The Flower
Stories
Object:
Contents
"The Flower" by Keith Hewitt
"Asking For an Answer" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Blood, Gore, and Guts!" by C. David McKirachan
"Eyewitness" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
The Flower
by Keith Hewitt
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
"I don't care what you tell me -- just don't try to tell me that God has a plan, or I swear I will shoot you dead."
The words were carved from ice; the woman's expression was a match for her words. Jamison Lee's eyes flickered from her to his wife, just leaving the small bedroom off the right side of the kitchen; her clear blue eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing. Good, he thought, and turned his attention back to the woman sitting across the table from him. "Eleanor," he said in an exaggeratedly calm voice, "I don't believe you would actually do that, even if I was foolish enough to say it."
Her eyes swiveled toward him, but her expression did not change. Her eyes did not quite seem to focus on him, but rather stared past him, or through him. "You'd best believe it, Reverend."
A bead of sweat formed on the back of his neck, trickled down his spine. He forced a reassuring smile, reached across the table with one hand, to touch the hand that lay there, clutching a white linen handkerchief. "When is the last time you slept, Eleanor?"
Her eyebrows drew together slightly. "What day is it? Tommy took sick on Sunday, after church. What day is it today?"
That's what I thought. "It's Wednesday, Eleanor. When did you last sleep?"
"Saturday night. Once Tommy took sick, I stayed up with him. Did you see him?"
Jamison shook his head once. "My wife did. Elizabeth." He nodded toward her.
Eleanor turned slightly, to face his wife. "Did you see him?"
She breathed deeply, let it out slowly, nodded. "I did, Eleanor."
"He looks peaceful, don't he?"
Elizabeth hesitated. The form on the bed behind the door was pale, slack jawed, his spindly limbs already starting to go into rigor. She guessed that he had been gone the better part of a day. "Yes, Eleanor, he looked peaceful."
"He's all I got left, you know. Bert died three years ago -- dysentery, something he picked up when he went to the reservation. Both our girls died in the typhoid outbreak. Tommy was all I had left." Her face turned back to Jamison. "Why would God take him, Reverend? What kind of an awful, vicious God would take a little boy like that? My little boy, when he's all I got?"
Jamison's heart seemed to twitch in his chest, and he shook his head. "I don't know, Eleanor. It doesn't make any sense, does it? But I can tell you this much, at least: God --"
He stopped suddenly, his sentence punctuated by the unmistakable double metallic click of a hammer being pulled back, and the soft ratcheting of a revolver cylinder rotating into place.
Elizabeth drew a quick breath, held it; Jamison looked at Eleanor, tried to hold her eyes with his own. "Now, Eleanor... let's not be hasty."
"Not hasty at all, Reverend -- I've been thinking about this since Tommy passed, last night." Her other hand appeared above the table, now, wrapped around the grip of a long barreled revolver. "I was going to send myself on, to follow my boy, but then you and your Missus showed up. No offense, but I told you -- if you tell me this is part of God's plan, I will put a hole in you before I do myself."
Jamison nodded. "I understand -- and that's not what I was going to say. But I do think you want to put that down, now, while we talk. Can you do that?"
She laid the revolver on the table but did not take her hand off it.
"Okay," he said slowly, when it became evident she wasn't going to release it. "First, I want you to know that I know a little bit about what you're feeling. Not everything," he said hastily, seeing her eyes starting to frost up, "nobody can know that. But I have at least a little idea. I lost my wife -- my first wife -- fifteen years ago, in a fire. And I lost my son -- I lost my son during the war. He was in a militia on the other side, and we fought in the same battle -- I may have killed him, myself. I don't know."
She said nothing, but there was something in her eyes -- a flicker of interest, a spark of understanding. He plowed on. "I was mad for a long time, Eleanor. I was angry with God, and any time I prayed -- when I prayed at all -- it was to yell at him. To let him know how angry I was and how I didn't understand and to ask how he could heap all this on me."
The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. "Mighty strange words, for a preacher."
"I wasn't a preacher back then. Just a regular guy, getting overwhelmed by life. And then one day -- we were outside this little place called Port William, down in Kentucky. One day my second in command came up to me and handed me a flower. Just plucked it out of a garden in somebody's yard."
