A Mother Forced To Choose
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "A Mother Forced to Choose"
Shining Moments: "An Unexpected Song" by Derrick Sanderson
Good Stories: "What Are You Looking For?"
Scrap Pile: "Tsunami Sermon" by Nathan Nettleson
What's Up This Week
by John Sumwalt
There are many inspiring stories coming out of South Asia since the tsunami struck on December 26. I think this topic will be a subject of preaching for some time, like 9/11 stories that are still being told in pulpits and church school classrooms around the world. Check out Jillian Searle's dramatic deliverance story in A Story to Live By, and Nathan Nettleson's powerful tsunami sermon in the Scrap Pile. Nathan addresses some of the hard questions raised by a natural disaster of this scope:
"We are afraid to even speak the name of God, aren't we? For inside there is a horrible question that we dare not face, that we don't know what to do with. It is not just that our faith seems to lack adequate words of comfort. It is that our faith is not sure that God is not to blame."
I did something last Sunday that I can't remember ever doing before in 33 years of ministry. I read someone else's sermon from the pulpit. I believe Nathan Nettleson's reflections on the tsunami catastrophe that is still shaking our world is truly an inspired word delivered by a master of sermon writing. (Take a look at the other worship resources available on Nathan's website Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources: http://LaughingBird.net)
A Story to Live By
A Mother Forced to Choose
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
Psalm 40:2
Few stories from the tsunami disaster in the Far East have had a happy ending. Vacationer Jillian Searle of Perth, Australia, "was forced to make the excruciating decision to let go of her five-year-old son Lachie or risk them both drowning along with her 20-month-old when the tsunami crashed through her hotel in Phuket on Sunday.... The Willetton mother knew Lachie could not swim and was afraid of water. But she also knew that if she tried to hold on to them both they would all be lost. As her strength waned she appealed to a young girl nearby to grab Lachie and hold on to him so she could hold little Blake.... Jillian thought she would never see Lachie again as he screamed for her not to let go and the water surged as high as her neck. When the young girl next saw Jillian, she told her she had tried to hold on but had been forced to let go of the boy and had lost him.... They had almost given up hope when [two hours later] they found him wandering around with a security guard searching for them, and they grabbed him from the man's arms. Lachie had been clinging alone to a door in the lobby for nearly two hours with his head just above water, waiting for it to subside. 'I cried for Mum for a long time and then I was quiet,' he told his dad later. 'I was waiting for the water to go and then I got down.' "
(From "Survivors," by Natasha Granath and Gareth Parker, The West Australian, December 30, 2004.)
Shining Moments
An Unexpected Song
by Derrick Sanderson
The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me.
Isaiah 49:1b
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40:2-3
Deep down, I have always known that God has been in my life, but I am a very independent person and I find it hard to listen to God's will -- especially when things aren't going the way that I planned them. Fortunately for me, God knows this. When the time comes that I need to receive his message, he lets me know in a way that I cannot miss. Without God's intervention I know that I would not be alive today.
The problems began with my relationship with my father, or I should say lack thereof. My parents got divorced when I was two and my father decided to move to southern California, separating himself from my brother and me by 2,800 miles. His visits were few and far between, leaving all of my parental guidance in the hands of my mother. My brother tried his best to be a father figure in my life by teaching me how to ride a bike and things of that nature, but he was too young to truly be the kind of parental figure that I needed and craved as a very strong-willed child.
As I got older, I started to think of my father in terms of what I needed and wanted. Like any young boy, I wanted my father to be at my soccer games. I wanted him to take me out fishing. I wanted to feel his love and compassion. In short, I wanted him to be there for me day in and day out. My father had always told me that he would be there for me, but there was only one time in my life when he actually was. The love-hate relationship that many sons have with their fathers quickly grew into a hate-only relationship for me. I hated him for all of the times that he said he would be there for me and then hung up the phone and went about his life. I hated him for missing my childhood. I hated him for not disciplining me when I caused problems. Most of all, I hated it when he said that he loved me.
It was at the peak of this hatred, during my teen years, that my father was struck a crucial blow: he was diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). PSP is an incurable disease and the symptoms are untreatable. That meant that not only was he going to die from this disease, he was going to die painfully from its side effects. Unfortunately, the life expectancy is unknown with this disease because it affects everyone individually and because many of the PSP victims die of the symptoms rather than the disease. My father's condition seemed at first to be progressing slowly, starting with some difficulty eating food and loss of voluntary eye movement. However, his condition became exponentially worse in a rather short period of time, forcing my father to move into an assisted living community.
I had seen my father only twice in the previous two years, and I decided that since his condition was worsening rapidly I would go visit him over my Thanksgiving break from school. I flew out to California and stayed at the house with my stepmom. Because of my father's condition, and because he was living in the assisted living community, I only got to spend a short amount of time with him. It was depressingly apparent, however, that the strong man I once knew no longer existed. All that was left was a withered, hunched-over middle-aged man on the brink of defeat.
One night, we both decided to get a professional massage to relieve my father of some of the muscle tension that PSP caused. I didn't think anything negative would come out of the experience, but I was wrong. At the spa, I had to help my dad undress and get onto the massage table in a semi-comfortable position so that he could get his massage. I left the room to the sound of my father moaning in discomfort and embarrassment that he could not longer do these things on his own.
My own massage relaxed my mind and body and helped me forget what I had just witnessed and the distance that had grown between us. Then as I lay half sleeping on the table, a knock came at the door. My father's masseuse entered and told me that his massage was done and that he needed help getting dressed. I hurriedly put on my clothes and went to help him. As I entered the room, he was struggling desperately to right himself. I quickly but tenderly helped him sit up. Even this simple motion caused him a great amount of discomfort. I helped him dress, and as I was putting on his shoes he said, "Why did this happen to me? I hate this." I could say nothing other than, "I know, Dad, I know."
Time went on and I became more and more disgusted with myself. No matter how hard I tried, I could not forgive my father for what he had -- or had not -- done to me. By early spring of the next year, the PSP had greatly weakened his immune system, leaving him victim to a lung infection. Normally, such an infection wouldn't be a big deal, but because of his state, he had to be admitted to the hospital.
My stepmom did a great job of keeping us updated on his condition. She relayed the doctor's thoughts on my father's condition: he should recover shortly with the help of an air tube. Within a week or two, my father was doing much better and was looking forward to being released from the hospital. However, once the air tube was removed, the infection quickly took hold again, forcing him to stay in the hospital. Sensing that his days might be numbered, my brother and I decided to go and visit. I had a three-day weekend coming up a couple of weeks later, and I decided that we should go then.
