It must be. Is this Albert Schwalbe a preacher?" Jamison studied the building in the dimming light. The windows were stained glass, and the flickers of motion and color said that there was a lantern or candles burning inside the chapel.
Josiah smiled. "Oh no, son -- Albert's farm was one of the first in this township. It's back that way." He pointed vaguely north, as if that detail was unimportant.
"Then why this?" Jamison asked, waving his free hand to take in the building and its landscape.
Josiah looked surprised. "Why, it's because he promised he would," the old man answered. When Jamison just looked at him curiously, Josiah smiled again and said, "Look, you've probably been traveling quite a while. Would you like something to eat?"
Jamison nodded, suddenly aware that he was hungry.
"I think I've got something that will do us both." Josiah disappeared into the little chapel and came out a few moments later with a wicker basket. The smell of fried chicken escaped from the basket and Jamison's mouth started to water. "Let's set a spell," Josiah suggested. "You can let your horse graze if you want."
Jamison unwrapped the reins from his hand and let them hang down, as the horse ambled out into the clearing and began nibbling at the grass that grew here and there in patches. The two men found a clear space nearby, and Jamison sat with his back to a tree as Josiah pulled food out of the basket. Cold fried chicken, potato salad, corn bread -- enough for two, and even two plates and red checked napkins. Jamison had already taken a bite of bread when Josiah bowed his head and said grace almost inaudibly. He stopped chewing and bowed his head 'til Josiah finished, then raised it again.
"This was always a special place to Albert," Josiah explained as he began to eat. "It's where he proposed to his wife Lola a year after he arrived from Bremen. It was their special spot. They used to come out here and picnic after they got married, and after the kids were born they would bring them too. They had two boys and a girl. Lost the girl to diphtheria when she was seven." Josiah paused and looked up at the sky across the clearing. "That was a hard time for them."
Unbidden, the image of his own son flashed in Jamison's mind, and he nodded, his heart suddenly heavy in his chest.
"But they went on," Josiah continued after a moment. "It wasn't too long after that, that Lola took sick. It came on slow, but eventually it was like a monster in her belly, eating her from the inside out. The pain would come and go at first, and then it was there all the time. And then it got worse and worse. Finally, she couldn't sleep, couldn't work, couldn't hardly bear to sit up and eat, and when she did it wouldn't stay down. It was almost a year like that."
"What was it?" Jamison asked.
Josiah shrugged. "Doesn't much matter. The doctor couldn't do anything but give her laudanum to dull the edge. Then one day when Albert woke up she was asleep in her chair. He tried to wake her up after a while, but he couldn't."
"Was she…" Jamison hesitated, unwilling to pronounce the word for some reason.
"No, she wasn't. But when he couldn't rouse her, Albert knew she had to be in a pretty bad way. So that night he laid her in bed, and then he knelt down next to her and he prayed. He'd never been the prayin' type, but that night he prayed for hours. He promised God that if he made her better, then he would build a little church out here in their clearing to praise him."
Jamison's eyebrows arched in the gloom. "So she got better?"
"When Albert woke up the next morning, she was gone. Passed away sometime in the night."
Jamison frowned and gestured toward the church with a half-eaten drumstick. "So what happened?"
Josiah looked thoughtful. "Well, let's just say Albert didn't take it very well. He'd never been a big churchgoer, but this was the last straw. He and God weren't on speaking terms for a long time."
"I know the feeling," Jamison said softly.
"Do you now? Well, as it happened, one day the following year Albert was going through his wife's things and he found her diary. Once he realized what it was, of course he started to read. And he kept reading, reliving the years they were together, right up through that last one. The writing got shaky then, and the entries were farther and farther apart. But the last entry was written the day before he found her. Do you know what it said?"
Jamison just shook his head.
"She wrote that she knew she wasn't going to get better. She wrote that the pain was just too much to bear, and she didn't want to be a burden to her family anymore. And then she wrote that she had spent whole last night praying that God would let her sleep, and then that he would take her soon."
There was a long silence, and then Jamison said, "Oh." There didn't seem to be anything else to say.
"So it turned out that the prayer was answered -- just not his. So Albert spent the rest of that summer building the chapel, because God has answered his wife's prayer. You see," Josiah concluded, "I think that God answers everyone's prayers -- it's just that sometimes in order to say 'yes' to one person, he's got to say 'no' to another."
"But why did he have to do this?" Jamison answered. "Why take a life instead of sparing it? What kind of answer is that?"
