Excavating To The Center
Stories
Contents
"Excavating To The Center" by David O. Bales
"Troubled Hearts" by David O. Bales
* * * * * * * *
Excavating To The Center
by David O. Bales
1 Peter 2:2-10
“Crummy,” Dwight said. “This is definitely not what I signed up for.”
“The brochure laid it all out pretty well,” Murray said. “Three days in Paris, three on the Rhone to Southern France. Then the more intensive archaeological evaluation of Medieval Christianity.”
“It’s like intensive agriculture in a rocky field,” Dwight said. “I think it’s a joke to call it archaeology. Rocks. That’s all Beecher cares about.”
“It gets three hours credits in the humanities,” Seth said. “That’s what I needed. Convinced my parents I could do this instead of get a summer job and still graduate in four years.”
The three college students were from different American universities and became friends in their first days on the Cloyston University summer extension in France. The terms of the course were generous: Two weeks in France and within a month after arriving home, submitting a 10-page paper about Christianity in fourteenth century Europe.
“Rocks,” Dwight said. “I thought I was worn down by museums in Paris, but Beecher’s only interested in our sifting around rock walls. I think he’s got stones rattling in his head. Thinks he’s so funny, ‘Consider yourselves like newborn infants in archaeology.’ I don’t know why anyone laughed.”
“Those were the Cloyston students,” Seth said. “Code words among Christians.”
“Must be,” Dwight said. “But sure doesn’t have much to do with all this gravel. Look at my fingernails!”
Dwight held out his hands, but Murray and Seth didn’t look. Half a dozen female Cloyston students walked by and waved. They were more interesting to Murray and Seth than Dwight’s fingernails.
Dwight went right on, “Like everybody’s supposed to be excited by arches and cornerstones. Yesterday, when we got to the corner of the building, Beecher started prancing around, ‘The cornerstone. The cornerstone.’ Thought he was going to drop to his knees and offer homage.”
Seth said, “I’m used to his style. The instructors at my university are on a payment track where they get graded by students as much as by what they publish. I couldn’t understand why my prof seemed giddy when lecturing on lichens and moss until an upper-class girl explained what was driving him.”
“Same thing with us,” Murray said. My Intro to Art instructor puts up these photos of paintings and then gyrates in front of the screen pointing to ‘how the eye moves,’ she says. We walk into class and my buddy quips, ‘About to move the eye again.’ For us engineering majors, it would be more interesting if she’d offer an image of a bridge and aim at the expansion stress points.”
Seth gestured to students slowly moving from their lunch break and back to the site of the fourteenth century abbey. It was built on a small rise which Dr. Beecher said helped preserve the foundation from the usual rainwater runoff. “Let’s follow thosegirls,” he said with a chuckle, and the three young men got up and strolled to their afternoon’s work.
Three hours before sundown, the students were grateful to hear Dr. Beecher announce, “That’s it for today. Tonight’s lecture after dinner will be Professor Bruce Ng, history and sociology. In the refectory, seven-thirty PM Central European Time which, I remind those who have been late to the lectures, is one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. Don’t want you to miss what Bruce says. He’s new on the staff this year and I think you’ll like him. Plus, he’ll deal with the crux of what we’re up to on this trip and excavation.” He hesitated and added, “If you take careful notes, he’ll give you the questions to handle in your paper.”
The professor’s warning brought the three young men on time to the evening lecture. Bruce Ng had been around the excavation but only to chat with Dr. Beecher. So the three who weren’t from Cloyston had little sense of what he was like in the classroom. For all they’d known he wrote tomes on the construction of medieval abbey roofs.
The three sat together near the rear so they could sneak out if his delivery was poor. He began, “The abbey you’re excavating was financed by a notoriously wealthy, cruel, licentious, despotic duke who exercised power across Southern France, jumping from one political side to the other, renting his knights to whichever army paid the most. In the last year of his life when he was dying, he bequeathed his entire holdings to erect this abbey so that as a ‘poor’ person he could purchase enough prayers to impress God and get his soul out of purgatory. From what you’ll learn about his murders, even of family members, and if you believe in purgatory, you may conclude it will take half of eternity to get him out of there.”
Most students laughed. Dr. Beecher, sitting to the side, laughed harder than anyone. After a pause to regain attention, Bruce became serious.
