Get Your Boots On
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Get Your Boots On" by C. David McKirachan
"The King Is Dead..." by C. David McKirachan
"Washing One Another's Feet" by Larry Winebrenner
"Repaying God" by Larry Winebrenner
"The Garden at Twilight" by Keith Hewitt
"Jesus in His Disturbing Disguise" by Sandra Herrmann
* * * * * * * *
Get Your Boots On
by C. David McKirachan
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
Holidays are wonderful. The family gets together and does the dance. The kids chase each other around, find out what's been happening, laugh at their parents, and get in fights. The adults cook, talk about the kids, talk about their jobs, talk about sports, remember the ones not there, tell stories about the ones not there, talk politics, and get in fights. One of my kids says that when you go to family reunions you bring a covered dish and an unresolved issue. Okay. But there is something about gathering the clan around a table or tables that is more than nice. It's a pain in the neck and it's who we are.
The whole idea of Passover is to remember. But it's more than just remembering what happened then. Such a memorial is powerful, surely. It helps those who participate realize from whence they have come. Yes. But there is more to it.
When these people were told how to get ready for this event, they were told to dress a certain way. The dress code didn't have to do with impressing their cousins. They were told to dress for the road. This was the beginning of their journey, out beyond what they had been, slaves. And as free people, they had to be ready to act like them, booted, girded, and ready to roll. They were also instructed to make this meal a sacrifice, leftovers to be burned, offered to God. Making the entire meal sacred, holy, consecrated, set aside from the run of the mill normal.
Now, there's no way I'm in favor of coming to the Easter table ready to unload trucks. Easter is a china and crystal day for us. And if anybody tries to incinerate the leftover lamb they'll have to get through me. I like lamb sandwiches, with arugula and pepper.
But, we are called to celebrate something more than that which happened then. We are called in this season of remembrance to let all the events seep into our beings, to rattle our normal, to transform our relationships, all of them. We are called to change who and what we are using the template of God's mighty acts. If we aren't doing that then His commandment to "do this remembering me," is a string of empty words only trotted out at the "appropriate" time. I'd say this whole thing is about as un-appropriate as anything could be. It's heart breaking. And it is life creating.
I don't look forward to this time of year. It's hard. I'm pretty sure it was hard for the slaves and I know it was hard for Jesus. Time to get our boots on.
The King Is Dead...
by C. David McKirachan
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
I was about ten, reading the usual epic tale of knights and chivalry, and I was bothered. It probably wasn't the first time I'd run into it, some aged king kicking the bucket, making way for the new-be. But this time it didn't make it under the radar. "Hear yea! Hear yea! The king is dead! Long live the king!" It hit me that in the midst of all the pennants and bright and shining new-hope-on-the-horizon whoopee, the king was dead. It got me in a place I'd never been got. So I brought my bother with me to church and listened to my father consecrate the elements, "As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do proclaim the Lord's death, until He comes." It got me again. And it's still getting me.
This whole death thing sticks in my craw. Why didn't He say, "You do proclaim the Lord's life, until He comes"? Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? Aren't we supposed to be living the way He lived? Aren't we supposed to be learning to be citizens of the kingdom? How can you be a citizen of the kingdom when all you do is trumpet out the death thing? What really matters in our theology, in our ethics, in our relationships, life or death?
As a ten-year-old theologian I chewed on it and came up with something that I've been chewing on ever since. I realized there was a difference between kings and the Lord. There's always got to be somebody in charge (for better or for worse). And announcing that the dude who's been in charge has shuffled off is important. That time is over. But it's also important to let people know that there's another dude (for better or for worse) making sure things don't all fall down. That time's done, but we're not. Jesus didn't say that. He said we're supposed to proclaim His death, until He comes. So, who's in charge? Uh... Yup, we're going to have to muddle through, until he gets back, which means He's dead, done, gone. The darkness and the fear of that is hard to bear. But He tells us to proclaim it, shout it out, live it out every day. His death! Which means His willingness to do whatever needed to be done to make it clear how much Our Father who art in Heaven loves us. Aw, come on Jesus. I want to do the life stuff. I want to be noble and valiant and slay the dragon.
Now I know this sounds deep for a ten year old. That's what my father thought too. I dumped this on him at the dinner table and he stopped mid chew. I'll always remember that. He looked at me and I wasn't sure if he was bothered or pleased. He told me we'd talk after dinner. I thought that meant I was in trouble. We went into his study (a sure sign that I was in trouble), and he sat me down and told me that Jesus' death was not something we were supposed to get used to. He told me that every time he said those words it hurt him a little bit. But he kept going, right through the death part to the "until He comes" part. That's the part that's about our hope. We don't live in darkness. We live in the light of the promise Jesus gave them and us. We're slugging it out here, now, every day. But we live in hope.
Holy week isn't fun. It's about His death. We know it's not the whole story. We know about Easter. Yea, but we're supposed to proclaim His death. That's tough stuff. And so is life. And it's the tough stuff that makes the Gospel so powerful in the midst of this broken world.