Josiah studied him for a moment, and a bit of light from the setting sun picked its way through the trees to illuminate his face -- and to Jamison, it looked as though he knew that he wasn't just talking about Lola and Albert. Finally, he said, "You know, I am sure Albert wondered the same thing -- but he kept his word anyway. Sometimes we don't understand his ways -- but we praise him anyway. You were in the war, yes?"
Jamison frowned. "How did you know?"
"The pistols on your belt, the way you carry yourself -- and this," he pointed to his own cheek, then to Jamison's. "There aren't many ways to get a scar like that."
Jamison reached up unconsciously and touched the angry red line that went from the bridge of his nose to the bottom of his right sideburn. "No," he murmured, "I don't suppose there are."
"You were an officer?"
"A colonel, yes -- 54th Wisconsin."
"The Fighting 54th. I've read about you. So tell me, when you were preparing for battle, or even preparing to march somewhere, did your men always know what you were thinking?"
I hope not. "Probably not."
"But they followed you anyway."
He shrugged. "It's part of discipline. It's not up to them to understand why -- just what."
"And there you go. Albert didn't understand why -- but he knew what he had to do. And he knew that it was right to praise God, even when you don't necessarily understand why something happened."
"It takes a lot of faith to do that."
"Some call it faith. I think of it as trust." Josiah finished his second piece of chicken and tossed the bone into the woods. "There's more to this world than we will ever understand, Colonel. So I think it is good that we trust the one who created it to do the right thing -- and thank him for it."
Jamison frowned again; then saw the image of his son, lying among the dead at White's Run, and closed his eyes. "It is very hard to thank him for some things, Josiah. It's more than I can do."
"Then you don't have to thank him, Colonel. Just trust him."
"Maybe," Jamison agreed as he yawned deeply, belatedly covering his mouth with his hand. "Sorry. I must be more tired than I thought."
"Well, you've come a long way, Colonel. Get some rest -- you've got a long way ahead of you."
Jamison shook his head. "I'm just going to Joliet, Josiah."
The old man smiled then. "That's not what I meant. Get some rest. And once you have the trust part down, remember to thank him occasionally when you see a sunrise or hear a bird sing… when you feel his presence in your life." He raised his hands, encompassing the clearing. "It's all around you."
They talked a little while longer, but Jamison could not remember what was said after he awoke the next morning. He looked around for the old man, even looked inside the little chapel, but there was no one there. Bemused, he got himself dressed, rolled up his bedroll, and got ready to leave. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something flash through the trees; then he heard the trill of a bird and felt the caress of a cool breeze scented with pine. He stood, one hand on the saddle of his horse, and looked up at the sky. The sun streamed into the clearing, bathing it in soft light, and high overhead a hawk soared in silence.
And from nowhere, his eyes filled with tears. When he had stood that way for a while, he patted the horse and said softly, "Wait here." And it did while he went inside the little chapel to say…
Well, he would know what to say when he got there…
He was suddenly sure of that.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT department at a major public safety testing organization.
Julia Gilbert Changes Love Feast Among the Brethren -- Twice!
by Frank Ramirez
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…
-- 1 Corinthians 11:23a
The venerable elders of the old Dunkers, one of the German Plain People sometimes referred to as the Pennsylvania Dutch, would meet yearly to argue their arcane understanding of the scriptures in order to be true in their faith and practice. What they received from their reading of the Lord's word they assiduously handed on to the next generation. They changed, if at all, very slowly. Though in theory anyone could speak at their Annual Meetings, in practice the respect accorded to their elders, with their long beards and plain garb, meant that they had a greater voice.
Nowhere were traditions more honored than in the long and complex ritual known as the Love Feast. This communion service, often stretching over three days, included a foot washing ceremony and an agape meal, along with the bread and cup. This was their signature practice, which others found so intriguing that many would come to witness the celebration.
So it is all the more surprising that these traditions were changed -- twice -- by a woman who was disabled, once when she was a teenager, and once decades later after a lifelong struggle.
Julia Gilbert (1844-1934) was born near the foot of South Mountain in Frederick County, Maryland, but when she was four her family moved to Wolfe Creek in western Ohio. She attended her first Annual Meeting at the age of six and rarely missed another through her long life.
When she was eight years old, two of her siblings died when they contracted measles and scarlet fever. She barely survived herself, and was crippled for life.
In 1858, at the age of 14, she was baptized in the rushing stream. At first she was reluctant to step into the water in her fragile condition, afraid of being swept away, but her pastor reminded her that Jesus had been there before. Recalling the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, she stepped out into the river and as she knelt she prayed, "Dear God, I promise to you that I will live faithful to Jesus until I die." She kept that promise.
