Dying For A Cookie
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Dying for a Cookie"
Shining Moments: "That You May Not Grieve" by Diane Henderson
Sermon Starters: "Therefore Keep Watch" / "All Saints Story"
Scrap Pile: "A Stewardship Sermon" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
There is a new Left Behind movie being shown in churches around the country. Like the first movies in that series and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (which was all the rage last year), it is being used as an evangelical tool to convince the spiritually hungry to embrace a very narrow view of scripture. At a showing of the film in a Milwaukee suburb last week, 120 young people came to the altar to dedicate themselves to Christ. Is that to be celebrated? One wonders. Can people come to know Christ by responding to a story that is a distortion of the gospel? The epistle and Gospel texts this week give an opportunity to speak about the dangers of accepting the message of these books and films at face value. Check out the Scott Hoezee quote in Sermon Starters, and see the joke in A Story to Live By.
See also the Advent 1 (Cycle A) edition of StoryShare, which was devoted entirely to this theme. Nancy Nichols' personal "Not Left Behind" story is worth telling again, and the comments of Bruce Bawer (author of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity) quoted in that issue will stimulate some dialogue: "...Protestant fundamentalism is not a more 'extreme' version of mainstream Christianity -- it is a different creature entirely. Though many individual fundamentalists may be loving people, the theology to which they subscribe delights in a God who casts his children by the millions into eternal hellfire, and who has ordained a sequence of events of end times that amounts to a grotesque pageant of slaughter and bloodshed without any visible moral significance or spiritual dimension" (Stealing Jesus, p. 103).
You will also find good material in the Advent 1 editions for Cycle B and Cycle C.
Our next book will be an anthology of "best stories" from preachers and Christian educators about experiences of God's presence. All of us who work in the church have powerful personal stories of the ways that God has called, led, guided, cajoled, dragged, knocked upside the head, and healed. If you are willing to share one of your stories or if you know of someone who has a story that is just too good not to share, write to us at jsumwalt@naspa.net.
A Story to Live By
Dying for a Cookie
For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.
1 Thessalonians 4:15
A 98-year-old man lay on his deathbed. By all of the doctors' accounts, he would not live to see another sunrise. All of a sudden, he became aware of the ever-increasing scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies coming from the kitchen two floors below. He thought, "Before I leave this world, I MUST have just ONE of my wife's wonderful chocolate chip cookies."
After all, it was such a batch of cookies made by his wife that first won his heart more than 80 years before when they were first dating. What better way to depart this life than with the warm and loving taste of his wife's cookies still lingering on his palate?
The man bravely and arduously rolled himself in his bed, until he was finally able to fall off of the bed onto the floor. He then pulled himself by his elbows out of the room and into the hallway.
He continued to pull himself to the stairwell, where he backed himself down the two flights of stairs, painfully sliding down one step at a time. The man then pulled himself through the parlor, living room, dining room, and finally into the kitchen.
Tears swelled in his eyes as he contemplated all of the love that his wife had put into that final batch of cookies. This was a most appropriate final act of love offered to him by the woman who had shared her life with him for more than 80 years.
He pulled himself to the countertop where the cooling batch of cookies lay, sending their aroma deep into his nostrils and announcing to the world that his wife's love for him was most certainly as fresh and warm today as on the day she married him.
He rested his body weight on his left elbow, and with shaking determination ever so slowly raised his right arm to a point that put his fingers so close to the cookies that he could feel the rising heat caressing his fingertips.
His wife turned her head and noticed her husband in his gallant struggle to reach for the cookies. She then grabbed his hand and declared, "Oh no you don't, THOSE are for the funeral!"
Shining Moments
That You May Not Grieve
by Diane Henderson (as told to John Sumwalt)
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
Diane was eight years old when her brother Larry died. Larry was nine. They had always been close. Diane followed her older brother everywhere. They helped their dad and mom on the farm, cared for the animals, chased each other around the buildings, played hide-and-seek in the haymow, and rambled through the meadow and the woods behind the barn. Diane would confess years later that she had been a bit of a tomboy.