I'm still chewing.
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).
Washing One Another's Feet
by Larry Winebrenner
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
If I then, your Lord and Teacher (Master), have washed your feet, you ought [it is your duty, you are under obligation, you owe it] to wash one another's feet.
Have you ever washed someone's feet?
Most theologians hold that this command is not to be taken literally. Rather, it is in the spirit of humility that you should serve another's needs.
The need might be dusting pews. Or washing dishes. Or helping an elderly person use as TV channel changer.
As a young man I was seeking the pastor of Bryan Memorial Methodist Church, the Reverend David Cathcart, for information. He was in charge of preacher wannabes training for a License to Preach.
I went to the church where he served. It was a large beautiful church built in honor of William Jennings Bryan. It was circular in shape; it had a pulpit in a garden. Later, after ordination, I preached many a sermon in that garden at Sunday morning early service.
I entered the church office. The secretary was out on an errand. I wandered into the sanctuary, looking for someone who could tell me where the minister could be found. Fortunately, I found an old guy dusting the pews.
"Know where I can find Reverend Cathcart?" I asked.
"You're looking at him," he replied.
He never apologized for doing that janitorial work or explained why. I suspect he was washing Jesus' feet.
I belong to a church that has a very active ministry to those living on the streets in downtown Miami, Florida. We provide some 300 to 400 meals weekly. We pass out blankets on cold days. [Yes, we have a number of cold, if not freezing, days in Florida.] We provide free haircuts and a number of other free services for the homeless.
And we have a foot washing ceremony every spring close to Easter. Last year we served over 300 men and women.
A number of years ago, Mary volunteered to participate in the foot washing service. There are lots of tasks to perform in addition to washing feet. Water carriers, towel providers, ushering those whose feet were washed to volunteer podiatrist students and their professor overseers, passing out new socks and a new pair of shoes, cooking food, serving food, lots of volunteers are needed.
"Okay," Mary said to herself. "I'll volunteer. But you're not going to see me washing the feet of street people. There are lots of other tasks to perform."
But when the organizers said, "We need more foot washers," Mary volunteered.
With fear and trepidation she faced the first man sitting across the foot basin from her.
"You're not going to wash my feet," he told her. "I got my feet burned bad in a fire. I don't want you to see how ugly they look."
Mary reached down and untied his first shoe. "I'm going to take your shoes and socks off," she told him.
She untied the second shoe. "Then I'm going to wash your feet," she continued.
She slipped his shoes off and removed his socks. Then she lifted his feet into the basin of water. "We're going to place some paper booties on your feet," she told him as she gently washed his feet. "You'll go to a doctor from Barry University who will look at your feet. Any simple treatment they can do here will be done."
She lifted each foot and tenderly dried it. "Then you're going to get some new socks and a new pair of shoes. And something to eat."
Mary, now the director of the program, washed his feet. She said, "As I looked at this poor soul and his feet, I felt like I was washing the feet of Jesus."
Repaying God
byLarry Winebrenner
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
What shall I render to the Lord for all the Almighty's benefits toward me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and deliverance and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord, yes, in the presence of all God's people.
-- Psalm 116:12
In Jean Auel's epic series about Earth's Children set in the last stages of the most recent ice age, the heroine, Ayla, is the central figure. The divine figure in the book is called the Great Earth Mother. Much of the religious expression and ideas are a close reflection of modern American Christianity.
The series is interesting, if not sometimes descriptive at great lengths. The explicit detail can get in the way of the story at times. Yet, it lends an air of authenticity.
In the novel Shelters of Stone, fifth in the series Ayla is discussing Gifts of the Great Mother with Zelondoni, the priestess of the Great Earth Mother. The priestess tells Ayla that Gifts of the Great Earth Mother are dangerous.
"Why?" Ayla wants to know.
"What did your mother teach you about receiving a gift from someone?" asked Zelondoni.
"That we should return something of greater value to the gift giver," the woman answered.
"The Great Mother's gifts are so great we sometimes don't want to return more than we get," explained the priestess.
As we read the Old Testament, it seems that the answer to the psalmist's question, "What shall I render to the Lord for all the Almighty's benefits toward me?" borders on the response Zelondoni gives to Ayla.
Abraham laid his son on the sacrificial altar. Only God's intercession saved the boy's life.
Hannah gave her son, Samuel, to Temple service while he was still a lad.
Jeremiah criticized Israelites for casting their live infants into the furnace in the belly of Molech.
Attempts to return to God more than the Lord had given.
He psalmist has a different answer. To begin with he says that the death of God's saints is precious in the sight of the Lord. Precious, not because they have been sacrificed in order to appease God; rather precious because they are loved by God while alive.
The tenor of the psalmist's words reflect the cry of the prophets.
Amos says
not your religious feasts; I hate, I despise them
not your assemblies; I cannot stand them
not your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them
not even your choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them
not the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
These are not how you pay your vows. How then? Amos says:
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Again, the psalmist is in accord with Micah.