He looked toward Elizabeth, beckoned to her, and she understood immediately; she knew the story. She went to the bouquet of flowers they had brought and laid on the sideboard when they arrived, plucked out a daisy, and handed it to him. Jamison nodded thanks, gestured with his eyes for her to leave; she sat down next to him, and he sighed.
He twirled the flower in his fingers for a moment or two, then held it out toward Eleanor. "See that?" he asked, offering her the bloom; she didn't take it. He moved it slowly, turning it around. "See all those petals. And those tiny little structures, there? I don't know what they are. My second in command showed me this flower, and he asked me if I knew how to make one. I looked at him like he'd lost his mind." He shifted his eyes from the flower to her. "Do you know how to make one, Eleanor?"
Puzzled, now, she shook her head.
"My second -- a man named Fritz -- Fritz held the flower out to me and said, 'Jamison, you could study botany for the next four years, until you could tell me everything there is to know about this flower. But when all was said and done, you still wouldn't know how to make one.' "
Jamison leaned closer, now. "That's when he made me understand -- I thought I could challenge God, I thought I could call him to task for what he'd done to me, but when you look at all the things he's done -- even something simple, like a flower -- you realize that you've got no place to talk. If he wants things to go a certain way, then who am I to question him? I figure I've got to give him some leeway -- until I finally figure out how to make a flower or build a deer."
"But it's not fair," Eleanor moaned softly. "It's not fair that I should have to go through this."
"And it's not fair that flowers should bloom, then die -- but they do. That's how they're made. All I know is this universe is way beyond my comprehension, so I have to cut God a little slack when he's running it. Maybe some day, if all goes well --" he cast his eyes upward for a moment, "-- I'll finally understand. But I'm not counting on it. I'm content to know that he's made it possible for me to see the ones I've lost again... one day."
Hesitantly, Eleanor took her hand off the revolver, took the flower from Jamison, and held it up close to her eyes, and studied it while she said softly, "Do you really think so? That we'll see them again, some day?"
Jamison nodded, smiled gently and reached across the table, slid the revolver away from her and uncocked it with both hands, careful to put his thumb in front of the firing pin before releasing and lowering the hammer. "I'm sure, Eleanor. But there's no hurry, now, is there?"
She was still studying the flower as she began to cry.
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
Asking For an Answer
by Peter Andrew Smith
Mark 10:46-52
Mary noticed the man sitting in the back pew of the empty church. He was slumped over with his head down and hadn't moved since the worship service ended. Mary picked up service bulletins and straightened hymn books in the pews and then slowly made her way to the back of the church. The man paid no attention to her so she cleared her throat.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
His eyes had dark circles around them and were tinged with red. "Fine, thank you."
"Sorry if this seems rude," she said. "But you don't look fine."
He gave her a tired smile. "Things have been rough lately."
"I'm sorry to hear that." She sat next to him. "Our pastor is a really good listener. He helped me through a difficult time in my life. Did you want me to get him?"
"No, thank you," the man said. "He preached a fine sermon and I suspect he is a good man but I came here looking for something I didn't find."
"Oh." Mary didn't know what else to say so she sat quietly for a few moments. Then she took a deep breath. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure," the man replied.
"If you didn't find what you were looking for why are you still here?"
"I don't know." The man's eyes filled with tears. "This was my last hope. I haven't been to church in years but I remember my mother taking me. I thought maybe if I came to the service I would find what I need."
"But you didn't in the service," Mary said.
"No, I didn't. I had hoped but..." The man shook his head and started to get up. "Anyway thank you for asking. Everyone here was very kind and nice."
Mary took his offered hand. "You are welcome. Can I impose on you with one more question?"
"Sure."
"What were you looking for?"
The man shrugged. "Healing. Hope. A Fresh start. Something from God."
"And you didn't find it?"
"No. I listened to the prayers, the songs, the readings, and the sermon. I didn't find it." The man shook his head again. "I guess I should be going."
As he started down the aisle with his shoulders hunched over Mary felt a feeling of despair wash over her. This wasn't the way things were supposed to happen in church. People were supposed to come and God was supposed to answer. Then something about what the man said struck her.
"Did you ask?" she said before he reached the door.