One day Diane was invited to go with two of her girlfriends to a baseball game. Larry asked to go along, but Diane said it was just for girls and they didn't want any boys tagging along. In the end, their parents decided that this time Larry would stay at home.
When they arrived at the game, there was a message that they should return home at once. Larry had been killed in a tractor accident. He was riding on the back of a tractor driven by one of the neighbor's hired men. The tractor had hit a bump, throwing Larry forward and down under one of the big rear wheels. His father, who was following behind on another tractor, picked him up and rushed him to the hospital where he died a short time later.
Diane's first thought was "I'm all alone. I'll have to do everything by myself now." And then she felt a terrible, agonizing, painful guilt in the pit of her stomach: "If I had let Larry go to the game this wouldn't have happened."
On the third night after the funeral, Diane wakened suddenly, sat up in her bed, and saw Larry sitting on the window sill across the room. Several moments passed as they sat there just looking at each other. "And then," Diane said, "Larry vanished right before my eyes."
When she told her family later, Diane said, "No one doubted me."
Diane says that she still gets goose bumps when she tells this story. And, she says, "To this day when I close my eyes I can see Larry sitting there just as he was that night when he appeared in my room."
If you were to ask Diane why she thinks Larry came to her, she would tell you, "I felt it was his way of saying good-bye and God's way of showing me he is alive."
Diane Henderson, of Janesvile, Wisconsin, related this personal story to John in May of 1988. It appeared in Lectionary Stories: 40 Tellable Tales For Cycle B by John Sumwalt (CSS Publishing Company), pp. 77-78.
Sermon Starters
Therefore Keep Watch
"Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."
Matthew 25:13
In most every era of the Christian church's history there have been impatient people who tried to force God's hand. There are always apocalyptic fringe groups which run through the church carrying those "The End Is Near!" signs. There are always those who claim that the Spirit has revealed to them that Jesus will most definitely be coming back by such-and-such a date. (These are the folks whom, in his own day, Martin Luther described as having swallowed the Holy Spirit "feathers and all.") In more recent decades certain authors have even made a tidy profit on such predictions: they are profit prophets who write books which pinpoint the date of Jesus' return. Then, when those dates come and go, these authors issue revised editions of their books with new dates. So gullible is at least a part of the Christian reading audience that the books sell almost as well when revised as when first printed. Or maybe it's less gullibility and more impatience or desperation. It's been a long time, after all. In the absence of Jesus actually returning we can at least fill our days reading books about the parousia, and so in this way vicariously experience the event. Surely something like that lies behind the meteoric success of the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Some are desperate to make Jesus' return seem more real. In the gospels Jesus himself admitted that he did not know the day or the hour of his return.
Excerpt from a sermon by Scott Hoezee, pastor of Calvin Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For the full text of the sermon click on http://www.calvincrc.org/sermons/2000/matt25Brdmds.html.
All Saints Story
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God...
Revelation 7:11
There was an actor who played Benjamin Franklin for schoolchildren. He dressed the part and told the story in the first person, to give the students an introduction to Franklin's life and some idea of his place in history. Then he invited questions.
A boy raised his hand and said, "I thought you died."
The actor replied, "Well, I did die. I died on April 17, 1790, when I was 84 years old. But I didn't like it, and I am never going to do that again." He was real pleased with his answer, and he asked, "Now, are there any other questions?"
Another boy in the back row raised his hand. "When you were in heaven, did you see my mother?"
The actor was stunned. He didn't know how to answer. He knew that for the boy to ask that question, he must have lost his mother recently. It must be a matter of ultimate concern for him. The actor knew he had to say something. Then he heard himself say, "I'm not sure if she was the one I think she was. But if she was, she was the prettiest angel there."
Scrap Pile
A Stewardship Sermon
by John Sumwalt
The assignment was to produce a stewardship sermon for the third week of our stewardship campaign. Our guest rainmaker had preached a very fine, standard stewardship sermon the week before. This was my offering the following Sunday.
