Love Is Hard
Illustration
Stories
Contents
“Love is Hard” by C. David McKirachan
“Interaction With Us” by C. David McKirachan
“The Question” by Keith Hewitt
Love is Hard
by C. David McKirachan
John 17:6-19
Having a kid is one of the most challenging experiences anyone can face. Having never attempted to climb Mount Everest, I don’t know about that; neither have I been elected to national office and tried to actually get things accomplished, nope, never done it. So, perhaps my parameters for comparison are limited. But I have been a parent, and I have tried with all of me to bring the children entrusted to my care beyond survival, to lives of quality and joy (I think the phrase is ‘…serve them with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.’)
Working as a pastor is the only thing that compares to the frustration, exhaustion, glory, and joy of investing one’s life into a child’s upbringing. And Jesus’ prayer in the upper room for his disciples sounds like a parent’s prayer, or some of the prayers I’ve lifted up for the leaders and the people of a church that I have served.
When I’ve sent my children out the door to school, it didn’t seem to matter how old they were, I did it in abject terror. I’d been there. I’d lived through good and shall we say not so good teachers. I’d struggled with the cruelty of other children, insecure and trying to carve out a niche among their peers by finding someone to mock or tease. I’d been bewildered by bullies, immature at all ages. I’d struggled with grinding routine that demanded I give up creativity in favor of system. And I’d been nearly crushed by boredom when redundancy seemed like such a terrible waste of time. I was told that the major purpose of education is to encourage socialization rather than teaching the how’s and the why’s and the wherefore’s of the universe. I’ve been there and done that and experienced all of that, so, sending my children into the jungle of school and worse, the battlefield of life, filled me with anxiety and terror.
This prayer the Lord lifted as he faced leaving the bunch that he’d brought along ‘The Way’ always made me feel closer to him. These were feelings I had. And here the Christ offers them up, in all his wisdom and power, in all his rock-solid faith and understanding and perspective, Jesus knew it wasn’t going to be easy for these guys. And the more they understood, the more they loved, the more they gave themselves to his call, the more they would feel the broken nature of the world and the people that they were ministering to.
It seems that the very nature of this process of giving oneself to the call, the more honest and loving one is, the more that brokenness impacts on us. We become the suffering servants outlined in Isaiah. ‘I consecrate myself that they may be consecrated…’ Consecration is what a priest does to a sacrifice.
Perhaps that kind of self-giving is what makes parenting and ministry so challenging. It demands that we be constantly giving ourselves and our children away, ‘laying ourselves and our children down.’
There’s an old country song, “Love is a rose, but you’d better not pick it. It only grows when it’s on the vine. Hand full of thorns and you know you’ve missed it. You lose your love, when you use the word mine.”
Such love is hard, brutal actually. There’s no credit or success. There are few thank yous. The only reason you get into such business is for the sake of the other. You give without counting the cost. Just so Paul said, “Have this mind among yourselves as was in Christ Jesus…” and so begins the doxology centered on Christ emptying himself.
Yes, such love is hard, but it is the only thing that yields transformation. And that is what we are celebrating.
In the season of Easter, we celebrate not only Christ’s transformation from death to life, but our transformation from darkness to light.
He is risen!
* * *
Interaction With Us
by C. David McKirachan
1 John 5:9-13
Over the years of my ministry there have been many profoundly serious Christians that approached me, apologetically, almost fearfully, wondering if they could still consider themselves to be Christian. It was my turn to wonder and to invite them into my office for a cup of coffee and a sit-down time of inquiry and listening. Exactly what was on their mind, why did they feel they might possibly be a non-Christian?
I never got an answer of an attraction to devil worship or orgies or other juicy horrors. Invariably, it had to do with one of two things: either the virgin birth or Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb or both. They worried that if they didn’t believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection of the body, basic parts of the church’s doctrine, their participation in church worship, church fellowship, and the church’s mission made them hypocrites.
My first question was, did they believe in God?
My second question was, was Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior?
None of them had a hard time with an all-powerful God.
None of them had a hard time with a personal Savior, a man who died on the cross to show human beings how much we are loved by this all-powerful God. And they didn’t have a hard time with the Holy Spirit! That one always surprised me.
It was just the virgin birth and the resurrection.
