Discovering What We Will Be
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Discovering What We Will Be" by Peter Andrew Smith
"The Whole Truth" by David O. Bales
"You Have Put Gladness in My Heart" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
There are some experiences that are so powerful that we cannot escape wrestling with how they change our lives. What really matters, though, as all of this week's StoryShare pieces demonstrate, is how we choose to respond. In our feature story, Peter Andrew Smith paints a compelling portrait of a world-famous singer who had everything the world defines as "success," yet left it behind for a quieter but much more fulfilling life centered on God. David Bales sits us down with Luke at his writing table as he struggles with "writer's block" -- for how can one adequately communicate in mere words the confounding reality of Jesus' resurrection? Finally, John Sumwalt shares his personal experience as a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. Recovery was not instantaneous -- but he details how the burdens have been lifted from his soul and he has even come to a point of forgiveness.
* * * * * * * * *
Discovering What We Will Be
Peter Andrew Smith
1 John 3:1-7
He recognized her as soon as he entered the cafe. Her hair was pulled back and spilled over her shoulders in a style he had never seen before, but he knew it was her. He had seen her perform too often to not recognize those piercing blue eyes that were focused on the book in front of her.
"Ms. DeYoung?" he said, extending a business card. "I'm a music writer and was hoping for a few moments of your time."
She lowered her head for a moment and then carefully placed a bookmark on her page. She took his card and gestured at the chair across from her.
"Do you mind if I record our conversation?" he asked. "Ms. DeYoung, I'm frankly surprised to see you here, in a place like this."
She turned her head to one side. "This is where I live. Why wouldn't I be here?"
"Well, you are internationally known and famous..."
"That doesn't change the fact that Margaret makes a lovely cup of tea and this is a short walk from my house," she said, nodding to the clerk behind the counter, who waved back with a smile. "Honestly, I'm surprised anyone from the media really is interested in talking to me. I retired a few years back so I don't think I am newsworthy any more."
"Oh, Ms. DeYoung, there are many people who still remember your performances and concerts. I don't think the world has ever seen a singer quite like you."
She blushed slightly. "You are too kind."
"I first saw you in New York," he said. "I've been following trends in music for 20 years and you were the first singer to actually impress me. Your style and voice were fresh and inspiring. Your music was selling well and your concerts were sold out. You had just started your career, and then suddenly you disappeared."
"I retired," she said. "When my contract was over I stopped touring and recording."
"They begged you to sign another and would have given you anything you wanted. You had everything and chose to stop singing completely."
She smiled. "I didn't stop completely. I teach voice full-time and sing at my church."
He shook his head. "That's not the same. You had everything -- fame, money, and a future. Why did you throw it all away?"
"I didn't. I walked away from it. There is a difference."
"Why? Why would you leave everything you had?"
"Because the money, the praise, and the fame were moving me in a direction I didn't want to go. I didn't like what it was doing to me."
"But you had everything."
"Maybe it looked that way, but I was forgetting that I was a child of God." She touched the book in front of her. "And I decided there were more important things than being famous and rich."
"Like what?"
"Like sitting in a cafe drinking tea and reading my Bible."
"But anyone can do that. You were a world-famous singer beloved by millions."
"If I don't remember that I am beloved by God, what difference does that make?"
"But you had a great future in front of you. You could have become the best in the world, remembered with the names of the greatest performers in history."
She smiled. "I think my path leads to a better future than that now. Walking with Jesus means sharing in his resurrection. My singing offered me everything the world has to give. My faith offers me everything God has to give. Once I realized that, it wasn't difficult to decide what to do."
He shook his head, reached over, and clicked off his voice recorder. "Thank you. I still don't understand, but I think I have everything I need for my story."
"Can I ask one thing?" she said as he stood.
"Certainly, anything I can do."
"No matter how you decide to write the story, make sure you say one thing."
"What's that?"
"That right now I have everything I need in life," she said, and went back to reading her Bible.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
The Whole Truth
by David O. Bales
Luke 24:36b-48
Luke was no slouch as a writer. He could compose long, convoluted Greek sentences that took half a page to complete. Then, dipping the stylus again into the ink, he could suddenly make words on papyrus sound like a stiff 300-year-old translation of Hebrew into Greek. He would subtly repeat themes and patterns of God's grace to help readers hear the Hebrew Old Testament echo in Jesus' life and teaching. The man was a master at clarity: never a word out of place, nor could anyone misunderstand his intent. If one only read his final draft, Luke seemed to be in full command of his subject.
