How The Mighty Have Fallen
Stories
Object:
Contents
"How the Mighty Have Fallen" by Frank Ramirez
"Death and Joy" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * * *
Angels Everywhere
by Frank Ramirez
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
And I know that such a person -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows -- was caught up into paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
-- 2 Corinthians 12:3-4
Visions can be controversial. Moreover, they are impossible to prove or disprove. Nowadays there are plenty of bestsellers about visions and the experiences of those who may have stepped over the border between life and death and returned. For some, reading such a book or hearing such a testimony can be life changing. Others are bluntly skeptical. Sometimes, however, people can look with disdain upon those who hold a different viewpoint about a testimony.
Perhaps something useful, therefore, can be learned from the experience of a young German-speaking girl named Catharine Hummer who grew up in the American colonies in the 1760s. Her story is less well-known that it ought because her German-American culture of Pennsylvania survives in modern America only as a curiosity, observed today only in the horse and buggy culture of the Plain Peoples.
Catharine Hummer belonged to the group known as the Dunkers. Their name was derived from their mode of baptism, which involved a threefold immersion. The Dunkers were among those who accepted William Penn's invitation to escape religious persecution in Europe. The Dunkers emigrated to the Germantown, Pennsylvania, area in 1719 and 1729 and settled down to peaceful lives as farmers or as practitioners of trades.
Catharine herself was still a teenager when, as she reports, "While sitting in the kitchen near the fire on the night of October 3d, 1762, between ten and eleven o'clock, somebody knocked at the door." The rest of her family had fallen asleep, so she answered the door and was greeted by an angel, who called for a spiritual revival among the believers. Catharine weeps because of her many sins, but the angel tells her to rejoice because they have been forgiven by her Savior.
Together they sang a hymn taken straight from the 1760 hymnal Das Kleine Davidische Psalterspiel: "How well I feel, how well I feel, when our God doth show himself in spirit to my soul, so that within I leap and jump for joy..."
The most controversial vision took place on November 12, 1762, when Catharine reports (much like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12) that her spirit was taken "...out of my body, up into invisible eternity." Catharine said she saw "all the prophets and apostles, together with all the saints and patriarchs" singing glorious songs, even as the Lord executes judgment, sending the godless away and inviting the pious to "the great supper."
Then she said, "A great water runs from Noon between Morning and Midnight that divides the earthly from the eternal realm. When a man dies and leaves this earthly realm, he imagines himself alive and does not know anything of his having died, and yet finds himself a stranger on earth." Catharine described in the vision how some walked toward heaven, other towards damnation, but some, perhaps those who had never had the chance to hear the word, were baptized and saved, even after death.
The vision was controversial enough -- but the fact that Catharine, with the consent of her father Peter Hummer, who was the pastor of the White Oak congregation, preached of these things was even more controversial. People came from miles around. Some claimed to see angels themselves when she spoke.
The whole matter was complicated by the fact that she went into trances when left by herself in the presence of a doctor named Sebastian Keller, himself a married man. Meanwhile, her father responded with anger toward anyone who did not believe his daughter. The Dunkers seemed on the verge of splitting apart over the matter.
On May 28, 1763, they met in a special meeting at Conestoga to decide what to do about Catharine. What they decided is probably a good lesson for everyone. They decided the father should not respond so angrily toward others and that "on both sides all rumors and harsh expression be entirely renounced." They also noted that "all unnecessary and too-frequent visiting cease, and that all evil appearances be carefully avoided..." a clear suggestion that Catharine and Dr. Keller should avoid giving others any pretext for suspicion.
They also decided it was less important to settle the truth of the matter than to preserve their love for each other in Christ.
"Although we have no consensus about the occurrence in question, those who believe in it are not to judge those who do not. Likewise, we shall not look down on those who derive some lesson and benefit from it. In general, we admonish you, beloved brethren, to receive one another as Christ has received us, and to forgive one another as Christ has forgiven us also. ...Let everyone leave to the other his own opinion in the fear of the Lord, that we might all spare our consciences."
No split took place among the Dunkers. Catharine Hummer continued to see visions for some years. Eventually, after Dr. Keller's wife passed away the two were married and had four children. After the American Revolution Dr. Keller, a respected member of the community, served in the state legislature. No one knows the dates for Catharine Hummer's birth or death.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
Up Home
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 6:1-13
My mother was born and raised on a farm near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Grandpa was a fireball, white hair and blue eyes and a smile that could crack glass. He and Grandma had seven children, six girls and a boy. Clara, Phennie, Caroline, Alice, the twins, Ada and Ida, and Fred. They were quite a bunch. Clara and my mother, Caroline married ministers. Fred married Aunt Dorothy and after the war bought a farm down the road. My cousin Keith still runs it. My grandfather always said the best crop they grew was rocks. Every year in the spring they'd pull a sledge through the sections to be plowed piling it with rocks, emptying it between the fields. No need for fences.
