Pay Attention
Stories
Contents
“Pay Attention” by C. David McKirachan
“Appropriate?” by C. David McKirachan
“Everything from A to Z” by Frank Ramirez
Pay Attention
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 97
When I was a kid, the Wizard of Oz intruded on my sitcom world like a cobra into a nursery. Between flying monkeys and the wicked witch, I had nightmares way beyond each viewing. But the Wizard never got to me. The clouds and noises and lightings didn’t slam into me, didn’t overcome this child’s defenses.
This psalm with all its special effects, describing the overpowering power of the Almighty leaves me slightly puzzled rather than awed. But that in itself made me wonder (isn’t it interesting how scripture gets you going one way or another?).
Back in the the pre-industrial days the psalmist spoke of such monstrous intrusions on the order of his day, evoking a scene of overpowering impact. We, in our experience, have seen 18 wheelers roaring down roads at ridiculous speeds, roaring louder than monsters from the Saurian Age. We have seen clouds of smoke, shot through with sparks billowing from factories that haven’t been busted by the Environmental Protection Agency. How awesome can anything be that gets fined?
What would we consider awesome? Some would say we have outgrown such sensations. We have come to understand things better, and so are not impressed by events that we comprehend. Talk about hubris. Such arrogance is spouted by adolescents who are sure they have come to know the ways of the world. And in many ways we have been taught to consider natural events with as no big deal. Perhaps that’s why we build houses on the lips of the monsters’ jaws, creating vacation homes with walls of glass to get a good view of the ocean and the hurricane’s destructive force first hand. Storm surges are beautiful, don’t you think?
One of my favorite aphorisms chosen to describe our church is, ‘A church reformed, always reforming.’ I think in this day and age of special effects and jaded mentalities, awe still exists. Perhaps it is not of the monstrous variety as it used to be, but having personally experienced storms of the sea I’d recommend them if you wish to experience something to tip your awe meter. I think awe is available as it always has been in any encounter we allow ourselves to be part of having to do with power beyond our own.
Such an encounter shakes us down to the roots more than any special effect or theoretical understanding. I can still feel the rumble of an orchestra playing Beethoven. I remember viscerally, the tears streaming down my cheeks as I sang an anthem by Clausen called ‘At the Name of Jesus.’ I still feel the vibration of hammers finishing a roofing project. Hammers wielded by a bunch of Senior Highs from my youth group. A project everyone said was too big and complicated for our group.
It seems to me that life is full of moments of awe, if we will allow ourselves to be touched by the presence of that which is more than we are. That which reminds us of the presence of the Spirit that moved over the waters and blew through the upper room, and said the simple word ‘Mary’ to a grieving friend.
I truly believe we would be happier and better able to live lives that are meaningful and filled with the joy of harmony if we would allow ourselves to be touched by the power in this world, hurricanes and hummingbirds. There are awesome and awful moments in almost every day.
My mother was big on awe. Maybe that’s where I get it. Her constant instruction was “Pay attention.” I truly pity those who consider themselves too sophisticated to see the miracles that she was able to see in an afternoon’s walk, or a lullaby. She could never understand why people had a hard time believing in God. She had a hard time ignoring the Spirit that flowed around her and through her. She’d giggle when someone called her a spirit filled individual. “Don’t they get it? They are too.”
She liked the Wizard of Oz, too. But she called the Wizard a buffoon. The flying monkeys were her favorite.
* * *
Appropriate?
C. David McKirachan
Acts 16: 16-34
The word ‘impractical’ is often used when conversations turn toward issues like education, environment, the homeless, mass transit, prisons, and the list goes on. The actual meaning of the word in these conversations is ‘expensive.’ We don’t like to spend money on things we aren’t in control of. We want it in our own pocket.
This account of miracles that set people free of possession and slavery, and of conversion are both ‘impractical.’ The Apostles get in a lot of trouble for sponsoring these ‘impractical’ events. Don’t expect popularity for preaching on such sorts of events of liberation or, God forbid, healing. Someone once told me that the church is one of the major catalysts for progressive change in culture while also being one of the major blockages for the same change. Paradox we may be, but the question persists, which side do we work toward?