She eagerly looked forward to the Love Feast that was celebrated following her baptism as a meal she was sharing with Jesus. The experience was joyful, but that night she found she could not sleep, and she finally lit a candle and read John 13:4: "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself."
The next day she asked her father why the Wolfe Creek congregation had performed the foot washing and then set the meal on the table. Shouldn't they have set the meal on the table and then, like Jesus, risen from the table for the foot washing? Her father, according to her report, sighed and answered, "The old Brethren took the ordinance from several passages of scripture and thought this to be the proper way it ought to be done." This satisfied her for a day or two, but eventually she questioned the elders, and the next year the congregation had changed the way they performed Love Feast to conform to the 14-year-old's reading of scripture.
By contrast, her next cause took nearly 50 years before it was successfully concluded. In her day men passed a long strip of communion bread with each other, each breaking off a piece, but the women did not break bread with each other. Instead, an elder walked down the row and the sisters broke off a piece. This did not seem biblical to Julia, nor was she satisfied with the official explanations for the practice. For decades, first in Ohio and later in Iowa, where she moved after her parents' deaths, she championed the cause, only to see it tabled or returned at Annual Meetings. Finally in June of 1910, at Winona Lake, Indiana, Julia herself spoke on the floor of Annual Meeting, saying, "When I was baptized, I made a vow to God to walk in all his ways and to read the scriptures. I believe it is our duty to do things the way Jesus taught us to do them." The motion passed, and the next year the sisters broke the bread among themselves.
Paul wrote his exhortation to the Corinthians not to preserve some imagined purity of practice -- what he had passed on was the practice of coming together at the table to commemorate the Passion of Jesus Christ. A reading of the larger context of the text makes it clear that the real problem in Corinth was that not all were sharing equally around the table. Rich were arriving early and eating all the good food of the agape meal, leaving the poor, who worked, to eat later and less. Regardless of the century in which we live, Jesus calls us as equals to his table, prepared to listen and learn from each other, and to recognize that the Spirit dwells richly among us all.
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, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
Is It Finished?
by Larry Winebrenner
Psalm 22
Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be good if one man died for the people (John 8:14). Caiaphas was not an evil man. He wasn't even a bad man. After all, he was the high priest in the temple of the Lord. But Caiaphas had a problem. There was a country bumpkin from Galilee stirring confusion among the people who worshiped in the temple. Galilee, of all places -- that was just one step removed from Samaria!
Not that this Jesus was without some merit. Caiaphas had stood unseen at times listening to the man's parables. He had a silver tongue. Caiaphas at times felt like Jesus was aware of his presence and told some of the stories directly to him. There was no mistaking who the father was in the story of the father and two sons -- or the older son.
Caiaphas almost stepped out to challenge Jesus in that event. But he had seen how Jesus had bested the haughty Pharisees and smug scribes in street debates. He had sometimes chuckled along with the people at the pin-pricking of their self-esteem. But he wasn't going to place himself in that position.
He was curious about who the straying son was. Jesus himself? He did mingle with the tax gathers and eat with sinners. But somehow Jesus didn't fit the mold.
The man was a puzzle… and a challenge. If Caiaphas had any shortcoming, it was the lust after power. And that man threatened the temple and the high priest's power.
That was about to end. When the streets were crowded with foreigners, the Romans were nervous. Passover brought armies of pilgrims into the temple city. The Roman authorities were on edge. Caiaphas felt the tiniest wedge could incite action on their part.
One of this man's closest followers had agreed -- for less money than the high priest was going to pay to accusers -- to take Caiaphas' temple police to where Jesus and his followers hid at night. Without the crowd to cause a disturbance, they could easily capture the man and bring him to the temple for trial.
Caiaphas smiled at the scenario he set up. The trial needed two persons who would speak in the prisoner's behalf. Well, wasn't it obvious, from the talk of Nicodemus and the behavior of the Aramathean, that he had his two defenders? The two witnesses sat in jail with their money and a promise of release.
Finally, Caiaphas knew his victim well enough to draw out a blasphemy. Jesus was condemned before the trial began.
It didn't go as well as Caiaphas anticipated. The Sanhedrin did hand down a guilty verdict. They did get their audience with Pilate. Then it began to fall apart.
Pilate wanted Herod to take the heat from the people for executing a popular public figure. Herod wriggled out of it and threw it back into Pilate's lap. Pilate tried to let the man free by offering to release him as the customary prisoner freed at this time of year.