The man stopped and turned around. "Pardon?"
"Did you ask God for help? You told me you listened and paid attention but you didn't say anything about taking part in the worship." Mary took a deep breath. "Did you pray about what you needed?"
"I came here, isn't that enough? I mean I don't mean to be rude in a church but God is supposed to know everything so how come God can't just give me what I need?"
"But what is it that you need?" Mary asked. "What is it that you want God to do for you?"
Tears started to roll down the man's cheeks. "I don't want to be alone. I want to stop feeling that emptiness inside of me since my wife died. I want my life to be like it used to be when I looked forward to getting up each day instead of dreading every moment."
Mary walked over to him and offered a tissue. He took it and wiped his eyes.
"You know there are widows and widowers here in the congregation," Mary said. "We sometimes get together for lunch. We talk and pray together. It helped me when Frank died."
"You're a widow?" the man said.
"I have been for two years."
"Does it still hurt?"
"Every day," Mary said. "We were married almost 45 years. I miss him so much my heart aches."
"Then you haven't found healing either."
"I didn't say that," Mary said.
"But you're still sad."
"Sure I am. I loved Frank with all my heart. But I know that one day I'll join him in heaven and on the days when it gets really bad I ask God for help." Mary smiled at the man. "You remember when I said that the pastor helped me through a rough time?"
"That was when your husband died?"
"It was."
The man finished wiping his tears. "Can I ask you a question?"
Mary laughed. "I think since I asked you three you certainly can ask me at least one."
"Do you think I could meet the pastor?"
"Absolutely," Mary said and together they walked toward the healing and wholeness that God intended for a man lost in pain and despair.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
Blood, Gore, and Guts!
by C. David McKirachan
Jeremiah 31:31-34
When I was twelve I heard this passage from the prophet and I thought, "Cool. Carved on our hearts. Blood, gore, and guts!" There's very little about the Bible that elicits such enthusiasm other than the massacres seeded throughout. This passage is downright theological. In spite of such abstraction, it grabbed my hormone-infested consciousness.
In our sanitized day and age where everything is rational and politically correct, we look at this frighteningly direct statement of the intent of God as an analogy, a figure of speech that indicates commitment. The heart is the center of intent, courage, and commitment. We fit it into our logical view of the methods and means of our belief. We sanitize it. We take the violence out of it. We take the visceral impact out of it. After all, how visceral are our committee meetings, our worship, even our sermons?
Jeremiah did a lot of confronting. He had a bad habit of slamming into the status quo. He worried less about keeping everybody comfortable than speaking God's word clearly and with as much power as his voice could muster. Visceral was just the beginning. I don't think he was too concerned with politically correct.
Twelve year olds may be nuts. But then again, anything that gets their attention must be pretty powerful. "Thus says the Lord..." Ready to rumble?
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
Eyewitness
by Keith Hewitt
John 11:32-44
The stench was almost a physical thing, a blanket of foulness that hung in the air and filled the nostrils, so vile you could taste it just by breathing it in... so thick that it seemed I would have to cut it with a blade in order to just pass through it. In the dark chill I wondered what it might be, what could possibly be the source of this awful odor... and with dawning horror I realized that it was me.
Don't ask me why, don't ask me how I knew, but all of a sudden I just knew, with the same utter certainty that I knew I was lying down and that my limbs were bound and my face covered by a linen cloth that was feather-light, but still seemed to cut off all the light.
Bound! The realization struck moments after that first idle thought -- I was bound, hand and foot. For a few moments I struggled against the linen wraps, still lying there, and then just so I could claim some small victory I raised my head and tossed it, first to one side, then the other, causing the cloth over my face to slip away.
I knew it did, because I felt it slip off... but the darkness remained.
Was I blind and bound?
I lay still for a moment or two, rising above every instinct in my body to move to fight, to somehow work my way free, but I knew this was a prison I could not escape without help. I frantically considered what to do next, to whom I might cry out, when suddenly a single line of light appeared. It hesitated for a moment, then swelled and became a shaft of light, probing back into the darkness, finding my face and caressing it like a mother touching a newborn baby.
I blinked back tears -- whether from the sudden light or the realization that I was not blind, I'm not sure -- and tried to cry out, but my throat was too dry. All that came out was a hoarse rasping sound that could not have been heard more than an arm's length away. Now! I thought, Now! You must say something!
