Following Jesus
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Contents
"Following Jesus" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Back From the Dead" by Sandra Herrmann
Following Jesus
by Peter Andrew Smith
John 10:22-30
“Wow.” Shelley looked at the photographs that Gladys had placed on the table. “You met so many famous people and travelled to so many places.”
“I did.” Gladys shifted in her wheelchair. “You could probably do a report on each one of them if you got me talking. I could tell you stories for hours.”
“In school I learned about some of the people in these pictures.” Shelly wrote a few lines in her notebook. “I never knew anyone who actually met them or who was there when history was being made.”
“History is always being made, Shelley.” Gladys thought for a moment. “Honestly with the exception of the time I heard Dr. King speak I don’t think I ever realized the importance of what was happening.”
Shelley frowned. “You mean meeting important people and going to exotic places were ordinary for you?”
“No, each and every picture here was an incredible experiences that I treasure. Yet at the time they were simply what was happening that day.” Gladys leaned forward to examine a picture. “I mean, look at the group of people standing beside the building. That was the medical clinic we built in a remote village in the mountains. There was a doctor who came monthly to the village but he had nowhere to work. We helped change that community for the better.”
“Our church did that?”
“Our church partnered with a local church to make it happen.” Gladys pointed to another. “This was a group who were rebuilding homes after a hurricane blew in from the coast. They touched a lot of lives and we still hear from some of those families.”
“Wow.” Shelly scanned through the photographs. “You are in every single one of these pictures.”
Gladys laughed. “At one point of my life it felt like I lived out of my suitcase. Thankfully John worked for the airline and that helped with all of the travelling.”
Shelley wrote some more in her book. “Which person you met or which one of these experiences would you say was the most influential or important to you and the work you did in your life?”
“I have been truly blessed.” Gladys thought for a few moments before answering. “Truthfully I would say that they all influenced me. The people whose names you would recognize inspired me but there are so many others who shaped the person I became and the things I was able to do.”
“You have lived an incredible life.” Shelley looked up from her notebook. “When I mentioned to the teacher that I knew you she was excited that I was going to interview you for my report.”
“I am glad to help you with your schoolwork,” Gladys said.
“I have more than enough.” Shelley closed her notebook. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me whatever you want, Shelley.”
“Do you miss it? I mean you travelled so much and did so much and now you are...” Shelley looked at Gladys’ wheelchair.
“I’m confined to a wheelchair and live in a nursing home.” Gladys smiled at her. “You don’t have to sugar coat my life. Some days I miss seeing new places and people but I am at peace with where I am right now.”
“I don’t think I could be if it happened to me,” Shelley said.
“I won’t pretend that it wasn’t hard after I had my stroke, but I am simply grateful that I had these experiences and was able to do the things I did when the opportunities were there.”
“You are so brave.”
Gladys shook her head. “Bravery has nothing to do with it. You have to have faith when your life changes.”
“Faith?”
“Yes, faith that when things are not the way they used to be, when you feel like something has been taken away from you, that God is still there and the promises of Jesus still apply to your life.” Gladys leaned forward in her chair. “Faith is what got me through losing John and the boys and being confined to this chair. Whenever I start to dwell on the things that get me down I remember my blessings and what God promises me.”
Shelley looked down at her notebook for a moment. “Would you mind if I included this in my report? I’m not sure what the teacher will think of it but I think it is something that kids like me need to hear.”
“I don’t think you can tell my story, all the places I have been and all that I was able to do, unless you mention my faith in Jesus.” Gladys smiled. “After all my story is not about how wonderful I have been but about how many wonderful things God helped me to see and do in my life.”
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada currently serving 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 and a number of stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
* * *
Back From the Dead
by Sandra Herrmann
Acts 9:36-43
Yes, my name is Gazelle. Yes, that Gazelle ? the one who died and was brought back by Peter the Apostle. Not that is any big thing to you today. You have drugs, electric paddles, open heart compressions, the whole thing; so it’s no miracle to you folks. Lots of people come back from the dead today. It’s practically a daily thing!
But in my day, people died daily, but only one had come back from the grave. That’s the man I followed: Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Oh, and his friend Lazarus. Jesus had gone to Lazarus’ family burial cave and called his name, and Lazarus actually shuffled out of the cave! The story, as you might imagine, was the talk of Bethany, and then it was all over Jerusalem. Word on the street was that the High Priest and his father were after Lazarus as well as Jesus. If Jesus could somehow stage such an impossible thing, who knew what else he might be capable of pulling off? He had become too dangerous.
So they moved to charge him with treason, and evidently they succeeded, because Jesus died on the cross within the month. And Lazarus and his sisters disappeared. No one knew where they were. But that didn’t stop the movement. Peter and Andrew and James and John and all of those who hung in after what we all thought was the end were back out there preaching, healing and teaching new followers how to pray and do the things Jesus used to do.