Unfortunately for Pilate, the alternative he offered was a man whose friends were in the crowd. They began shouting, "Bar-RAB-bus! Bar-RAB-bus! Bar-RAB-bus!" Like so many sheep, the crowd followed the leader. It was finally done.
Now Caiaphas waited. He waited to hear from his temple functionaries that it was finally finished. Somehow he didn't feel the sense of triumph he thought he would.
The darkened sky, the earthquake, and the rending of the veil to the Holy of Holies was not the cause. The skies cleared; the ground stopped quivering; and the veil could be replaced. It was something else, like the feeling you get when you go on a trip and feel like you've forgotten something.
He recognized one of the older scribes coming up the temple steps -- alone.
"Where is everyone else?"
"I don't know. We went our several ways separately."
Caiaphas waited for the old man to finish climbing the steps.
"It is finished," said the scribe, puffing as he walked up, with more of a scowl than a smile on his face. "That's what he said as he hung on the cross. Somehow, Caiaphas, I don't think we're through with this."
Caiaphas looked at him for a long minute. Finally he said, "Neither do I."
He turned and walked back to his quarters.
Larry Winebrenner is now retired and living in Miami Gardens, Florida. He taught for 33 years at Miami-Dade Community College, and served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Larry is currently active at First United Methodist Church in downtown Miami, where he leads discussion in an adult fellowship group on Sunday mornings and preaches occasionally. He has authored two college textbooks, written four novels, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
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StoryShare, April 1-2, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 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.
What's Up This Week
"The Clearing" by Keith Hewitt
"Julia Gilbert Changes Love Feast Among the Brethren -- Twice!" by Frank Ramirez
"Is It Finished?" by Larry Winebrenner
What's Up This Week
As we contemplate again the powerful events of Holy Week, we must look deep inside ourselves and face what lies within our hearts. What do we ask of God and of each other? Are we prepared to respond to the life-saving gift that God has given us on the cross? Are we prepared to recognize that God answers our prayers -- just not on demand, or in the manner we expect? In this edition of StoryShare, Keith Hewitt spins a powerful tale about a traveler who has an unexpected encounter that changes his perspective about the gift of life and about our tendency to question how God takes it from us. Then Frank Ramirez and Larry Winebrenner offer some insight into the motivations of two very different characters: Julia Gilbert and the high priest Caiaphas.
* * * * * * * * *
The Clearing
by Keith Hewitt
Psalm 116
The plank road from Fort Neshotah to Joliet had seen better days. In fact, it had seen better years. There seemed to be more rotted planks than not, to the point that actually using the road was nearly as treacherous as riding across the often-spongy ground alongside it, and probably only marginally faster. Jamison Lee kept a watchful eye on the road as his horse plodded along, apparently unconcerned at the prospect of sticking a hoof through some bit of soft wood and breaking a leg.
It had been a thriving thoroughfare for seven or eight years, before the state road was carved through the countryside a few miles north. After that, faced with the choice of going an hour out of the way or using the plank road and paying a toll, most of the thrifty farmers and tradesmen in the two counties had chosen the free road. The War Between the States had driven a stake through its heart -- the owners abandoned it once the maintenance costs outstripped the tolls paid by travelers. After that, nature began the tedious process of reclaiming that which had been taken from it.
Still, for a man who needed to travel the fifty miles or so from Fort Neshotah to Joliet and be alone with his thoughts, the old plank road was just the ticket.
As long as he could see where he was going…
The sun was still above the horizon, but not by much. The road was getting harder to see, with shadows camouflaging holes where the road had rotted through. He just missed one the size of his hat, tugging his horse to one side to avoid stepping in it at the last moment. The horse snuffled indignantly and turned its head to look at him out of the corner of his eye. Jamison nudged it with his knee and muttered, "Just keep your eyes on the road." Disgusted, the horse turned back to face the road, shaking its head once in a mighty twitch.
Should have left a little earlier, Jamison mused, and he pulled out his watch, flipped the cover open, and tilted it toward the waning light. I've got maybe an hour of light, and about four hours of ground to cover -- and no lantern. Even using a lantern to ride by would have been chancy on this road -- but he might have thought about it, at least. He thought back over the last week and decided that there would be little or no illumination to the night -- it was definitely a waning moon.