“You’ve been instructed in how to be gentle with the soil around your site, how to inspect without damaging, how to draw conclusions from carefully formatted evidence. As Dr. Beecher says, ‘Let the rocks speak.’ I urge you to be as gentle with the people who lived here. Don’t write them off as weirdos from the past with whom you have no human or faith connection. See the world from where they lived in order to understand them from the inside out. They lived under rulers who claimed they had God’s license to govern them. They believed that nature surrounded them with good or bad omens from heaven. The Black Death swept away 40 percent of Europe, which definitely fell into the ‘bad’ category, especially when they considered it as God’s punishment. But punishment for what? They asked that question believing that Christians were God’s special people, a chosen race, a holy nation. They often demonstrated that belief by persecuting Jews.
“These are the angles from which to view the abbey’s inhabitants, the aspects of their lives to consider as you continue your reading, peck away at those old walls and dig up those dusty or, on the south side, muddy artifacts.”
By the groans in the room everyone could tell who had worked near the south wall that day.
“What kind of society sends people to a monastery … or convent? Not literally sends them, although sometimes, more with women than men, they were actually compelled. What kind of faith is stirring in the social world to prepare people to want such a religious vocation? When everyone is defined as a Christian, how do those who are devout beyond the culturally ordinary express their faith?
“For the serf, the knight, the monk, what’s valuable in this life? What’s precious about Jesus? American Christians seldom consider Jesus telling disciples to hate their life in this world to keep it in eternal life. They don’t know about his telling followers to hate their family members in order to follow him, or to sell all they have and give to the poor. I can see by your faces—those few with eyes still open anyway—that I’m hitting somewhere near home.”
Seth grinned to his two companions that he was becoming interested in what they were doing at the abandoned monastery.
“Those who came to this abbey are usually interpreted by modern folk as fleeing the world. How about what they were seeking? Life with God, both now and eternally? What did these people believe and trust? Be as urgent to learn their faith as they were to be faithful. You owe it to them as scholars; and, if you are Christian, you have a further responsibility to understand them. Why would they walk months on pilgrimages to a cathedral to kiss a relic when another cathedral a couple cities away had a relic claiming to be the same left thigh bone of the same saint? Why would some nearly starve themselves and others whip themselves?”
“Then, pivot and ask the same of Americans and modern Christians. If these late-medieval folk believed that the most faithful Christians should take a vow of poverty, how come so many American Christians assume that real Christians get rich? Comparing the people in this abbey 700 years ago with today, ask how will historians—how will Christians—view contemporary American society and church 700 years from now? What do people today trust: democracy, education, science, the military? At the same time, what’s unchanging in the Christian experience, constant across history? In summary, when everything cultural is sifted away from the faith, what’s left? What in Christianity is universal … modified, of course, like that oxymoron a ‘living stone,’ but secure and certain as a cornerstone? Right Dr. Beecher?”
Dr. Beecher nearly leaped from his seat, “Yes, yes, the cornerstone. Section 12, 15 inches beneath the surface, and eroded slightly by runoff.”
Dwight, Murray, and Seth looked back and forth at one another. Seth decided that although he might not work more vigorously at the excavation tomorrow, personally, he was going to examine the Christian faith more thoroughly.
Preaching point: The culturally conditioned versus the universal Christian faith.
* * *
Troubled Hearts
by David O. Bales
John 14:1-14
Rome’s avenging army crept from the north like a volcano’s flowing lava. Reports arrived daily to Bethsaida of more Jewish forces defeated. Rumors of impending disaster buzzed through the streets and alleys like bees from a smashed hive. Many had already fled the city. Merchants offered to purchase possessions for a pittance—when soldiers requisitioned all the city’s food and supplies, why not sell now? What were Christians to do amid what seemed inevitable destruction?
Into this chaos Philip and Thomas arrived at Bethsaida with one final ministry. They were both elderly and guessed that they might be the last of Jesus’ original disciples alive. No matter his declining health, Philip had vowed to bring Christ’s peace once more to his hometown and Thomas promised to help. Yet Thomas recognized that Philip’s mind wandered more lately.