While I had heard of Jesus and what he could do, and the stories he had told, I never met the man. I had, however, decided that he must be the Messiah, the Son of Almighty God. Not because of the miracles. No, what convinced me of the truth was the fearlessness of Jesus’ followers, and their love for one another. That combination is a hard one to find in any human being, but it seemed that all of the Apostles had both of those qualities.
I had been searching for a long time for a group of friends who might love fearlessly, but that was hard to find in captive Israel. The priests seemed to be slaves to Rome, constantly trying to please God and please the Roman governor. Impossible. The Pharisees were constantly looking over everyone’s shoulder to make sure we kept every tiny part of their regulations, even though those regulations went far beyond the Law that Moses gave us. And then there were the Sadducees, who took away every hope for a life after this one was over. Of course, they didn’t need a Resurrection; they were rich enough why should they want a Heaven? Well, for many of the people, this life was not enough. The poor did not have enough. The homeless did not have enough. The beggars did not have enough. The street rats did not have enough.
And that was what had stirred me. The Apostles had a real concern for the poor. They insisted that caring for the street rats was the responsibility of all the people who claimed to love God. And I agreed.
I had been a wife, but I had never been a mother. It pained me to see little children running through the streets, half-clothed and bony. It pained me to see them shivering when it was cold. They had no parents to cuddle them or tuck them under a blanket when it was cold. The best they could do was to crawl under the overturned boats on the shore and huddle together. At least once a week, one of them would fail to waken in the morning, and a little blue body would be carried away and buried in the pauper’s graveyard.
My home is near the waterfront. The homes rise almost vertically there, tier upon tier, up the hills, overlooking the sea. Every evening, I sit in my chair at the window in my front room and watch the sun set into the sea, making a golden pathway till the sky moves from pale blue to black, and the stars begin to wink on. I watch the children walk down to the shore, and I watch them as they set a lookout to make sure that no one sees where they are hiding under the boats. Sometimes, in the winter, I see them scuff up fishnets into nests under the boats, in the hope that the nests will be warmer than the air.
It was this that gave me an idea. I started making little coats for the children. I would take them down to the beach and leave them for the children. At first, they avoided them, but when I thought about it, I started wadding them up and leaving them on the sand, and then they weren’t afraid they’d be accused of stealing, so they took them and kept warm. It made me smile.
Then there were the women on the streets. Not the prostitutes; they at least had money to spend on warm clothes. But the beggars. They were often crippled, or rocked constantly, or drooled, or shouted at passersby. They were dirty, frightened, frightening, and so they didn’t get much from those who saw them. I began to make them dresses, coats and shawls, and I would give these garments to whomever I saw on my way to the market.
Soon other women from my neighborhood began to see what I was doing, and they began to give me old clothes to pass out. I asked them to help, and soon we had a number of women who also carried clothing to the marketplace and handed it out. We began to sew together, and since we were all widows, it made us happy to be together. But, of course, we also had losses. At our age, that’s a problem for everyone ? it’s easy to get sick, easier to die. And, eventually, it was my turn. That’s the way of it. I wasn’t afraid to die. I believed in Jesus, and he had said we would all live again.
When the women sent for Peter, I was in bed with a fever and pain in every joint in my body. My mouth was dry, my eyes were leaking, and my hair kept sticking to my neck. My friends were taking turns to keep me drinking water and sponging my face, but I was feeling hotter and hotter. Finally, darkness enveloped me, and I fell asleep.
I woke up to someone calling my name. I didn’t want to wake up; in my sleep I didn’t hurt, I didn’t have a fever, I was at peace. I didn’t want to hurt again. But I found I could not resist it. The darkness faded, my eyelids fluttered, and I opened my eyes. Standing over me was a huge man with a brown beard. He was holding my hand, bending over me with a look of concern on his face. “Gazelle, wake up!”
I looked into his eyes, and I was wide awake. He smiled, and helped me sit on the side of the bed. “How do you feel, Gazelle?”
“I’m fine,” I said, but I wasn’t ready to stand up yet, I could tell.
It didn’t take me long, though, to stand and walk to the dining room. The women of my group gasped as I walked in. And then they were all touching me, hugging me, hugging Peter and giving thanks and glory to God. We had a real feast that night, laughing and talking and singing songs. We kept the lamps lighted until we finally started falling asleep despite ourselves.
Ever since then, people keep coming to my house to see me. They say they just want to help, but that’s not all any of them want. What they want is to see the woman who came back from the dead. But that’s not all, of course. They want to know what it feels like to be dead. But I have to tell them, “I don’t know. I can’t remember a thing, except a peaceful sleep.”