"He has showed you, O man, what is good," says Micah, and asks, "And what does the Lord require of you?"
The requirements of God aren't displays of wealth or extensive tribute. According to Micah it's simple. He says the Lord requires us
To act justly and
to love mercy and
to walk humbly with your God
"What shall I render to the Lord for all the Almighty's benefits toward me?" asks the psalmist?
His advice might well be, "Look not to the Zelondoni who recommends the impossible, repaying more than received.
"Rather look to the prophets. Look to the prophets."
Larry Winebrenner is now retired and living in Miami Gardens, Florida. He taught for 33 years at Miami-Dade Community College, and served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Larry is currently active at First United Methodist Church in downtown Miami, where he leads discussion in an adult fellowship group on Sunday mornings and preaches occasionally. He has authored two college textbooks, written four novels, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
The Garden at Twilight
by Keith Hewitt
John 18:1--19:42
"I wasn't sure you'd come." The speaker was a wiry man with stringy dark hair, dressed in clothes that had seen better days -- his mantle was torn and dirty, his leather belt cracked in long, dry fissures that ran halfway around his body. He seemed out of place in the neat, manicured garden that ran across the hillside and filled the little hollow where they stood.
"Neither was I," the other man said frankly. He was taller and broader than the first man; his clothes were clean, if not new, and his hair was neat, shot through with gray. His dark eyes were cold, but there was a glint of hard humor in them when he added, "There are many in my acquaintance who would sooner see you dead, than standing here."
"And you?" The first man's eyes shifted rapidly back and forth as he studied the face of the man standing before him, judging if he should run or stand his ground.
The man hesitated, absent-mindedly fingering the threads of the tzitzit -- the fringe that dangled from the corner of his mantle. After a few moments he answered quietly, "Let's just say that I've come to a different understanding." He seemed to realize what he was doing, then, suddenly released the tzitzit from his hand and smoothed it against his side. "I'm going to assume you didn't ask me to meet you just to find out if I wanted you dead."
The smaller man shook his head, took a couple of steps to one side, then paced back again, stopped and faced the other man. "No, no, I came for an explanation," he answered, and ran his hand nervously over his face, and then stood, fidgeting like a boy called before his elders.
The other man watched him for a moment, then took a long, deep breath, closed his eyes. If he strained his ears against the stillness of the garden in twilight, he could still hear the roar of the crowd, the chanting... the rage. With closed eyes he could see the crowds, the guards like stone statues arrayed along the walls surrounding the square. If he did not look away, he could see their Master, swaying like a bloody stalk between two red-cloaked Roman guards.
Give us Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!
A chill rippled down his spine and he shook his head rapidly, sending the sights and sounds back to the past, where they belonged. His eyes opened and locked onto the other's eyes. "Trust me," he said coldly, "there is no explanation that you can offer that I would be interested in hearing."
The man took a couple of steps again, spun and paced back in front of him, his head shaking, his hands flexing into fists, then uncurling. "That's not it," he said rapidly. "I'm not here to offer an explanation, but to seek one."
"Then talk to your priests, Barabbas. Talk to your elders." He started to turn away. This had been a mistake -- the anger that burned in his belly like a palpable thing told him that. It was not right.
"Wait!"
Barabbas grabbed him by the arm, spun him around. He disengaged the grasping hand roughly, flung it down and glared. "You have no cause to touch me," he growled. "Do it again, and you will finish the day a lesser man than you already are." Such anger was not right -- he knew that -- but still...
Barabbas threw up both hands, palms out, to show that he wasn't touching him anymore, stammered, "But I have to know. I have to know!"
"Know what?" The question was unbidden, out of his mouth before he could catch it.
Barabbas ran a trembling hand over his face again, then wiped it on his chest, moving his hand back and forth slowly as he talked. "That day -- the trial, the questioning -- were you there?"
Give us Barabbas! Give us Barabbas! He nodded. "I was."
"Then you know what it was like -- it was just a mass of confusion, and people yelling. I could hear the guards talking, and I knew they were putting together an execution party -- and then they came for me, dragged me out of the dungeon, threw me on the pavement in front of the Procurator."
Quietly. "I know."
"Then the Procurator asked the crowd who they wanted to live -- me, or this other fellow, this Jesus." He winced at the pinch of memory, licked his lips nervously. "I think the Procurator wanted them to choose the other man. But the loudest voices called for me -- and he let me go, sent this Jesus to be crucified."
Blood and nails, screams and hopelessness... "I know."
"And as they dragged him away, he looked at me -- just for an instant, across the courtyard, and I knew -- I could tell that he was none of the things they said he was. He was an innocent man. But he looked right at me, and there was this look -- just for a moment, this look that said, 'This is as it should be.' "
Hours of pain while the body died, a sack of blood and insects hanging from a cross... "I know."
Barabbas reached out for him, then -- stopped and lowered his hand when he realized what he had almost done. There was a terrible urgency in his eyes, etched in the drawn, haggard mask of his face. "Then this is what I need to know. I am a murderer, a thief -- I am many things, none of them good, and yet his life was given in exchange for mine. He knew it, but when he looked at me there was nothing but acceptance in his eyes. How can that possibly be?"