In one of the ages of my ministry the political leaders were establishing the ‘trickle-down theory’ as a political reality for our nation. Cutting taxes by cutting social programs became the norm. It occurred to me that we were going to have a lot more hungry people on our hands and the church needed to do something about it besides including the hungry in our prayers. So, we set up a food bank. Short sentence, but major undertaking. The miracle part of it was that it got some traction. I think one of the best ways to get anything going is to get the women’s association behind it in league with the Boy Scouts. Don’t get huffy. It works. The next thing we knew we had the Methodist, Episcopal, and Catholic churches participating.
A few tangential issues made the whole thing ‘impractical.’ One of them was the use of the storage closet for the pantry. One of them was the kind of people it attracted to the church. One of them came from left field.
A volunteer who was happy about their participation in the project asked for an appointment with me. They sat down with an aura of discomfort and disapproval. “What’s up?” Evidentially someone had come in for food, gotten their bags with much thanks. That night the participator in the project had been out to dinner with their family and who did they see at the next table, but the receiver of the bounty of the food bank. “If they had the money to go out to dinner, they shouldn’t be coming to the food bank.”
I had experience they didn’t. I’d worked in Newark with the poor and I understood that helping people was often a journey into disappointments and lessons of stewardship that stretched our sense of appropriate. But if we were going to reach the truly needy, we had to be willing to be generous to a fault.
That person considered the entire issue to be ‘unacceptable.’ They left the food bank, but bless them, they upped their pledge to make up for the work they’d given up. Paradoxical? Hey I’ll take blessings as they fall.
It’s a wonder that the church doesn’t crack down the middle and sink into the earth. We have a symbol of the most impractical sacrificial gift ever given in the front of our place of worship. The gift came free of charge, free of conditions, given to people who were ‘unworthy’ according to any standard imaginable. And we worry about ‘impractical’ and ‘appropriate’ before we get involved in situations that beg for attention. At least according to the guy who hung there and suffered for us. His parameters for ‘impractical’ and ‘appropriate’ would get us into situations that might put us in jail with the Apostles.
But according to a member of the church who came to me with nothing short of a sense of joy, “You meet the nicest people in jail.” I think he did something ‘impractical.’ That was just before he started to tithe. What a weirdo. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
* * *
Everything from A to Z
by Frank Ramirez
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Revelation 22:13)
Spelling Bees have become spectacles on television. You can cut the tension with a knife as you watch some of these incredible students spell words that you or I may have never heard!
Did you ever take part in a spelling bee? Have you ever filled out a crossword puzzle? How about filling out a job application? What about simply spelling out your name as you endorse the back of a check?
If you’ve done any of these things you’ve taken part in a miracle that is so commonplace now that you don’t even notice it. It’s part of our everyday life, and it’s so obvious we don’t see it. But trust me, there are people whose language precludes this wonderful innovation, and for them something as simple as writing the name of a loved one, or typing a short note, is not necessarily easy, or even possible!
I’m talking about something as simple as A to Z — or Alpha and Omega if you’re Greek.
I’m talking about the alphabet.
The word alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha and Beta. And since the early alphabets were intertwined in a complex family tree, it’s worth noting that the first letters of the Hebrew alphabet are Aleph and Beth.
Although the origins of the first human writing are not totally clear, there are some breathtakingly beautiful depictions of animals drawn by ancient humans on the walls of caves. There were probably other examples of artwork that hasn't survived the ravages of time because they were drawn on the dirt, or on outside surfaces such as walls or the sides of hills exposed to the weather.
At some point it was necessary for bean counters — well, bureaucrats — to keep track of who raised which animals or grew which crops, in order for them to be taxed. The most ancient writing that has survived the millennia might be the cuneiform accounts kept by the ancient Mesopotamian peoples, and of course the famous hieroglyphs written by the Egyptians. In these cases a stylized picture that represented a particular word was used to record what had happened. This can get a little clumsy, though, because you need a different symbol for each thing you want to write about.
That's why it's important that some genius figured out that the same symbols could be used to stand for consonants. Suddenly you were recording the sounds of the word, not a picture of that word, and that meant you could rearrange those symbols, which we call letters, to create all the words you use.
The Egyptians are credited with creating twenty-two symbols to stand for the consonants in their languages. At first only consonants were needed. In some languages, the rules for which vowels are used make it easy to guess which vowels to pronounce when reading. This was the case for the Phoenician alphabet, which was adapted from the Egyptian alphabet, as well as the Aramaic alphabet. These are the two most influential. Although the Hebrew language originally had its own symbols, eventually the copyists who preserved our Old Testament adopted that Aramaic alphabet, which is still used to this day.
