Encounter In The Darkness
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Encounter in the Darkness" by Keith Hewitt
"Please Don't Forget Me" by Scott Dalgarno
"An Unwanted Gift" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
Death is an inescapable reality in our world of mortality. We will all have to come face-to-face with death sooner or later. How we face death can often speak to how we have faced life. It can also have a great impact on those around us. "Encounter in the Darkness" offers two contrasting reactions to a notable death in the Bible. "Please Don't Forget Me" is a moving illustration of how our death can affect those closest to us. In "An Unwanted Gift," we meet a man who has an unusual connection with death and we discover how that connection ministers to him and those around him.
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Encounter in the Darkness
By Keith Hewitt
Acts 7:55-60
The man in the dark woolen cloak drew it around himself a little tighter to ward off the night air, and waited by a smoldering brazier; others stood nearby, some closer to the warmth, some farther away, deeper in the darkness. Few words were exchanged -- sometimes a brief negotiation, and then a pair of shadows would depart together; other times a longer exchange to no particular end as they waited out the night.
"I always want to bathe after I've been here," a voice said in his ear, deep and soft, Greek with a Latin burr that dulled the hard edges of the consonants and subtly altered the vowels.
He twitched visibly, turned to his left to see the figure standing beside him. "It took you long enough," he said. "I've been waiting here most of the night."
"My time is not my own," the man said simply. "Why did you send for me?"
"I have news." He dipped the hood of the cloak, looked around, then pulled it up again and took the man's arm, gently directed him away from the brazier. "This way," he said. "I must be careful."
"You must," agreed the man, shirking the guiding hand, "because if you touch me again, you won't have a hand." He still spoke quietly, but there was no doubting that he would do it. He wore no cloak or breastplate, carried no sword or shield, but his very body was uniform enough, the way he carried himself, the way he moved.
"I'm sorry, Centurion, this way please." The man led the way to a rude lean-to, back against the city wall. It was not quite tall enough for a man to stand in, but then standing was not usually an issue. "In there," he said, drawing back a curtain that acted as door and wall, and did neither very well.
The centurion crouched down, peered into the gloom and sniffed, then stood up and shook his head, a moving silhouette against the red, glowing embers in the brazier, a dozen paces away. "No," he said simply. "Just tell me why I'm here, and we'll be done with this. The morning watch comes soon."
The man reached out to take his arm again, hesitated, let his hand drop, and simply moved further back into the night, up against the wall, to the side of the lean-to. "Back here, then. You never know who these madmen are." The centurion followed him. They stood still, again, and the man looked around with darting eyes, wished he could see like a cat. "I have done as you asked," he said, not looking at the Roman. "You heard about what happened yesterday?"
"Many things happened yesterday."
"The madman, the heretic -- you heard, yes? I am not your only informant, am I?" His voice, though hushed, drew querulous. "Tell me our taxes are spent more wisely than that."
"You are not the only one," the centurion agreed.
"Then you know about the madman. He was arrested and brought before the high priest and the elders, accused of blasphemy. They had him stoned."
"Barbaric, but yes, I heard."
"Barbaric? You have an odd view of barbarism, Friend. How many men have you hung on a cross, in your time?"
"Call me 'friend' again, and you will be added to the list that I carry. You seem eager to tell me about this stoning -- what is it that you think I don't know, already?"
Eyes darted. "You probably knew the man was a Christ-follower. He was preaching his madness to the people -- about this prophet that can't be killed." He leaned forward, lowered his voice 'til it was nearly a whisper. "I saw him do it with my own eyes, and with my own hand, I turned him in. I told the priests that this man was spreading blasphemous lies."
The centurion's voice was bleak. "So you killed him." It was not a question. "I pay you to ferret out Zealots, I pay you to watch these Christ-followers and report their activities to me. I don't pay you to kill them."
"I did no such thing," the man answered quickly. "It was the high priest and the elders that killed him. All I did was report him."
"So if I throw you from the mountaintop into the Valley of Gehenna, is it the falling nature of things that kills you when your body dashes against the rocks? Or is it me?" The man started to chatter an answer, and the centurion held up a hand to stay him. "Don't waste my time. You killed that man as surely as if you'd thrown the stones yourself."