And I croaked, a hopeless sound or two, and could do no more.
But from outside, there seemed to be an answer.
From outside, a voice boomed, "Lazarus! Come out!"
And it pulled me up. It pulled me up, just as surely as though someone had placed a hand behind my shoulders and raised me to a sitting position. A million fragments of thought whirled through my mind -- where was I, what had happened, who was calling me? None of them lit for more than a moment, before fluttering away to be replaced by another. None of them was enough to make me take pause against the compulsion of that voice.
"Lazarus! Come out!"
Clumsily, I twisted on the shelf on which I lay, swung my legs off, and let them fall to the ground in this space. Awkwardly, without the use of my hands -- still bound to my side -- I stood partway up, pressed my shoulders back against the sloped ceiling to give myself some leverage, and inched my way to a standing position -- or as close to one as I could manage, in that not-quite-head-high room. Drawn by the voice, I shuffled toward the light, making my way inch by inch, it seemed.
The door -- shoulder high and barely wider than me -- was a challenge that I managed with unexpected ease, something seeming to keep me upright as I ducked through and out into the full blast of warm, bright sunshine. A cold that I had not been aware of seemed to flow out of my bones, replaced by a warmth that could not be wholly explained by the sunlight. Remember the first time you kissed a woman -- the flush, the tingle that went from the core of your being out to your fingers and toes? It was like that.
Only better.
I squinted in the flood of sunlight and picked out faces in the crowd -- my sisters, friends, my rabbi -- I saw their expressions... dimly, heard the gasps and the prayerful exclamations... even a stifled scream, here and there. I didn't understand, at first, what was wrong.
I remembered being sick, and I remembered darkness falling over me... and then there was nothing, until I became aware of the stench, in the darkness. And here was a curiosity, because it wasn't as though I couldn't remember the intervening time -- it was precisely as though the time did not exist, like a scroll with a history of something written upon it, but then having a part of the scroll excised, and the two ends stitched together.
It was not until Martha fell upon me, weeping hysterically and pulling away the linen bindings, saying over and over again, "You're alive! You're alive!" that I had an inkling of what had happened. And though I didn't believe it, a chill did blow through my body like a north wind sighing through a valley.
The warmth was gone.
Eventually, I did believe because it was easier to believe something even that preposterous, over the counter possibility that my sisters, my family, and my friends were all wildly mistaken. With grim acceptance, I finally believed that, yes, I had died... and, yes, I had spent days in a tomb before Jesus called me forth. And, yes, I had been raised from the dead.
But I did not feel special. I carried no memories of what it was like and had to share that lack with a dozen people, at least, over the next week or two. I did not understand what had happened, could not explain it, could not even properly describe it, beyond what I've done here.
I was not even curious about the details, after a while. Though I had visited death and returned, I did not want to recall the details, even if I could. There is a mystery hiding in that void in my memory -- and it's better that way. Much as you might want to know more, it is not my tale to tell, not my mystery to explain. Death comes to us all, in our own time, and we will each have our chance to discover its wonders.
But here is one curious thing: one night, a couple of days afterward, dinner was done and my sisters were cleaning up after us. Jesus invited me to go for a walk with him, and we went out to the edge of town, to a little grove of trees that overlooked the fold in the earth where the tombs were carved. In the fleeing light, Jesus pointed to them -- pointed to the open one, with the rock still set aside -- and said to me, "Lazarus, what was it like?"
When I stammered my way through a confession that I had no idea, sputtered over the holes in my memory, he just put his hand on my shoulder and smiled, told me that it was okay.
After a moment or two of silence, standing there above the tombs, I nodded toward them and asked my own question. "Why me? Out of all the sons of Israel, why did you bring me back that day?"
Staring at the tombs, he said, "Maybe it was because of the faith your sisters had in me. Or maybe it was because the people needed a powerful miracle to focus their attention." He paused, then, looked at me and smiled that wry, almost wistful smile that I had come to know over the last year or two. "Or maybe," he said softly, "I just wanted to have somebody I could compare notes with."
I looked at him in the fading light and did not understand.
Then...
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin.