Thomas watched Philip’s every tottery step, always ready to reach out and steady him. Philip didn’t complain about his pain and increasing weakness. This morning he said cheerily, “I think my right leg’s a little stronger today.” But although Philip was still able to carry a staff in his right hand, Thomas remained close at his left on Bethsaida’s uneven streets and lanes.
Philip sighed as though he were going to speak, but when Thomas turned to him, Philip had already forgotten what he was going to say. The tension of the days affected them both. The two hadn’t lived during a war before; yet, they’d felt the world ending when they’d been dragged through Jesus’ last days and crucifixion. Now their ministries in the twilight of their lives became strengthening the faith of fellow believers who faced what seemed to be the end of the world. The questions they heard this morning in the first two homes were the same: Is this horror a portent of the end of days? Is this when Christ will come again and take us to himself? The immediate question: should Christians join the Jewish armies or pack up and abandon their country while there’s a chance?
Philip had no difficulty directing them to the next house. It was a family he’d known half a lifetime ago, before he began to follow Jesus. The disciples entered saying, “The peace of Christ be on all within.”
The older woman had barely responded when her granddaughter, eleven or twelve years old, blurted, “The Romans are only four days away. That’s what I heard yesterday at the wharf.” Her stance showed that she wanted them to somehow prove her wrong.
Her grandmother, eyes wide, stepped between her and the two elderly disciples. “That’s all she talks about,” she said. “Her grandfather too.” Then as though she could hardly speak of it, she whispered through trembling lips, “Is this the last assault of the hostile powers? Is Jesus returning now?”
The two men looked at each other and Thomas answered, “I wish he were. But we don’t know.” Philip extended his shaky hand toward the girl and was beginning to speak, but she ducked her head and ran out.
“She’s been like that for half the year,” the grandmother said. “We all have. So jittery we can hardly sleep at night.” She pointed to two stuffed bags by the door. “We’ve put clothes and some utensils in there. Getting ready to go. We’ve heard Pella is a good city to flee to. Stay east of the Jordan and be there in two days. Maybe we’d be identified as Christians and not Jews. Maybe that’s the place Jesus prepared for us.”
“The Lord Jesus is with us now,” Thomas said. “His Spirit is here to strengthen us for this ordeal, no matter what comes, no matter what we must do.”
The woman pursed her lips and nodded that she believed him. “I keep praying,” she said. “What’s hardest is that I know those soldiers who’ve been killed and those villagers who’ve been slaughtered prayed also.” That’s what Ari wonders about. “War worries are devouring him because he’s supposed to protect his family. He works constantly. Comes home for a bite and a couple hours sleep, then pushes the boat out alone to spend every extra minute casting his net at the mouth of the Jordan. Only earns a few more coins, because who has any money left? But he’s driven himself until he’s stringy thin.” She grit her teeth. “Terrible on him. Would you talk with him?”
“Of course,” Thomas said. “We’re trying to meet with every Christian in Bethsaida. Talking in the Lord’s Day gathering is one way to spread the Lord’s peace, but we also want to speak personally to all, the way Jesus did with us.”
The disciples prayed with her, then Thomas supported Philip as they made their way haltingly to the shore. They spotted Ari sitting cross-legged beside his beached boat and frowning over his net. His granddaughter sat beside him and watched them draw near but she didn’t speak. Ari heard the two but kept his attention on his needle in, out, and through the flax strands and then tying it off. Philip remembered Ari as a stump of a man, his bulky shoulders built from his constant casting and pulling nets. Now Ari looked half the person Philip remembered.
“Just a minute,” Ari spoke to whoever was beside the boat. “Two more knots.” His hands and fingers flipped through the net, almost too fast to see, then he tossed the net off his lap and looked up to his visitors.
Philip spoke in a quavering voice, “The peace of Christ be with you.” Ari gave a thin smile. He recognized Philip. Everyone in Bethsaida talked about Philip who’d been drawn away from his family and job by Nazareth’s teacher. After Jesus’ resurrection, Ari also came to faith but he’d never leave his family and boat.
“Well?” Ari said as he slowly gained his feet. He and his granddaughter beside him stared at the disciples with life’s deepest questions on their faces. “Now what’s going to happen?”
Philip answered slowly, “As we’ve said to everyone, we don’t know when Jesus will return. We just trust the word he spoke and his Spirit among us.”
