Hunger Dreams
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Hunger Dreams" by John Sumwalt
"Blooming" by Constance Berg
* * * * * * * *
Hunger Dreams
by John Sumwalt
Luke 24:36b-48
While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, Jesus said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.
-- Luke 24:41-42
I just finished reading a book called The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. If you haven't heard of the book you may have heard of the movie, which has been setting records at the box office. It has been the source of some controversy because the story involves teenagers killing other teenagers in a futuristic version of Survivor. Like George Orwell's 1984, the story is a cautionary tale about what can happen in a society when a powerful minority has absolute power and lives in luxury, while the rest of the population is on the brink of starvation, much like North Korea today. Anyone who breaks one of the rigid laws of this fictional country called Panem is executed immediately.
In The Hunger Games, 24 players between the ages of twelve and eighteen, chosen by lot, are forced to fight to the death until only one remains. This horrific spectacle is televised and the whole nation is compelled to watch. It brings to mind the gladiatorial games in ancient Rome. Of the 45 million people in the countries that made up the Roman Empire, most of them did not share in the incredible luxury enjoyed by the nearly one million citizens, who were served by 500,000 slaves, in the city of Rome.
The purpose of the provinces, like Palestine, was to provide as much tax money as could be extracted without bringing about the collapse of the local economy. 500,000 Roman soldiers were deployed throughout the empire to keep order. People who were deemed a threat to "Pax Romana," the Roman peace, were crucified, sometimes by the thousands.
The stone roads that led to Rome were for the rapid deployment of troops and efficient transfer of tribute to the capital. Eventually, one third of the empire's budget went to support the gladiatorial games. 55,000 spectators watched as people and animals were slaughtered all day long. Sometimes the blood ran so thick that they had to put down sand to soak it up so that the games could continue.
This was the world into which Jesus was born and in which he gave his life. This was the unnatural order in which the people who flocked to Jesus subsisted. He was their hope of a better world, the Messiah who would get them out from under the heel of the Roman boot. And this was the reason for the utter despair Jesus followers felt when they saw him crucified.
When Mary came to the tomb that Sunday morning her hope, and the hope of the Jewish nation, was dead too. More painful than this political reality was her personal grief and that of all the disciples who loved him. Their world collapsed when Jesus took his last breath on the cross.
Her heart breaking, Mary had come to prepare Jesus' body for burial. That she was able to come at all was no small thing. Most of the others had fled after his arrest, fearing for their own lives. Mary was one of the few who stayed until the end. She had endured the trauma of Jesus' suffering, and now, still in shock, had come to do the only thing that was left to do.
I experienced a similar kind of shock when my father died in 1998. As a pastor, I had sat at the bedsides and prayed with countless people in their last hours. I had officiated at hundreds of funerals and comforted many a bereaved soul in the days following the death of a loved one -- but nothing prepared me for the death of my father.
My heart ached for him for months -- still does. I feel it as a deep longing for his presence. How could he not be here? I think of Dad as I work at our farm, his farm, where he and I spent so many hours cutting wood, fixing fence, repairing machinery, picking berries, hauling vegetables, cleaning pig pens, talking as we worked, as men and boys do. My grief is a kind of deep hunger that I feel even in my dreams. This kind of loss breaks us for a while.
Like Mary Magdalene in the resurrection account in John's gospel, we feel we have lost an essential part of ourselves. Mary was weeping as she stood outside the tomb. She didn't recognize the man she thought to be the gardener until he spoke her name: "Mary..." The shock of loss turned into another kind of shock: the realization that he was alive. Can you imagine? What would it be like to hear your name spoken by someone you knew to be dead? Through the fog of sorrow and the drowning darkness of grief, Mary heard her beloved teacher speak her name (John 20:11-16).
It was like one of those dreams where something startling occurs and you wake up shaking. In one shocking moment of recognition Mary knew Jesus was alive. It would take years for her, and the church, to assimilate this new reality. In fact, Christians are still debating what it all means. Was Jesus' corpse resuscitated? His disciples were terrified when he suddenly appeared among them, seemingly out of nowhere. Jesus reassured them, saying, "Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." He asked them for something to eat. Yet they testified that he passed through walls. Was Jesus somehow able to rearrange the molecules of his resurrected body? (Luke 24:41-42).
The doubtful Corinthian Christians asked, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" Paul wrote: "There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing and the glory of the earthly is another." What exactly does that mean? If it happened then, why doesn't it happen now? It does. Many have reported meeting Jesus in his heavenly body (1 Corinthians 15:35, 40).