The other man nodded, then, surprised that the anger in his belly had melted away. He studied the small, wiry man in front of himself, suddenly saw something different. He reached out, lay a hand on his shoulder -- Barabbas flinched, but let his hand rest there. "Let me tell you a secret, friend," the man said, his voice low. "I look at myself, and I wonder the same thing. And yet, that's exactly what he did."
"Then what is the answer? How is this right?" Barabbas asked.
The other man smiled -- a small one, but a smile just the same. "Let me take you to someone who can answer that," he said quietly, and gently guided Barabbas through the garden, back toward the city gate. As they walked, they passed a tomb sculpted out of a low hill, so new that the stone framing the entrance was still raw. Barabbas did not notice it, or he might have wondered why it stood open.
And empty...
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
Jesus in His Disturbing Disguise
by Sandra Herrmann
Isaiah 52:13—53:12
Mother Teresa came to the streets of Calcutta as a young woman in search of a ministry. She felt that God had "ordered her" to leave the comfort of the Sisters of Loreto and to move into the streets, living with and helping the poor of India.
She found her ministry in the gutters of the city. There, looking as though they were already dead, lay the poorest of the poor. Without family, without community, they lay on the sidewalks, begging, until they were overcome with disease, heat, hunger, or the lack of a will to stay alive. Often coated in vomit, feces, the dirt of the street, they had become untouchable. Despite the fact that they smelled, despite their lack of anything more than rags to cover their private parts, they had become invisible. People walked by without more than a passing glance.
Better not to become involved. Besides, there were so many of them. Every block, one could see one or more of the members of this invisible caste.
But to Mother Teresa, they were visible. They were, in fact, Christ -- as she liked to say -- in his distressing disguise as the poorest of the poor. Someone needed to see them, to lift them up, to give them at least a decent place to die.
Before she did that, however, she knew other things had to be taken care of. Where could she take them? She needed a place where they would be safe. Somewhere a little cooler than the streets and sidewalks, where the sleeping needed to keep fanning themselves, or they would die of the 120 degree heat that often suffused the heart of Calcutta.
She found an unused temple dedicated to the Hindu goddess Shakti and tried to arrange to rent it. The neighborhood rose up against her. How dare she, a Christian, want to take over and use a Hindu temple? People stood outside the building and shouted at her, threw stones at her as she came and went. At last, as people understood that she was opening a hospice, they were more open to her using the building.
So in 1952, she opened the Kalighat Home for the Dying (Kalighat means The Home of the Pure Heart). Here, she and her sisters provided medical attention and the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites.
One day, while Malcolm Muggeridge was observing and filming her ministry, a man was brought in. He was in terrible condition, filthy and covered with bug bites. The sisters took off his rags and bathed him carefully, then laid him on a clean pallet and covered him with a sheet. Mother Teresa came over to him. While she was bending over him, he rose up slightly and spat in her face.
"Why do you bother me?" the man demanded. "Leave me alone."
Muggeridge was appalled. He asked Mother Teresa if this happened often.
"Oh, yes," she said, "sometimes people do not understand what we are doing. They are afraid we will ask them for money. This man is not really in his right mind. He is very sick and will die soon."
"But how can you go on, doing so much for such people, only to be spat upon?"
"A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels -- loved and wanted." Always, she reminded those who asked such questions, "We are caring for Jesus in his distressing disguise of the poor."
Mother Teresa often overworked herself, despite the warnings of doctors that she had a bad heart and didn't eat enough. But when she looked at the poor of Calcutta, often nothing but skin and bones and lacking even the most basic medicines, she felt she should never ask to be above them. This attitude made her Sisters of Charity shake their heads, and was the bane of her doctor, who warned her again and again that she was cutting her life short to live as she did.
Mother Teresa died September 5, 1997, at the age of 87. When the people of the neighborhood heard that she had died, many said that she was Shakti, the Hindu Mother Goddess, who had come to earth for a while and had now returned to the heavens. This tiny woman probably would have objected to that, since she considered herself the bride of Christ.
Many people were shocked when Mother Teresa's spiritual diary was released for others to read, and they found that she had struggled with her faith for most of the time she had pursued her ministry. This woman had said to others that it was no easy thing to have Jesus for a husband, and that there were days when she did not want to talk to him nor follow his will. But whether it was easy or not, she did what she knew she had been called to do.
She was not beautiful in the way we think of beautiful women. She was not educated in medicine and had to live with the knowledge that she was severely criticized for not getting her Sisters trained in modern medicine. Many Christians were jealous of the way her convents were flooded with gifts because people wanted to participate in her ministry, and so joined in criticism against her stands on certain issues that separate us in the church.
But one thing we can say. She saw Jesus in the words of Isaiah: a man who is not lovely, "whose appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness -- on the cross, bleeding so that we might be put at one with God again."