His subject, however, was Jesus, and Jesus had been raised from the dead. No editing job as Luke rewrote Mark's gospel would or should undo the central fact of Jesus' resurrection. Within a few decades the faith had grown out of Judea, and the new religion of Jesus was spreading through the eastern Mediterranean world -- even showing up in the city of Rome. This faith depended upon the truth of Jesus' resurrection.
Luke sat at his writing table. A good writer, yes; a careful historian, of course; a believer in the risen Jesus, always. But in his reporting of Jesus' resurrection appearances, he'd gotten jittery. Luke had his sources. He'd heard the stories passed on from the first eyewitnesses. Jesus' resurrection was the tip of God's new world invading human existence. But as an architect doubts his abilities when asked to design the most imposing structure in the world, so Luke the writer fumbled for words to describe Jesus' three resurrection appearances.
Halfway through recording Jesus' resurrection appearances, Luke had gasped, slammed his hands on the writing table, and stopped his writing. He'd let his manuscript sit for weeks. Years of work just laid upon a shelf. Daily he walked by the scroll and then quickly left the room. He had a few fingers' width of space remaining blank on the bottom of the papyrus for the writing of what seemed incredible.
Decades before, Paul the apostle had also stumbled around trying to describe the resurrection. He'd attempted to do so by talking about different kinds of bodies and the way seeds change after sprouting. Paul had struggled to explain what Luke now must portray in order to finish his gospel.
Jesus had been alive and free of the tomb, talking to his students, and even eating with them. Luke was sure of this. He'd interviewed many of the first Christians. They'd told him about Jesus simply showing up in their midst. However, if they'd thought Jesus was a ghost, how could Luke, merely by writing, convince people otherwise? If Jesus' disciples assumed the resurrection was too good to be true, could Luke reduce it to papyrus and make it seem anything but untrue?
Talk about writer's block! He prayed, and he checked his notes and written sources again. He discussed the problem with his fellow Christians, and he waited -- almost like Jesus told his students to wait in Jerusalem for the power from on high.
Then early one Sunday morning, he had it. During a worship gathering a preacher had talked about Jesus' resurrection. Luke had watched Jesus' resurrection appearances in his mind as he heard them. Like a waking dream, he'd taken part in the disciples' experience of Jesus being alive again. By an answer to prayer or profound insight, whatever anyone wanted to name it, Luke realized he needed to tell the whole truth. In obedience to God he should record the entire story -- not just that Jesus came out of nowhere while the disciples talked, not just that he commanded them to touch him and reassured them that ghosts weren't made of flesh and blood, not just that he showed them his hands and feet, not just that he ate their broiled fish. Luke realized that, in order for readers to truly accept Jesus' final appearance to his disciples, he needed to record all the truth. Jesus' resurrection wasn't just about Jesus, but also about the people he appeared to. Luke must tell as much about what Jesus' friends experienced as about what Jesus said and did. He dashed into the room where his document about Jesus waited on the shelf.
Luke pulled out the notes about Jesus after his resurrection. He began to copy the events, but he would halt in his copying to include what he'd been told about Jesus' students. "They were startled and terrified, and thought they were seeing a ghost." He continued reporting Jesus' appearance, but he added that doubts arose in their hearts. He told of how Jesus dealt matter-of-factly with their amazement. Luke then inserted "in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering." There it was -- the whole truth. He continued the last sentences to describe Jesus' ascension. He pushed the scroll to the side, put his face in his hands, and wept. The whole truth about Jesus' resurrection was now written, and it was almost -- but not quite -- too good to be true.
David O. Bales was a Presbyterian minister for 33 years. Recently retired as the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Ontario, Oregon, he is also a freelance writer and editor for Stephen Ministries and Tebunah Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching Great Texts, and Interpretation, and he is the author of the CSS titles Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story and Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace.
You Have Put Gladness in My Heart
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 4
You have put gladness in my heart... I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.