Well, it's not like you haven't spent a few nights under the stars. He straightened up, raised himself tall in the saddle, and looked around. There was mostly marsh grass to his south, with clumps of brush here and there. To his north there was open land, but the last cultivated stretch was a few miles behind him. But there, almost abreast of him, was a stand of trees that would offer some shelter. Better than sleeping out in the open. He reined up, gently this time, and clucked softly, nudged his horse with his left knee. The beast clopped to a halt and looked back at him as if to ask if he really meant it.
"You heard me," Jamison answered sternly and nudged him again. The horse snuffled in response, delicately walked over to the edge of the road, and stepped off. With man and horse watching the uneven, grassy terrain closely, they made their way slowly toward the trees. In fairly short order, though, they had crossed the open ground and were in among the trees. Jamison dismounted then and walked ahead of them, one hand wrapped securely in the reins, the other resting on the worn leather holster flap of the Cold Navy pistol on his left hip. He stumbled over a fallen branch hidden in shadow, and thought he heard his horse chuckle in his ear.
They had gone about thirty or forty yards -- passing up a couple of likely spots -- but something seemed to be calling to Jamison from further in. And there it was suddenly -- the trees thinned out, faded to open space -- a clearing in the woods. Jamison stopped abruptly and was bumped from behind as the horse walked into him, then stopped on its own.
It was a sight so incongruous that his mind refused to accept it at first. And then when it did, the whole picture sprang into being, at once obvious and strange. On the far side of the clearing was what looked like a miniature church -- a chapel with white clapboard walls, a proportionate steeple at the front, and even a small bell -- but the building could not have held more than a handful of adults. There were beds of flowers planted around it, and they seemed large in comparison to the building they surrounded.
At the front, tending an oval patch of petunias next to the two steps that led up to the door, knelt a man. His head raised as Jamison's horse whinnied softly and he looked back, then he slowly stood up and stood there, garden trowel in one hand, a stringy green weed in the other. He studied Jamison for a few moments, then smiled. "Evenin'," he said cordially.
"Good evening," Jamison said automatically, still cataloging the whole sight. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."
The man tossed the weed onto a small pile of its siblings and wiped his face with that hand. "Not at all," he answered. "Can I help you?"
Jamison hesitated. "Uhh… I was just looking for a place to bed down for the night. I'm on my way to Joliet, and we seem to have run out of daylight."
"I see. We don't get many folks down this way anymore." The man leaned down, stuck the trowel in the dirt, and stepped toward Jamison, extending his hand. "My name is Josiah."
"Jamison," Jamison answered, stepping forward to shake hands. "Jamison Lee."
"Pleased to meet you." Josiah glanced back toward the building, then back to Jamison. "You seem pretty taken with the chapel here."
"Sorry," Jamison apologized, without knowing why. "It's just… beautiful. And unexpected, out here."
"It's not mine," Josiah explained, answering a question that hadn't been asked. "I'm just taking care of it for a friend of mine. Albert Schwalbe built this chapel about thirty years ago." He nodded back toward the building. "Kept it up ever since. It's kind of a labor of love."
"It must be. Is this Albert Schwalbe a preacher?" Jamison studied the building in the dimming light. The windows were stained glass, and the flickers of motion and color said that there was a lantern or candles burning inside the chapel.
Josiah smiled. "Oh no, son -- Albert's farm was one of the first in this township. It's back that way." He pointed vaguely north, as if that detail was unimportant.
"Then why this?" Jamison asked, waving his free hand to take in the building and its landscape.
Josiah looked surprised. "Why, it's because he promised he would," the old man answered. When Jamison just looked at him curiously, Josiah smiled again and said, "Look, you've probably been traveling quite a while. Would you like something to eat?"
Jamison nodded, suddenly aware that he was hungry.
"I think I've got something that will do us both." Josiah disappeared into the little chapel and came out a few moments later with a wicker basket. The smell of fried chicken escaped from the basket and Jamison's mouth started to water. "Let's set a spell," Josiah suggested. "You can let your horse graze if you want."
Jamison unwrapped the reins from his hand and let them hang down, as the horse ambled out into the clearing and began nibbling at the grass that grew here and there in patches. The two men found a clear space nearby, and Jamison sat with his back to a tree as Josiah pulled food out of the basket. Cold fried chicken, potato salad, corn bread -- enough for two, and even two plates and red checked napkins. Jamison had already taken a bite of bread when Josiah bowed his head and said grace almost inaudibly. He stopped chewing and bowed his head 'til Josiah finished, then raised it again.