“We share the fear of the community,” Thomas put in, “and your questions. We had plenty of questions for Jesus and he didn’t always answer them the way we wanted nor did we always understand his answers. But Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life. Whoever has seen him has seen our heavenly Father.”
“Yes, yes. I know Jesus talked in those mystical ways,” Ari said. “But right now! Our lives are in danger.” He looked at his granddaughter who was cradled under his arm. “Now, some answers, for now.”
Philip’s body rocked slightly as he stared at Ari. He swallowed twice and said, “For now, Ari, I’d say that as you’ve woven your needle in and out of your net and tied all your knots, that’s how Jesus is with us. He is in us, around us, through us, and over us. He has bound himself to us as you have bound your net together. Jesus didn’t answer all our questions and we still don’t comprehend everything about him. But when we disciples were all panicky and upset the night before his betrayal, he told us ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.’ And so, we trust him even now. We,” Philip said and pointed his staff to Thomas, “have done so for half a lifetime, and he has proved his love for us no matter what’s happened.”
“We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow or even this afternoon.” Thomas said, “But he has calmed our hearts; and by his Spirit he’s shown us all that we need to know about our heavenly Father. Our ministry is to bring Jesus’ peace into whatever trouble gets thrown against our hearts.”
Ari was convinced enough to join in prayer with Philip and Thomas. His granddaughter stayed under his arm. As Philip and Thomas walked away from the beach Philip stumbled but Thomas held him tightly.
Philip’s face was grim, and Thomas could tell that his pain had returned. “Do you need to sit for a while?” Thomas asked. Philip didn’t answer. He tried more carefully to pick his steps through the rocks, but it was more important to tell Thomas what he was thinking than it was to walk carefully, “Not just tied,” he said. Thomas listened and waited while Philip caught his breath and said what had been forming within him, “We’re woven into Jesus—heart and all—not just tied. And by Christ’s Spirit within me, I am very soon to test the strength of that fabric.”
Preaching point: Jesus’ comforting presence within us, even in the worst situations.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 10, 2020, issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Excavating To The Center" by David O. Bales
"Troubled Hearts" by David O. Bales
* * * * * * * *
Excavating To The Center
by David O. Bales
1 Peter 2:2-10
“Crummy,” Dwight said. “This is definitely not what I signed up for.”
“The brochure laid it all out pretty well,” Murray said. “Three days in Paris, three on the Rhone to Southern France. Then the more intensive archaeological evaluation of Medieval Christianity.”
“It’s like intensive agriculture in a rocky field,” Dwight said. “I think it’s a joke to call it archaeology. Rocks. That’s all Beecher cares about.”
“It gets three hours credits in the humanities,” Seth said. “That’s what I needed. Convinced my parents I could do this instead of get a summer job and still graduate in four years.”
The three college students were from different American universities and became friends in their first days on the Cloyston University summer extension in France. The terms of the course were generous: Two weeks in France and within a month after arriving home, submitting a 10-page paper about Christianity in fourteenth century Europe.
“Rocks,” Dwight said. “I thought I was worn down by museums in Paris, but Beecher’s only interested in our sifting around rock walls. I think he’s got stones rattling in his head. Thinks he’s so funny, ‘Consider yourselves like newborn infants in archaeology.’ I don’t know why anyone laughed.”
“Those were the Cloyston students,” Seth said. “Code words among Christians.”
“Must be,” Dwight said. “But sure doesn’t have much to do with all this gravel. Look at my fingernails!”
Dwight held out his hands, but Murray and Seth didn’t look. Half a dozen female Cloyston students walked by and waved. They were more interesting to Murray and Seth than Dwight’s fingernails.
Dwight went right on, “Like everybody’s supposed to be excited by arches and cornerstones. Yesterday, when we got to the corner of the building, Beecher started prancing around, ‘The cornerstone. The cornerstone.’ Thought he was going to drop to his knees and offer homage.”
Seth said, “I’m used to his style. The instructors at my university are on a payment track where they get graded by students as much as by what they publish. I couldn’t understand why my prof seemed giddy when lecturing on lichens and moss until an upper-class girl explained what was driving him.”