Three days later, I was taken out of my second period class and my mother told me my father had died the night before. I sat in silence as they told me that, late the night before, he had painfully pulled the air tube out of his esophagus. They told me that he hadn't made a sound, despite ripping everything from his lungs into his mouth, and that he had died quickly once off the machine. I was in disbelief at first because that was not the man I knew: my father never gave up. But I realized that he hadn't given up, he simply couldn't handle being sick anymore or causing pain and sorrow to his loved ones.
Before he died, he had decided that he wanted to be buried in Marshall, Wisconsin, on the family farm. As I lowered his ashes into the ground, a hatred for myself started to stir within me. As the days passed after the funeral, I sank deeper and deeper into depression and began to feel more and more helpless and alone. I utterly hated myself and my life. I had tried to live my father's dying days according to my own schedule. I had failed to acknowledge that his situation was a bigger issue than my own life, and I couldn't handle that realization. I denounced God, claiming that he couldn't be all good if he could do this to me.
My strong independence kept me from seeking help from my family, friends, counselors, and especially God. Even when gestures were made, I wouldn't let anyone help me. As my hatred grew, so did the feeling that I was a waste of space. I began to think that life would be much better without me. Suicide became more and more appealing each day. I never considered it seriously until I reached the point when I couldn't handle it anymore, and I decided that I was going to kill myself. When I got home from school, I locked myself in the bathroom and held a razor blade to my wrist. I took one last look into the mirror and said to myself, "Good-bye, I'm sorry." But something inside kept me from making the cut. I couldn't bear to make my family feel the way I had felt after my father took away the chance for me to say good-bye. I didn't want to go like that, at least not at this time. So I pulled through the rest of my senior year in high school, hating every moment of my worthless existence, especially time spent around extended family.
A blessing was waiting for me in the form of an invitation to be a counselor at a United Methodist youth summer church camp called YOMICA. I'm not completely sure why I accepted the invitation, but I thought hanging out with kids for a week would be a nice escape from my life. I was a little uncomfortable with the decision, seeing that I didn't think God was good, but since the camp was fast approaching, I figured it was unfair of me to back out and I felt obligated to give it a shot.
Camp started, and I felt awkwardly out of place. I was singing and praying about how God was good and how he could heal our pain, but I didn't believe he was good and I thought he was the cause of my pain. To say the least, I was simply going through the motions. But then the greatest moment of my life occurred.
It was a warm July night, and I was sitting with my campers in the amphitheater-style chapel, overlooking the lake that bordered the camp, trying to avoid as much of the devotion as possible. I paused from singing and noticed how brightly the moon was shining upon the log cross. It was at that point much brighter than when we had begun the devotion. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed it, but everyone was too involved in the service. I took a moment and looked up at the sky and said, "God, I don't know what is going on in my life, but I've had enough of this." As my eyes focused back on the cross, the children's singing cut back into my consciousness with "Father, I adore you, and I'll lay my life before you. How I love you." At that moment my heart swelled and the air painfully escaped my lungs and I heard "Be still and know that I am God; set me as a seal upon your heart." Now, I'm not claiming that God was actually talking to me, because I don't really know how that works. But from somewhere inside of me I heard -- or better yet felt -- that message. As I struggled for air, I couldn't focus on anything but that moonlit cross. My mind thought about nothing but the glorious song of those beautiful children. For the first time in my life I was at peace, and for the first time in a long time I was truly happy. I was happy to be alive and thankful for God's message.
Derrick Sanderson is a student at Viterbo University in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, majoring in biology with a minor in environmental studies. He is a member of St. Aiden's Episcopal Church in Hartford, Wisconsin.
Good Stories
What Are You Looking For?
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?"
John 1:35-38
After trying everything else, Shelly was present for her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Skeptical and listening half-heartedly at first, the words of Martha caught her attention. Martha told the group, "I just knew that I could handle alcohol and my other problems on my own, but I couldn't. Seven years ago I came to my first AA meeting, and since that time I have grown as a person beyond anything I could have ever imagined."
Martha exuded confidence and depth. She spoke of a power "higher that I," the God of Jesus Christ, and the way in which God now lived at the center of her life. Her words oozed with sincere encouragement and concern. Most of all, Martha exhibited a thankfulness which words could not express. Shelly, who came to the meeting doubtful that anything she would hear would change the way she felt or thought, made her way to Martha when the meeting was over. "I want what you have," Shelly told Martha. "I want what you have."
Shelly wanted the compassion and depth and hope which Martha knew, but she may not have realized fully how Martha came to know those things. Martha learned compassion from a time of deep personal suffering. She acquired spiritual depth from hours of praying when there was nowhere else to turn. She discovered hope by taking one step at a time because "one day at a time" was too much to be expected.
Shelly said, "I want what you have. Where do I get it?" And Martha told her, "It comes from being right where you are and doing just what you are doing." Martha went on to tell Shelly the oddest story about learning compassion when we are hurting, and learning love when we are excluded, and learning hope when we are helpless.
(Adapted from And Then Came the Angel by William B. Kincaid III, CSS Publishing Company, 1998.)
Scrap Pile
Tsunami Sermon
by Nathan Nettleson
A January 2005sermon in response to the south Asia tsunami disaster
Texts: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18
Nine nights ago we gathered here to sing and celebrate. We told stories about a baby, a baby who would save the world, a baby whose birth was greeted by angels, a baby whose birth meant tidings of joy for all people everywhere. We spoke of God-made-flesh -- cute, chubby baby flesh. We sang familiar songs. We enjoyed familiar company. We smiled at baby Piper playing over here as we sang about the baby. We drank champagne and ate Christmas cake. God was in heaven and all was well with the world. Or so it seemed.
But all was not well with the world. A pressure was building up deep beneath the surface; two unyielding forces were pushing against each other. And we sang on, oblivious. And others partied on and holidayed on, walked along moonlit beaches hand in hand, wrapped final presents as the kids fell asleep. But underneath, the pressure grew and grew.
"All is calm, all is bright," we sang, "sleep in heavenly peace." "Now you hear of endless bliss," we sang, "while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love." "We will live forevermore, because of Christmas Day," we sang. But the pressure grew and grew, knowing nothing of the bliss of our songs or the angels' watch.
Nothing gave way that night, or the next. But the pressure went right on building. And the next morning all hell broke loose. It was a simple thing, really. Those two great forces pushing against one another -- one slipped a bit. The earth shuddered; the pressure was released. All quite simple. The sudden movement caused a wave -- quite explainable.