Donald Prom, Wisconsin's longest surviving heart transplant recipient, until his death at the age of seventy in December of 2000, described a healing vision that occurred after a failed heart bypass operation. His doctors told him he would die within a year. But something kept him alive. His wife Marie, mother of the couples nine children, said, "He told me that he had an out of body experience..." that "... he went through a tunnel of light and saw Christ and Christ said, 'You must go back to your family.' Thanks to a heart transplant seven years later, Prom stayed alive almost two more decades..." and "... lived to see 23 more grandchildren" (Peter Maller, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December, 2000).
The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. It is a paradigm shift, a new way of understanding the world. Suddenly there is another dimension of reality to consider. I can't explain it. Nobody can really. Something happened all those years ago that changed the disciples forever -- and is still changing us today.
My father came to me in a dream the other night, one of those dreams that is more real than real. He appeared as his younger self, like I knew him when he was in his late thirties, only better than he had ever looked in life. He was glowing. It felt so good to see him, to be with him again. He didn't say anything. I just looked at him and he looked at me. I can still feel him with me.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller in the Milwaukee area. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
Blooming
by Constance Berg
1 John 3:1-7
"You know how three weeks ago I asked you to speak about your trip to Mexico? Well, could you talk about flowers instead?"
It was only 24 hours before I was to speak at a Mother-Daughter banquet. I cringed. I knew nothing about flowers. My meditation time tripled the next morning.
I cried out to God. What could I say about flowers, for heaven's sake? And how could the topic be changed at the last minute? I had wanted to be inspirational and knowledgeable when I spoke and I was looking forward to speaking about my favorite subject -- Mexico -- my favorite place on the planet. And now I had to speak about flowers! There had to be a reason.
God was more than gracious. During my quiet time that morning I remembered the beautiful orchids growing wild in the jungles. I recalled walking to my preaching assignments in the Guatemalan jungle and seeing breathtaking visions of the most exquisite flowers one could imagine. I'd have to sneak that into my talk.
Then I recalled words that my mother had told me umpteen times when I was young -- blossom into a beautiful flower no matter where you are, no matter who you are with, and no matter what the situation -- an extended version of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's famous "Bloom Where You Are Planted" sentiment. I would make my speech around this point.
My Bible reading was about trusting God and being a child of God. A topic of flowers had reduced me to a fearful child and now the answer lay in scripture. God must want to talk through me, I decided.
I ventured out with my six-year-old daughter and found the church in the small town about fifty miles away. We walked in and people welcomed us warmly.
The hall was decorated, the tables set beautifully, and several ladies had poems and readings about flowers. The meal was delicious and served by several men who were ready to give us anything we needed. Dessert came and suddenly my stomach was in my knees as I quivered and wondered if I was prepared. Would I stumble over my words? Would I make sense? What was my point anyway? And where was my cheat sheet index card?
I was introduced and I smiled as I silently asked the Holy Spirit to use my mouth as a vessel. I knew I wasn't really there to talk about flowers. I was suddenly excited to have the mystery revealed to me too.
I shared about the Mexican orchids and told funny things that had happened to me as a missionary. The audience was enthusiastic. I shared about moving to a new place where I was a fish out of water. I saw understanding nods. I shared the theme my mother had planted in my brain and the thought that I would somehow bloom no matter where I was. I saw several women smiling and one young woman crying.
Then I started to cry. Just a little cry came out, but no one could miss it. I stopped. I had to get a hold of myself.
"I always do this when I talk about my mother. It's not that she's bad, it's that I miss her so terribly much." That was the wrong thing to say. Another cry came out of my well-trained, experienced mouth. I couldn't believe it. It was against the rules of speech etiquette. Well, this was probably going to be my last speech anyway.
I got a hold of myself and continued. "Her motto lifted me up many times during those first years here." I shared about the tulips we discovered when the snow finally started to melt and how I took it as a sign of hope -- a sign that God was with me.
The speech went very well after all. I finished to enthusiastic women on their feet applauding. Maybe my speaking career wasn't over. I sat down and said a hundred prayers of thanksgiving.
Then I felt a tug on my arm.
"I needed to hear what you were saying tonight. Thank you so much!" The young woman who earlier had tears in her eyes shared with me about moving here from a metropolitan area a few months earlier to be with her fiancé. Although she loved him dearly, she couldn't decide if she would be able to live in such a small, rural community so far from her home. That morning she had told her fiancé she would have to think about it. She felt she received her answer from my message of hope.
I hugged her and held her hand. I told her that I was not to be thanked and that I had nothing to do with this. I shared about the change in topic and the strange turn of events. We smiled as we considered that she was probably the reason why.
The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. And great and wondrous will those mysteries be to those who are open to them!
(from Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, Series II, Cycle B, 0-7880-1370-X [CSS Publishing, Company, Inc.: Lima, Ohio], pp. 70-72)
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 22, 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.