The man scowled, shrugged beneath the cloak. "You waste tears on a madman. They brought him up before the council, and do you know what he did? The madman preached to them -- told them about Abraham, and the promises of God, and where things had gone wrong." He made a dismissive motion. "Like a delinquent child lecturing his parents. No wonder they killed him."
"You people have little tolerance for new ideas. It sounds like this man died bravely." His eyes traveled past the man before him, probed out into the darkness. It seemed even gloomier than when he had left the Praetorium -- was that possible?
"We have little tolerance for madness. And the man died as he had lived, mad to the end, so there is no doubt."
"What do you mean?"
"So you didn't know? You need to buy better informants."
"Not better, just different. Now go on."
"I had to testify, so naturally I was there when they dragged him out of the temple. He scarcely fought them at all." He paused for a moment, then went on, his voice shaded with something between scorn and wonder. "And do you know what this madman did when the first stones hit him -- as he knelt there in the sun, watching blood drip from his own body onto the ground, barely able to hold himself upright?"
"What?" It was hushed -- almost a whisper.
"He claimed to see this dead Messiah standing next to our God in heaven. Then he asked his mad God for forgiveness -- not for himself, not for his blasphemy, but for the people who were casting stones. He asked God to forgive them, because they did not understand."
"Father, forgive them, because they don't know what they're doing." The centurion's voice was low, and he spoke in badly accented Aramaic.
"What was that?" the man demanded. "You speak our language?"
"Never mind. These Christ-followers -- I don't understand them. And neither do you, that's obvious."
"I understand they die, like everyone else."
"I wonder." He reached beneath his tunic, pulled out a small number of coins wrapped in a rough woolen cloth, handed it to the man. "Here, you've earned your pay -- you told me things I had not heard from the others." The man took the bundle, hefted it, tucked it beneath his cloak; there was no checking the coins in this darkness, and trying to do so would only anger the Roman.
He started to leave.
"Tell me, do you know Quintus Aurelius?" the centurion asked suddenly.
The informant hesitated, turned, and looked at him curiously. "No, I don't. Who is he, one of your senators?"
"No," the centurion answered after a moment, "No, just a better man than you or I will ever be. The day this Christ person was executed, Quintus passed by the Skull. He heard this madman, this false Messiah, as you put it, say the same thing: Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing."
The other man shrugged. "Mad Messiah, mad follower. Can't say I'm surprised."
"Then would it surprise you to learn that Quintus Aurelius saw that same man -- the one hanging on the cross -- saw him two days later... as alive as you or me?"
There was another pause. "Mad Messiah, mad follower -- mad friend, and I beg your pardon, Centurion. I mean no disrespect."
"Maybe it is madness. Maybe it is just as mad to believe that a teacher, a prophet, would expect us to forgive those who do us ill. It's hardly human, is it?"
"I am a simple man, Centurion, not a scholar. I do not burden myself with philosophy, when there is a life to be lived."
"I understand -- and yet we still have this Messiah of yours."
"Not mine," the man said indignantly. "I do not follow mad Galileans. I live right, pay my taxes, and do my duty -- particularly when others are watching. What more could any man do -- or be expected to do?"
"Some say that this Galilean, this Jesus, was an offering, a sacrifice to your father-God to atone for the sins of all humankind. If that is the case, who truly hung him on the cross -- the soldier who drove in the nails, or all of us, by our sins?"
"You lose me, Centurion."
"I fear we are all lost. If it is our sins he died for, then we bear the burden -- and it is all of us, not just the executioners, that he sought forgiveness for. Just as you bear the burden for that disciple's death, even though you never held a stone in your hand, and I, for having employed you."
"I tell you, I did nothing wrong," the informant insisted.
"You did everything wrong -- the same as me."
"Then you seek forgiveness, Centurion. My conscience is clear."
"And therein lies the problem -- I think we may already have forgiveness. We just don't deserve it." He stared into the gloom. "I want to feel it. I want to understand."
"Then you need a rabbi, not an informant. Seek your truth, Centurion -- just leave me out of these fool's errands."
When there was no response, the man slipped away and disappeared into the darkness. The centurion looked after him for a bit, then sighed and directed his steps back to the city, to the Praetorium where there would be sense and order to his life. He walked in silence through the darkness, his sandals slapping softly against the pavement.