“Same thing with us,” Murray said. My Intro to Art instructor puts up these photos of paintings and then gyrates in front of the screen pointing to ‘how the eye moves,’ she says. We walk into class and my buddy quips, ‘About to move the eye again.’ For us engineering majors, it would be more interesting if she’d offer an image of a bridge and aim at the expansion stress points.”
Seth gestured to students slowly moving from their lunch break and back to the site of the fourteenth century abbey. It was built on a small rise which Dr. Beecher said helped preserve the foundation from the usual rainwater runoff. “Let’s follow thosegirls,” he said with a chuckle, and the three young men got up and strolled to their afternoon’s work.
Three hours before sundown, the students were grateful to hear Dr. Beecher announce, “That’s it for today. Tonight’s lecture after dinner will be Professor Bruce Ng, history and sociology. In the refectory, seven-thirty PM Central European Time which, I remind those who have been late to the lectures, is one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. Don’t want you to miss what Bruce says. He’s new on the staff this year and I think you’ll like him. Plus, he’ll deal with the crux of what we’re up to on this trip and excavation.” He hesitated and added, “If you take careful notes, he’ll give you the questions to handle in your paper.”
The professor’s warning brought the three young men on time to the evening lecture. Bruce Ng had been around the excavation but only to chat with Dr. Beecher. So the three who weren’t from Cloyston had little sense of what he was like in the classroom. For all they’d known he wrote tomes on the construction of medieval abbey roofs.
The three sat together near the rear so they could sneak out if his delivery was poor. He began, “The abbey you’re excavating was financed by a notoriously wealthy, cruel, licentious, despotic duke who exercised power across Southern France, jumping from one political side to the other, renting his knights to whichever army paid the most. In the last year of his life when he was dying, he bequeathed his entire holdings to erect this abbey so that as a ‘poor’ person he could purchase enough prayers to impress God and get his soul out of purgatory. From what you’ll learn about his murders, even of family members, and if you believe in purgatory, you may conclude it will take half of eternity to get him out of there.”
Most students laughed. Dr. Beecher, sitting to the side, laughed harder than anyone. After a pause to regain attention, Bruce became serious.
“You’ve been instructed in how to be gentle with the soil around your site, how to inspect without damaging, how to draw conclusions from carefully formatted evidence. As Dr. Beecher says, ‘Let the rocks speak.’ I urge you to be as gentle with the people who lived here. Don’t write them off as weirdos from the past with whom you have no human or faith connection. See the world from where they lived in order to understand them from the inside out. They lived under rulers who claimed they had God’s license to govern them. They believed that nature surrounded them with good or bad omens from heaven. The Black Death swept away 40 percent of Europe, which definitely fell into the ‘bad’ category, especially when they considered it as God’s punishment. But punishment for what? They asked that question believing that Christians were God’s special people, a chosen race, a holy nation. They often demonstrated that belief by persecuting Jews.
“These are the angles from which to view the abbey’s inhabitants, the aspects of their lives to consider as you continue your reading, peck away at those old walls and dig up those dusty or, on the south side, muddy artifacts.”
By the groans in the room everyone could tell who had worked near the south wall that day.
“What kind of society sends people to a monastery … or convent? Not literally sends them, although sometimes, more with women than men, they were actually compelled. What kind of faith is stirring in the social world to prepare people to want such a religious vocation? When everyone is defined as a Christian, how do those who are devout beyond the culturally ordinary express their faith?
“For the serf, the knight, the monk, what’s valuable in this life? What’s precious about Jesus? American Christians seldom consider Jesus telling disciples to hate their life in this world to keep it in eternal life. They don’t know about his telling followers to hate their family members in order to follow him, or to sell all they have and give to the poor. I can see by your faces—those few with eyes still open anyway—that I’m hitting somewhere near home.”
Seth grinned to his two companions that he was becoming interested in what they were doing at the abandoned monastery.
“Those who came to this abbey are usually interpreted by modern folk as fleeing the world. How about what they were seeking? Life with God, both now and eternally? What did these people believe and trust? Be as urgent to learn their faith as they were to be faithful. You owe it to them as scholars; and, if you are Christian, you have a further responsibility to understand them. Why would they walk months on pilgrimages to a cathedral to kiss a relic when another cathedral a couple cities away had a relic claiming to be the same left thigh bone of the same saint? Why would some nearly starve themselves and others whip themselves?”