On Moses, Death, Powerball, and Stewardship
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
I have been following the Powerball jackpot all week. When it got up to $340 million, I was tempted to go out and buy a ticket. I began to think about what I might do with all that money. I could buy World Series tickets, pay off the mortgage and the credit cards, give a couple hundred dollars to the kids (I wouldn't want to spoil them), help take care of the hundreds of thousands of people who are homeless and jobless after the recent hurricanes and earthquake, help end world hunger, put a couple of million aside for retirement -- just imagine all the good that could be done with that kind of money.
But then I got to thinking about the responsibility that goes with having that much cash, all the hands that would be held out. All the people who know me would be calling and knocking on my door. Jo and I have at least seven or eight hundred relatives -- and those are just the ones we know about. It just seemed like too much. So I didn't buy a ticket. Besides, I was afraid that I might run into one of you at the ticket counter -- and how would I explain it to the bishop if I won?
All of this reminded me of an old farmer who was going bankrupt. He had once been one of the most successful farmers around -- but then the bottom fell out of the markets and he was about to lose everything. He was also a very fine Christian man: he was active in the church all of his life, taught Sunday school, and sang in the choir.
It occurred to him that Jesus said to ask for what you need and God will provide. So he got down on his knees beside the bed one night and prayed: "God, please help me. I'm about to lose the farm, and if I don't get some money soon I won't have any income or anywhere to live. Please let me win the lottery." The next day when the lottery winners were announced. somebody else won. That night he prayed again: "Dear God, please let me win the lottery. I am losing the farm, my family is going starve. I don't know what else to do." The next day when the winners were announced, the farmer still had no luck. Once more he got down on his knees and prayed with all of his might: "My God, why have you forsaken me? I am about to lose everything. The mortgage is due. I have no money to pay. I don't often ask you for help and I have always been a good servant to you. Please let me win the lottery just this one time so I can get my life back in order."
Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light as the heavens opened, and the old farmer heard the voice of God Almighty: "Earl, work with me on this.... Buy a ticket!"
Moses was one who worked closely with God. Indeed, as we heard in the reading of the text (Deuteronomy 34:1-12), there has never been one like Moses "...whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all of his servants...." Moses was the one who brought the word of God to Pharaoh, then the mightiest ruler on earth. He had the audacity to call him out: "You have enslaved us for 400 years. We will wait no longer. Let my people go!"
At God's command Moses let loose the plagues of blood and frogs and disease and death, until finally Pharaoh did let his people go. And after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, after Israel had had one opportunity to enter the promised land but had not been brave enough to take it, after all of the first generation that set out for the promised land had died, Moses brought their children and grandchildren to the brink of the promise. It was time to enter the land flowing with milk and honey that they had been dreaming about all of their lives.
Moses climbed up Mount Nebo to take a look at what was to come. And as he looked out upon the rich lands that would be the future of his people, date palms blowing in the breeze, fields of golden wheat, vineyards dripping with ripe purple grapes, wells of water that would never go dry, walled cities, safe and secure freedom like they had never known before, God let Moses know that his work was done. It was time to lay down the burden of leadership, to pass the mantle to a new leader.
The old Hebrew storytellers must have had tears in their eyes as they told this part of the story. God said: "I will give it to your descendants; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there."
To be so close... to see the beauty of the promise, to smell the blossoms of the honey trees, to almost be able to taste it -- and not go in?
You know how Moses must have felt. You may have known people who have had this happen. They worked hard all of their lives to build a business, an organization, a school, a church, a hospital; they had almost finished building their dream house, the first grandchild was on the way, and God said, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
Say what? I'm not finished yet! "But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep" (Robert Frost).
"It's all right, child. Your part is done. It is time to rest, time to come home, the work will be finished when it is time. Close your eyes, let it go..."
"Moses was 120 years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not been abated." His vigor had not been abated means he didn't need Viagra or Cialis. Moses could still throw the football through the swinging tire. (You've seen those awful commercials?)