Off in the distance, though, day was dawning with a sliver of pearl beyond the hills.
Keith Hewitt is the author of NaTiVity Dramas: Four Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages. 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.
Please Don't Forget Me
by Scott Dalgarno
John 14:1-14
When we visit my wife's father, Henry (Hank, as everybody knows him), it's my job to prepare the scrambled eggs. On the particular morning I'm remembering, the day after Thanksgiving, I crack the eggs while my daughter Sarah cuts fruit into bowls -- no grapefruit for her mother, lots of melon for her brother, and extra banana for her grandfather. I try hard to make sure the eggs are not runny, but not dry either.
Soon everyone is seated at the family table made by Hank himself. There's a chair for everyone and one chair set aside for Hank's late wife, Edith, my children's most beloved grandmother. The cushion is covered with fabric from one of her cheery summer dresses.
"Who's the boy?" Hank asks, looking directly at our son. "That's your grandson, Stephen," my wife, Catherine says. Hank doesn't recognize any of us anymore, except, Catherine. Hank has had a series of strokes -- the last one took most of his memory, and has left his right side shriveled. The one thing his memory is clear on is Edith. She was the one thing in his life that really "worked." "Best decision I ever made," he used to say, and now he can't even remember what he did all his life, what a difference he made in the lives of so many young people at Syracuse University.
The family tradition was that Hank says grace at meals, which I used to find funny because until he was nearly sixty, he was a self-described agnostic. It was the realization, coming on the eve of old age, that he and Edith would not always be together (on this side of the grave) that made him begin to entertain the idea of heaven.
Maybe it was because she was such a beacon of goodness that he began to think the existence of such a place was even possible. Oh, there was nothing all that saintly about her. No, she had a wicked sense of humor -- everyone knew that. But she was just so... so solid. Her integrity was absolute. She was the one person I've met in my life who really loved everybody. Some try, but Edith pulled it off, and there was no doubting it. I remember how suspect I was, meeting this amazing family that day that Catherine first brought me into her home. To Hank, I was Charles Manson until proven otherwise. But not for Edith. She read in the looks Catherine gave me at our first dinner around this same table that I was someone special, even if I didn't feel it myself, and until the day of her death she made me feel that I had given her the greatest two gifts in her life -- her two grandchildren.
It was the day she died when something broke, for the first time, in Hank's steely composure. We all stood or sat around Grandma's bed and we were holding her hands, chatting quietly, and she just slipped away, as they say. No great labored breaths, no rattles, just a quiet letting go. We found ourselves transfixed by the smile that came to her mouth and eyes in that last moment. It wasn't lost on Hank. Whatever she was seeing, HE wanted to see. More than that, he wanted to go where she had told him she believed she was headed -- the place she was sure she would see her own mother again, and the place she believed she would see the one who taught her it was possible to love people as if they were all children of God.
For Hank, heaven became a matter of trust, of trusting his wife. In those few moments beside her bed, his heart grew strangely warm. Where she was going, he wanted to go, and his sarcasm about spiritual matters evaporated right then and there.
Once the eggs and bowls of fruit were placed in front of everyone we bowed our heads, grabbed hands, and waited. Hank didn't speak. After a few moments of silence Catherine began, "God is... " Hank chimed in, "God is..." That was followed by another long pause, at which point Stephen and Sarah started in slowly and deliberately. "God is good, God is great. Let us thank Him for our food." Everyone added an "Amen" except Hank. He still had his head bowed. He seemed to be mumbling something. Catherine leaned over kissing his shoulder and rubbing his back very gently. Then she raised herself and settled her head on his shoulder looking about eighteen again. It nearly did me in.
After breakfast Catherine and I gathered up the dishes. I noticed tears in her eyes. "Are you all right?" I asked.
She hesitated and then said, "Dad was praying the same thing over and over. He just kept saying, 'God take care of Edith,' and 'God... please don't forget me. Please don't forget me. Please don't forget me...."
Scott Dalgarno is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Ashland, Oregon. He is also an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University, where he teaches Film and Ethics. His poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The Christian Century, America: The National Catholic Weekly, The Antioch Review, and Alive Now.