After this scenario with these two issues got brought up twice, I began worrying if I was saying something in my preaching or teaching that muddied the waters around Christmas and Easter. So, I called the experts, my father and my mother. They had more experience in the ministry than I did, and they’d read a lot more books than I had.
My father brought up the struggles of the early church parents to corral these issues and other wild beasts in the doctrine jungle into some sort of order, reminding me that the creeds were the work of the Holy Spirit. And concurrently, political deals, hammered out with blood, sweat, and tears. These questions were deeper than how Jesus got “begatted” and resuscitated. These had to do with the identity of God and God’s relationship with us. Neither of which can be understood by our small logic, creeds, or brain capacity.
My mother told me there was a lot more going on with these people than a struggle with orthodoxy. I was obviously doing my job, helping to open these people to sense the nudges of God (she was always building me up). Then she quoted Dostoyevsky: “Faith is forged in a furnace of doubt.” (Like I said, they read and remembered.) And she told me to ask them how things are going at home. The real issue might be a loss of their own sense of identity or sense of control. Smart she was.
So, I stopped worrying about my own heretical corruption of these believers and brought it back to the questioners. I said, to paraphrase: Don’t let the miracles of God become obstacles that get between you and God. They are evidence of the presence of this infinite being and that being’s interaction with us. There are bound to be some scraped knees when we get into that scrum. Don’t forget Jacob wrestling with the angel and his new name, given to him by the angel, ‘Israel, he who contends or wrestles with God’. Then there was the father of the possessed child who cried to Jesus, ‘Lord I believe, help my unbelief.’ And don’t forget, we’re not in control. Never have been, never will be. Life’s not like that. So, trying to understand this unfolding miracle we call life will leave us at a dead end. And following my mother’s instructions, I asked how things were going at home. And did a lot of listening.
And I decided if a few had asked, there were many more who wondered and doubted. So, I preached on it. I told them that’s the kind of Savior we have, a Savior who loves us in spite of our stubbornness and our insistence on holding onto fear. As John told us, we can have confidence in this God.
Nuff Said.
They liked the sermon. Maybe that was because I kept it short.
* * *
The Question
by Keith Hewitt
John 17:6-19
The question came up…again.
It came up every night at about the same time — coincidentally (or maybe not) after dinner, when bellies were full and the wine skins were not, and the men were starting to relax. Relaxation was not easy to come by, when it seemed like there was a suspicious glance, an accusing face around every corner — or worse yet, a Roman soldier looking to score points with his centurion by flushing out a rebel, or a Temple guard hoping to curry favor with the high priests by arresting a heretic.
Relaxation was something that only came at night, behind carefully bolted doors and bolstered by equal parts wine and a sense of strength in numbers, seasoned with the knowledge of what had happened to their Teacher, beginning with that terrible night of betrayal and ending with the mind bending mystery of the Resurrection. With relaxation came curiosity about the future — their future — and loosened tongues.
So the question came up…again.
“Who d’you think is going to replace…you know?” It was a fisherman from Galilee, this time, a kid named Aaron. The Teacher had healed him of a fever the previous fall, and Aaron had left his nets behind to follow ever since. As he asked the question, his voice dipped at the end, so the last two words were just above a whisper, as though saying them aloud might summon the condemned soul of the traitor.
A few of the men mumbled apotropaic blessings or passages from Scripture, one or two spat on the floor — most just stared into the depths of personal space, recalling the man who had betrayed their Teacher for a handful of silver and a pat on the head. They had all known him and some had known him well, but no one — except Jesus — had known him for what he turned out to be. Unconsciously, some of the men pulled their tunics a little tighter, trying to ward off a chill that didn’t come from the outside.
“I hear they’re going to be choosing someone soon,” one of the other men said.
Someone always said that, too.
Having chosen his twelve closest disciples, Jesus became part of a set: Jesus and the Twelve. And that had been good — twelve was a special number, and people could appreciate the strength and meaning it brought. To refer, now, to Jesus and the Eleven seemed awkward. Eleven did not carry the same meaning as twelve, but even more disturbing was that it reminded people of the betrayal — to some, it even reminded them that Jesus had failed to recognize the presence of evil within his own inner circle.
Now, some weeks later, it did seem likely that the Eleven would be picking a successor to the traitor at any time.