"Hunger Dreams" by John Sumwalt
"Blooming" by Constance Berg
* * * * * * * *
Hunger Dreams
by John Sumwalt
Luke 24:36b-48
While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, Jesus said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.
-- Luke 24:41-42
I just finished reading a book called The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. If you haven't heard of the book you may have heard of the movie, which has been setting records at the box office. It has been the source of some controversy because the story involves teenagers killing other teenagers in a futuristic version of Survivor. Like George Orwell's 1984, the story is a cautionary tale about what can happen in a society when a powerful minority has absolute power and lives in luxury, while the rest of the population is on the brink of starvation, much like North Korea today. Anyone who breaks one of the rigid laws of this fictional country called Panem is executed immediately.
In The Hunger Games, 24 players between the ages of twelve and eighteen, chosen by lot, are forced to fight to the death until only one remains. This horrific spectacle is televised and the whole nation is compelled to watch. It brings to mind the gladiatorial games in ancient Rome. Of the 45 million people in the countries that made up the Roman Empire, most of them did not share in the incredible luxury enjoyed by the nearly one million citizens, who were served by 500,000 slaves, in the city of Rome.
The purpose of the provinces, like Palestine, was to provide as much tax money as could be extracted without bringing about the collapse of the local economy. 500,000 Roman soldiers were deployed throughout the empire to keep order. People who were deemed a threat to "Pax Romana," the Roman peace, were crucified, sometimes by the thousands.
The stone roads that led to Rome were for the rapid deployment of troops and efficient transfer of tribute to the capital. Eventually, one third of the empire's budget went to support the gladiatorial games. 55,000 spectators watched as people and animals were slaughtered all day long. Sometimes the blood ran so thick that they had to put down sand to soak it up so that the games could continue.
This was the world into which Jesus was born and in which he gave his life. This was the unnatural order in which the people who flocked to Jesus subsisted. He was their hope of a better world, the Messiah who would get them out from under the heel of the Roman boot. And this was the reason for the utter despair Jesus followers felt when they saw him crucified.
When Mary came to the tomb that Sunday morning her hope, and the hope of the Jewish nation, was dead too. More painful than this political reality was her personal grief and that of all the disciples who loved him. Their world collapsed when Jesus took his last breath on the cross.
Her heart breaking, Mary had come to prepare Jesus' body for burial. That she was able to come at all was no small thing. Most of the others had fled after his arrest, fearing for their own lives. Mary was one of the few who stayed until the end. She had endured the trauma of Jesus' suffering, and now, still in shock, had come to do the only thing that was left to do.
I experienced a similar kind of shock when my father died in 1998. As a pastor, I had sat at the bedsides and prayed with countless people in their last hours. I had officiated at hundreds of funerals and comforted many a bereaved soul in the days following the death of a loved one -- but nothing prepared me for the death of my father.
My heart ached for him for months -- still does. I feel it as a deep longing for his presence. How could he not be here? I think of Dad as I work at our farm, his farm, where he and I spent so many hours cutting wood, fixing fence, repairing machinery, picking berries, hauling vegetables, cleaning pig pens, talking as we worked, as men and boys do. My grief is a kind of deep hunger that I feel even in my dreams. This kind of loss breaks us for a while.
Like Mary Magdalene in the resurrection account in John's gospel, we feel we have lost an essential part of ourselves. Mary was weeping as she stood outside the tomb. She didn't recognize the man she thought to be the gardener until he spoke her name: "Mary..." The shock of loss turned into another kind of shock: the realization that he was alive. Can you imagine? What would it be like to hear your name spoken by someone you knew to be dead? Through the fog of sorrow and the drowning darkness of grief, Mary heard her beloved teacher speak her name (John 20:11-16).
It was like one of those dreams where something startling occurs and you wake up shaking. In one shocking moment of recognition Mary knew Jesus was alive. It would take years for her, and the church, to assimilate this new reality. In fact, Christians are still debating what it all means. Was Jesus' corpse resuscitated? His disciples were terrified when he suddenly appeared among them, seemingly out of nowhere. Jesus reassured them, saying, "Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." He asked them for something to eat. Yet they testified that he passed through walls. Was Jesus somehow able to rearrange the molecules of his resurrected body? (Luke 24:41-42).
The doubtful Corinthian Christians asked, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" Paul wrote: "There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing and the glory of the earthly is another." What exactly does that mean? If it happened then, why doesn't it happen now? It does. Many have reported meeting Jesus in his heavenly body (1 Corinthians 15:35, 40).