An Unwanted Gift
By John Sumwalt
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
"Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are variety of services, but the same Lord; and there are a variety of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone" (1 Corinthians 12:4-6).
Gifted. That's what everyone said about Tim Grimsley, and they didn't necessarily mean it as a compliment. It was more of an explanation of something that was both wondrous and disturbing. From the time he was a small boy, Tim, or Grim, as he came to be known, had the gift of "seeing." It was not just that he could see into the future; it was what he could see that set him apart from other kinds of see-ers, what these days are popularly known as psychics. Grim could tell when people were going to die.
This extraordinary gift was more of a curse than it was a blessing. The first time Grim foretold a death was a day he would never forget because the foretold demise was that of his own dear grandfather. They had been fishing down by the creek, just him and "Pa." Grim was catching suckers and chubs, but nothing worth taking home for supper. Pa had been casting further out along the bank, where the creek curved around the big cottonwood, and had hardly had a bite all day. Suddenly his luck changed and it in was that moment when Pa reeled in a 23-inch rainbow trout that Grim saw it, the image of his grandfather lying in an open coffin in front of the altar at church.
At the tender age of ten, Grim had never been to a funeral, much less seen anyone in a coffin. He wasn't sure what he was seeing and in all the excitement over the trophy trout he forgot all about it until three days later when he was looking at his grandfather's body lying in the coffin in front of the altar at church. As he stood there between his mother and father, who were each holding tightly onto one of his hands, he leaned over and whispered, "Mom, I saw Pa like this the day we caught the fish." His mother didn't say anything, but just squeezed his hand more tightly and put her head on his father's shoulder.
It was several days later that the subject came up again, after breakfast one morning after his father left for work. As they were washing dishes, Grim repeated to his mother what he had seen that day down by the creek. She was silent for a long time and after a while took his hand and spoke to him in a tender voice, "Timmy, you apparently have the same gift that your other grandfather, my father, had."
Grandpa Beasley had died before Grim was born and his mother had never told him much about him.
"My dad could sometimes tell when people were going to die," his mother said in a more serious tone than she had ever spoken to him before. "He rarely told anyone what he knew unless he thought it would be helpful in some way, or if someone wanted to know for a good reason."
Grim never forgot what his mother said to him that day and as the years passed her words became his own personal code of conduct. He came to understand that the knowledge he was given was sacred, something holy that was to be guarded carefully and shared only with the greatest discretion. His mother had helped him to learn these distinctions throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, as one after another he had been able to see the impending deaths of uncles, aunts, neighbors, and friends.
At first Grim had been angry that he alone had to carry the burden of this terrible knowledge. He wondered why God would give him such a gift. Sometimes it seemed more than he could bear. But as he matured he came to accept it and to recognize that there were occasions when what he knew could make a positive difference in someone's life, like the time his best friend, Abe, was dying of cancer.
They were both in their early thirties and Abe had been married for just a year. He had wanted to know if he was going to recover or if he should prepare his wife and family for his passing. It was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, but Grim managed to tell Abe what he saw. The whole experience proved to be transforming. Something in Grim changed when he saw the way his gift helped Abe find his way to a peaceful death, and, strangely, to a kind of joy that had been a blessing to all who loved him.
Then came the day that Grim had been dreading, when he looked upon his mother's face and knew both how and when she was going to die. He was helping her walk down the hall in the hospital after hip surgery. As hard as he tried, he could not keep what he knew to himself. His mother knew him too well and saw it in his eyes immediately. She smiled and squeezed his hand. "I knew this day would come," she said. "It's all right, I'm ready. Now I can say my good-byes and finish a few things I've started before I go."
The six weeks Grim and his mother had together before the heart attack he had seen were some of the best days of his life. They laughed together and cherished one another, remembering the many good times they had shared in their family. As Grim held his mother's hand, waiting for her last breaths, he found himself giving thanks for the "gift" he had not wanted.
John E. Sumwalt is the lead pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee. He is the author of ten books, including How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It, now available from CSS Publishing. John and his wife, Jo Perry-Sumwalt, were the editors of StoryShare from 2004-2006.