We all know well the story of a strong leader of our own time who was suddenly taken from us. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had not planned to preach that night at the Mason Temple in Memphis. He was tired, fighting a virus, and had told his staff that he was going to bed early as they left the motel for the evening service. They hadn't expected much of a crowd, but when they arrived it was apparent that the church would soon be filled to overflowing. They were there for one purpose, to hear Dr. King; they needed inspiration, hope that the garbage workers strike would end with a just settlement and without more violence and death.
Someone called back to the motel and said, "Dr. King, you've got to come." And so he came on that night just before an assassin's bullet would end his life -- and preached like he had never preached before. You remember what he said...
"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter to me now, because I've been to the mountaintop, and I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. He's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And I am happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.' " (Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993, pp. 117-121)
Jo and I had the privilege of helping with the building of a new church building in Montello in 1984, the same year our son Orrin was born. We went back last year to celebrate the 20th anniversary and the mortgage burning. They asked me to preach the sermon that day, and one of the stories I told was that of Mary Cartwright, one of the longtime faithful members of that congregation who had taught Sunday school and served at their famous harvest dinners for over 60 years. Her son Fred was on the building committee. Her grandchildren had children in Sunday school. Mary was in her late 80s. She was excited about the new church. It was to be built on land that was almost in sight of their old farm, now run by her grandson.
On the day that we broke ground for the building, we had a little service with about 100 people gathered in a circle on the site where the church would stand. Fred had picked up his mother that morning and brought her in the car right up to the edge of the future foundations. Everyone was surprised to see Mary because she had been quite ill. She stayed in the car with the windows down.
I preached about the children of Israel crossing the Jordan River to enter the promised land. The new church building was our promised land. I looked at Mary sitting in the car, knowing that she knew she would never set foot in the new building. Indeed, we celebrated her life in the old building just a few weeks later. But on that bright morning Mary sang with us that great hymn we all sang in this service a few moments ago: "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah... bid my anxious fears subside; death of death and hell's destruction, land me safe on Canaan's side."
In the scripture we read that after Moses died, "The Israelites wept... in the plains of Moab for thirty days." How do you go on after Moses dies? There had never been one like Moses. He made them a people, got the slavery out of their blood and out of their heads, brought them as a free people to the promised land.
Every once in awhile when I come into this church building I find myself feeling a deep sadness. It took me a long time to figure out what that was about. It came to me one day that in almost 12 years as your pastor I have officiated at the funerals of well over 100 longtime faithful members, people we all love dearly and still can hardly believe are gone from our midst. I would name some of them and tell you their stories, but we don't have time. There are so many -- and anyway, I couldn't name them without breaking down. How do you go on after Moses is gone?
The World War II generation is slipping away, our parents and grandparents in the faith who built this church, this beautiful sanctuary with its breathtaking stained glass windows, the spacious Sunday school rooms we have up on the third level; who gave generously, sacrificially, giving up many of the luxuries we now enjoy so there would be a church here for us. They are now over on the other side, their work here completed.
How it must thrill them as they look out from their mountaintops to see all of these children in our Sunday school (over 100 at last count) who are learning the stories of Jesus every week. Surely they see. Surely God has let them know that all their dreams for this congregation are coming true.
As we fill out our pledge cards this week and bring them to be dedicated on the altar here next Sunday, we will be doing our part to ensure a bountiful future for this congregation that we love, for the ministry that reaches out beyond these walls to so many who are yearning for a word a hope.
What we write on these cards as we make our way up the mountain to take our peek over into what is to come will determine... well, it will determine the future here -- if there will be a future here, if there will be a congregation of faithful souls here in 40 or 50 years when these little ones take on the work that we took on from those who came before us.
Can we do our part? Will we do our part? Will we, as Dr. Jones challenged us last Sunday, be able to say that what we put on our pledge card represents who we truly are?
May God help us to be faithful, to give a worthy proportion of the many blessings we have been given.
Excerpt from a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee on October 23, 2005.
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How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and e-mail the story to us.