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 21, 31, and November 1, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 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.
"The Flower" by Keith Hewitt
"Asking For an Answer" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Blood, Gore, and Guts!" by C. David McKirachan
"Eyewitness" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
The Flower
by Keith Hewitt
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
"I don't care what you tell me -- just don't try to tell me that God has a plan, or I swear I will shoot you dead."
The words were carved from ice; the woman's expression was a match for her words. Jamison Lee's eyes flickered from her to his wife, just leaving the small bedroom off the right side of the kitchen; her clear blue eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing. Good, he thought, and turned his attention back to the woman sitting across the table from him. "Eleanor," he said in an exaggeratedly calm voice, "I don't believe you would actually do that, even if I was foolish enough to say it."
Her eyes swiveled toward him, but her expression did not change. Her eyes did not quite seem to focus on him, but rather stared past him, or through him. "You'd best believe it, Reverend."
A bead of sweat formed on the back of his neck, trickled down his spine. He forced a reassuring smile, reached across the table with one hand, to touch the hand that lay there, clutching a white linen handkerchief. "When is the last time you slept, Eleanor?"
Her eyebrows drew together slightly. "What day is it? Tommy took sick on Sunday, after church. What day is it today?"
That's what I thought. "It's Wednesday, Eleanor. When did you last sleep?"
"Saturday night. Once Tommy took sick, I stayed up with him. Did you see him?"
Jamison shook his head once. "My wife did. Elizabeth." He nodded toward her.
Eleanor turned slightly, to face his wife. "Did you see him?"
She breathed deeply, let it out slowly, nodded. "I did, Eleanor."
"He looks peaceful, don't he?"
Elizabeth hesitated. The form on the bed behind the door was pale, slack jawed, his spindly limbs already starting to go into rigor. She guessed that he had been gone the better part of a day. "Yes, Eleanor, he looked peaceful."
"He's all I got left, you know. Bert died three years ago -- dysentery, something he picked up when he went to the reservation. Both our girls died in the typhoid outbreak. Tommy was all I had left." Her face turned back to Jamison. "Why would God take him, Reverend? What kind of an awful, vicious God would take a little boy like that? My little boy, when he's all I got?"
Jamison's heart seemed to twitch in his chest, and he shook his head. "I don't know, Eleanor. It doesn't make any sense, does it? But I can tell you this much, at least: God --"
He stopped suddenly, his sentence punctuated by the unmistakable double metallic click of a hammer being pulled back, and the soft ratcheting of a revolver cylinder rotating into place.
Elizabeth drew a quick breath, held it; Jamison looked at Eleanor, tried to hold her eyes with his own. "Now, Eleanor... let's not be hasty."
"Not hasty at all, Reverend -- I've been thinking about this since Tommy passed, last night." Her other hand appeared above the table, now, wrapped around the grip of a long barreled revolver. "I was going to send myself on, to follow my boy, but then you and your Missus showed up. No offense, but I told you -- if you tell me this is part of God's plan, I will put a hole in you before I do myself."
Jamison nodded. "I understand -- and that's not what I was going to say. But I do think you want to put that down, now, while we talk. Can you do that?"
She laid the revolver on the table but did not take her hand off it.
"Okay," he said slowly, when it became evident she wasn't going to release it. "First, I want you to know that I know a little bit about what you're feeling. Not everything," he said hastily, seeing her eyes starting to frost up, "nobody can know that. But I have at least a little idea. I lost my wife -- my first wife -- fifteen years ago, in a fire. And I lost my son -- I lost my son during the war. He was in a militia on the other side, and we fought in the same battle -- I may have killed him, myself. I don't know."
She said nothing, but there was something in her eyes -- a flicker of interest, a spark of understanding. He plowed on. "I was mad for a long time, Eleanor. I was angry with God, and any time I prayed -- when I prayed at all -- it was to yell at him. To let him know how angry I was and how I didn't understand and to ask how he could heap all this on me."
The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. "Mighty strange words, for a preacher."
"I wasn't a preacher back then. Just a regular guy, getting overwhelmed by life. And then one day -- we were outside this little place called Port William, down in Kentucky. One day my second in command came up to me and handed me a flower. Just plucked it out of a garden in somebody's yard."