But as the churches went on singing that Sunday morning, singing songs about that lovely baby again, that wave was tearing babies out of people's arms, sucking beds out through hotel windows with people still in them, dumping sharks in swimming pools, turning idyllic beachside villages into churning soups of angry water and broken glass and car parts and blood and corrugated iron and dying children and splintered wood. It was all over in minutes. The water ran back into the sea, taking with it whatever it wished, whatever it hadn't impaled or trapped or buried.
We've all seen pictures of what it left behind. Haunting horrible pictures, mud and ruins and corpses, tens of thousands of corpses -- old, young, men, women, the life sucked out of them. Dead children strewn everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of dead babies.
What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? What child is this who laid to rest in the mud and devastation of Aceh? And what child is this? And this? And this? Who knows? Corpses everywhere, battered lifeless unnamed corpses. Every now and then there is a scream and one of the living gives a name to one of the dead and grieves, and thousands more lay waste in the sun, some perhaps with no one left alive who knew their name.
What can we say? Who wants to sing of cute babies now? Who wants to stand up and talk of the Word made flesh? There's flesh strewn all over the streets, broken lifeless flesh beginning to bloat in the sun. What do those songs we were singing mean now? Do the angels' tidings of great joy mean anything in the face of this? Can we stand in the mud and debris of Banda Aceh or Phuket or Galle and speak of the one who is called Emmanuel, God with us? Or would it sound obscene? But that's the challenge, isn't it? Because if the Christmas gospel has nothing meaningful to say in Tamil Nadu or the Maldives or Meuloboh, then it doesn't really have anything meaningful to say at all.
Someone once said -- perhaps it was Athol Gill, I can't remember -- that any theology that can't be preached in the presence of parents grieving over their slaughtered children isn't worth preaching anywhere else either. But in the midst of the carnage and shock and horror, what can we say? There are no words. The lovely lines of peace on earth and goodwill to all sound impossibly trite and hollow. And worse still, we are afraid to even speak the name of God, aren't we? For inside there is a horrible question that we dare not face, that we don't know what to do with. It is not just that our faith seems to lack adequate words of comfort. It is that our faith is not sure that God is not to blame.
What did our psalm say just a few minutes ago, our words of sacred scripture? God sends the snow and frost and hail. God speaks, the ice melts. God breathes, the waters flow. That's what it said. And if we believe that, if we believe that is not just poetic hyperbole but fundamental doctrine, if we believe that God directs the weather, that God speaks and the earth shudders, that God can calm the waves with a word, then can we escape the awful conclusion that the tsunami is God's doing? And what did John say in our gospel reading? All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. The tsunami? Through him?
Those who shake their fists at heaven and say that either there is no God or that God is a callous tyrant have got irrefutable evidence on their side this week, perhaps every week. Even if God didn't directly make the tsunami, doesn't God have to accept responsibility for creating the things that create tsunami? Or is God somehow exempt from manufacturer's liability questions? Let us not speak too hastily in defense of God, lest we be guilty of simply trying to prop up our own shaky faith and silence the doubts and fears that lurk within all of us. Let us allow God to speak for himself.
Another preacher rang me up on Thursday. He needed to know that he wasn't the only one with a head full of horror, wondering how to preach the gospel this week. It's lonely, he said, being the one who has to find words to say; impossibly daunting too, bearing the responsibility of preaching the gospel in a week when the news of the world seems to make a mockery of it. It struck me that we preachers should probably feel like that every week, charged with the responsibility to speak the word of God to a desperate people in a world that seems always capable of proving our every word a lie.
So my friend and I are stuck. As much as we might want to flee the wave of fear and uncertainty that threatens to uproot us and suck the life out of our faith, we have been called to preach the faith of the Church in season and out of season. And preach it we must. So I cannot hide behind my own advice to let God speak for himself, because when God speaks for himself I am one of the ones God has called to interpret to you the word God speaks. And at times like this, such a responsibility can feel a bit like some of those awful pictures. I can feel a bit like the man wading through the chaos with his beloved child cradled in his arms, limp and lifeless. Here is the gospel, the faith of the Church. Is there life in it yet? Or has it drowned in the angry wave of awful reality? I'm not sure, but dead or alive I still love this child.
I can't speak to you as one who has the answers. Like you, I am looking for signs of life amidst the chaos and devastation. But I can and must speak as one called by God to interpret what God says in the face of all this. So what does God have to say? What word am I to interpret?
There is a Word from God, and the Word became flesh. The Word became flesh and cast in his lot with us. Why do we call Jesus "the Word"? We call him the Word because he is what God has to say. What God has to say is made flesh in the Word. All that God has to say is made flesh in the Word. What God has to say in the face of unspeakable suffering is made flesh in the Word.
There are all too many other words spoken about God. Everyone has an opinion. Some will say that God is absent, dead, or doesn't care. Some will say that God is all-powerful, that nothing happens except at God's say-so, and that, yes, tsunamis only happen if God wills them to. Some will say that the tsunami is God's judgment. Words, words, words -- there are no end of words about God. But what does God have to say? Jesus! God, are you all-powerful? Jesus! God, do you care? The Word becomes flesh. God, did you make the tsunami? The Word becomes flesh. God, where are you? The Word becomes flesh.
Of course, there is always a temptation to try to repackage the Word, to make it say what we wish it would say. We want a messiah who will protect us from every danger, and we can find words about God that will say that. We want a messiah who can calm the waves before they get us, and we can find a story of Jesus doing that. We want a messiah who will ride in triumphant like the cavalry at the last minute, and vanquish all that would harm us, and bring us singing and weeping tears of joy to the victory banquet. Our reading from Jeremiah speaks with such words. But if we make the words say whatever we want we may miss the Word that God speaks altogether, the Word that takes flesh. Because God has spoken a Word and it hasn't charged in like the cavalry; God has spoken a Word and it did make the world shudder. The Word became flesh and the world shuddered, and a great wave of hostility and selfishness and bitterness rose up and flung itself against the Word, devastating all in its path, killing even children in its rage, snarling, surging, seething, smashing -- a great wave of darkness furiously seeking to annihilate the light.
And where was God as the wave hit? Wasn't God right there bearing the brunt of it? Wasn't God there clinging to his beloved child, only to be overwhelmed by the wave and have the child ripped from his arms, and torn away on that surging flood of hatred, and battered and smashed and pierced and tossed limp and lifeless to the earth?