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StoryShare, April 20, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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What's Up This Week
"Encounter in the Darkness" by Keith Hewitt
"Please Don't Forget Me" by Scott Dalgarno
"An Unwanted Gift" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
Death is an inescapable reality in our world of mortality. We will all have to come face-to-face with death sooner or later. How we face death can often speak to how we have faced life. It can also have a great impact on those around us. "Encounter in the Darkness" offers two contrasting reactions to a notable death in the Bible. "Please Don't Forget Me" is a moving illustration of how our death can affect those closest to us. In "An Unwanted Gift," we meet a man who has an unusual connection with death and we discover how that connection ministers to him and those around him.
* * * * * * * * *
Encounter in the Darkness
By Keith Hewitt
Acts 7:55-60
The man in the dark woolen cloak drew it around himself a little tighter to ward off the night air, and waited by a smoldering brazier; others stood nearby, some closer to the warmth, some farther away, deeper in the darkness. Few words were exchanged -- sometimes a brief negotiation, and then a pair of shadows would depart together; other times a longer exchange to no particular end as they waited out the night.
"I always want to bathe after I've been here," a voice said in his ear, deep and soft, Greek with a Latin burr that dulled the hard edges of the consonants and subtly altered the vowels.
He twitched visibly, turned to his left to see the figure standing beside him. "It took you long enough," he said. "I've been waiting here most of the night."
"My time is not my own," the man said simply. "Why did you send for me?"
"I have news." He dipped the hood of the cloak, looked around, then pulled it up again and took the man's arm, gently directed him away from the brazier. "This way," he said. "I must be careful."
"You must," agreed the man, shirking the guiding hand, "because if you touch me again, you won't have a hand." He still spoke quietly, but there was no doubting that he would do it. He wore no cloak or breastplate, carried no sword or shield, but his very body was uniform enough, the way he carried himself, the way he moved.
"I'm sorry, Centurion, this way please." The man led the way to a rude lean-to, back against the city wall. It was not quite tall enough for a man to stand in, but then standing was not usually an issue. "In there," he said, drawing back a curtain that acted as door and wall, and did neither very well.
The centurion crouched down, peered into the gloom and sniffed, then stood up and shook his head, a moving silhouette against the red, glowing embers in the brazier, a dozen paces away. "No," he said simply. "Just tell me why I'm here, and we'll be done with this. The morning watch comes soon."
The man reached out to take his arm again, hesitated, let his hand drop, and simply moved further back into the night, up against the wall, to the side of the lean-to. "Back here, then. You never know who these madmen are." The centurion followed him. They stood still, again, and the man looked around with darting eyes, wished he could see like a cat. "I have done as you asked," he said, not looking at the Roman. "You heard about what happened yesterday?"
"Many things happened yesterday."
"The madman, the heretic -- you heard, yes? I am not your only informant, am I?" His voice, though hushed, drew querulous. "Tell me our taxes are spent more wisely than that."
"You are not the only one," the centurion agreed.
"Then you know about the madman. He was arrested and brought before the high priest and the elders, accused of blasphemy. They had him stoned."
"Barbaric, but yes, I heard."
"Barbaric? You have an odd view of barbarism, Friend. How many men have you hung on a cross, in your time?"
"Call me 'friend' again, and you will be added to the list that I carry. You seem eager to tell me about this stoning -- what is it that you think I don't know, already?"
Eyes darted. "You probably knew the man was a Christ-follower. He was preaching his madness to the people -- about this prophet that can't be killed." He leaned forward, lowered his voice 'til it was nearly a whisper. "I saw him do it with my own eyes, and with my own hand, I turned him in. I told the priests that this man was spreading blasphemous lies."
The centurion's voice was bleak. "So you killed him." It was not a question. "I pay you to ferret out Zealots, I pay you to watch these Christ-followers and report their activities to me. I don't pay you to kill them."
"I did no such thing," the man answered quickly. "It was the high priest and the elders that killed him. All I did was report him."
"So if I throw you from the mountaintop into the Valley of Gehenna, is it the falling nature of things that kills you when your body dashes against the rocks? Or is it me?" The man started to chatter an answer, and the centurion held up a hand to stay him. "Don't waste my time. You killed that man as surely as if you'd thrown the stones yourself."