“Then, pivot and ask the same of Americans and modern Christians. If these late-medieval folk believed that the most faithful Christians should take a vow of poverty, how come so many American Christians assume that real Christians get rich? Comparing the people in this abbey 700 years ago with today, ask how will historians—how will Christians—view contemporary American society and church 700 years from now? What do people today trust: democracy, education, science, the military? At the same time, what’s unchanging in the Christian experience, constant across history? In summary, when everything cultural is sifted away from the faith, what’s left? What in Christianity is universal … modified, of course, like that oxymoron a ‘living stone,’ but secure and certain as a cornerstone? Right Dr. Beecher?”
Dr. Beecher nearly leaped from his seat, “Yes, yes, the cornerstone. Section 12, 15 inches beneath the surface, and eroded slightly by runoff.”
Dwight, Murray, and Seth looked back and forth at one another. Seth decided that although he might not work more vigorously at the excavation tomorrow, personally, he was going to examine the Christian faith more thoroughly.
Preaching point: The culturally conditioned versus the universal Christian faith.
* * *
Troubled Hearts
by David O. Bales
John 14:1-14
Rome’s avenging army crept from the north like a volcano’s flowing lava. Reports arrived daily to Bethsaida of more Jewish forces defeated. Rumors of impending disaster buzzed through the streets and alleys like bees from a smashed hive. Many had already fled the city. Merchants offered to purchase possessions for a pittance—when soldiers requisitioned all the city’s food and supplies, why not sell now? What were Christians to do amid what seemed inevitable destruction?
Into this chaos Philip and Thomas arrived at Bethsaida with one final ministry. They were both elderly and guessed that they might be the last of Jesus’ original disciples alive. No matter his declining health, Philip had vowed to bring Christ’s peace once more to his hometown and Thomas promised to help. Yet Thomas recognized that Philip’s mind wandered more lately.
Thomas watched Philip’s every tottery step, always ready to reach out and steady him. Philip didn’t complain about his pain and increasing weakness. This morning he said cheerily, “I think my right leg’s a little stronger today.” But although Philip was still able to carry a staff in his right hand, Thomas remained close at his left on Bethsaida’s uneven streets and lanes.
Philip sighed as though he were going to speak, but when Thomas turned to him, Philip had already forgotten what he was going to say. The tension of the days affected them both. The two hadn’t lived during a war before; yet, they’d felt the world ending when they’d been dragged through Jesus’ last days and crucifixion. Now their ministries in the twilight of their lives became strengthening the faith of fellow believers who faced what seemed to be the end of the world. The questions they heard this morning in the first two homes were the same: Is this horror a portent of the end of days? Is this when Christ will come again and take us to himself? The immediate question: should Christians join the Jewish armies or pack up and abandon their country while there’s a chance?
Philip had no difficulty directing them to the next house. It was a family he’d known half a lifetime ago, before he began to follow Jesus. The disciples entered saying, “The peace of Christ be on all within.”
The older woman had barely responded when her granddaughter, eleven or twelve years old, blurted, “The Romans are only four days away. That’s what I heard yesterday at the wharf.” Her stance showed that she wanted them to somehow prove her wrong.
Her grandmother, eyes wide, stepped between her and the two elderly disciples. “That’s all she talks about,” she said. “Her grandfather too.” Then as though she could hardly speak of it, she whispered through trembling lips, “Is this the last assault of the hostile powers? Is Jesus returning now?”
The two men looked at each other and Thomas answered, “I wish he were. But we don’t know.” Philip extended his shaky hand toward the girl and was beginning to speak, but she ducked her head and ran out.
“She’s been like that for half the year,” the grandmother said. “We all have. So jittery we can hardly sleep at night.” She pointed to two stuffed bags by the door. “We’ve put clothes and some utensils in there. Getting ready to go. We’ve heard Pella is a good city to flee to. Stay east of the Jordan and be there in two days. Maybe we’d be identified as Christians and not Jews. Maybe that’s the place Jesus prepared for us.”
“The Lord Jesus is with us now,” Thomas said. “His Spirit is here to strengthen us for this ordeal, no matter what comes, no matter what we must do.”