Barsabbas, who had followed Jesus from the earliest of days, raised a cup and said, “Perhaps they will choose one of the faithful women who discovered the empty tomb.” There was a moment of silence, then he could no longer keep a straight face and broke into a broad smile; everyone laughed at the absurdity of choosing a woman to be one of the Twelve. In the wake of the absurd, more names were tossed into the conversation. Though none of them reached the same level of implausibility as a woman, someone was always able to quickly add a shortcoming to each name.
In a corner of the room, shadowy because of the indifferent lighting of the oil lamps, a man named Matthias watched the discussion. Smiling, sometimes laughing, he reflected on the realization that no one in the room could really measure up to the other Disciples. Sure, the Disciples had broken at the moment Jesus needed them most — but in the last few days he had come to realize that only by breaking…only by fleeing…had they ensured that they would be around and alive to spread the good news of the Resurrection afterward. Certainly, they had struggled with the teachings of Jesus — but he had also taken special time with them, to make sure they understood what they needed to understand. Matthias had seen it happen time and time again, since he first began to follow Jesus in Galilee, back at the very beginning.
Anybody in the room — any one of the hundred-plus men who remained in Jerusalem after the Resurrection — could replace the traitor, Judas, but that was a low bar to clear. The Disciples needed to find someone who would not just replace and surpass the miserable example of the traitor, but would also be able to stand on an equal footing with them as they prepared for whatever was to come next.
And what would that be, he wondered. Twelve men standing up to the priests and Pharisees, to reform and restore the faith of Israel, to rescue it from what it had become — that would be the work of a lifetime, at least. Any sane man would say that it was an act of folly, impossible to achieve, and who could argue? He — they all — had seen how the people in power had crushed and ground to dust any kind of challenge, all under the guise of protecting the faith — a corrupted version of it, at least.
It’s all well and good to have faith, Matthias mused, but to take on a challenge like that would require something extraordinary…unshakable. Who in this room, he wondered, could possibly measure up to that?
“Merciful Lord,” he murmured, “please help them find the right person.”
He was still wondering when there was a tap on his shoulder. Startled, he raised his head, turned to see Peter, himself, beckoning him to follow to another room. He sat, frozen, for a moment, then Peter leaned over and said quietly in his ear, “Brother Matthias, come with me. We have work for you to do.”
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 17, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
“Love is Hard” by C. David McKirachan
“Interaction With Us” by C. David McKirachan
“The Question” by Keith Hewitt
Love is Hard
by C. David McKirachan
John 17:6-19
Having a kid is one of the most challenging experiences anyone can face. Having never attempted to climb Mount Everest, I don’t know about that; neither have I been elected to national office and tried to actually get things accomplished, nope, never done it. So, perhaps my parameters for comparison are limited. But I have been a parent, and I have tried with all of me to bring the children entrusted to my care beyond survival, to lives of quality and joy (I think the phrase is ‘…serve them with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.’)
Working as a pastor is the only thing that compares to the frustration, exhaustion, glory, and joy of investing one’s life into a child’s upbringing. And Jesus’ prayer in the upper room for his disciples sounds like a parent’s prayer, or some of the prayers I’ve lifted up for the leaders and the people of a church that I have served.
When I’ve sent my children out the door to school, it didn’t seem to matter how old they were, I did it in abject terror. I’d been there. I’d lived through good and shall we say not so good teachers. I’d struggled with the cruelty of other children, insecure and trying to carve out a niche among their peers by finding someone to mock or tease. I’d been bewildered by bullies, immature at all ages. I’d struggled with grinding routine that demanded I give up creativity in favor of system. And I’d been nearly crushed by boredom when redundancy seemed like such a terrible waste of time. I was told that the major purpose of education is to encourage socialization rather than teaching the how’s and the why’s and the wherefore’s of the universe. I’ve been there and done that and experienced all of that, so, sending my children into the jungle of school and worse, the battlefield of life, filled me with anxiety and terror.
This prayer the Lord lifted as he faced leaving the bunch that he’d brought along ‘The Way’ always made me feel closer to him. These were feelings I had. And here the Christ offers them up, in all his wisdom and power, in all his rock-solid faith and understanding and perspective, Jesus knew it wasn’t going to be easy for these guys. And the more they understood, the more they loved, the more they gave themselves to his call, the more they would feel the broken nature of the world and the people that they were ministering to.