"This was always a special place to Albert," Josiah explained as he began to eat. "It's where he proposed to his wife Lola a year after he arrived from Bremen. It was their special spot. They used to come out here and picnic after they got married, and after the kids were born they would bring them too. They had two boys and a girl. Lost the girl to diphtheria when she was seven." Josiah paused and looked up at the sky across the clearing. "That was a hard time for them."
Unbidden, the image of his own son flashed in Jamison's mind, and he nodded, his heart suddenly heavy in his chest.
"But they went on," Josiah continued after a moment. "It wasn't too long after that, that Lola took sick. It came on slow, but eventually it was like a monster in her belly, eating her from the inside out. The pain would come and go at first, and then it was there all the time. And then it got worse and worse. Finally, she couldn't sleep, couldn't work, couldn't hardly bear to sit up and eat, and when she did it wouldn't stay down. It was almost a year like that."
"What was it?" Jamison asked.
Josiah shrugged. "Doesn't much matter. The doctor couldn't do anything but give her laudanum to dull the edge. Then one day when Albert woke up she was asleep in her chair. He tried to wake her up after a while, but he couldn't."
"Was she…" Jamison hesitated, unwilling to pronounce the word for some reason.
"No, she wasn't. But when he couldn't rouse her, Albert knew she had to be in a pretty bad way. So that night he laid her in bed, and then he knelt down next to her and he prayed. He'd never been the prayin' type, but that night he prayed for hours. He promised God that if he made her better, then he would build a little church out here in their clearing to praise him."
Jamison's eyebrows arched in the gloom. "So she got better?"
"When Albert woke up the next morning, she was gone. Passed away sometime in the night."
Jamison frowned and gestured toward the church with a half-eaten drumstick. "So what happened?"
Josiah looked thoughtful. "Well, let's just say Albert didn't take it very well. He'd never been a big churchgoer, but this was the last straw. He and God weren't on speaking terms for a long time."
"I know the feeling," Jamison said softly.
"Do you now? Well, as it happened, one day the following year Albert was going through his wife's things and he found her diary. Once he realized what it was, of course he started to read. And he kept reading, reliving the years they were together, right up through that last one. The writing got shaky then, and the entries were farther and farther apart. But the last entry was written the day before he found her. Do you know what it said?"
Jamison just shook his head.
"She wrote that she knew she wasn't going to get better. She wrote that the pain was just too much to bear, and she didn't want to be a burden to her family anymore. And then she wrote that she had spent whole last night praying that God would let her sleep, and then that he would take her soon."
There was a long silence, and then Jamison said, "Oh." There didn't seem to be anything else to say.
"So it turned out that the prayer was answered -- just not his. So Albert spent the rest of that summer building the chapel, because God has answered his wife's prayer. You see," Josiah concluded, "I think that God answers everyone's prayers -- it's just that sometimes in order to say 'yes' to one person, he's got to say 'no' to another."
"But why did he have to do this?" Jamison answered. "Why take a life instead of sparing it? What kind of answer is that?"
Josiah studied him for a moment, and a bit of light from the setting sun picked its way through the trees to illuminate his face -- and to Jamison, it looked as though he knew that he wasn't just talking about Lola and Albert. Finally, he said, "You know, I am sure Albert wondered the same thing -- but he kept his word anyway. Sometimes we don't understand his ways -- but we praise him anyway. You were in the war, yes?"
Jamison frowned. "How did you know?"
"The pistols on your belt, the way you carry yourself -- and this," he pointed to his own cheek, then to Jamison's. "There aren't many ways to get a scar like that."
Jamison reached up unconsciously and touched the angry red line that went from the bridge of his nose to the bottom of his right sideburn. "No," he murmured, "I don't suppose there are."
"You were an officer?"
"A colonel, yes -- 54th Wisconsin."
"The Fighting 54th. I've read about you. So tell me, when you were preparing for battle, or even preparing to march somewhere, did your men always know what you were thinking?"
I hope not. "Probably not."
"But they followed you anyway."
He shrugged. "It's part of discipline. It's not up to them to understand why -- just what."
"And there you go. Albert didn't understand why -- but he knew what he had to do. And he knew that it was right to praise God, even when you don't necessarily understand why something happened."
"It takes a lot of faith to do that."
"Some call it faith. I think of it as trust." Josiah finished his second piece of chicken and tossed the bone into the woods. "There's more to this world than we will ever understand, Colonel. So I think it is good that we trust the one who created it to do the right thing -- and thank him for it."
Jamison frowned again; then saw the image of his son, lying among the dead at White's Run, and closed his eyes. "It is very hard to thank him for some things, Josiah. It's more than I can do."