-- Psalm 4:7a-8
I am a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, which occurred when I was an adolescent. I always knew it, but I didn't feel the pain of it until I was 42 years old. When it broke (another story) I began the long process of recovery. Early in that process I realized there was one part of what happened to me that I had never told my wife. I had always thought that I kept no secrets from her, and then I realized one night while reading a passage about secrets from a book by Janet Greeson that there was one very significant secret about the abuse that I had never shared.
I turned to Jo, who was lying in bed beside me reading, and told her the secret. Afterward I felt as if a great weight had been lifted. I felt physically, psychically, and spiritually relieved. Jo and I held each other and wept together. That night I slept like a baby. The next morning I wrote in my journal, "I am reborn!" My depression lifted. I felt joy again; I had energy to talk to people, to work, and to play with our children for the first time in weeks.
Three nights later I dreamed I saw a male figure rising out of a vast lake. The figure beckoned to me, and as I reached out to him I felt my spirit moving toward him like a force of energy traveling thousands of miles an hour through what I can only describe as something like the Milky Way. There was a great web of light flashing all around me as I soared outward, seemingly away from my body, with ever-increasing speed. I was aware that I could have stopped myself if I chose to, but didn't. I let myself go on and on. It was as if my soul had escaped my body, rocketed out of this world, and was flying free in another dimension. I woke abruptly, feeling energized and fully whole for the first time in years.
Alas, the euphoria I felt and the salvation I thought I had attained were not to last. Four days later I fell into a deep depression. My recovery work was just beginning,
I hold this and other experiences during my recovery in my heart and am still gleaning comfort and meaning from them as the years pass.
I am in a good place these days. The post-traumatic episodes I suffered for over ten years are now very rare. The nightmares I had of my abusers (yes, there were two) have abated. I still see them in my dreams occasionally, but there is no more terror -- they are just present. I am also at a point of full forgiveness. I can pray for them and empathize with the pain in their lives that led them to sexually assault me and others. I do not, of course, excuse their behavior. I held them publicly accountable in the church and the community. And I have moved on. I made a very conscious decision not to assume a victim/survivor identity. I have too many other things to do with my life. It is as the Psalmist prayed: "You have put gladness in my heart."
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt are the former co-editors of StoryShare, and John is the author of nine books.
**************
StoryShare, April 26, 2009, issue.
Copyright 2009 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
What's Up This Week
"Discovering What We Will Be" by Peter Andrew Smith
"The Whole Truth" by David O. Bales
"You Have Put Gladness in My Heart" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
There are some experiences that are so powerful that we cannot escape wrestling with how they change our lives. What really matters, though, as all of this week's StoryShare pieces demonstrate, is how we choose to respond. In our feature story, Peter Andrew Smith paints a compelling portrait of a world-famous singer who had everything the world defines as "success," yet left it behind for a quieter but much more fulfilling life centered on God. David Bales sits us down with Luke at his writing table as he struggles with "writer's block" -- for how can one adequately communicate in mere words the confounding reality of Jesus' resurrection? Finally, John Sumwalt shares his personal experience as a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. Recovery was not instantaneous -- but he details how the burdens have been lifted from his soul and he has even come to a point of forgiveness.
* * * * * * * * *
Discovering What We Will Be
Peter Andrew Smith
1 John 3:1-7
He recognized her as soon as he entered the cafe. Her hair was pulled back and spilled over her shoulders in a style he had never seen before, but he knew it was her. He had seen her perform too often to not recognize those piercing blue eyes that were focused on the book in front of her.
"Ms. DeYoung?" he said, extending a business card. "I'm a music writer and was hoping for a few moments of your time."
She lowered her head for a moment and then carefully placed a bookmark on her page. She took his card and gestured at the chair across from her.
"Do you mind if I record our conversation?" he asked. "Ms. DeYoung, I'm frankly surprised to see you here, in a place like this."
She turned her head to one side. "This is where I live. Why wouldn't I be here?"
"Well, you are internationally known and famous..."
"That doesn't change the fact that Margaret makes a lovely cup of tea and this is a short walk from my house," she said, nodding to the clerk behind the counter, who waved back with a smile. "Honestly, I'm surprised anyone from the media really is interested in talking to me. I retired a few years back so I don't think I am newsworthy any more."
"Oh, Ms. DeYoung, there are many people who still remember your performances and concerts. I don't think the world has ever seen a singer quite like you."
She blushed slightly. "You are too kind."