It seems that the very nature of this process of giving oneself to the call, the more honest and loving one is, the more that brokenness impacts on us. We become the suffering servants outlined in Isaiah. ‘I consecrate myself that they may be consecrated…’ Consecration is what a priest does to a sacrifice.
Perhaps that kind of self-giving is what makes parenting and ministry so challenging. It demands that we be constantly giving ourselves and our children away, ‘laying ourselves and our children down.’
There’s an old country song, “Love is a rose, but you’d better not pick it. It only grows when it’s on the vine. Hand full of thorns and you know you’ve missed it. You lose your love, when you use the word mine.”
Such love is hard, brutal actually. There’s no credit or success. There are few thank yous. The only reason you get into such business is for the sake of the other. You give without counting the cost. Just so Paul said, “Have this mind among yourselves as was in Christ Jesus…” and so begins the doxology centered on Christ emptying himself.
Yes, such love is hard, but it is the only thing that yields transformation. And that is what we are celebrating.
In the season of Easter, we celebrate not only Christ’s transformation from death to life, but our transformation from darkness to light.
He is risen!
* * *
Interaction With Us
by C. David McKirachan
1 John 5:9-13
Over the years of my ministry there have been many profoundly serious Christians that approached me, apologetically, almost fearfully, wondering if they could still consider themselves to be Christian. It was my turn to wonder and to invite them into my office for a cup of coffee and a sit-down time of inquiry and listening. Exactly what was on their mind, why did they feel they might possibly be a non-Christian?
I never got an answer of an attraction to devil worship or orgies or other juicy horrors. Invariably, it had to do with one of two things: either the virgin birth or Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb or both. They worried that if they didn’t believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection of the body, basic parts of the church’s doctrine, their participation in church worship, church fellowship, and the church’s mission made them hypocrites.
My first question was, did they believe in God?
My second question was, was Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior?
None of them had a hard time with an all-powerful God.
None of them had a hard time with a personal Savior, a man who died on the cross to show human beings how much we are loved by this all-powerful God. And they didn’t have a hard time with the Holy Spirit! That one always surprised me.
It was just the virgin birth and the resurrection.
After this scenario with these two issues got brought up twice, I began worrying if I was saying something in my preaching or teaching that muddied the waters around Christmas and Easter. So, I called the experts, my father and my mother. They had more experience in the ministry than I did, and they’d read a lot more books than I had.
My father brought up the struggles of the early church parents to corral these issues and other wild beasts in the doctrine jungle into some sort of order, reminding me that the creeds were the work of the Holy Spirit. And concurrently, political deals, hammered out with blood, sweat, and tears. These questions were deeper than how Jesus got “begatted” and resuscitated. These had to do with the identity of God and God’s relationship with us. Neither of which can be understood by our small logic, creeds, or brain capacity.
My mother told me there was a lot more going on with these people than a struggle with orthodoxy. I was obviously doing my job, helping to open these people to sense the nudges of God (she was always building me up). Then she quoted Dostoyevsky: “Faith is forged in a furnace of doubt.” (Like I said, they read and remembered.) And she told me to ask them how things are going at home. The real issue might be a loss of their own sense of identity or sense of control. Smart she was.
So, I stopped worrying about my own heretical corruption of these believers and brought it back to the questioners. I said, to paraphrase: Don’t let the miracles of God become obstacles that get between you and God. They are evidence of the presence of this infinite being and that being’s interaction with us. There are bound to be some scraped knees when we get into that scrum. Don’t forget Jacob wrestling with the angel and his new name, given to him by the angel, ‘Israel, he who contends or wrestles with God’. Then there was the father of the possessed child who cried to Jesus, ‘Lord I believe, help my unbelief.’ And don’t forget, we’re not in control. Never have been, never will be. Life’s not like that. So, trying to understand this unfolding miracle we call life will leave us at a dead end. And following my mother’s instructions, I asked how things were going at home. And did a lot of listening.
And I decided if a few had asked, there were many more who wondered and doubted. So, I preached on it. I told them that’s the kind of Savior we have, a Savior who loves us in spite of our stubbornness and our insistence on holding onto fear. As John told us, we can have confidence in this God.
Nuff Said.
They liked the sermon. Maybe that was because I kept it short.
* * *
The Question
by Keith Hewitt
John 17:6-19
The question came up…again.