That Phoenician alphabet mentioned earlier is the ancestor of the one we use. The Greeks adapted it, and so did the Romans, and so did we!
The Alpha that the Revelator writes about comes from the Hebrew Aleph, and is adapted from the picture of the Ox. It is the first letter of several alphabets. It also stands for the boss, or the leader. Since letters in the ancient world were made to stand for numbers as well (our system of Hindu-Arabic numbers only goes back about a thousand years), and the Alpha stood for 1.
The Omega is the twenty-second and last letter of the Greek alphabet. It was not in the earliest alphabets, however. It stands for the Great O (a ‘mega’ O, get it?), and represented a long 'o' sound. The Omega is also the number 800.
We sometimes use the term "Everything from A to Z" as a fancy way of saying everything. If you're British you say "A to Zed," since that's their way of pronouncing our last letter. And it makes perfect sense for Jesus, speaking in Revelation, to say "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." Everything we say, do, think, know, has happened, is happening, and will happen, is expressed within the confines of that marvelous invention we take for granted, the alphabet. Which kind of reminds me of the way we take Jesus for granted, as well as the plan Jesus has for history, outlined in Revelation.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 2, 2019, issue.
Copyright 2019 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.
“Pay Attention” by C. David McKirachan
“Appropriate?” by C. David McKirachan
“Everything from A to Z” by Frank Ramirez
Pay Attention
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 97
When I was a kid, the Wizard of Oz intruded on my sitcom world like a cobra into a nursery. Between flying monkeys and the wicked witch, I had nightmares way beyond each viewing. But the Wizard never got to me. The clouds and noises and lightings didn’t slam into me, didn’t overcome this child’s defenses.
This psalm with all its special effects, describing the overpowering power of the Almighty leaves me slightly puzzled rather than awed. But that in itself made me wonder (isn’t it interesting how scripture gets you going one way or another?).
Back in the the pre-industrial days the psalmist spoke of such monstrous intrusions on the order of his day, evoking a scene of overpowering impact. We, in our experience, have seen 18 wheelers roaring down roads at ridiculous speeds, roaring louder than monsters from the Saurian Age. We have seen clouds of smoke, shot through with sparks billowing from factories that haven’t been busted by the Environmental Protection Agency. How awesome can anything be that gets fined?
What would we consider awesome? Some would say we have outgrown such sensations. We have come to understand things better, and so are not impressed by events that we comprehend. Talk about hubris. Such arrogance is spouted by adolescents who are sure they have come to know the ways of the world. And in many ways we have been taught to consider natural events with as no big deal. Perhaps that’s why we build houses on the lips of the monsters’ jaws, creating vacation homes with walls of glass to get a good view of the ocean and the hurricane’s destructive force first hand. Storm surges are beautiful, don’t you think?
One of my favorite aphorisms chosen to describe our church is, ‘A church reformed, always reforming.’ I think in this day and age of special effects and jaded mentalities, awe still exists. Perhaps it is not of the monstrous variety as it used to be, but having personally experienced storms of the sea I’d recommend them if you wish to experience something to tip your awe meter. I think awe is available as it always has been in any encounter we allow ourselves to be part of having to do with power beyond our own.
Such an encounter shakes us down to the roots more than any special effect or theoretical understanding. I can still feel the rumble of an orchestra playing Beethoven. I remember viscerally, the tears streaming down my cheeks as I sang an anthem by Clausen called ‘At the Name of Jesus.’ I still feel the vibration of hammers finishing a roofing project. Hammers wielded by a bunch of Senior Highs from my youth group. A project everyone said was too big and complicated for our group.
It seems to me that life is full of moments of awe, if we will allow ourselves to be touched by the presence of that which is more than we are. That which reminds us of the presence of the Spirit that moved over the waters and blew through the upper room, and said the simple word ‘Mary’ to a grieving friend.
I truly believe we would be happier and better able to live lives that are meaningful and filled with the joy of harmony if we would allow ourselves to be touched by the power in this world, hurricanes and hummingbirds. There are awesome and awful moments in almost every day.
My mother was big on awe. Maybe that’s where I get it. Her constant instruction was “Pay attention.” I truly pity those who consider themselves too sophisticated to see the miracles that she was able to see in an afternoon’s walk, or a lullaby. She could never understand why people had a hard time believing in God. She had a hard time ignoring the Spirit that flowed around her and through her. She’d giggle when someone called her a spirit filled individual. “Don’t they get it? They are too.”