The woman pursed her lips and nodded that she believed him. “I keep praying,” she said. “What’s hardest is that I know those soldiers who’ve been killed and those villagers who’ve been slaughtered prayed also.” That’s what Ari wonders about. “War worries are devouring him because he’s supposed to protect his family. He works constantly. Comes home for a bite and a couple hours sleep, then pushes the boat out alone to spend every extra minute casting his net at the mouth of the Jordan. Only earns a few more coins, because who has any money left? But he’s driven himself until he’s stringy thin.” She grit her teeth. “Terrible on him. Would you talk with him?”
“Of course,” Thomas said. “We’re trying to meet with every Christian in Bethsaida. Talking in the Lord’s Day gathering is one way to spread the Lord’s peace, but we also want to speak personally to all, the way Jesus did with us.”
“Then please find Ari,” she said. “He should be at the boat unless he’s already put out.”
The disciples prayed with her, then Thomas supported Philip as they made their way haltingly to the shore. They spotted Ari sitting cross-legged beside his beached boat and frowning over his net. His granddaughter sat beside him and watched them draw near but she didn’t speak. Ari heard the two but kept his attention on his needle in, out, and through the flax strands and then tying it off. Philip remembered Ari as a stump of a man, his bulky shoulders built from his constant casting and pulling nets. Now Ari looked half the person Philip remembered.
“Just a minute,” Ari spoke to whoever was beside the boat. “Two more knots.” His hands and fingers flipped through the net, almost too fast to see, then he tossed the net off his lap and looked up to his visitors.
Philip spoke in a quavering voice, “The peace of Christ be with you.” Ari gave a thin smile. He recognized Philip. Everyone in Bethsaida talked about Philip who’d been drawn away from his family and job by Nazareth’s teacher. After Jesus’ resurrection, Ari also came to faith but he’d never leave his family and boat.
“Well?” Ari said as he slowly gained his feet. He and his granddaughter beside him stared at the disciples with life’s deepest questions on their faces. “Now what’s going to happen?”
Philip answered slowly, “As we’ve said to everyone, we don’t know when Jesus will return. We just trust the word he spoke and his Spirit among us.”
“We share the fear of the community,” Thomas put in, “and your questions. We had plenty of questions for Jesus and he didn’t always answer them the way we wanted nor did we always understand his answers. But Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life. Whoever has seen him has seen our heavenly Father.”
“Yes, yes. I know Jesus talked in those mystical ways,” Ari said. “But right now! Our lives are in danger.” He looked at his granddaughter who was cradled under his arm. “Now, some answers, for now.”
Philip’s body rocked slightly as he stared at Ari. He swallowed twice and said, “For now, Ari, I’d say that as you’ve woven your needle in and out of your net and tied all your knots, that’s how Jesus is with us. He is in us, around us, through us, and over us. He has bound himself to us as you have bound your net together. Jesus didn’t answer all our questions and we still don’t comprehend everything about him. But when we disciples were all panicky and upset the night before his betrayal, he told us ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.’ And so, we trust him even now. We,” Philip said and pointed his staff to Thomas, “have done so for half a lifetime, and he has proved his love for us no matter what’s happened.”
“We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow or even this afternoon.” Thomas said, “But he has calmed our hearts; and by his Spirit he’s shown us all that we need to know about our heavenly Father. Our ministry is to bring Jesus’ peace into whatever trouble gets thrown against our hearts.”
Ari was convinced enough to join in prayer with Philip and Thomas. His granddaughter stayed under his arm. As Philip and Thomas walked away from the beach Philip stumbled but Thomas held him tightly.
Philip’s face was grim, and Thomas could tell that his pain had returned. “Do you need to sit for a while?” Thomas asked. Philip didn’t answer. He tried more carefully to pick his steps through the rocks, but it was more important to tell Thomas what he was thinking than it was to walk carefully, “Not just tied,” he said. Thomas listened and waited while Philip caught his breath and said what had been forming within him, “We’re woven into Jesus—heart and all—not just tied. And by Christ’s Spirit within me, I am very soon to test the strength of that fabric.”
Preaching point: Jesus’ comforting presence within us, even in the worst situations.
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StoryShare, May 10, 2020, issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