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 17, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
"Following Jesus" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Back From the Dead" by Sandra Herrmann
Following Jesus
by Peter Andrew Smith
John 10:22-30
“Wow.” Shelley looked at the photographs that Gladys had placed on the table. “You met so many famous people and travelled to so many places.”
“I did.” Gladys shifted in her wheelchair. “You could probably do a report on each one of them if you got me talking. I could tell you stories for hours.”
“In school I learned about some of the people in these pictures.” Shelly wrote a few lines in her notebook. “I never knew anyone who actually met them or who was there when history was being made.”
“History is always being made, Shelley.” Gladys thought for a moment. “Honestly with the exception of the time I heard Dr. King speak I don’t think I ever realized the importance of what was happening.”
Shelley frowned. “You mean meeting important people and going to exotic places were ordinary for you?”
“No, each and every picture here was an incredible experiences that I treasure. Yet at the time they were simply what was happening that day.” Gladys leaned forward to examine a picture. “I mean, look at the group of people standing beside the building. That was the medical clinic we built in a remote village in the mountains. There was a doctor who came monthly to the village but he had nowhere to work. We helped change that community for the better.”
“Our church did that?”
“Our church partnered with a local church to make it happen.” Gladys pointed to another. “This was a group who were rebuilding homes after a hurricane blew in from the coast. They touched a lot of lives and we still hear from some of those families.”
“Wow.” Shelly scanned through the photographs. “You are in every single one of these pictures.”
Gladys laughed. “At one point of my life it felt like I lived out of my suitcase. Thankfully John worked for the airline and that helped with all of the travelling.”
Shelley wrote some more in her book. “Which person you met or which one of these experiences would you say was the most influential or important to you and the work you did in your life?”
“I have been truly blessed.” Gladys thought for a few moments before answering. “Truthfully I would say that they all influenced me. The people whose names you would recognize inspired me but there are so many others who shaped the person I became and the things I was able to do.”
“You have lived an incredible life.” Shelley looked up from her notebook. “When I mentioned to the teacher that I knew you she was excited that I was going to interview you for my report.”
“I am glad to help you with your schoolwork,” Gladys said.
“I have more than enough.” Shelley closed her notebook. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me whatever you want, Shelley.”
“Do you miss it? I mean you travelled so much and did so much and now you are...” Shelley looked at Gladys’ wheelchair.
“I’m confined to a wheelchair and live in a nursing home.” Gladys smiled at her. “You don’t have to sugar coat my life. Some days I miss seeing new places and people but I am at peace with where I am right now.”
“I don’t think I could be if it happened to me,” Shelley said.
“I won’t pretend that it wasn’t hard after I had my stroke, but I am simply grateful that I had these experiences and was able to do the things I did when the opportunities were there.”
“You are so brave.”
Gladys shook her head. “Bravery has nothing to do with it. You have to have faith when your life changes.”
“Faith?”
“Yes, faith that when things are not the way they used to be, when you feel like something has been taken away from you, that God is still there and the promises of Jesus still apply to your life.” Gladys leaned forward in her chair. “Faith is what got me through losing John and the boys and being confined to this chair. Whenever I start to dwell on the things that get me down I remember my blessings and what God promises me.”
Shelley looked down at her notebook for a moment. “Would you mind if I included this in my report? I’m not sure what the teacher will think of it but I think it is something that kids like me need to hear.”
“I don’t think you can tell my story, all the places I have been and all that I was able to do, unless you mention my faith in Jesus.” Gladys smiled. “After all my story is not about how wonderful I have been but about how many wonderful things God helped me to see and do in my life.”
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada currently serving 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 and a number of stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
* * *
Back From the Dead
by Sandra Herrmann
Acts 9:36-43
Yes, my name is Gazelle. Yes, that Gazelle ? the one who died and was brought back by Peter the Apostle. Not that is any big thing to you today. You have drugs, electric paddles, open heart compressions, the whole thing; so it’s no miracle to you folks. Lots of people come back from the dead today. It’s practically a daily thing!
But in my day, people died daily, but only one had come back from the grave. That’s the man I followed: Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Oh, and his friend Lazarus. Jesus had gone to Lazarus’ family burial cave and called his name, and Lazarus actually shuffled out of the cave! The story, as you might imagine, was the talk of Bethany, and then it was all over Jerusalem. Word on the street was that the High Priest and his father were after Lazarus as well as Jesus. If Jesus could somehow stage such an impossible thing, who knew what else he might be capable of pulling off? He had become too dangerous.
So they moved to charge him with treason, and evidently they succeeded, because Jesus died on the cross within the month. And Lazarus and his sisters disappeared. No one knew where they were. But that didn’t stop the movement. Peter and Andrew and James and John and all of those who hung in after what we all thought was the end were back out there preaching, healing and teaching new followers how to pray and do the things Jesus used to do.