"I first saw you in New York," he said. "I've been following trends in music for 20 years and you were the first singer to actually impress me. Your style and voice were fresh and inspiring. Your music was selling well and your concerts were sold out. You had just started your career, and then suddenly you disappeared."
"I retired," she said. "When my contract was over I stopped touring and recording."
"They begged you to sign another and would have given you anything you wanted. You had everything and chose to stop singing completely."
She smiled. "I didn't stop completely. I teach voice full-time and sing at my church."
He shook his head. "That's not the same. You had everything -- fame, money, and a future. Why did you throw it all away?"
"I didn't. I walked away from it. There is a difference."
"Why? Why would you leave everything you had?"
"Because the money, the praise, and the fame were moving me in a direction I didn't want to go. I didn't like what it was doing to me."
"But you had everything."
"Maybe it looked that way, but I was forgetting that I was a child of God." She touched the book in front of her. "And I decided there were more important things than being famous and rich."
"Like what?"
"Like sitting in a cafe drinking tea and reading my Bible."
"But anyone can do that. You were a world-famous singer beloved by millions."
"If I don't remember that I am beloved by God, what difference does that make?"
"But you had a great future in front of you. You could have become the best in the world, remembered with the names of the greatest performers in history."
She smiled. "I think my path leads to a better future than that now. Walking with Jesus means sharing in his resurrection. My singing offered me everything the world has to give. My faith offers me everything God has to give. Once I realized that, it wasn't difficult to decide what to do."
He shook his head, reached over, and clicked off his voice recorder. "Thank you. I still don't understand, but I think I have everything I need for my story."
"Can I ask one thing?" she said as he stood.
"Certainly, anything I can do."
"No matter how you decide to write the story, make sure you say one thing."
"What's that?"
"That right now I have everything I need in life," she said, and went back to reading her Bible.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
The Whole Truth
by David O. Bales
Luke 24:36b-48
Luke was no slouch as a writer. He could compose long, convoluted Greek sentences that took half a page to complete. Then, dipping the stylus again into the ink, he could suddenly make words on papyrus sound like a stiff 300-year-old translation of Hebrew into Greek. He would subtly repeat themes and patterns of God's grace to help readers hear the Hebrew Old Testament echo in Jesus' life and teaching. The man was a master at clarity: never a word out of place, nor could anyone misunderstand his intent. If one only read his final draft, Luke seemed to be in full command of his subject.
His subject, however, was Jesus, and Jesus had been raised from the dead. No editing job as Luke rewrote Mark's gospel would or should undo the central fact of Jesus' resurrection. Within a few decades the faith had grown out of Judea, and the new religion of Jesus was spreading through the eastern Mediterranean world -- even showing up in the city of Rome. This faith depended upon the truth of Jesus' resurrection.
Luke sat at his writing table. A good writer, yes; a careful historian, of course; a believer in the risen Jesus, always. But in his reporting of Jesus' resurrection appearances, he'd gotten jittery. Luke had his sources. He'd heard the stories passed on from the first eyewitnesses. Jesus' resurrection was the tip of God's new world invading human existence. But as an architect doubts his abilities when asked to design the most imposing structure in the world, so Luke the writer fumbled for words to describe Jesus' three resurrection appearances.
Halfway through recording Jesus' resurrection appearances, Luke had gasped, slammed his hands on the writing table, and stopped his writing. He'd let his manuscript sit for weeks. Years of work just laid upon a shelf. Daily he walked by the scroll and then quickly left the room. He had a few fingers' width of space remaining blank on the bottom of the papyrus for the writing of what seemed incredible.
Decades before, Paul the apostle had also stumbled around trying to describe the resurrection. He'd attempted to do so by talking about different kinds of bodies and the way seeds change after sprouting. Paul had struggled to explain what Luke now must portray in order to finish his gospel.
Jesus had been alive and free of the tomb, talking to his students, and even eating with them. Luke was sure of this. He'd interviewed many of the first Christians. They'd told him about Jesus simply showing up in their midst. However, if they'd thought Jesus was a ghost, how could Luke, merely by writing, convince people otherwise? If Jesus' disciples assumed the resurrection was too good to be true, could Luke reduce it to papyrus and make it seem anything but untrue?
Talk about writer's block! He prayed, and he checked his notes and written sources again. He discussed the problem with his fellow Christians, and he waited -- almost like Jesus told his students to wait in Jerusalem for the power from on high.