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StoryShare, November 6, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Dying for a Cookie"
Shining Moments: "That You May Not Grieve" by Diane Henderson
Sermon Starters: "Therefore Keep Watch" / "All Saints Story"
Scrap Pile: "A Stewardship Sermon" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
There is a new Left Behind movie being shown in churches around the country. Like the first movies in that series and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (which was all the rage last year), it is being used as an evangelical tool to convince the spiritually hungry to embrace a very narrow view of scripture. At a showing of the film in a Milwaukee suburb last week, 120 young people came to the altar to dedicate themselves to Christ. Is that to be celebrated? One wonders. Can people come to know Christ by responding to a story that is a distortion of the gospel? The epistle and Gospel texts this week give an opportunity to speak about the dangers of accepting the message of these books and films at face value. Check out the Scott Hoezee quote in Sermon Starters, and see the joke in A Story to Live By.
See also the Advent 1 (Cycle A) edition of StoryShare, which was devoted entirely to this theme. Nancy Nichols' personal "Not Left Behind" story is worth telling again, and the comments of Bruce Bawer (author of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity) quoted in that issue will stimulate some dialogue: "...Protestant fundamentalism is not a more 'extreme' version of mainstream Christianity -- it is a different creature entirely. Though many individual fundamentalists may be loving people, the theology to which they subscribe delights in a God who casts his children by the millions into eternal hellfire, and who has ordained a sequence of events of end times that amounts to a grotesque pageant of slaughter and bloodshed without any visible moral significance or spiritual dimension" (Stealing Jesus, p. 103).
You will also find good material in the Advent 1 editions for Cycle B and Cycle C.
Our next book will be an anthology of "best stories" from preachers and Christian educators about experiences of God's presence. All of us who work in the church have powerful personal stories of the ways that God has called, led, guided, cajoled, dragged, knocked upside the head, and healed. If you are willing to share one of your stories or if you know of someone who has a story that is just too good not to share, write to us at jsumwalt@naspa.net.
A Story to Live By
Dying for a Cookie
For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.
1 Thessalonians 4:15
A 98-year-old man lay on his deathbed. By all of the doctors' accounts, he would not live to see another sunrise. All of a sudden, he became aware of the ever-increasing scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies coming from the kitchen two floors below. He thought, "Before I leave this world, I MUST have just ONE of my wife's wonderful chocolate chip cookies."
After all, it was such a batch of cookies made by his wife that first won his heart more than 80 years before when they were first dating. What better way to depart this life than with the warm and loving taste of his wife's cookies still lingering on his palate?
The man bravely and arduously rolled himself in his bed, until he was finally able to fall off of the bed onto the floor. He then pulled himself by his elbows out of the room and into the hallway.
He continued to pull himself to the stairwell, where he backed himself down the two flights of stairs, painfully sliding down one step at a time. The man then pulled himself through the parlor, living room, dining room, and finally into the kitchen.
Tears swelled in his eyes as he contemplated all of the love that his wife had put into that final batch of cookies. This was a most appropriate final act of love offered to him by the woman who had shared her life with him for more than 80 years.
He pulled himself to the countertop where the cooling batch of cookies lay, sending their aroma deep into his nostrils and announcing to the world that his wife's love for him was most certainly as fresh and warm today as on the day she married him.
He rested his body weight on his left elbow, and with shaking determination ever so slowly raised his right arm to a point that put his fingers so close to the cookies that he could feel the rising heat caressing his fingertips.
His wife turned her head and noticed her husband in his gallant struggle to reach for the cookies. She then grabbed his hand and declared, "Oh no you don't, THOSE are for the funeral!"
Shining Moments
That You May Not Grieve
by Diane Henderson (as told to John Sumwalt)
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
Diane was eight years old when her brother Larry died. Larry was nine. They had always been close. Diane followed her older brother everywhere. They helped their dad and mom on the farm, cared for the animals, chased each other around the buildings, played hide-and-seek in the haymow, and rambled through the meadow and the woods behind the barn. Diane would confess years later that she had been a bit of a tomboy.