As a father, I've been tormented by those images this week, imagining myself trying to protect my child as the wave hit, desperately clinging to her with every ounce of strength, only to feel her ripped from my arms and torn away in the surging blackness, and then later hunting for her in the chaos and ruins, checking body after body, desperately hoping that none of them are her, that somehow she will have been washed to safety, and then finding her crumpled and lifeless and blindly carrying her limp body, looking for someone who could help, but knowing in the hollow depths of my guts that nothing can help, and seeing in the eyes of everyone who passes that to all but me she is just one more of a hundred thousand corpses.
It took three days of news footage before it really got to me. It finally broke me when I saw footage of a mother in Australia who had just got news that her daughter who she thought had been lost was safe. She wept tears of joy and relief, and it struck me that everyone of those hundred thousand corpses represented a real person over whom there would be no such tears of joy and relief, and I wanted to hold my daughter close and cry but I couldn't, because ironically she was at the beach with her mother. So I broke down and sobbed alone.
Do I have any idea what it would really feel like? I doubt it. It was bad enough just imagining it. I don't know how I'd cope if it was real. I certainly wouldn't want to be hearing any comfortable cliches like all things working together for good or they've gone to a better place. I doubt whether I have any idea what it would really feel like, but I reckon God does, because when we cried out for answers, for explanations, for deliverance, God spoke a Word and the Word became flesh as a beloved child, and the child was torn from the Father's arms by a ruthless wave, and the waters of death closed over him and spat him out as just another of the hundreds and thousands and million of unnamed innocent victims down through the ages.
I reckon God knows. And I reckon that as hard as we might find it to talk about flesh while the nameless flesh of countless corpses are necessarily treated as little more than a threat to public health and piled into mass graves, God is still not afraid to be identified as flesh -- fragile flesh, brutalized flesh, limp and lifeless flesh. Because the promise of Christmas is not just that the Word became cute and chubby baby flesh, but that the Word became flesh and cast in his lot with us -- hunted flesh, despised flesh, tortured flesh, dead and buried flesh, three days dead flesh stinking and a threat to public health.
And although our story of the Word made flesh does not stop with dead and buried, we will not really understand the rest of the story if we think of resurrection as just some kind of miracle cure which means that death is no longer part of Christ's reality. In the book of Revelation we see the vision of the risen one on the throne who still looks like one mortally wounded. The risen one is still the crucified one. The rising one is still the being-crucified one. The people who say all crosses must now be empty are wrong, because the risen Christ is still the suffering and dying Christ. The risen Christ who promised we would meet him in the least of these desperate and vulnerable ones can be seen lying dead in the mud in Khao Lak and Meuloboh -- the Word became flesh. If you want to see what God has to say in the face of this, go walk among the ruins of Banda Aceh, or just turn on your TV, for God is speaking and the Word has become flesh.
Perhaps as we begin to see what God is saying, we will begin to comprehend how blasphemous so much of what we blithely say about God really is, and how chillingly we treat powerful and dangerous realities and casual and comfortable little things. Perhaps when water is flung at us in a few minutes to remind us of our identity as those who have been buried in the deep waters of death with Christ; perhaps this week we'll have a little more sense of what a serious matter it is to go under the deep waters of death. Perhaps when we hold out our empty hands to receive the piece of bread we will be offered shortly, we will recognize something of our solidarity with desperate, hungry people holding out empty hands for the food aid the world is trying to muster. And perhaps we will see in those images of the Father holding the limp body of his dead child, the image of the Father who spoke the Word that becomes flesh and whose grief and suffering take flesh still in body and blood, offered for the life of the world and placed into our empty hands, that we might live even in the face of death.
And perhaps when we have heard that Christmas story, the story of God speaking a Word which becomes human flesh and falls victim to the full force of the waves of horror that assail the earth and its inhabitants, a Word which continues to take flesh in all the suffering and grief and desperation; perhaps then we will be capable of hearing the story of resurrection and recognizing that our songs of endless bliss and our promises of sorrow turned into joy are reduced to pious platitudes if they are not seen in their contexts of unspeakable fear, death, and anguish.
I pray that we and I might have the courage and compassion to recognize the Word that God speaks this week and follow where the Word calls -- into the places that terrify and horrify us, the places where we will know what it means to cry out for salvation, the places, perhaps the only places, where we are capable of knowing the Word of resurrection, the Word made flesh, the Christ born of Mary.
Nathan Nettleton is a pastor to the South Yarra Community Baptist Church in inner-city Melbourne, Australia, and Lecturer in Liturgical Studies at Whitley College in the Melbourne College of Divinity. His writings are regularly available on the Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources website: http://LaughingBird.net. Nathan is married with one daughter and two dogs.
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New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. (Click on the title for information about how to order.) Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Anne Sunday, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
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About the Editors
John E. Sumwalt is the pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, and is the author of eight books for CSS. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), John received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for Parish Ministry from UDTS in 1997. John is known in the Milwaukee area for his one-minute radio spots which always include a brief story. He concludes each spot by saying, "I'm John Sumwalt with 'A Story to Live By' from Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church."
John has done numerous storytelling events for civic, school, and church groups, as well as on radio and television. He has performed at a number of fundraisers for the homeless, the hungry, Habitat for Humanity, and women's shelters. Since the fall of 1999, when he began working on the Vision Stories series, he has led seminars and retreats around the themes "A Safe Place to Tell Visions," "Vision Stories in the Bible and Today," and coming this spring: "Soul Growth: Discovering Lost Spiritual Dimensions." To schedule a seminar or a retreat, write to jsumwalt@naspa.net or phone 414-257-1228.
Joanne Perry-Sumwalt is director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. Jo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, with a degree in English and writing. She has co-authored two books with John, Life Stories: A Study In Christian Decision Making and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit: 62 Stories For Cycle B. Jo writes original curriculum for church classes. She also serves as the secretary of the Wisconsin chapter of the Christian Educators Fellowship (CEF), and is a member of the National CEF.
Jo and John have been married since 1975. They have two grown children, Kathryn and Orrin. They both love reading, movies, long walks with Chloe (their West Highland Terrier), and working on their old farmhouse in southwest Wisconsin.
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StoryShare, January 16, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "A Mother Forced to Choose"
Shining Moments: "An Unexpected Song" by Derrick Sanderson
Good Stories: "What Are You Looking For?"