"Then you don't have to thank him, Colonel. Just trust him."
"Maybe," Jamison agreed as he yawned deeply, belatedly covering his mouth with his hand. "Sorry. I must be more tired than I thought."
"Well, you've come a long way, Colonel. Get some rest -- you've got a long way ahead of you."
Jamison shook his head. "I'm just going to Joliet, Josiah."
The old man smiled then. "That's not what I meant. Get some rest. And once you have the trust part down, remember to thank him occasionally when you see a sunrise or hear a bird sing… when you feel his presence in your life." He raised his hands, encompassing the clearing. "It's all around you."
They talked a little while longer, but Jamison could not remember what was said after he awoke the next morning. He looked around for the old man, even looked inside the little chapel, but there was no one there. Bemused, he got himself dressed, rolled up his bedroll, and got ready to leave. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something flash through the trees; then he heard the trill of a bird and felt the caress of a cool breeze scented with pine. He stood, one hand on the saddle of his horse, and looked up at the sky. The sun streamed into the clearing, bathing it in soft light, and high overhead a hawk soared in silence.
And from nowhere, his eyes filled with tears. When he had stood that way for a while, he patted the horse and said softly, "Wait here." And it did while he went inside the little chapel to say…
Well, he would know what to say when he got there…
He was suddenly sure of that.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT department at a major public safety testing organization.
Julia Gilbert Changes Love Feast Among the Brethren -- Twice!
by Frank Ramirez
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…
-- 1 Corinthians 11:23a
The venerable elders of the old Dunkers, one of the German Plain People sometimes referred to as the Pennsylvania Dutch, would meet yearly to argue their arcane understanding of the scriptures in order to be true in their faith and practice. What they received from their reading of the Lord's word they assiduously handed on to the next generation. They changed, if at all, very slowly. Though in theory anyone could speak at their Annual Meetings, in practice the respect accorded to their elders, with their long beards and plain garb, meant that they had a greater voice.
Nowhere were traditions more honored than in the long and complex ritual known as the Love Feast. This communion service, often stretching over three days, included a foot washing ceremony and an agape meal, along with the bread and cup. This was their signature practice, which others found so intriguing that many would come to witness the celebration.
So it is all the more surprising that these traditions were changed -- twice -- by a woman who was disabled, once when she was a teenager, and once decades later after a lifelong struggle.
Julia Gilbert (1844-1934) was born near the foot of South Mountain in Frederick County, Maryland, but when she was four her family moved to Wolfe Creek in western Ohio. She attended her first Annual Meeting at the age of six and rarely missed another through her long life.
When she was eight years old, two of her siblings died when they contracted measles and scarlet fever. She barely survived herself, and was crippled for life.
In 1858, at the age of 14, she was baptized in the rushing stream. At first she was reluctant to step into the water in her fragile condition, afraid of being swept away, but her pastor reminded her that Jesus had been there before. Recalling the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, she stepped out into the river and as she knelt she prayed, "Dear God, I promise to you that I will live faithful to Jesus until I die." She kept that promise.
She eagerly looked forward to the Love Feast that was celebrated following her baptism as a meal she was sharing with Jesus. The experience was joyful, but that night she found she could not sleep, and she finally lit a candle and read John 13:4: "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself."
The next day she asked her father why the Wolfe Creek congregation had performed the foot washing and then set the meal on the table. Shouldn't they have set the meal on the table and then, like Jesus, risen from the table for the foot washing? Her father, according to her report, sighed and answered, "The old Brethren took the ordinance from several passages of scripture and thought this to be the proper way it ought to be done." This satisfied her for a day or two, but eventually she questioned the elders, and the next year the congregation had changed the way they performed Love Feast to conform to the 14-year-old's reading of scripture.
By contrast, her next cause took nearly 50 years before it was successfully concluded. In her day men passed a long strip of communion bread with each other, each breaking off a piece, but the women did not break bread with each other. Instead, an elder walked down the row and the sisters broke off a piece. This did not seem biblical to Julia, nor was she satisfied with the official explanations for the practice. For decades, first in Ohio and later in Iowa, where she moved after her parents' deaths, she championed the cause, only to see it tabled or returned at Annual Meetings. Finally in June of 1910, at Winona Lake, Indiana, Julia herself spoke on the floor of Annual Meeting, saying, "When I was baptized, I made a vow to God to walk in all his ways and to read the scriptures. I believe it is our duty to do things the way Jesus taught us to do them." The motion passed, and the next year the sisters broke the bread among themselves.