He looked toward Elizabeth, beckoned to her, and she understood immediately; she knew the story. She went to the bouquet of flowers they had brought and laid on the sideboard when they arrived, plucked out a daisy, and handed it to him. Jamison nodded thanks, gestured with his eyes for her to leave; she sat down next to him, and he sighed.
He twirled the flower in his fingers for a moment or two, then held it out toward Eleanor. "See that?" he asked, offering her the bloom; she didn't take it. He moved it slowly, turning it around. "See all those petals. And those tiny little structures, there? I don't know what they are. My second in command showed me this flower, and he asked me if I knew how to make one. I looked at him like he'd lost his mind." He shifted his eyes from the flower to her. "Do you know how to make one, Eleanor?"
Puzzled, now, she shook her head.
"My second -- a man named Fritz -- Fritz held the flower out to me and said, 'Jamison, you could study botany for the next four years, until you could tell me everything there is to know about this flower. But when all was said and done, you still wouldn't know how to make one.' "
Jamison leaned closer, now. "That's when he made me understand -- I thought I could challenge God, I thought I could call him to task for what he'd done to me, but when you look at all the things he's done -- even something simple, like a flower -- you realize that you've got no place to talk. If he wants things to go a certain way, then who am I to question him? I figure I've got to give him some leeway -- until I finally figure out how to make a flower or build a deer."
"But it's not fair," Eleanor moaned softly. "It's not fair that I should have to go through this."
"And it's not fair that flowers should bloom, then die -- but they do. That's how they're made. All I know is this universe is way beyond my comprehension, so I have to cut God a little slack when he's running it. Maybe some day, if all goes well --" he cast his eyes upward for a moment, "-- I'll finally understand. But I'm not counting on it. I'm content to know that he's made it possible for me to see the ones I've lost again... one day."
Hesitantly, Eleanor took her hand off the revolver, took the flower from Jamison, and held it up close to her eyes, and studied it while she said softly, "Do you really think so? That we'll see them again, some day?"
Jamison nodded, smiled gently and reached across the table, slid the revolver away from her and uncocked it with both hands, careful to put his thumb in front of the firing pin before releasing and lowering the hammer. "I'm sure, Eleanor. But there's no hurry, now, is there?"
She was still studying the flower as she began to cry.
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
Asking For an Answer
by Peter Andrew Smith
Mark 10:46-52
Mary noticed the man sitting in the back pew of the empty church. He was slumped over with his head down and hadn't moved since the worship service ended. Mary picked up service bulletins and straightened hymn books in the pews and then slowly made her way to the back of the church. The man paid no attention to her so she cleared her throat.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
His eyes had dark circles around them and were tinged with red. "Fine, thank you."
"Sorry if this seems rude," she said. "But you don't look fine."
He gave her a tired smile. "Things have been rough lately."
"I'm sorry to hear that." She sat next to him. "Our pastor is a really good listener. He helped me through a difficult time in my life. Did you want me to get him?"
"No, thank you," the man said. "He preached a fine sermon and I suspect he is a good man but I came here looking for something I didn't find."
"Oh." Mary didn't know what else to say so she sat quietly for a few moments. Then she took a deep breath. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure," the man replied.
"If you didn't find what you were looking for why are you still here?"
"I don't know." The man's eyes filled with tears. "This was my last hope. I haven't been to church in years but I remember my mother taking me. I thought maybe if I came to the service I would find what I need."
"But you didn't in the service," Mary said.
"No, I didn't. I had hoped but..." The man shook his head and started to get up. "Anyway thank you for asking. Everyone here was very kind and nice."
Mary took his offered hand. "You are welcome. Can I impose on you with one more question?"
"Sure."
"What were you looking for?"
The man shrugged. "Healing. Hope. A Fresh start. Something from God."
"And you didn't find it?"
"No. I listened to the prayers, the songs, the readings, and the sermon. I didn't find it." The man shook his head again. "I guess I should be going."
As he started down the aisle with his shoulders hunched over Mary felt a feeling of despair wash over her. This wasn't the way things were supposed to happen in church. People were supposed to come and God was supposed to answer. Then something about what the man said struck her.
"Did you ask?" she said before he reached the door.
The man stopped and turned around. "Pardon?"