Scrap Pile: "Tsunami Sermon" by Nathan Nettleson
What's Up This Week
by John Sumwalt
There are many inspiring stories coming out of South Asia since the tsunami struck on December 26. I think this topic will be a subject of preaching for some time, like 9/11 stories that are still being told in pulpits and church school classrooms around the world. Check out Jillian Searle's dramatic deliverance story in A Story to Live By, and Nathan Nettleson's powerful tsunami sermon in the Scrap Pile. Nathan addresses some of the hard questions raised by a natural disaster of this scope:
"We are afraid to even speak the name of God, aren't we? For inside there is a horrible question that we dare not face, that we don't know what to do with. It is not just that our faith seems to lack adequate words of comfort. It is that our faith is not sure that God is not to blame."
I did something last Sunday that I can't remember ever doing before in 33 years of ministry. I read someone else's sermon from the pulpit. I believe Nathan Nettleson's reflections on the tsunami catastrophe that is still shaking our world is truly an inspired word delivered by a master of sermon writing. (Take a look at the other worship resources available on Nathan's website Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources: http://LaughingBird.net)
A Story to Live By
A Mother Forced to Choose
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
Psalm 40:2
Few stories from the tsunami disaster in the Far East have had a happy ending. Vacationer Jillian Searle of Perth, Australia, "was forced to make the excruciating decision to let go of her five-year-old son Lachie or risk them both drowning along with her 20-month-old when the tsunami crashed through her hotel in Phuket on Sunday.... The Willetton mother knew Lachie could not swim and was afraid of water. But she also knew that if she tried to hold on to them both they would all be lost. As her strength waned she appealed to a young girl nearby to grab Lachie and hold on to him so she could hold little Blake.... Jillian thought she would never see Lachie again as he screamed for her not to let go and the water surged as high as her neck. When the young girl next saw Jillian, she told her she had tried to hold on but had been forced to let go of the boy and had lost him.... They had almost given up hope when [two hours later] they found him wandering around with a security guard searching for them, and they grabbed him from the man's arms. Lachie had been clinging alone to a door in the lobby for nearly two hours with his head just above water, waiting for it to subside. 'I cried for Mum for a long time and then I was quiet,' he told his dad later. 'I was waiting for the water to go and then I got down.' "
(From "Survivors," by Natasha Granath and Gareth Parker, The West Australian, December 30, 2004.)
Shining Moments
An Unexpected Song
by Derrick Sanderson
The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me.
Isaiah 49:1b
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40:2-3
Deep down, I have always known that God has been in my life, but I am a very independent person and I find it hard to listen to God's will -- especially when things aren't going the way that I planned them. Fortunately for me, God knows this. When the time comes that I need to receive his message, he lets me know in a way that I cannot miss. Without God's intervention I know that I would not be alive today.
The problems began with my relationship with my father, or I should say lack thereof. My parents got divorced when I was two and my father decided to move to southern California, separating himself from my brother and me by 2,800 miles. His visits were few and far between, leaving all of my parental guidance in the hands of my mother. My brother tried his best to be a father figure in my life by teaching me how to ride a bike and things of that nature, but he was too young to truly be the kind of parental figure that I needed and craved as a very strong-willed child.
As I got older, I started to think of my father in terms of what I needed and wanted. Like any young boy, I wanted my father to be at my soccer games. I wanted him to take me out fishing. I wanted to feel his love and compassion. In short, I wanted him to be there for me day in and day out. My father had always told me that he would be there for me, but there was only one time in my life when he actually was. The love-hate relationship that many sons have with their fathers quickly grew into a hate-only relationship for me. I hated him for all of the times that he said he would be there for me and then hung up the phone and went about his life. I hated him for missing my childhood. I hated him for not disciplining me when I caused problems. Most of all, I hated it when he said that he loved me.
It was at the peak of this hatred, during my teen years, that my father was struck a crucial blow: he was diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). PSP is an incurable disease and the symptoms are untreatable. That meant that not only was he going to die from this disease, he was going to die painfully from its side effects. Unfortunately, the life expectancy is unknown with this disease because it affects everyone individually and because many of the PSP victims die of the symptoms rather than the disease. My father's condition seemed at first to be progressing slowly, starting with some difficulty eating food and loss of voluntary eye movement. However, his condition became exponentially worse in a rather short period of time, forcing my father to move into an assisted living community.
I had seen my father only twice in the previous two years, and I decided that since his condition was worsening rapidly I would go visit him over my Thanksgiving break from school. I flew out to California and stayed at the house with my stepmom. Because of my father's condition, and because he was living in the assisted living community, I only got to spend a short amount of time with him. It was depressingly apparent, however, that the strong man I once knew no longer existed. All that was left was a withered, hunched-over middle-aged man on the brink of defeat.
One night, we both decided to get a professional massage to relieve my father of some of the muscle tension that PSP caused. I didn't think anything negative would come out of the experience, but I was wrong. At the spa, I had to help my dad undress and get onto the massage table in a semi-comfortable position so that he could get his massage. I left the room to the sound of my father moaning in discomfort and embarrassment that he could not longer do these things on his own.
My own massage relaxed my mind and body and helped me forget what I had just witnessed and the distance that had grown between us. Then as I lay half sleeping on the table, a knock came at the door. My father's masseuse entered and told me that his massage was done and that he needed help getting dressed. I hurriedly put on my clothes and went to help him. As I entered the room, he was struggling desperately to right himself. I quickly but tenderly helped him sit up. Even this simple motion caused him a great amount of discomfort. I helped him dress, and as I was putting on his shoes he said, "Why did this happen to me? I hate this." I could say nothing other than, "I know, Dad, I know."
Time went on and I became more and more disgusted with myself. No matter how hard I tried, I could not forgive my father for what he had -- or had not -- done to me. By early spring of the next year, the PSP had greatly weakened his immune system, leaving him victim to a lung infection. Normally, such an infection wouldn't be a big deal, but because of his state, he had to be admitted to the hospital.
My stepmom did a great job of keeping us updated on his condition. She relayed the doctor's thoughts on my father's condition: he should recover shortly with the help of an air tube. Within a week or two, my father was doing much better and was looking forward to being released from the hospital. However, once the air tube was removed, the infection quickly took hold again, forcing him to stay in the hospital. Sensing that his days might be numbered, my brother and I decided to go and visit. I had a three-day weekend coming up a couple of weeks later, and I decided that we should go then.