Paul wrote his exhortation to the Corinthians not to preserve some imagined purity of practice -- what he had passed on was the practice of coming together at the table to commemorate the Passion of Jesus Christ. A reading of the larger context of the text makes it clear that the real problem in Corinth was that not all were sharing equally around the table. Rich were arriving early and eating all the good food of the agape meal, leaving the poor, who worked, to eat later and less. Regardless of the century in which we live, Jesus calls us as equals to his table, prepared to listen and learn from each other, and to recognize that the Spirit dwells richly among us all.
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, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
Is It Finished?
by Larry Winebrenner
Psalm 22
Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be good if one man died for the people (John 8:14). Caiaphas was not an evil man. He wasn't even a bad man. After all, he was the high priest in the temple of the Lord. But Caiaphas had a problem. There was a country bumpkin from Galilee stirring confusion among the people who worshiped in the temple. Galilee, of all places -- that was just one step removed from Samaria!
Not that this Jesus was without some merit. Caiaphas had stood unseen at times listening to the man's parables. He had a silver tongue. Caiaphas at times felt like Jesus was aware of his presence and told some of the stories directly to him. There was no mistaking who the father was in the story of the father and two sons -- or the older son.
Caiaphas almost stepped out to challenge Jesus in that event. But he had seen how Jesus had bested the haughty Pharisees and smug scribes in street debates. He had sometimes chuckled along with the people at the pin-pricking of their self-esteem. But he wasn't going to place himself in that position.
He was curious about who the straying son was. Jesus himself? He did mingle with the tax gathers and eat with sinners. But somehow Jesus didn't fit the mold.
The man was a puzzle… and a challenge. If Caiaphas had any shortcoming, it was the lust after power. And that man threatened the temple and the high priest's power.
That was about to end. When the streets were crowded with foreigners, the Romans were nervous. Passover brought armies of pilgrims into the temple city. The Roman authorities were on edge. Caiaphas felt the tiniest wedge could incite action on their part.
One of this man's closest followers had agreed -- for less money than the high priest was going to pay to accusers -- to take Caiaphas' temple police to where Jesus and his followers hid at night. Without the crowd to cause a disturbance, they could easily capture the man and bring him to the temple for trial.
Caiaphas smiled at the scenario he set up. The trial needed two persons who would speak in the prisoner's behalf. Well, wasn't it obvious, from the talk of Nicodemus and the behavior of the Aramathean, that he had his two defenders? The two witnesses sat in jail with their money and a promise of release.
Finally, Caiaphas knew his victim well enough to draw out a blasphemy. Jesus was condemned before the trial began.
It didn't go as well as Caiaphas anticipated. The Sanhedrin did hand down a guilty verdict. They did get their audience with Pilate. Then it began to fall apart.
Pilate wanted Herod to take the heat from the people for executing a popular public figure. Herod wriggled out of it and threw it back into Pilate's lap. Pilate tried to let the man free by offering to release him as the customary prisoner freed at this time of year.
Unfortunately for Pilate, the alternative he offered was a man whose friends were in the crowd. They began shouting, "Bar-RAB-bus! Bar-RAB-bus! Bar-RAB-bus!" Like so many sheep, the crowd followed the leader. It was finally done.
Now Caiaphas waited. He waited to hear from his temple functionaries that it was finally finished. Somehow he didn't feel the sense of triumph he thought he would.
The darkened sky, the earthquake, and the rending of the veil to the Holy of Holies was not the cause. The skies cleared; the ground stopped quivering; and the veil could be replaced. It was something else, like the feeling you get when you go on a trip and feel like you've forgotten something.
He recognized one of the older scribes coming up the temple steps -- alone.
"Where is everyone else?"
"I don't know. We went our several ways separately."
Caiaphas waited for the old man to finish climbing the steps.
"It is finished," said the scribe, puffing as he walked up, with more of a scowl than a smile on his face. "That's what he said as he hung on the cross. Somehow, Caiaphas, I don't think we're through with this."
Caiaphas looked at him for a long minute. Finally he said, "Neither do I."
He turned and walked back to his quarters.
Larry Winebrenner is now retired and living in Miami Gardens, Florida. He taught for 33 years at Miami-Dade Community College, and served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Larry is currently active at First United Methodist Church in downtown Miami, where he leads discussion in an adult fellowship group on Sunday mornings and preaches occasionally. He has authored two college textbooks, written four novels, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
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StoryShare, April 1-2, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 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.