"Did you ask God for help? You told me you listened and paid attention but you didn't say anything about taking part in the worship." Mary took a deep breath. "Did you pray about what you needed?"
"I came here, isn't that enough? I mean I don't mean to be rude in a church but God is supposed to know everything so how come God can't just give me what I need?"
"But what is it that you need?" Mary asked. "What is it that you want God to do for you?"
Tears started to roll down the man's cheeks. "I don't want to be alone. I want to stop feeling that emptiness inside of me since my wife died. I want my life to be like it used to be when I looked forward to getting up each day instead of dreading every moment."
Mary walked over to him and offered a tissue. He took it and wiped his eyes.
"You know there are widows and widowers here in the congregation," Mary said. "We sometimes get together for lunch. We talk and pray together. It helped me when Frank died."
"You're a widow?" the man said.
"I have been for two years."
"Does it still hurt?"
"Every day," Mary said. "We were married almost 45 years. I miss him so much my heart aches."
"Then you haven't found healing either."
"I didn't say that," Mary said.
"But you're still sad."
"Sure I am. I loved Frank with all my heart. But I know that one day I'll join him in heaven and on the days when it gets really bad I ask God for help." Mary smiled at the man. "You remember when I said that the pastor helped me through a rough time?"
"That was when your husband died?"
"It was."
The man finished wiping his tears. "Can I ask you a question?"
Mary laughed. "I think since I asked you three you certainly can ask me at least one."
"Do you think I could meet the pastor?"
"Absolutely," Mary said and together they walked toward the healing and wholeness that God intended for a man lost in pain and despair.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
Blood, Gore, and Guts!
by C. David McKirachan
Jeremiah 31:31-34
When I was twelve I heard this passage from the prophet and I thought, "Cool. Carved on our hearts. Blood, gore, and guts!" There's very little about the Bible that elicits such enthusiasm other than the massacres seeded throughout. This passage is downright theological. In spite of such abstraction, it grabbed my hormone-infested consciousness.
In our sanitized day and age where everything is rational and politically correct, we look at this frighteningly direct statement of the intent of God as an analogy, a figure of speech that indicates commitment. The heart is the center of intent, courage, and commitment. We fit it into our logical view of the methods and means of our belief. We sanitize it. We take the violence out of it. We take the visceral impact out of it. After all, how visceral are our committee meetings, our worship, even our sermons?
Jeremiah did a lot of confronting. He had a bad habit of slamming into the status quo. He worried less about keeping everybody comfortable than speaking God's word clearly and with as much power as his voice could muster. Visceral was just the beginning. I don't think he was too concerned with politically correct.
Twelve year olds may be nuts. But then again, anything that gets their attention must be pretty powerful. "Thus says the Lord..." Ready to rumble?
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
Eyewitness
by Keith Hewitt
John 11:32-44
The stench was almost a physical thing, a blanket of foulness that hung in the air and filled the nostrils, so vile you could taste it just by breathing it in... so thick that it seemed I would have to cut it with a blade in order to just pass through it. In the dark chill I wondered what it might be, what could possibly be the source of this awful odor... and with dawning horror I realized that it was me.
Don't ask me why, don't ask me how I knew, but all of a sudden I just knew, with the same utter certainty that I knew I was lying down and that my limbs were bound and my face covered by a linen cloth that was feather-light, but still seemed to cut off all the light.
Bound! The realization struck moments after that first idle thought -- I was bound, hand and foot. For a few moments I struggled against the linen wraps, still lying there, and then just so I could claim some small victory I raised my head and tossed it, first to one side, then the other, causing the cloth over my face to slip away.
I knew it did, because I felt it slip off... but the darkness remained.
Was I blind and bound?
I lay still for a moment or two, rising above every instinct in my body to move to fight, to somehow work my way free, but I knew this was a prison I could not escape without help. I frantically considered what to do next, to whom I might cry out, when suddenly a single line of light appeared. It hesitated for a moment, then swelled and became a shaft of light, probing back into the darkness, finding my face and caressing it like a mother touching a newborn baby.
I blinked back tears -- whether from the sudden light or the realization that I was not blind, I'm not sure -- and tried to cry out, but my throat was too dry. All that came out was a hoarse rasping sound that could not have been heard more than an arm's length away. Now! I thought, Now! You must say something!