One day Diane was invited to go with two of her girlfriends to a baseball game. Larry asked to go along, but Diane said it was just for girls and they didn't want any boys tagging along. In the end, their parents decided that this time Larry would stay at home.
When they arrived at the game, there was a message that they should return home at once. Larry had been killed in a tractor accident. He was riding on the back of a tractor driven by one of the neighbor's hired men. The tractor had hit a bump, throwing Larry forward and down under one of the big rear wheels. His father, who was following behind on another tractor, picked him up and rushed him to the hospital where he died a short time later.
Diane's first thought was "I'm all alone. I'll have to do everything by myself now." And then she felt a terrible, agonizing, painful guilt in the pit of her stomach: "If I had let Larry go to the game this wouldn't have happened."
On the third night after the funeral, Diane wakened suddenly, sat up in her bed, and saw Larry sitting on the window sill across the room. Several moments passed as they sat there just looking at each other. "And then," Diane said, "Larry vanished right before my eyes."
When she told her family later, Diane said, "No one doubted me."
Diane says that she still gets goose bumps when she tells this story. And, she says, "To this day when I close my eyes I can see Larry sitting there just as he was that night when he appeared in my room."
If you were to ask Diane why she thinks Larry came to her, she would tell you, "I felt it was his way of saying good-bye and God's way of showing me he is alive."
Diane Henderson, of Janesvile, Wisconsin, related this personal story to John in May of 1988. It appeared in Lectionary Stories: 40 Tellable Tales For Cycle B by John Sumwalt (CSS Publishing Company), pp. 77-78.
Sermon Starters
Therefore Keep Watch
"Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."
Matthew 25:13
In most every era of the Christian church's history there have been impatient people who tried to force God's hand. There are always apocalyptic fringe groups which run through the church carrying those "The End Is Near!" signs. There are always those who claim that the Spirit has revealed to them that Jesus will most definitely be coming back by such-and-such a date. (These are the folks whom, in his own day, Martin Luther described as having swallowed the Holy Spirit "feathers and all.") In more recent decades certain authors have even made a tidy profit on such predictions: they are profit prophets who write books which pinpoint the date of Jesus' return. Then, when those dates come and go, these authors issue revised editions of their books with new dates. So gullible is at least a part of the Christian reading audience that the books sell almost as well when revised as when first printed. Or maybe it's less gullibility and more impatience or desperation. It's been a long time, after all. In the absence of Jesus actually returning we can at least fill our days reading books about the parousia, and so in this way vicariously experience the event. Surely something like that lies behind the meteoric success of the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Some are desperate to make Jesus' return seem more real. In the gospels Jesus himself admitted that he did not know the day or the hour of his return.
Excerpt from a sermon by Scott Hoezee, pastor of Calvin Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For the full text of the sermon click on http://www.calvincrc.org/sermons/2000/matt25Brdmds.html.
All Saints Story
And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God...
Revelation 7:11
There was an actor who played Benjamin Franklin for schoolchildren. He dressed the part and told the story in the first person, to give the students an introduction to Franklin's life and some idea of his place in history. Then he invited questions.
A boy raised his hand and said, "I thought you died."
The actor replied, "Well, I did die. I died on April 17, 1790, when I was 84 years old. But I didn't like it, and I am never going to do that again." He was real pleased with his answer, and he asked, "Now, are there any other questions?"
Another boy in the back row raised his hand. "When you were in heaven, did you see my mother?"
The actor was stunned. He didn't know how to answer. He knew that for the boy to ask that question, he must have lost his mother recently. It must be a matter of ultimate concern for him. The actor knew he had to say something. Then he heard himself say, "I'm not sure if she was the one I think she was. But if she was, she was the prettiest angel there."
Scrap Pile
A Stewardship Sermon
by John Sumwalt
The assignment was to produce a stewardship sermon for the third week of our stewardship campaign. Our guest rainmaker had preached a very fine, standard stewardship sermon the week before. This was my offering the following Sunday.