The man scowled, shrugged beneath the cloak. "You waste tears on a madman. They brought him up before the council, and do you know what he did? The madman preached to them -- told them about Abraham, and the promises of God, and where things had gone wrong." He made a dismissive motion. "Like a delinquent child lecturing his parents. No wonder they killed him."
"You people have little tolerance for new ideas. It sounds like this man died bravely." His eyes traveled past the man before him, probed out into the darkness. It seemed even gloomier than when he had left the Praetorium -- was that possible?
"We have little tolerance for madness. And the man died as he had lived, mad to the end, so there is no doubt."
"What do you mean?"
"So you didn't know? You need to buy better informants."
"Not better, just different. Now go on."
"I had to testify, so naturally I was there when they dragged him out of the temple. He scarcely fought them at all." He paused for a moment, then went on, his voice shaded with something between scorn and wonder. "And do you know what this madman did when the first stones hit him -- as he knelt there in the sun, watching blood drip from his own body onto the ground, barely able to hold himself upright?"
"What?" It was hushed -- almost a whisper.
"He claimed to see this dead Messiah standing next to our God in heaven. Then he asked his mad God for forgiveness -- not for himself, not for his blasphemy, but for the people who were casting stones. He asked God to forgive them, because they did not understand."
"Father, forgive them, because they don't know what they're doing." The centurion's voice was low, and he spoke in badly accented Aramaic.
"What was that?" the man demanded. "You speak our language?"
"Never mind. These Christ-followers -- I don't understand them. And neither do you, that's obvious."
"I understand they die, like everyone else."
"I wonder." He reached beneath his tunic, pulled out a small number of coins wrapped in a rough woolen cloth, handed it to the man. "Here, you've earned your pay -- you told me things I had not heard from the others." The man took the bundle, hefted it, tucked it beneath his cloak; there was no checking the coins in this darkness, and trying to do so would only anger the Roman.
He started to leave.
"Tell me, do you know Quintus Aurelius?" the centurion asked suddenly.
The informant hesitated, turned, and looked at him curiously. "No, I don't. Who is he, one of your senators?"
"No," the centurion answered after a moment, "No, just a better man than you or I will ever be. The day this Christ person was executed, Quintus passed by the Skull. He heard this madman, this false Messiah, as you put it, say the same thing: Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing."
The other man shrugged. "Mad Messiah, mad follower. Can't say I'm surprised."
"Then would it surprise you to learn that Quintus Aurelius saw that same man -- the one hanging on the cross -- saw him two days later... as alive as you or me?"
There was another pause. "Mad Messiah, mad follower -- mad friend, and I beg your pardon, Centurion. I mean no disrespect."
"Maybe it is madness. Maybe it is just as mad to believe that a teacher, a prophet, would expect us to forgive those who do us ill. It's hardly human, is it?"
"I am a simple man, Centurion, not a scholar. I do not burden myself with philosophy, when there is a life to be lived."
"I understand -- and yet we still have this Messiah of yours."
"Not mine," the man said indignantly. "I do not follow mad Galileans. I live right, pay my taxes, and do my duty -- particularly when others are watching. What more could any man do -- or be expected to do?"
"Some say that this Galilean, this Jesus, was an offering, a sacrifice to your father-God to atone for the sins of all humankind. If that is the case, who truly hung him on the cross -- the soldier who drove in the nails, or all of us, by our sins?"
"You lose me, Centurion."
"I fear we are all lost. If it is our sins he died for, then we bear the burden -- and it is all of us, not just the executioners, that he sought forgiveness for. Just as you bear the burden for that disciple's death, even though you never held a stone in your hand, and I, for having employed you."
"I tell you, I did nothing wrong," the informant insisted.
"You did everything wrong -- the same as me."
"Then you seek forgiveness, Centurion. My conscience is clear."
"And therein lies the problem -- I think we may already have forgiveness. We just don't deserve it." He stared into the gloom. "I want to feel it. I want to understand."
"Then you need a rabbi, not an informant. Seek your truth, Centurion -- just leave me out of these fool's errands."
When there was no response, the man slipped away and disappeared into the darkness. The centurion looked after him for a bit, then sighed and directed his steps back to the city, to the Praetorium where there would be sense and order to his life. He walked in silence through the darkness, his sandals slapping softly against the pavement.