Donald Prom, Wisconsin's longest surviving heart transplant recipient, until his death at the age of seventy in December of 2000, described a healing vision that occurred after a failed heart bypass operation. His doctors told him he would die within a year. But something kept him alive. His wife Marie, mother of the couples nine children, said, "He told me that he had an out of body experience..." that "... he went through a tunnel of light and saw Christ and Christ said, 'You must go back to your family.' Thanks to a heart transplant seven years later, Prom stayed alive almost two more decades..." and "... lived to see 23 more grandchildren" (Peter Maller, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December, 2000).
The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. It is a paradigm shift, a new way of understanding the world. Suddenly there is another dimension of reality to consider. I can't explain it. Nobody can really. Something happened all those years ago that changed the disciples forever -- and is still changing us today.
My father came to me in a dream the other night, one of those dreams that is more real than real. He appeared as his younger self, like I knew him when he was in his late thirties, only better than he had ever looked in life. He was glowing. It felt so good to see him, to be with him again. He didn't say anything. I just looked at him and he looked at me. I can still feel him with me.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller in the Milwaukee area. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
Blooming
by Constance Berg
1 John 3:1-7
"You know how three weeks ago I asked you to speak about your trip to Mexico? Well, could you talk about flowers instead?"
It was only 24 hours before I was to speak at a Mother-Daughter banquet. I cringed. I knew nothing about flowers. My meditation time tripled the next morning.
I cried out to God. What could I say about flowers, for heaven's sake? And how could the topic be changed at the last minute? I had wanted to be inspirational and knowledgeable when I spoke and I was looking forward to speaking about my favorite subject -- Mexico -- my favorite place on the planet. And now I had to speak about flowers! There had to be a reason.
God was more than gracious. During my quiet time that morning I remembered the beautiful orchids growing wild in the jungles. I recalled walking to my preaching assignments in the Guatemalan jungle and seeing breathtaking visions of the most exquisite flowers one could imagine. I'd have to sneak that into my talk.
Then I recalled words that my mother had told me umpteen times when I was young -- blossom into a beautiful flower no matter where you are, no matter who you are with, and no matter what the situation -- an extended version of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's famous "Bloom Where You Are Planted" sentiment. I would make my speech around this point.
My Bible reading was about trusting God and being a child of God. A topic of flowers had reduced me to a fearful child and now the answer lay in scripture. God must want to talk through me, I decided.
I ventured out with my six-year-old daughter and found the church in the small town about fifty miles away. We walked in and people welcomed us warmly.
The hall was decorated, the tables set beautifully, and several ladies had poems and readings about flowers. The meal was delicious and served by several men who were ready to give us anything we needed. Dessert came and suddenly my stomach was in my knees as I quivered and wondered if I was prepared. Would I stumble over my words? Would I make sense? What was my point anyway? And where was my cheat sheet index card?
I was introduced and I smiled as I silently asked the Holy Spirit to use my mouth as a vessel. I knew I wasn't really there to talk about flowers. I was suddenly excited to have the mystery revealed to me too.
I shared about the Mexican orchids and told funny things that had happened to me as a missionary. The audience was enthusiastic. I shared about moving to a new place where I was a fish out of water. I saw understanding nods. I shared the theme my mother had planted in my brain and the thought that I would somehow bloom no matter where I was. I saw several women smiling and one young woman crying.
Then I started to cry. Just a little cry came out, but no one could miss it. I stopped. I had to get a hold of myself.
"I always do this when I talk about my mother. It's not that she's bad, it's that I miss her so terribly much." That was the wrong thing to say. Another cry came out of my well-trained, experienced mouth. I couldn't believe it. It was against the rules of speech etiquette. Well, this was probably going to be my last speech anyway.
I got a hold of myself and continued. "Her motto lifted me up many times during those first years here." I shared about the tulips we discovered when the snow finally started to melt and how I took it as a sign of hope -- a sign that God was with me.
The speech went very well after all. I finished to enthusiastic women on their feet applauding. Maybe my speaking career wasn't over. I sat down and said a hundred prayers of thanksgiving.
Then I felt a tug on my arm.
"I needed to hear what you were saying tonight. Thank you so much!" The young woman who earlier had tears in her eyes shared with me about moving here from a metropolitan area a few months earlier to be with her fiancé. Although she loved him dearly, she couldn't decide if she would be able to live in such a small, rural community so far from her home. That morning she had told her fiancé she would have to think about it. She felt she received her answer from my message of hope.
I hugged her and held her hand. I told her that I was not to be thanked and that I had nothing to do with this. I shared about the change in topic and the strange turn of events. We smiled as we considered that she was probably the reason why.
The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. And great and wondrous will those mysteries be to those who are open to them!
(from Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, Series II, Cycle B, 0-7880-1370-X [CSS Publishing, Company, Inc.: Lima, Ohio], pp. 70-72)
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 22, 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.