Sandra Herrmann is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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StoryShare, April 21-22, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
"Get Your Boots On" by C. David McKirachan
"The King Is Dead..." by C. David McKirachan
"Washing One Another's Feet" by Larry Winebrenner
"Repaying God" by Larry Winebrenner
"The Garden at Twilight" by Keith Hewitt
"Jesus in His Disturbing Disguise" by Sandra Herrmann
* * * * * * * *
Get Your Boots On
by C. David McKirachan
Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
Holidays are wonderful. The family gets together and does the dance. The kids chase each other around, find out what's been happening, laugh at their parents, and get in fights. The adults cook, talk about the kids, talk about their jobs, talk about sports, remember the ones not there, tell stories about the ones not there, talk politics, and get in fights. One of my kids says that when you go to family reunions you bring a covered dish and an unresolved issue. Okay. But there is something about gathering the clan around a table or tables that is more than nice. It's a pain in the neck and it's who we are.
The whole idea of Passover is to remember. But it's more than just remembering what happened then. Such a memorial is powerful, surely. It helps those who participate realize from whence they have come. Yes. But there is more to it.
When these people were told how to get ready for this event, they were told to dress a certain way. The dress code didn't have to do with impressing their cousins. They were told to dress for the road. This was the beginning of their journey, out beyond what they had been, slaves. And as free people, they had to be ready to act like them, booted, girded, and ready to roll. They were also instructed to make this meal a sacrifice, leftovers to be burned, offered to God. Making the entire meal sacred, holy, consecrated, set aside from the run of the mill normal.
Now, there's no way I'm in favor of coming to the Easter table ready to unload trucks. Easter is a china and crystal day for us. And if anybody tries to incinerate the leftover lamb they'll have to get through me. I like lamb sandwiches, with arugula and pepper.
But, we are called to celebrate something more than that which happened then. We are called in this season of remembrance to let all the events seep into our beings, to rattle our normal, to transform our relationships, all of them. We are called to change who and what we are using the template of God's mighty acts. If we aren't doing that then His commandment to "do this remembering me," is a string of empty words only trotted out at the "appropriate" time. I'd say this whole thing is about as un-appropriate as anything could be. It's heart breaking. And it is life creating.
I don't look forward to this time of year. It's hard. I'm pretty sure it was hard for the slaves and I know it was hard for Jesus. Time to get our boots on.
The King Is Dead...
by C. David McKirachan
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
I was about ten, reading the usual epic tale of knights and chivalry, and I was bothered. It probably wasn't the first time I'd run into it, some aged king kicking the bucket, making way for the new-be. But this time it didn't make it under the radar. "Hear yea! Hear yea! The king is dead! Long live the king!" It hit me that in the midst of all the pennants and bright and shining new-hope-on-the-horizon whoopee, the king was dead. It got me in a place I'd never been got. So I brought my bother with me to church and listened to my father consecrate the elements, "As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do proclaim the Lord's death, until He comes." It got me again. And it's still getting me.
This whole death thing sticks in my craw. Why didn't He say, "You do proclaim the Lord's life, until He comes"? Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? Aren't we supposed to be living the way He lived? Aren't we supposed to be learning to be citizens of the kingdom? How can you be a citizen of the kingdom when all you do is trumpet out the death thing? What really matters in our theology, in our ethics, in our relationships, life or death?
As a ten-year-old theologian I chewed on it and came up with something that I've been chewing on ever since. I realized there was a difference between kings and the Lord. There's always got to be somebody in charge (for better or for worse). And announcing that the dude who's been in charge has shuffled off is important. That time is over. But it's also important to let people know that there's another dude (for better or for worse) making sure things don't all fall down. That time's done, but we're not. Jesus didn't say that. He said we're supposed to proclaim His death, until He comes. So, who's in charge? Uh... Yup, we're going to have to muddle through, until he gets back, which means He's dead, done, gone. The darkness and the fear of that is hard to bear. But He tells us to proclaim it, shout it out, live it out every day. His death! Which means His willingness to do whatever needed to be done to make it clear how much Our Father who art in Heaven loves us. Aw, come on Jesus. I want to do the life stuff. I want to be noble and valiant and slay the dragon.
Now I know this sounds deep for a ten year old. That's what my father thought too. I dumped this on him at the dinner table and he stopped mid chew. I'll always remember that. He looked at me and I wasn't sure if he was bothered or pleased. He told me we'd talk after dinner. I thought that meant I was in trouble. We went into his study (a sure sign that I was in trouble), and he sat me down and told me that Jesus' death was not something we were supposed to get used to. He told me that every time he said those words it hurt him a little bit. But he kept going, right through the death part to the "until He comes" part. That's the part that's about our hope. We don't live in darkness. We live in the light of the promise Jesus gave them and us. We're slugging it out here, now, every day. But we live in hope.
Holy week isn't fun. It's about His death. We know it's not the whole story. We know about Easter. Yea, but we're supposed to proclaim His death. That's tough stuff. And so is life. And it's the tough stuff that makes the Gospel so powerful in the midst of this broken world.