Off in the distance, though, day was dawning with a sliver of pearl beyond the hills.
Keith Hewitt is the author of NaTiVity Dramas: Four Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages. 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.
Please Don't Forget Me
by Scott Dalgarno
John 14:1-14
When we visit my wife's father, Henry (Hank, as everybody knows him), it's my job to prepare the scrambled eggs. On the particular morning I'm remembering, the day after Thanksgiving, I crack the eggs while my daughter Sarah cuts fruit into bowls -- no grapefruit for her mother, lots of melon for her brother, and extra banana for her grandfather. I try hard to make sure the eggs are not runny, but not dry either.
Soon everyone is seated at the family table made by Hank himself. There's a chair for everyone and one chair set aside for Hank's late wife, Edith, my children's most beloved grandmother. The cushion is covered with fabric from one of her cheery summer dresses.
"Who's the boy?" Hank asks, looking directly at our son. "That's your grandson, Stephen," my wife, Catherine says. Hank doesn't recognize any of us anymore, except, Catherine. Hank has had a series of strokes -- the last one took most of his memory, and has left his right side shriveled. The one thing his memory is clear on is Edith. She was the one thing in his life that really "worked." "Best decision I ever made," he used to say, and now he can't even remember what he did all his life, what a difference he made in the lives of so many young people at Syracuse University.
The family tradition was that Hank says grace at meals, which I used to find funny because until he was nearly sixty, he was a self-described agnostic. It was the realization, coming on the eve of old age, that he and Edith would not always be together (on this side of the grave) that made him begin to entertain the idea of heaven.
Maybe it was because she was such a beacon of goodness that he began to think the existence of such a place was even possible. Oh, there was nothing all that saintly about her. No, she had a wicked sense of humor -- everyone knew that. But she was just so... so solid. Her integrity was absolute. She was the one person I've met in my life who really loved everybody. Some try, but Edith pulled it off, and there was no doubting it. I remember how suspect I was, meeting this amazing family that day that Catherine first brought me into her home. To Hank, I was Charles Manson until proven otherwise. But not for Edith. She read in the looks Catherine gave me at our first dinner around this same table that I was someone special, even if I didn't feel it myself, and until the day of her death she made me feel that I had given her the greatest two gifts in her life -- her two grandchildren.
It was the day she died when something broke, for the first time, in Hank's steely composure. We all stood or sat around Grandma's bed and we were holding her hands, chatting quietly, and she just slipped away, as they say. No great labored breaths, no rattles, just a quiet letting go. We found ourselves transfixed by the smile that came to her mouth and eyes in that last moment. It wasn't lost on Hank. Whatever she was seeing, HE wanted to see. More than that, he wanted to go where she had told him she believed she was headed -- the place she was sure she would see her own mother again, and the place she believed she would see the one who taught her it was possible to love people as if they were all children of God.
For Hank, heaven became a matter of trust, of trusting his wife. In those few moments beside her bed, his heart grew strangely warm. Where she was going, he wanted to go, and his sarcasm about spiritual matters evaporated right then and there.
Once the eggs and bowls of fruit were placed in front of everyone we bowed our heads, grabbed hands, and waited. Hank didn't speak. After a few moments of silence Catherine began, "God is... " Hank chimed in, "God is..." That was followed by another long pause, at which point Stephen and Sarah started in slowly and deliberately. "God is good, God is great. Let us thank Him for our food." Everyone added an "Amen" except Hank. He still had his head bowed. He seemed to be mumbling something. Catherine leaned over kissing his shoulder and rubbing his back very gently. Then she raised herself and settled her head on his shoulder looking about eighteen again. It nearly did me in.
After breakfast Catherine and I gathered up the dishes. I noticed tears in her eyes. "Are you all right?" I asked.
She hesitated and then said, "Dad was praying the same thing over and over. He just kept saying, 'God take care of Edith,' and 'God... please don't forget me. Please don't forget me. Please don't forget me...."
Scott Dalgarno is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Ashland, Oregon. He is also an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University, where he teaches Film and Ethics. His poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The Christian Century, America: The National Catholic Weekly, The Antioch Review, and Alive Now.