Three days later, I was taken out of my second period class and my mother told me my father had died the night before. I sat in silence as they told me that, late the night before, he had painfully pulled the air tube out of his esophagus. They told me that he hadn't made a sound, despite ripping everything from his lungs into his mouth, and that he had died quickly once off the machine. I was in disbelief at first because that was not the man I knew: my father never gave up. But I realized that he hadn't given up, he simply couldn't handle being sick anymore or causing pain and sorrow to his loved ones.
Before he died, he had decided that he wanted to be buried in Marshall, Wisconsin, on the family farm. As I lowered his ashes into the ground, a hatred for myself started to stir within me. As the days passed after the funeral, I sank deeper and deeper into depression and began to feel more and more helpless and alone. I utterly hated myself and my life. I had tried to live my father's dying days according to my own schedule. I had failed to acknowledge that his situation was a bigger issue than my own life, and I couldn't handle that realization. I denounced God, claiming that he couldn't be all good if he could do this to me.
My strong independence kept me from seeking help from my family, friends, counselors, and especially God. Even when gestures were made, I wouldn't let anyone help me. As my hatred grew, so did the feeling that I was a waste of space. I began to think that life would be much better without me. Suicide became more and more appealing each day. I never considered it seriously until I reached the point when I couldn't handle it anymore, and I decided that I was going to kill myself. When I got home from school, I locked myself in the bathroom and held a razor blade to my wrist. I took one last look into the mirror and said to myself, "Good-bye, I'm sorry." But something inside kept me from making the cut. I couldn't bear to make my family feel the way I had felt after my father took away the chance for me to say good-bye. I didn't want to go like that, at least not at this time. So I pulled through the rest of my senior year in high school, hating every moment of my worthless existence, especially time spent around extended family.
A blessing was waiting for me in the form of an invitation to be a counselor at a United Methodist youth summer church camp called YOMICA. I'm not completely sure why I accepted the invitation, but I thought hanging out with kids for a week would be a nice escape from my life. I was a little uncomfortable with the decision, seeing that I didn't think God was good, but since the camp was fast approaching, I figured it was unfair of me to back out and I felt obligated to give it a shot.
Camp started, and I felt awkwardly out of place. I was singing and praying about how God was good and how he could heal our pain, but I didn't believe he was good and I thought he was the cause of my pain. To say the least, I was simply going through the motions. But then the greatest moment of my life occurred.
It was a warm July night, and I was sitting with my campers in the amphitheater-style chapel, overlooking the lake that bordered the camp, trying to avoid as much of the devotion as possible. I paused from singing and noticed how brightly the moon was shining upon the log cross. It was at that point much brighter than when we had begun the devotion. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed it, but everyone was too involved in the service. I took a moment and looked up at the sky and said, "God, I don't know what is going on in my life, but I've had enough of this." As my eyes focused back on the cross, the children's singing cut back into my consciousness with "Father, I adore you, and I'll lay my life before you. How I love you." At that moment my heart swelled and the air painfully escaped my lungs and I heard "Be still and know that I am God; set me as a seal upon your heart." Now, I'm not claiming that God was actually talking to me, because I don't really know how that works. But from somewhere inside of me I heard -- or better yet felt -- that message. As I struggled for air, I couldn't focus on anything but that moonlit cross. My mind thought about nothing but the glorious song of those beautiful children. For the first time in my life I was at peace, and for the first time in a long time I was truly happy. I was happy to be alive and thankful for God's message.
Derrick Sanderson is a student at Viterbo University in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, majoring in biology with a minor in environmental studies. He is a member of St. Aiden's Episcopal Church in Hartford, Wisconsin.
Good Stories
What Are You Looking For?
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?"
John 1:35-38
After trying everything else, Shelly was present for her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Skeptical and listening half-heartedly at first, the words of Martha caught her attention. Martha told the group, "I just knew that I could handle alcohol and my other problems on my own, but I couldn't. Seven years ago I came to my first AA meeting, and since that time I have grown as a person beyond anything I could have ever imagined."
Martha exuded confidence and depth. She spoke of a power "higher that I," the God of Jesus Christ, and the way in which God now lived at the center of her life. Her words oozed with sincere encouragement and concern. Most of all, Martha exhibited a thankfulness which words could not express. Shelly, who came to the meeting doubtful that anything she would hear would change the way she felt or thought, made her way to Martha when the meeting was over. "I want what you have," Shelly told Martha. "I want what you have."
Shelly wanted the compassion and depth and hope which Martha knew, but she may not have realized fully how Martha came to know those things. Martha learned compassion from a time of deep personal suffering. She acquired spiritual depth from hours of praying when there was nowhere else to turn. She discovered hope by taking one step at a time because "one day at a time" was too much to be expected.
Shelly said, "I want what you have. Where do I get it?" And Martha told her, "It comes from being right where you are and doing just what you are doing." Martha went on to tell Shelly the oddest story about learning compassion when we are hurting, and learning love when we are excluded, and learning hope when we are helpless.
(Adapted from And Then Came the Angel by William B. Kincaid III, CSS Publishing Company, 1998.)
Scrap Pile
Tsunami Sermon
by Nathan Nettleson
A January 2005sermon in response to the south Asia tsunami disaster
Texts: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18
Nine nights ago we gathered here to sing and celebrate. We told stories about a baby, a baby who would save the world, a baby whose birth was greeted by angels, a baby whose birth meant tidings of joy for all people everywhere. We spoke of God-made-flesh -- cute, chubby baby flesh. We sang familiar songs. We enjoyed familiar company. We smiled at baby Piper playing over here as we sang about the baby. We drank champagne and ate Christmas cake. God was in heaven and all was well with the world. Or so it seemed.
But all was not well with the world. A pressure was building up deep beneath the surface; two unyielding forces were pushing against each other. And we sang on, oblivious. And others partied on and holidayed on, walked along moonlit beaches hand in hand, wrapped final presents as the kids fell asleep. But underneath, the pressure grew and grew.
"All is calm, all is bright," we sang, "sleep in heavenly peace." "Now you hear of endless bliss," we sang, "while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love." "We will live forevermore, because of Christmas Day," we sang. But the pressure grew and grew, knowing nothing of the bliss of our songs or the angels' watch.
Nothing gave way that night, or the next. But the pressure went right on building. And the next morning all hell broke loose. It was a simple thing, really. Those two great forces pushing against one another -- one slipped a bit. The earth shuddered; the pressure was released. All quite simple. The sudden movement caused a wave -- quite explainable.