It came up every night at about the same time — coincidentally (or maybe not) after dinner, when bellies were full and the wine skins were not, and the men were starting to relax. Relaxation was not easy to come by, when it seemed like there was a suspicious glance, an accusing face around every corner — or worse yet, a Roman soldier looking to score points with his centurion by flushing out a rebel, or a Temple guard hoping to curry favor with the high priests by arresting a heretic.
Relaxation was something that only came at night, behind carefully bolted doors and bolstered by equal parts wine and a sense of strength in numbers, seasoned with the knowledge of what had happened to their Teacher, beginning with that terrible night of betrayal and ending with the mind bending mystery of the Resurrection. With relaxation came curiosity about the future — their future — and loosened tongues.
So the question came up…again.
“Who d’you think is going to replace…you know?” It was a fisherman from Galilee, this time, a kid named Aaron. The Teacher had healed him of a fever the previous fall, and Aaron had left his nets behind to follow ever since. As he asked the question, his voice dipped at the end, so the last two words were just above a whisper, as though saying them aloud might summon the condemned soul of the traitor.
A few of the men mumbled apotropaic blessings or passages from Scripture, one or two spat on the floor — most just stared into the depths of personal space, recalling the man who had betrayed their Teacher for a handful of silver and a pat on the head. They had all known him and some had known him well, but no one — except Jesus — had known him for what he turned out to be. Unconsciously, some of the men pulled their tunics a little tighter, trying to ward off a chill that didn’t come from the outside.
“I hear they’re going to be choosing someone soon,” one of the other men said.
Someone always said that, too.
Having chosen his twelve closest disciples, Jesus became part of a set: Jesus and the Twelve. And that had been good — twelve was a special number, and people could appreciate the strength and meaning it brought. To refer, now, to Jesus and the Eleven seemed awkward. Eleven did not carry the same meaning as twelve, but even more disturbing was that it reminded people of the betrayal — to some, it even reminded them that Jesus had failed to recognize the presence of evil within his own inner circle.
Now, some weeks later, it did seem likely that the Eleven would be picking a successor to the traitor at any time.
Barsabbas, who had followed Jesus from the earliest of days, raised a cup and said, “Perhaps they will choose one of the faithful women who discovered the empty tomb.” There was a moment of silence, then he could no longer keep a straight face and broke into a broad smile; everyone laughed at the absurdity of choosing a woman to be one of the Twelve. In the wake of the absurd, more names were tossed into the conversation. Though none of them reached the same level of implausibility as a woman, someone was always able to quickly add a shortcoming to each name.
In a corner of the room, shadowy because of the indifferent lighting of the oil lamps, a man named Matthias watched the discussion. Smiling, sometimes laughing, he reflected on the realization that no one in the room could really measure up to the other Disciples. Sure, the Disciples had broken at the moment Jesus needed them most — but in the last few days he had come to realize that only by breaking…only by fleeing…had they ensured that they would be around and alive to spread the good news of the Resurrection afterward. Certainly, they had struggled with the teachings of Jesus — but he had also taken special time with them, to make sure they understood what they needed to understand. Matthias had seen it happen time and time again, since he first began to follow Jesus in Galilee, back at the very beginning.
Anybody in the room — any one of the hundred-plus men who remained in Jerusalem after the Resurrection — could replace the traitor, Judas, but that was a low bar to clear. The Disciples needed to find someone who would not just replace and surpass the miserable example of the traitor, but would also be able to stand on an equal footing with them as they prepared for whatever was to come next.
And what would that be, he wondered. Twelve men standing up to the priests and Pharisees, to reform and restore the faith of Israel, to rescue it from what it had become — that would be the work of a lifetime, at least. Any sane man would say that it was an act of folly, impossible to achieve, and who could argue? He — they all — had seen how the people in power had crushed and ground to dust any kind of challenge, all under the guise of protecting the faith — a corrupted version of it, at least.
It’s all well and good to have faith, Matthias mused, but to take on a challenge like that would require something extraordinary…unshakable. Who in this room, he wondered, could possibly measure up to that?
“Merciful Lord,” he murmured, “please help them find the right person.”
He was still wondering when there was a tap on his shoulder. Startled, he raised his head, turned to see Peter, himself, beckoning him to follow to another room. He sat, frozen, for a moment, then Peter leaned over and said quietly in his ear, “Brother Matthias, come with me. We have work for you to do.”
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 17, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