Phennie, Alice, and the twins lived on the farm, doing the chores, raising tomatoes, corn, hay, and rocks. They were all under five feet tall. I grew to be six foot four. Long before I stopped growing they started calling me the giraffe. But more often they'd called me Davie. I don't like to be called anything but my name, David. Don't call me Dave, I'll correct you, still. Then, I defended the turf of my name with a desperation born of a kid who wasn't real sure of himself. That, I could insist on. But when I went "up home," that's what my mother always called it, when I went there, among the aunts, I was Davie.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a cute little name for a cute little kid, toddling around, drooling on the floor, discovering the world by putting most of it in his mouth. I was not little or cute and I was trying hard not to put things in my mouth. I prided myself on my philosophical focus and my radical stance on social issues. My diminutive aunts treated me as if I would never be anything but a toddler.
I don't know what they called Jesus in his hometown. His childhood hadn't been the easiest. Mary's indiscretion, that's what they probably called him. Who knows what his brothers and sisters called him in the middle of childhood brawls. Who knows what the village kids used to wound him. Kids are like that. Some of that came out when he came home. "Keep your place kid. Don't get uppity on us. We know where you came from."
This is a judgment on us all. We live in ruts, unwilling to consider how people have grown and changed. Our expectations are constructed of old visions and memories that help us maintain and control our lives. When someone that we expect to be a certain way comes in being something else, we are not very willing to listen or pay attention to the possibilities of a new day.
But at the same time this, in a strange way, is part of what home means: It is a place where we have nothing to prove. We are who we are. We have a history there. Perhaps part of the problem with Jesus was that his home was not Nazareth. His zip code was somewhere else. But Mary knew who he was. She at the least was his home, here. I bet she could call him anything she wanted.
Mom and her brother and sisters are gone. Even the house burned down a few years ago. The rock foundation seems so small. They were a wild bunch. They knew I'd grown up. They thought I was doing some weird stuff. But with them, I was always Davie. And when I think of going to be with them, it's always "up home."
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).
*****************************************
StoryShare, July 8, 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.
"How the Mighty Have Fallen" by Frank Ramirez
"Death and Joy" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * * *
Angels Everywhere
by Frank Ramirez
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
And I know that such a person -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows -- was caught up into paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
-- 2 Corinthians 12:3-4
Visions can be controversial. Moreover, they are impossible to prove or disprove. Nowadays there are plenty of bestsellers about visions and the experiences of those who may have stepped over the border between life and death and returned. For some, reading such a book or hearing such a testimony can be life changing. Others are bluntly skeptical. Sometimes, however, people can look with disdain upon those who hold a different viewpoint about a testimony.
Perhaps something useful, therefore, can be learned from the experience of a young German-speaking girl named Catharine Hummer who grew up in the American colonies in the 1760s. Her story is less well-known that it ought because her German-American culture of Pennsylvania survives in modern America only as a curiosity, observed today only in the horse and buggy culture of the Plain Peoples.
Catharine Hummer belonged to the group known as the Dunkers. Their name was derived from their mode of baptism, which involved a threefold immersion. The Dunkers were among those who accepted William Penn's invitation to escape religious persecution in Europe. The Dunkers emigrated to the Germantown, Pennsylvania, area in 1719 and 1729 and settled down to peaceful lives as farmers or as practitioners of trades.
Catharine herself was still a teenager when, as she reports, "While sitting in the kitchen near the fire on the night of October 3d, 1762, between ten and eleven o'clock, somebody knocked at the door." The rest of her family had fallen asleep, so she answered the door and was greeted by an angel, who called for a spiritual revival among the believers. Catharine weeps because of her many sins, but the angel tells her to rejoice because they have been forgiven by her Savior.
Together they sang a hymn taken straight from the 1760 hymnal Das Kleine Davidische Psalterspiel: "How well I feel, how well I feel, when our God doth show himself in spirit to my soul, so that within I leap and jump for joy..."
The most controversial vision took place on November 12, 1762, when Catharine reports (much like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12) that her spirit was taken "...out of my body, up into invisible eternity." Catharine said she saw "all the prophets and apostles, together with all the saints and patriarchs" singing glorious songs, even as the Lord executes judgment, sending the godless away and inviting the pious to "the great supper."