But as the churches went on singing that Sunday morning, singing songs about that lovely baby again, that wave was tearing babies out of people's arms, sucking beds out through hotel windows with people still in them, dumping sharks in swimming pools, turning idyllic beachside villages into churning soups of angry water and broken glass and car parts and blood and corrugated iron and dying children and splintered wood. It was all over in minutes. The water ran back into the sea, taking with it whatever it wished, whatever it hadn't impaled or trapped or buried.
We've all seen pictures of what it left behind. Haunting horrible pictures, mud and ruins and corpses, tens of thousands of corpses -- old, young, men, women, the life sucked out of them. Dead children strewn everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of dead babies.
What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? What child is this who laid to rest in the mud and devastation of Aceh? And what child is this? And this? And this? Who knows? Corpses everywhere, battered lifeless unnamed corpses. Every now and then there is a scream and one of the living gives a name to one of the dead and grieves, and thousands more lay waste in the sun, some perhaps with no one left alive who knew their name.
What can we say? Who wants to sing of cute babies now? Who wants to stand up and talk of the Word made flesh? There's flesh strewn all over the streets, broken lifeless flesh beginning to bloat in the sun. What do those songs we were singing mean now? Do the angels' tidings of great joy mean anything in the face of this? Can we stand in the mud and debris of Banda Aceh or Phuket or Galle and speak of the one who is called Emmanuel, God with us? Or would it sound obscene? But that's the challenge, isn't it? Because if the Christmas gospel has nothing meaningful to say in Tamil Nadu or the Maldives or Meuloboh, then it doesn't really have anything meaningful to say at all.
Someone once said -- perhaps it was Athol Gill, I can't remember -- that any theology that can't be preached in the presence of parents grieving over their slaughtered children isn't worth preaching anywhere else either. But in the midst of the carnage and shock and horror, what can we say? There are no words. The lovely lines of peace on earth and goodwill to all sound impossibly trite and hollow. And worse still, we are afraid to even speak the name of God, aren't we? For inside there is a horrible question that we dare not face, that we don't know what to do with. It is not just that our faith seems to lack adequate words of comfort. It is that our faith is not sure that God is not to blame.
What did our psalm say just a few minutes ago, our words of sacred scripture? God sends the snow and frost and hail. God speaks, the ice melts. God breathes, the waters flow. That's what it said. And if we believe that, if we believe that is not just poetic hyperbole but fundamental doctrine, if we believe that God directs the weather, that God speaks and the earth shudders, that God can calm the waves with a word, then can we escape the awful conclusion that the tsunami is God's doing? And what did John say in our gospel reading? All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. The tsunami? Through him?
Those who shake their fists at heaven and say that either there is no God or that God is a callous tyrant have got irrefutable evidence on their side this week, perhaps every week. Even if God didn't directly make the tsunami, doesn't God have to accept responsibility for creating the things that create tsunami? Or is God somehow exempt from manufacturer's liability questions? Let us not speak too hastily in defense of God, lest we be guilty of simply trying to prop up our own shaky faith and silence the doubts and fears that lurk within all of us. Let us allow God to speak for himself.
Another preacher rang me up on Thursday. He needed to know that he wasn't the only one with a head full of horror, wondering how to preach the gospel this week. It's lonely, he said, being the one who has to find words to say; impossibly daunting too, bearing the responsibility of preaching the gospel in a week when the news of the world seems to make a mockery of it. It struck me that we preachers should probably feel like that every week, charged with the responsibility to speak the word of God to a desperate people in a world that seems always capable of proving our every word a lie.
So my friend and I are stuck. As much as we might want to flee the wave of fear and uncertainty that threatens to uproot us and suck the life out of our faith, we have been called to preach the faith of the Church in season and out of season. And preach it we must. So I cannot hide behind my own advice to let God speak for himself, because when God speaks for himself I am one of the ones God has called to interpret to you the word God speaks. And at times like this, such a responsibility can feel a bit like some of those awful pictures. I can feel a bit like the man wading through the chaos with his beloved child cradled in his arms, limp and lifeless. Here is the gospel, the faith of the Church. Is there life in it yet? Or has it drowned in the angry wave of awful reality? I'm not sure, but dead or alive I still love this child.
I can't speak to you as one who has the answers. Like you, I am looking for signs of life amidst the chaos and devastation. But I can and must speak as one called by God to interpret what God says in the face of all this. So what does God have to say? What word am I to interpret?
There is a Word from God, and the Word became flesh. The Word became flesh and cast in his lot with us. Why do we call Jesus "the Word"? We call him the Word because he is what God has to say. What God has to say is made flesh in the Word. All that God has to say is made flesh in the Word. What God has to say in the face of unspeakable suffering is made flesh in the Word.
There are all too many other words spoken about God. Everyone has an opinion. Some will say that God is absent, dead, or doesn't care. Some will say that God is all-powerful, that nothing happens except at God's say-so, and that, yes, tsunamis only happen if God wills them to. Some will say that the tsunami is God's judgment. Words, words, words -- there are no end of words about God. But what does God have to say? Jesus! God, are you all-powerful? Jesus! God, do you care? The Word becomes flesh. God, did you make the tsunami? The Word becomes flesh. God, where are you? The Word becomes flesh.
Of course, there is always a temptation to try to repackage the Word, to make it say what we wish it would say. We want a messiah who will protect us from every danger, and we can find words about God that will say that. We want a messiah who can calm the waves before they get us, and we can find a story of Jesus doing that. We want a messiah who will ride in triumphant like the cavalry at the last minute, and vanquish all that would harm us, and bring us singing and weeping tears of joy to the victory banquet. Our reading from Jeremiah speaks with such words. But if we make the words say whatever we want we may miss the Word that God speaks altogether, the Word that takes flesh. Because God has spoken a Word and it hasn't charged in like the cavalry; God has spoken a Word and it did make the world shudder. The Word became flesh and the world shuddered, and a great wave of hostility and selfishness and bitterness rose up and flung itself against the Word, devastating all in its path, killing even children in its rage, snarling, surging, seething, smashing -- a great wave of darkness furiously seeking to annihilate the light.
And where was God as the wave hit? Wasn't God right there bearing the brunt of it? Wasn't God there clinging to his beloved child, only to be overwhelmed by the wave and have the child ripped from his arms, and torn away on that surging flood of hatred, and battered and smashed and pierced and tossed limp and lifeless to the earth?
As a father, I've been tormented by those images this week, imagining myself trying to protect my child as the wave hit, desperately clinging to her with every ounce of strength, only to feel her ripped from my arms and torn away in the surging blackness, and then later hunting for her in the chaos and ruins, checking body after body, desperately hoping that none of them are her, that somehow she will have been washed to safety, and then finding her crumpled and lifeless and blindly carrying her limp body, looking for someone who could help, but knowing in the hollow depths of my guts that nothing can help, and seeing in the eyes of everyone who passes that to all but me she is just one more of a hundred thousand corpses.