On Moses, Death, Powerball, and Stewardship
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
I have been following the Powerball jackpot all week. When it got up to $340 million, I was tempted to go out and buy a ticket. I began to think about what I might do with all that money. I could buy World Series tickets, pay off the mortgage and the credit cards, give a couple hundred dollars to the kids (I wouldn't want to spoil them), help take care of the hundreds of thousands of people who are homeless and jobless after the recent hurricanes and earthquake, help end world hunger, put a couple of million aside for retirement -- just imagine all the good that could be done with that kind of money.
But then I got to thinking about the responsibility that goes with having that much cash, all the hands that would be held out. All the people who know me would be calling and knocking on my door. Jo and I have at least seven or eight hundred relatives -- and those are just the ones we know about. It just seemed like too much. So I didn't buy a ticket. Besides, I was afraid that I might run into one of you at the ticket counter -- and how would I explain it to the bishop if I won?
All of this reminded me of an old farmer who was going bankrupt. He had once been one of the most successful farmers around -- but then the bottom fell out of the markets and he was about to lose everything. He was also a very fine Christian man: he was active in the church all of his life, taught Sunday school, and sang in the choir.
It occurred to him that Jesus said to ask for what you need and God will provide. So he got down on his knees beside the bed one night and prayed: "God, please help me. I'm about to lose the farm, and if I don't get some money soon I won't have any income or anywhere to live. Please let me win the lottery." The next day when the lottery winners were announced. somebody else won. That night he prayed again: "Dear God, please let me win the lottery. I am losing the farm, my family is going starve. I don't know what else to do." The next day when the winners were announced, the farmer still had no luck. Once more he got down on his knees and prayed with all of his might: "My God, why have you forsaken me? I am about to lose everything. The mortgage is due. I have no money to pay. I don't often ask you for help and I have always been a good servant to you. Please let me win the lottery just this one time so I can get my life back in order."
Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light as the heavens opened, and the old farmer heard the voice of God Almighty: "Earl, work with me on this.... Buy a ticket!"
Moses was one who worked closely with God. Indeed, as we heard in the reading of the text (Deuteronomy 34:1-12), there has never been one like Moses "...whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all of his servants...." Moses was the one who brought the word of God to Pharaoh, then the mightiest ruler on earth. He had the audacity to call him out: "You have enslaved us for 400 years. We will wait no longer. Let my people go!"
At God's command Moses let loose the plagues of blood and frogs and disease and death, until finally Pharaoh did let his people go. And after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, after Israel had had one opportunity to enter the promised land but had not been brave enough to take it, after all of the first generation that set out for the promised land had died, Moses brought their children and grandchildren to the brink of the promise. It was time to enter the land flowing with milk and honey that they had been dreaming about all of their lives.
Moses climbed up Mount Nebo to take a look at what was to come. And as he looked out upon the rich lands that would be the future of his people, date palms blowing in the breeze, fields of golden wheat, vineyards dripping with ripe purple grapes, wells of water that would never go dry, walled cities, safe and secure freedom like they had never known before, God let Moses know that his work was done. It was time to lay down the burden of leadership, to pass the mantle to a new leader.
The old Hebrew storytellers must have had tears in their eyes as they told this part of the story. God said: "I will give it to your descendants; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there."
To be so close... to see the beauty of the promise, to smell the blossoms of the honey trees, to almost be able to taste it -- and not go in?
You know how Moses must have felt. You may have known people who have had this happen. They worked hard all of their lives to build a business, an organization, a school, a church, a hospital; they had almost finished building their dream house, the first grandchild was on the way, and God said, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
Say what? I'm not finished yet! "But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep" (Robert Frost).
"It's all right, child. Your part is done. It is time to rest, time to come home, the work will be finished when it is time. Close your eyes, let it go..."
"Moses was 120 years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not been abated." His vigor had not been abated means he didn't need Viagra or Cialis. Moses could still throw the football through the swinging tire. (You've seen those awful commercials?)