I'm still chewing.
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).
Washing One Another's Feet
by Larry Winebrenner
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
If I then, your Lord and Teacher (Master), have washed your feet, you ought [it is your duty, you are under obligation, you owe it] to wash one another's feet.
Have you ever washed someone's feet?
Most theologians hold that this command is not to be taken literally. Rather, it is in the spirit of humility that you should serve another's needs.
The need might be dusting pews. Or washing dishes. Or helping an elderly person use as TV channel changer.
As a young man I was seeking the pastor of Bryan Memorial Methodist Church, the Reverend David Cathcart, for information. He was in charge of preacher wannabes training for a License to Preach.
I went to the church where he served. It was a large beautiful church built in honor of William Jennings Bryan. It was circular in shape; it had a pulpit in a garden. Later, after ordination, I preached many a sermon in that garden at Sunday morning early service.
I entered the church office. The secretary was out on an errand. I wandered into the sanctuary, looking for someone who could tell me where the minister could be found. Fortunately, I found an old guy dusting the pews.
"Know where I can find Reverend Cathcart?" I asked.
"You're looking at him," he replied.
He never apologized for doing that janitorial work or explained why. I suspect he was washing Jesus' feet.
I belong to a church that has a very active ministry to those living on the streets in downtown Miami, Florida. We provide some 300 to 400 meals weekly. We pass out blankets on cold days. [Yes, we have a number of cold, if not freezing, days in Florida.] We provide free haircuts and a number of other free services for the homeless.
And we have a foot washing ceremony every spring close to Easter. Last year we served over 300 men and women.
A number of years ago, Mary volunteered to participate in the foot washing service. There are lots of tasks to perform in addition to washing feet. Water carriers, towel providers, ushering those whose feet were washed to volunteer podiatrist students and their professor overseers, passing out new socks and a new pair of shoes, cooking food, serving food, lots of volunteers are needed.
"Okay," Mary said to herself. "I'll volunteer. But you're not going to see me washing the feet of street people. There are lots of other tasks to perform."
But when the organizers said, "We need more foot washers," Mary volunteered.
With fear and trepidation she faced the first man sitting across the foot basin from her.
"You're not going to wash my feet," he told her. "I got my feet burned bad in a fire. I don't want you to see how ugly they look."
Mary reached down and untied his first shoe. "I'm going to take your shoes and socks off," she told him.
She untied the second shoe. "Then I'm going to wash your feet," she continued.
She slipped his shoes off and removed his socks. Then she lifted his feet into the basin of water. "We're going to place some paper booties on your feet," she told him as she gently washed his feet. "You'll go to a doctor from Barry University who will look at your feet. Any simple treatment they can do here will be done."
She lifted each foot and tenderly dried it. "Then you're going to get some new socks and a new pair of shoes. And something to eat."
Mary, now the director of the program, washed his feet. She said, "As I looked at this poor soul and his feet, I felt like I was washing the feet of Jesus."
Repaying God
byLarry Winebrenner
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
What shall I render to the Lord for all the Almighty's benefits toward me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and deliverance and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord, yes, in the presence of all God's people.
-- Psalm 116:12
In Jean Auel's epic series about Earth's Children set in the last stages of the most recent ice age, the heroine, Ayla, is the central figure. The divine figure in the book is called the Great Earth Mother. Much of the religious expression and ideas are a close reflection of modern American Christianity.
The series is interesting, if not sometimes descriptive at great lengths. The explicit detail can get in the way of the story at times. Yet, it lends an air of authenticity.
In the novel Shelters of Stone, fifth in the series Ayla is discussing Gifts of the Great Mother with Zelondoni, the priestess of the Great Earth Mother. The priestess tells Ayla that Gifts of the Great Earth Mother are dangerous.
"Why?" Ayla wants to know.
"What did your mother teach you about receiving a gift from someone?" asked Zelondoni.
"That we should return something of greater value to the gift giver," the woman answered.
"The Great Mother's gifts are so great we sometimes don't want to return more than we get," explained the priestess.
As we read the Old Testament, it seems that the answer to the psalmist's question, "What shall I render to the Lord for all the Almighty's benefits toward me?" borders on the response Zelondoni gives to Ayla.
Abraham laid his son on the sacrificial altar. Only God's intercession saved the boy's life.
Hannah gave her son, Samuel, to Temple service while he was still a lad.
Jeremiah criticized Israelites for casting their live infants into the furnace in the belly of Molech.
Attempts to return to God more than the Lord had given.
He psalmist has a different answer. To begin with he says that the death of God's saints is precious in the sight of the Lord. Precious, not because they have been sacrificed in order to appease God; rather precious because they are loved by God while alive.
The tenor of the psalmist's words reflect the cry of the prophets.
Amos says
not your religious feasts; I hate, I despise them
not your assemblies; I cannot stand them
not your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them
not even your choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them
not the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
These are not how you pay your vows. How then? Amos says:
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Again, the psalmist is in accord with Micah.