While I had heard of Jesus and what he could do, and the stories he had told, I never met the man. I had, however, decided that he must be the Messiah, the Son of Almighty God. Not because of the miracles. No, what convinced me of the truth was the fearlessness of Jesus’ followers, and their love for one another. That combination is a hard one to find in any human being, but it seemed that all of the Apostles had both of those qualities.
I had been searching for a long time for a group of friends who might love fearlessly, but that was hard to find in captive Israel. The priests seemed to be slaves to Rome, constantly trying to please God and please the Roman governor. Impossible. The Pharisees were constantly looking over everyone’s shoulder to make sure we kept every tiny part of their regulations, even though those regulations went far beyond the Law that Moses gave us. And then there were the Sadducees, who took away every hope for a life after this one was over. Of course, they didn’t need a Resurrection; they were rich enough why should they want a Heaven? Well, for many of the people, this life was not enough. The poor did not have enough. The homeless did not have enough. The beggars did not have enough. The street rats did not have enough.
And that was what had stirred me. The Apostles had a real concern for the poor. They insisted that caring for the street rats was the responsibility of all the people who claimed to love God. And I agreed.
I had been a wife, but I had never been a mother. It pained me to see little children running through the streets, half-clothed and bony. It pained me to see them shivering when it was cold. They had no parents to cuddle them or tuck them under a blanket when it was cold. The best they could do was to crawl under the overturned boats on the shore and huddle together. At least once a week, one of them would fail to waken in the morning, and a little blue body would be carried away and buried in the pauper’s graveyard.
My home is near the waterfront. The homes rise almost vertically there, tier upon tier, up the hills, overlooking the sea. Every evening, I sit in my chair at the window in my front room and watch the sun set into the sea, making a golden pathway till the sky moves from pale blue to black, and the stars begin to wink on. I watch the children walk down to the shore, and I watch them as they set a lookout to make sure that no one sees where they are hiding under the boats. Sometimes, in the winter, I see them scuff up fishnets into nests under the boats, in the hope that the nests will be warmer than the air.
It was this that gave me an idea. I started making little coats for the children. I would take them down to the beach and leave them for the children. At first, they avoided them, but when I thought about it, I started wadding them up and leaving them on the sand, and then they weren’t afraid they’d be accused of stealing, so they took them and kept warm. It made me smile.
Then there were the women on the streets. Not the prostitutes; they at least had money to spend on warm clothes. But the beggars. They were often crippled, or rocked constantly, or drooled, or shouted at passersby. They were dirty, frightened, frightening, and so they didn’t get much from those who saw them. I began to make them dresses, coats and shawls, and I would give these garments to whomever I saw on my way to the market.
Soon other women from my neighborhood began to see what I was doing, and they began to give me old clothes to pass out. I asked them to help, and soon we had a number of women who also carried clothing to the marketplace and handed it out. We began to sew together, and since we were all widows, it made us happy to be together. But, of course, we also had losses. At our age, that’s a problem for everyone ? it’s easy to get sick, easier to die. And, eventually, it was my turn. That’s the way of it. I wasn’t afraid to die. I believed in Jesus, and he had said we would all live again.
When the women sent for Peter, I was in bed with a fever and pain in every joint in my body. My mouth was dry, my eyes were leaking, and my hair kept sticking to my neck. My friends were taking turns to keep me drinking water and sponging my face, but I was feeling hotter and hotter. Finally, darkness enveloped me, and I fell asleep.
I woke up to someone calling my name. I didn’t want to wake up; in my sleep I didn’t hurt, I didn’t have a fever, I was at peace. I didn’t want to hurt again. But I found I could not resist it. The darkness faded, my eyelids fluttered, and I opened my eyes. Standing over me was a huge man with a brown beard. He was holding my hand, bending over me with a look of concern on his face. “Gazelle, wake up!”
I looked into his eyes, and I was wide awake. He smiled, and helped me sit on the side of the bed. “How do you feel, Gazelle?”
“I’m fine,” I said, but I wasn’t ready to stand up yet, I could tell.
It didn’t take me long, though, to stand and walk to the dining room. The women of my group gasped as I walked in. And then they were all touching me, hugging me, hugging Peter and giving thanks and glory to God. We had a real feast that night, laughing and talking and singing songs. We kept the lamps lighted until we finally started falling asleep despite ourselves.
Ever since then, people keep coming to my house to see me. They say they just want to help, but that’s not all any of them want. What they want is to see the woman who came back from the dead. But that’s not all, of course. They want to know what it feels like to be dead. But I have to tell them, “I don’t know. I can’t remember a thing, except a peaceful sleep.”
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 17, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