We all know well the story of a strong leader of our own time who was suddenly taken from us. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had not planned to preach that night at the Mason Temple in Memphis. He was tired, fighting a virus, and had told his staff that he was going to bed early as they left the motel for the evening service. They hadn't expected much of a crowd, but when they arrived it was apparent that the church would soon be filled to overflowing. They were there for one purpose, to hear Dr. King; they needed inspiration, hope that the garbage workers strike would end with a just settlement and without more violence and death.
Someone called back to the motel and said, "Dr. King, you've got to come." And so he came on that night just before an assassin's bullet would end his life -- and preached like he had never preached before. You remember what he said...
"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter to me now, because I've been to the mountaintop, and I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. He's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And I am happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.' " (Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993, pp. 117-121)
Jo and I had the privilege of helping with the building of a new church building in Montello in 1984, the same year our son Orrin was born. We went back last year to celebrate the 20th anniversary and the mortgage burning. They asked me to preach the sermon that day, and one of the stories I told was that of Mary Cartwright, one of the longtime faithful members of that congregation who had taught Sunday school and served at their famous harvest dinners for over 60 years. Her son Fred was on the building committee. Her grandchildren had children in Sunday school. Mary was in her late 80s. She was excited about the new church. It was to be built on land that was almost in sight of their old farm, now run by her grandson.
On the day that we broke ground for the building, we had a little service with about 100 people gathered in a circle on the site where the church would stand. Fred had picked up his mother that morning and brought her in the car right up to the edge of the future foundations. Everyone was surprised to see Mary because she had been quite ill. She stayed in the car with the windows down.
I preached about the children of Israel crossing the Jordan River to enter the promised land. The new church building was our promised land. I looked at Mary sitting in the car, knowing that she knew she would never set foot in the new building. Indeed, we celebrated her life in the old building just a few weeks later. But on that bright morning Mary sang with us that great hymn we all sang in this service a few moments ago: "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah... bid my anxious fears subside; death of death and hell's destruction, land me safe on Canaan's side."
In the scripture we read that after Moses died, "The Israelites wept... in the plains of Moab for thirty days." How do you go on after Moses dies? There had never been one like Moses. He made them a people, got the slavery out of their blood and out of their heads, brought them as a free people to the promised land.
Every once in awhile when I come into this church building I find myself feeling a deep sadness. It took me a long time to figure out what that was about. It came to me one day that in almost 12 years as your pastor I have officiated at the funerals of well over 100 longtime faithful members, people we all love dearly and still can hardly believe are gone from our midst. I would name some of them and tell you their stories, but we don't have time. There are so many -- and anyway, I couldn't name them without breaking down. How do you go on after Moses is gone?
The World War II generation is slipping away, our parents and grandparents in the faith who built this church, this beautiful sanctuary with its breathtaking stained glass windows, the spacious Sunday school rooms we have up on the third level; who gave generously, sacrificially, giving up many of the luxuries we now enjoy so there would be a church here for us. They are now over on the other side, their work here completed.
How it must thrill them as they look out from their mountaintops to see all of these children in our Sunday school (over 100 at last count) who are learning the stories of Jesus every week. Surely they see. Surely God has let them know that all their dreams for this congregation are coming true.
As we fill out our pledge cards this week and bring them to be dedicated on the altar here next Sunday, we will be doing our part to ensure a bountiful future for this congregation that we love, for the ministry that reaches out beyond these walls to so many who are yearning for a word a hope.
What we write on these cards as we make our way up the mountain to take our peek over into what is to come will determine... well, it will determine the future here -- if there will be a future here, if there will be a congregation of faithful souls here in 40 or 50 years when these little ones take on the work that we took on from those who came before us.
Can we do our part? Will we do our part? Will we, as Dr. Jones challenged us last Sunday, be able to say that what we put on our pledge card represents who we truly are?
May God help us to be faithful, to give a worthy proportion of the many blessings we have been given.
Excerpt from a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee on October 23, 2005.
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StoryShare, November 6, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