An Unwanted Gift
By John Sumwalt
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
"Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are variety of services, but the same Lord; and there are a variety of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone" (1 Corinthians 12:4-6).
Gifted. That's what everyone said about Tim Grimsley, and they didn't necessarily mean it as a compliment. It was more of an explanation of something that was both wondrous and disturbing. From the time he was a small boy, Tim, or Grim, as he came to be known, had the gift of "seeing." It was not just that he could see into the future; it was what he could see that set him apart from other kinds of see-ers, what these days are popularly known as psychics. Grim could tell when people were going to die.
This extraordinary gift was more of a curse than it was a blessing. The first time Grim foretold a death was a day he would never forget because the foretold demise was that of his own dear grandfather. They had been fishing down by the creek, just him and "Pa." Grim was catching suckers and chubs, but nothing worth taking home for supper. Pa had been casting further out along the bank, where the creek curved around the big cottonwood, and had hardly had a bite all day. Suddenly his luck changed and it in was that moment when Pa reeled in a 23-inch rainbow trout that Grim saw it, the image of his grandfather lying in an open coffin in front of the altar at church.
At the tender age of ten, Grim had never been to a funeral, much less seen anyone in a coffin. He wasn't sure what he was seeing and in all the excitement over the trophy trout he forgot all about it until three days later when he was looking at his grandfather's body lying in the coffin in front of the altar at church. As he stood there between his mother and father, who were each holding tightly onto one of his hands, he leaned over and whispered, "Mom, I saw Pa like this the day we caught the fish." His mother didn't say anything, but just squeezed his hand more tightly and put her head on his father's shoulder.
It was several days later that the subject came up again, after breakfast one morning after his father left for work. As they were washing dishes, Grim repeated to his mother what he had seen that day down by the creek. She was silent for a long time and after a while took his hand and spoke to him in a tender voice, "Timmy, you apparently have the same gift that your other grandfather, my father, had."
Grandpa Beasley had died before Grim was born and his mother had never told him much about him.
"My dad could sometimes tell when people were going to die," his mother said in a more serious tone than she had ever spoken to him before. "He rarely told anyone what he knew unless he thought it would be helpful in some way, or if someone wanted to know for a good reason."
Grim never forgot what his mother said to him that day and as the years passed her words became his own personal code of conduct. He came to understand that the knowledge he was given was sacred, something holy that was to be guarded carefully and shared only with the greatest discretion. His mother had helped him to learn these distinctions throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, as one after another he had been able to see the impending deaths of uncles, aunts, neighbors, and friends.
At first Grim had been angry that he alone had to carry the burden of this terrible knowledge. He wondered why God would give him such a gift. Sometimes it seemed more than he could bear. But as he matured he came to accept it and to recognize that there were occasions when what he knew could make a positive difference in someone's life, like the time his best friend, Abe, was dying of cancer.
They were both in their early thirties and Abe had been married for just a year. He had wanted to know if he was going to recover or if he should prepare his wife and family for his passing. It was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, but Grim managed to tell Abe what he saw. The whole experience proved to be transforming. Something in Grim changed when he saw the way his gift helped Abe find his way to a peaceful death, and, strangely, to a kind of joy that had been a blessing to all who loved him.
Then came the day that Grim had been dreading, when he looked upon his mother's face and knew both how and when she was going to die. He was helping her walk down the hall in the hospital after hip surgery. As hard as he tried, he could not keep what he knew to himself. His mother knew him too well and saw it in his eyes immediately. She smiled and squeezed his hand. "I knew this day would come," she said. "It's all right, I'm ready. Now I can say my good-byes and finish a few things I've started before I go."
The six weeks Grim and his mother had together before the heart attack he had seen were some of the best days of his life. They laughed together and cherished one another, remembering the many good times they had shared in their family. As Grim held his mother's hand, waiting for her last breaths, he found himself giving thanks for the "gift" he had not wanted.
John E. Sumwalt is the lead pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee. He is the author of ten books, including How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It, now available from CSS Publishing. John and his wife, Jo Perry-Sumwalt, were the editors of StoryShare from 2004-2006.
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StoryShare, April 20, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 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.