"He has showed you, O man, what is good," says Micah, and asks, "And what does the Lord require of you?"
The requirements of God aren't displays of wealth or extensive tribute. According to Micah it's simple. He says the Lord requires us
To act justly and
to love mercy and
to walk humbly with your God
"What shall I render to the Lord for all the Almighty's benefits toward me?" asks the psalmist?
His advice might well be, "Look not to the Zelondoni who recommends the impossible, repaying more than received.
"Rather look to the prophets. Look to the prophets."
Larry Winebrenner is now retired and living in Miami Gardens, Florida. He taught for 33 years at Miami-Dade Community College, and served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Larry is currently active at First United Methodist Church in downtown Miami, where he leads discussion in an adult fellowship group on Sunday mornings and preaches occasionally. He has authored two college textbooks, written four novels, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
The Garden at Twilight
by Keith Hewitt
John 18:1--19:42
"I wasn't sure you'd come." The speaker was a wiry man with stringy dark hair, dressed in clothes that had seen better days -- his mantle was torn and dirty, his leather belt cracked in long, dry fissures that ran halfway around his body. He seemed out of place in the neat, manicured garden that ran across the hillside and filled the little hollow where they stood.
"Neither was I," the other man said frankly. He was taller and broader than the first man; his clothes were clean, if not new, and his hair was neat, shot through with gray. His dark eyes were cold, but there was a glint of hard humor in them when he added, "There are many in my acquaintance who would sooner see you dead, than standing here."
"And you?" The first man's eyes shifted rapidly back and forth as he studied the face of the man standing before him, judging if he should run or stand his ground.
The man hesitated, absent-mindedly fingering the threads of the tzitzit -- the fringe that dangled from the corner of his mantle. After a few moments he answered quietly, "Let's just say that I've come to a different understanding." He seemed to realize what he was doing, then, suddenly released the tzitzit from his hand and smoothed it against his side. "I'm going to assume you didn't ask me to meet you just to find out if I wanted you dead."
The smaller man shook his head, took a couple of steps to one side, then paced back again, stopped and faced the other man. "No, no, I came for an explanation," he answered, and ran his hand nervously over his face, and then stood, fidgeting like a boy called before his elders.
The other man watched him for a moment, then took a long, deep breath, closed his eyes. If he strained his ears against the stillness of the garden in twilight, he could still hear the roar of the crowd, the chanting... the rage. With closed eyes he could see the crowds, the guards like stone statues arrayed along the walls surrounding the square. If he did not look away, he could see their Master, swaying like a bloody stalk between two red-cloaked Roman guards.
Give us Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!
A chill rippled down his spine and he shook his head rapidly, sending the sights and sounds back to the past, where they belonged. His eyes opened and locked onto the other's eyes. "Trust me," he said coldly, "there is no explanation that you can offer that I would be interested in hearing."
The man took a couple of steps again, spun and paced back in front of him, his head shaking, his hands flexing into fists, then uncurling. "That's not it," he said rapidly. "I'm not here to offer an explanation, but to seek one."
"Then talk to your priests, Barabbas. Talk to your elders." He started to turn away. This had been a mistake -- the anger that burned in his belly like a palpable thing told him that. It was not right.
"Wait!"
Barabbas grabbed him by the arm, spun him around. He disengaged the grasping hand roughly, flung it down and glared. "You have no cause to touch me," he growled. "Do it again, and you will finish the day a lesser man than you already are." Such anger was not right -- he knew that -- but still...
Barabbas threw up both hands, palms out, to show that he wasn't touching him anymore, stammered, "But I have to know. I have to know!"
"Know what?" The question was unbidden, out of his mouth before he could catch it.
Barabbas ran a trembling hand over his face again, then wiped it on his chest, moving his hand back and forth slowly as he talked. "That day -- the trial, the questioning -- were you there?"
Give us Barabbas! Give us Barabbas! He nodded. "I was."
"Then you know what it was like -- it was just a mass of confusion, and people yelling. I could hear the guards talking, and I knew they were putting together an execution party -- and then they came for me, dragged me out of the dungeon, threw me on the pavement in front of the Procurator."
Quietly. "I know."
"Then the Procurator asked the crowd who they wanted to live -- me, or this other fellow, this Jesus." He winced at the pinch of memory, licked his lips nervously. "I think the Procurator wanted them to choose the other man. But the loudest voices called for me -- and he let me go, sent this Jesus to be crucified."
Blood and nails, screams and hopelessness... "I know."
"And as they dragged him away, he looked at me -- just for an instant, across the courtyard, and I knew -- I could tell that he was none of the things they said he was. He was an innocent man. But he looked right at me, and there was this look -- just for a moment, this look that said, 'This is as it should be.' "
Hours of pain while the body died, a sack of blood and insects hanging from a cross... "I know."
Barabbas reached out for him, then -- stopped and lowered his hand when he realized what he had almost done. There was a terrible urgency in his eyes, etched in the drawn, haggard mask of his face. "Then this is what I need to know. I am a murderer, a thief -- I am many things, none of them good, and yet his life was given in exchange for mine. He knew it, but when he looked at me there was nothing but acceptance in his eyes. How can that possibly be?"