Then she said, "A great water runs from Noon between Morning and Midnight that divides the earthly from the eternal realm. When a man dies and leaves this earthly realm, he imagines himself alive and does not know anything of his having died, and yet finds himself a stranger on earth." Catharine described in the vision how some walked toward heaven, other towards damnation, but some, perhaps those who had never had the chance to hear the word, were baptized and saved, even after death.
The vision was controversial enough -- but the fact that Catharine, with the consent of her father Peter Hummer, who was the pastor of the White Oak congregation, preached of these things was even more controversial. People came from miles around. Some claimed to see angels themselves when she spoke.
The whole matter was complicated by the fact that she went into trances when left by herself in the presence of a doctor named Sebastian Keller, himself a married man. Meanwhile, her father responded with anger toward anyone who did not believe his daughter. The Dunkers seemed on the verge of splitting apart over the matter.
On May 28, 1763, they met in a special meeting at Conestoga to decide what to do about Catharine. What they decided is probably a good lesson for everyone. They decided the father should not respond so angrily toward others and that "on both sides all rumors and harsh expression be entirely renounced." They also noted that "all unnecessary and too-frequent visiting cease, and that all evil appearances be carefully avoided..." a clear suggestion that Catharine and Dr. Keller should avoid giving others any pretext for suspicion.
They also decided it was less important to settle the truth of the matter than to preserve their love for each other in Christ.
"Although we have no consensus about the occurrence in question, those who believe in it are not to judge those who do not. Likewise, we shall not look down on those who derive some lesson and benefit from it. In general, we admonish you, beloved brethren, to receive one another as Christ has received us, and to forgive one another as Christ has forgiven us also. ...Let everyone leave to the other his own opinion in the fear of the Lord, that we might all spare our consciences."
No split took place among the Dunkers. Catharine Hummer continued to see visions for some years. Eventually, after Dr. Keller's wife passed away the two were married and had four children. After the American Revolution Dr. Keller, a respected member of the community, served in the state legislature. No one knows the dates for Catharine Hummer's birth or death.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
Up Home
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 6:1-13
My mother was born and raised on a farm near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Grandpa was a fireball, white hair and blue eyes and a smile that could crack glass. He and Grandma had seven children, six girls and a boy. Clara, Phennie, Caroline, Alice, the twins, Ada and Ida, and Fred. They were quite a bunch. Clara and my mother, Caroline married ministers. Fred married Aunt Dorothy and after the war bought a farm down the road. My cousin Keith still runs it. My grandfather always said the best crop they grew was rocks. Every year in the spring they'd pull a sledge through the sections to be plowed piling it with rocks, emptying it between the fields. No need for fences.
Phennie, Alice, and the twins lived on the farm, doing the chores, raising tomatoes, corn, hay, and rocks. They were all under five feet tall. I grew to be six foot four. Long before I stopped growing they started calling me the giraffe. But more often they'd called me Davie. I don't like to be called anything but my name, David. Don't call me Dave, I'll correct you, still. Then, I defended the turf of my name with a desperation born of a kid who wasn't real sure of himself. That, I could insist on. But when I went "up home," that's what my mother always called it, when I went there, among the aunts, I was Davie.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a cute little name for a cute little kid, toddling around, drooling on the floor, discovering the world by putting most of it in his mouth. I was not little or cute and I was trying hard not to put things in my mouth. I prided myself on my philosophical focus and my radical stance on social issues. My diminutive aunts treated me as if I would never be anything but a toddler.
I don't know what they called Jesus in his hometown. His childhood hadn't been the easiest. Mary's indiscretion, that's what they probably called him. Who knows what his brothers and sisters called him in the middle of childhood brawls. Who knows what the village kids used to wound him. Kids are like that. Some of that came out when he came home. "Keep your place kid. Don't get uppity on us. We know where you came from."
This is a judgment on us all. We live in ruts, unwilling to consider how people have grown and changed. Our expectations are constructed of old visions and memories that help us maintain and control our lives. When someone that we expect to be a certain way comes in being something else, we are not very willing to listen or pay attention to the possibilities of a new day.
But at the same time this, in a strange way, is part of what home means: It is a place where we have nothing to prove. We are who we are. We have a history there. Perhaps part of the problem with Jesus was that his home was not Nazareth. His zip code was somewhere else. But Mary knew who he was. She at the least was his home, here. I bet she could call him anything she wanted.
Mom and her brother and sisters are gone. Even the house burned down a few years ago. The rock foundation seems so small. They were a wild bunch. They knew I'd grown up. They thought I was doing some weird stuff. But with them, I was always Davie. And when I think of going to be with them, it's always "up home."
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).
*****************************************
StoryShare, July 8, 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.