Then early one Sunday morning, he had it. During a worship gathering a preacher had talked about Jesus' resurrection. Luke had watched Jesus' resurrection appearances in his mind as he heard them. Like a waking dream, he'd taken part in the disciples' experience of Jesus being alive again. By an answer to prayer or profound insight, whatever anyone wanted to name it, Luke realized he needed to tell the whole truth. In obedience to God he should record the entire story -- not just that Jesus came out of nowhere while the disciples talked, not just that he commanded them to touch him and reassured them that ghosts weren't made of flesh and blood, not just that he showed them his hands and feet, not just that he ate their broiled fish. Luke realized that, in order for readers to truly accept Jesus' final appearance to his disciples, he needed to record all the truth. Jesus' resurrection wasn't just about Jesus, but also about the people he appeared to. Luke must tell as much about what Jesus' friends experienced as about what Jesus said and did. He dashed into the room where his document about Jesus waited on the shelf.
Luke pulled out the notes about Jesus after his resurrection. He began to copy the events, but he would halt in his copying to include what he'd been told about Jesus' students. "They were startled and terrified, and thought they were seeing a ghost." He continued reporting Jesus' appearance, but he added that doubts arose in their hearts. He told of how Jesus dealt matter-of-factly with their amazement. Luke then inserted "in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering." There it was -- the whole truth. He continued the last sentences to describe Jesus' ascension. He pushed the scroll to the side, put his face in his hands, and wept. The whole truth about Jesus' resurrection was now written, and it was almost -- but not quite -- too good to be true.
David O. Bales was a Presbyterian minister for 33 years. Recently retired as the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Ontario, Oregon, he is also a freelance writer and editor for Stephen Ministries and Tebunah Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching Great Texts, and Interpretation, and he is the author of the CSS titles Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story and Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace.
You Have Put Gladness in My Heart
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 4
You have put gladness in my heart... I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.
-- Psalm 4:7a-8
I am a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, which occurred when I was an adolescent. I always knew it, but I didn't feel the pain of it until I was 42 years old. When it broke (another story) I began the long process of recovery. Early in that process I realized there was one part of what happened to me that I had never told my wife. I had always thought that I kept no secrets from her, and then I realized one night while reading a passage about secrets from a book by Janet Greeson that there was one very significant secret about the abuse that I had never shared.
I turned to Jo, who was lying in bed beside me reading, and told her the secret. Afterward I felt as if a great weight had been lifted. I felt physically, psychically, and spiritually relieved. Jo and I held each other and wept together. That night I slept like a baby. The next morning I wrote in my journal, "I am reborn!" My depression lifted. I felt joy again; I had energy to talk to people, to work, and to play with our children for the first time in weeks.
Three nights later I dreamed I saw a male figure rising out of a vast lake. The figure beckoned to me, and as I reached out to him I felt my spirit moving toward him like a force of energy traveling thousands of miles an hour through what I can only describe as something like the Milky Way. There was a great web of light flashing all around me as I soared outward, seemingly away from my body, with ever-increasing speed. I was aware that I could have stopped myself if I chose to, but didn't. I let myself go on and on. It was as if my soul had escaped my body, rocketed out of this world, and was flying free in another dimension. I woke abruptly, feeling energized and fully whole for the first time in years.
Alas, the euphoria I felt and the salvation I thought I had attained were not to last. Four days later I fell into a deep depression. My recovery work was just beginning,
I hold this and other experiences during my recovery in my heart and am still gleaning comfort and meaning from them as the years pass.
I am in a good place these days. The post-traumatic episodes I suffered for over ten years are now very rare. The nightmares I had of my abusers (yes, there were two) have abated. I still see them in my dreams occasionally, but there is no more terror -- they are just present. I am also at a point of full forgiveness. I can pray for them and empathize with the pain in their lives that led them to sexually assault me and others. I do not, of course, excuse their behavior. I held them publicly accountable in the church and the community. And I have moved on. I made a very conscious decision not to assume a victim/survivor identity. I have too many other things to do with my life. It is as the Psalmist prayed: "You have put gladness in my heart."
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt are the former co-editors of StoryShare, and John is the author of nine books.
**************
StoryShare, April 26, 2009, issue.
Copyright 2009 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