The other man nodded, then, surprised that the anger in his belly had melted away. He studied the small, wiry man in front of himself, suddenly saw something different. He reached out, lay a hand on his shoulder -- Barabbas flinched, but let his hand rest there. "Let me tell you a secret, friend," the man said, his voice low. "I look at myself, and I wonder the same thing. And yet, that's exactly what he did."
"Then what is the answer? How is this right?" Barabbas asked.
The other man smiled -- a small one, but a smile just the same. "Let me take you to someone who can answer that," he said quietly, and gently guided Barabbas through the garden, back toward the city gate. As they walked, they passed a tomb sculpted out of a low hill, so new that the stone framing the entrance was still raw. Barabbas did not notice it, or he might have wondered why it stood open.
And empty...
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
Jesus in His Disturbing Disguise
by Sandra Herrmann
Isaiah 52:13—53:12
Mother Teresa came to the streets of Calcutta as a young woman in search of a ministry. She felt that God had "ordered her" to leave the comfort of the Sisters of Loreto and to move into the streets, living with and helping the poor of India.
She found her ministry in the gutters of the city. There, looking as though they were already dead, lay the poorest of the poor. Without family, without community, they lay on the sidewalks, begging, until they were overcome with disease, heat, hunger, or the lack of a will to stay alive. Often coated in vomit, feces, the dirt of the street, they had become untouchable. Despite the fact that they smelled, despite their lack of anything more than rags to cover their private parts, they had become invisible. People walked by without more than a passing glance.
Better not to become involved. Besides, there were so many of them. Every block, one could see one or more of the members of this invisible caste.
But to Mother Teresa, they were visible. They were, in fact, Christ -- as she liked to say -- in his distressing disguise as the poorest of the poor. Someone needed to see them, to lift them up, to give them at least a decent place to die.
Before she did that, however, she knew other things had to be taken care of. Where could she take them? She needed a place where they would be safe. Somewhere a little cooler than the streets and sidewalks, where the sleeping needed to keep fanning themselves, or they would die of the 120 degree heat that often suffused the heart of Calcutta.
She found an unused temple dedicated to the Hindu goddess Shakti and tried to arrange to rent it. The neighborhood rose up against her. How dare she, a Christian, want to take over and use a Hindu temple? People stood outside the building and shouted at her, threw stones at her as she came and went. At last, as people understood that she was opening a hospice, they were more open to her using the building.
So in 1952, she opened the Kalighat Home for the Dying (Kalighat means The Home of the Pure Heart). Here, she and her sisters provided medical attention and the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites.
One day, while Malcolm Muggeridge was observing and filming her ministry, a man was brought in. He was in terrible condition, filthy and covered with bug bites. The sisters took off his rags and bathed him carefully, then laid him on a clean pallet and covered him with a sheet. Mother Teresa came over to him. While she was bending over him, he rose up slightly and spat in her face.
"Why do you bother me?" the man demanded. "Leave me alone."
Muggeridge was appalled. He asked Mother Teresa if this happened often.
"Oh, yes," she said, "sometimes people do not understand what we are doing. They are afraid we will ask them for money. This man is not really in his right mind. He is very sick and will die soon."
"But how can you go on, doing so much for such people, only to be spat upon?"
"A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels -- loved and wanted." Always, she reminded those who asked such questions, "We are caring for Jesus in his distressing disguise of the poor."
Mother Teresa often overworked herself, despite the warnings of doctors that she had a bad heart and didn't eat enough. But when she looked at the poor of Calcutta, often nothing but skin and bones and lacking even the most basic medicines, she felt she should never ask to be above them. This attitude made her Sisters of Charity shake their heads, and was the bane of her doctor, who warned her again and again that she was cutting her life short to live as she did.
Mother Teresa died September 5, 1997, at the age of 87. When the people of the neighborhood heard that she had died, many said that she was Shakti, the Hindu Mother Goddess, who had come to earth for a while and had now returned to the heavens. This tiny woman probably would have objected to that, since she considered herself the bride of Christ.
Many people were shocked when Mother Teresa's spiritual diary was released for others to read, and they found that she had struggled with her faith for most of the time she had pursued her ministry. This woman had said to others that it was no easy thing to have Jesus for a husband, and that there were days when she did not want to talk to him nor follow his will. But whether it was easy or not, she did what she knew she had been called to do.
She was not beautiful in the way we think of beautiful women. She was not educated in medicine and had to live with the knowledge that she was severely criticized for not getting her Sisters trained in modern medicine. Many Christians were jealous of the way her convents were flooded with gifts because people wanted to participate in her ministry, and so joined in criticism against her stands on certain issues that separate us in the church.
But one thing we can say. She saw Jesus in the words of Isaiah: a man who is not lovely, "whose appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness -- on the cross, bleeding so that we might be put at one with God again."
Sandra Herrmann is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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StoryShare, April 21-22, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