And I croaked, a hopeless sound or two, and could do no more.
But from outside, there seemed to be an answer.
From outside, a voice boomed, "Lazarus! Come out!"
And it pulled me up. It pulled me up, just as surely as though someone had placed a hand behind my shoulders and raised me to a sitting position. A million fragments of thought whirled through my mind -- where was I, what had happened, who was calling me? None of them lit for more than a moment, before fluttering away to be replaced by another. None of them was enough to make me take pause against the compulsion of that voice.
"Lazarus! Come out!"
Clumsily, I twisted on the shelf on which I lay, swung my legs off, and let them fall to the ground in this space. Awkwardly, without the use of my hands -- still bound to my side -- I stood partway up, pressed my shoulders back against the sloped ceiling to give myself some leverage, and inched my way to a standing position -- or as close to one as I could manage, in that not-quite-head-high room. Drawn by the voice, I shuffled toward the light, making my way inch by inch, it seemed.
The door -- shoulder high and barely wider than me -- was a challenge that I managed with unexpected ease, something seeming to keep me upright as I ducked through and out into the full blast of warm, bright sunshine. A cold that I had not been aware of seemed to flow out of my bones, replaced by a warmth that could not be wholly explained by the sunlight. Remember the first time you kissed a woman -- the flush, the tingle that went from the core of your being out to your fingers and toes? It was like that.
Only better.
I squinted in the flood of sunlight and picked out faces in the crowd -- my sisters, friends, my rabbi -- I saw their expressions... dimly, heard the gasps and the prayerful exclamations... even a stifled scream, here and there. I didn't understand, at first, what was wrong.
I remembered being sick, and I remembered darkness falling over me... and then there was nothing, until I became aware of the stench, in the darkness. And here was a curiosity, because it wasn't as though I couldn't remember the intervening time -- it was precisely as though the time did not exist, like a scroll with a history of something written upon it, but then having a part of the scroll excised, and the two ends stitched together.
It was not until Martha fell upon me, weeping hysterically and pulling away the linen bindings, saying over and over again, "You're alive! You're alive!" that I had an inkling of what had happened. And though I didn't believe it, a chill did blow through my body like a north wind sighing through a valley.
The warmth was gone.
Eventually, I did believe because it was easier to believe something even that preposterous, over the counter possibility that my sisters, my family, and my friends were all wildly mistaken. With grim acceptance, I finally believed that, yes, I had died... and, yes, I had spent days in a tomb before Jesus called me forth. And, yes, I had been raised from the dead.
But I did not feel special. I carried no memories of what it was like and had to share that lack with a dozen people, at least, over the next week or two. I did not understand what had happened, could not explain it, could not even properly describe it, beyond what I've done here.
I was not even curious about the details, after a while. Though I had visited death and returned, I did not want to recall the details, even if I could. There is a mystery hiding in that void in my memory -- and it's better that way. Much as you might want to know more, it is not my tale to tell, not my mystery to explain. Death comes to us all, in our own time, and we will each have our chance to discover its wonders.
But here is one curious thing: one night, a couple of days afterward, dinner was done and my sisters were cleaning up after us. Jesus invited me to go for a walk with him, and we went out to the edge of town, to a little grove of trees that overlooked the fold in the earth where the tombs were carved. In the fleeing light, Jesus pointed to them -- pointed to the open one, with the rock still set aside -- and said to me, "Lazarus, what was it like?"
When I stammered my way through a confession that I had no idea, sputtered over the holes in my memory, he just put his hand on my shoulder and smiled, told me that it was okay.
After a moment or two of silence, standing there above the tombs, I nodded toward them and asked my own question. "Why me? Out of all the sons of Israel, why did you bring me back that day?"
Staring at the tombs, he said, "Maybe it was because of the faith your sisters had in me. Or maybe it was because the people needed a powerful miracle to focus their attention." He paused, then, looked at me and smiled that wry, almost wistful smile that I had come to know over the last year or two. "Or maybe," he said softly, "I just wanted to have somebody I could compare notes with."
I looked at him in the fading light and did not understand.
Then...
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin.
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 21, 31, and November 1, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 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.