It took three days of news footage before it really got to me. It finally broke me when I saw footage of a mother in Australia who had just got news that her daughter who she thought had been lost was safe. She wept tears of joy and relief, and it struck me that everyone of those hundred thousand corpses represented a real person over whom there would be no such tears of joy and relief, and I wanted to hold my daughter close and cry but I couldn't, because ironically she was at the beach with her mother. So I broke down and sobbed alone.
Do I have any idea what it would really feel like? I doubt it. It was bad enough just imagining it. I don't know how I'd cope if it was real. I certainly wouldn't want to be hearing any comfortable cliches like all things working together for good or they've gone to a better place. I doubt whether I have any idea what it would really feel like, but I reckon God does, because when we cried out for answers, for explanations, for deliverance, God spoke a Word and the Word became flesh as a beloved child, and the child was torn from the Father's arms by a ruthless wave, and the waters of death closed over him and spat him out as just another of the hundreds and thousands and million of unnamed innocent victims down through the ages.
I reckon God knows. And I reckon that as hard as we might find it to talk about flesh while the nameless flesh of countless corpses are necessarily treated as little more than a threat to public health and piled into mass graves, God is still not afraid to be identified as flesh -- fragile flesh, brutalized flesh, limp and lifeless flesh. Because the promise of Christmas is not just that the Word became cute and chubby baby flesh, but that the Word became flesh and cast in his lot with us -- hunted flesh, despised flesh, tortured flesh, dead and buried flesh, three days dead flesh stinking and a threat to public health.
And although our story of the Word made flesh does not stop with dead and buried, we will not really understand the rest of the story if we think of resurrection as just some kind of miracle cure which means that death is no longer part of Christ's reality. In the book of Revelation we see the vision of the risen one on the throne who still looks like one mortally wounded. The risen one is still the crucified one. The rising one is still the being-crucified one. The people who say all crosses must now be empty are wrong, because the risen Christ is still the suffering and dying Christ. The risen Christ who promised we would meet him in the least of these desperate and vulnerable ones can be seen lying dead in the mud in Khao Lak and Meuloboh -- the Word became flesh. If you want to see what God has to say in the face of this, go walk among the ruins of Banda Aceh, or just turn on your TV, for God is speaking and the Word has become flesh.
Perhaps as we begin to see what God is saying, we will begin to comprehend how blasphemous so much of what we blithely say about God really is, and how chillingly we treat powerful and dangerous realities and casual and comfortable little things. Perhaps when water is flung at us in a few minutes to remind us of our identity as those who have been buried in the deep waters of death with Christ; perhaps this week we'll have a little more sense of what a serious matter it is to go under the deep waters of death. Perhaps when we hold out our empty hands to receive the piece of bread we will be offered shortly, we will recognize something of our solidarity with desperate, hungry people holding out empty hands for the food aid the world is trying to muster. And perhaps we will see in those images of the Father holding the limp body of his dead child, the image of the Father who spoke the Word that becomes flesh and whose grief and suffering take flesh still in body and blood, offered for the life of the world and placed into our empty hands, that we might live even in the face of death.
And perhaps when we have heard that Christmas story, the story of God speaking a Word which becomes human flesh and falls victim to the full force of the waves of horror that assail the earth and its inhabitants, a Word which continues to take flesh in all the suffering and grief and desperation; perhaps then we will be capable of hearing the story of resurrection and recognizing that our songs of endless bliss and our promises of sorrow turned into joy are reduced to pious platitudes if they are not seen in their contexts of unspeakable fear, death, and anguish.
I pray that we and I might have the courage and compassion to recognize the Word that God speaks this week and follow where the Word calls -- into the places that terrify and horrify us, the places where we will know what it means to cry out for salvation, the places, perhaps the only places, where we are capable of knowing the Word of resurrection, the Word made flesh, the Christ born of Mary.
Nathan Nettleton is a pastor to the South Yarra Community Baptist Church in inner-city Melbourne, Australia, and Lecturer in Liturgical Studies at Whitley College in the Melbourne College of Divinity. His writings are regularly available on the Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources website: http://LaughingBird.net. Nathan is married with one daughter and two dogs.
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Subscribing online is convenient using our secure server -- or you can all CSS toll-free at (800) 537-1030 Monday - Friday from 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM (Eastern Time) or send an e-mail to orders@csspub.com, and our customer service team will be happy to assist you. Subscribers receive weekly installments of StoryShare -- plus full access to the StoryShare archives -- for an annual subscription rate of only $19.95. A two-year subscription is available for only $34.95. We think this is the best value in preaching, teaching, and devotional resources available anywhere. If you don't agree we will refund the balance of your subscription payment. To subscribe online, click here http://www.csspub.com/css-secure/storysubscribe.lasso.
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New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. (Click on the title for information about how to order.) Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Anne Sunday, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
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About the Editors
John E. Sumwalt is the pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, and is the author of eight books for CSS. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), John received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for Parish Ministry from UDTS in 1997. John is known in the Milwaukee area for his one-minute radio spots which always include a brief story. He concludes each spot by saying, "I'm John Sumwalt with 'A Story to Live By' from Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church."
John has done numerous storytelling events for civic, school, and church groups, as well as on radio and television. He has performed at a number of fundraisers for the homeless, the hungry, Habitat for Humanity, and women's shelters. Since the fall of 1999, when he began working on the Vision Stories series, he has led seminars and retreats around the themes "A Safe Place to Tell Visions," "Vision Stories in the Bible and Today," and coming this spring: "Soul Growth: Discovering Lost Spiritual Dimensions." To schedule a seminar or a retreat, write to jsumwalt@naspa.net or phone 414-257-1228.
Joanne Perry-Sumwalt is director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. Jo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, with a degree in English and writing. She has co-authored two books with John, Life Stories: A Study In Christian Decision Making and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit: 62 Stories For Cycle B. Jo writes original curriculum for church classes. She also serves as the secretary of the Wisconsin chapter of the Christian Educators Fellowship (CEF), and is a member of the National CEF.
Jo and John have been married since 1975. They have two grown children, Kathryn and Orrin. They both love reading, movies, long walks with Chloe (their West Highland Terrier), and working on their old farmhouse in southwest Wisconsin.
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StoryShare, January 16, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