She liked the Wizard of Oz, too. But she called the Wizard a buffoon. The flying monkeys were her favorite.
* * *
Appropriate?
C. David McKirachan
Acts 16: 16-34
The word ‘impractical’ is often used when conversations turn toward issues like education, environment, the homeless, mass transit, prisons, and the list goes on. The actual meaning of the word in these conversations is ‘expensive.’ We don’t like to spend money on things we aren’t in control of. We want it in our own pocket.
This account of miracles that set people free of possession and slavery, and of conversion are both ‘impractical.’ The Apostles get in a lot of trouble for sponsoring these ‘impractical’ events. Don’t expect popularity for preaching on such sorts of events of liberation or, God forbid, healing. Someone once told me that the church is one of the major catalysts for progressive change in culture while also being one of the major blockages for the same change. Paradox we may be, but the question persists, which side do we work toward?
In one of the ages of my ministry the political leaders were establishing the ‘trickle-down theory’ as a political reality for our nation. Cutting taxes by cutting social programs became the norm. It occurred to me that we were going to have a lot more hungry people on our hands and the church needed to do something about it besides including the hungry in our prayers. So, we set up a food bank. Short sentence, but major undertaking. The miracle part of it was that it got some traction. I think one of the best ways to get anything going is to get the women’s association behind it in league with the Boy Scouts. Don’t get huffy. It works. The next thing we knew we had the Methodist, Episcopal, and Catholic churches participating.
A few tangential issues made the whole thing ‘impractical.’ One of them was the use of the storage closet for the pantry. One of them was the kind of people it attracted to the church. One of them came from left field.
A volunteer who was happy about their participation in the project asked for an appointment with me. They sat down with an aura of discomfort and disapproval. “What’s up?” Evidentially someone had come in for food, gotten their bags with much thanks. That night the participator in the project had been out to dinner with their family and who did they see at the next table, but the receiver of the bounty of the food bank. “If they had the money to go out to dinner, they shouldn’t be coming to the food bank.”
I had experience they didn’t. I’d worked in Newark with the poor and I understood that helping people was often a journey into disappointments and lessons of stewardship that stretched our sense of appropriate. But if we were going to reach the truly needy, we had to be willing to be generous to a fault.
That person considered the entire issue to be ‘unacceptable.’ They left the food bank, but bless them, they upped their pledge to make up for the work they’d given up. Paradoxical? Hey I’ll take blessings as they fall.
It’s a wonder that the church doesn’t crack down the middle and sink into the earth. We have a symbol of the most impractical sacrificial gift ever given in the front of our place of worship. The gift came free of charge, free of conditions, given to people who were ‘unworthy’ according to any standard imaginable. And we worry about ‘impractical’ and ‘appropriate’ before we get involved in situations that beg for attention. At least according to the guy who hung there and suffered for us. His parameters for ‘impractical’ and ‘appropriate’ would get us into situations that might put us in jail with the Apostles.
But according to a member of the church who came to me with nothing short of a sense of joy, “You meet the nicest people in jail.” I think he did something ‘impractical.’ That was just before he started to tithe. What a weirdo. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
* * *
Everything from A to Z
by Frank Ramirez
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Revelation 22:13)
Spelling Bees have become spectacles on television. You can cut the tension with a knife as you watch some of these incredible students spell words that you or I may have never heard!
Did you ever take part in a spelling bee? Have you ever filled out a crossword puzzle? How about filling out a job application? What about simply spelling out your name as you endorse the back of a check?
If you’ve done any of these things you’ve taken part in a miracle that is so commonplace now that you don’t even notice it. It’s part of our everyday life, and it’s so obvious we don’t see it. But trust me, there are people whose language precludes this wonderful innovation, and for them something as simple as writing the name of a loved one, or typing a short note, is not necessarily easy, or even possible!
I’m talking about something as simple as A to Z — or Alpha and Omega if you’re Greek.
I’m talking about the alphabet.
The word alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha and Beta. And since the early alphabets were intertwined in a complex family tree, it’s worth noting that the first letters of the Hebrew alphabet are Aleph and Beth.
Although the origins of the first human writing are not totally clear, there are some breathtakingly beautiful depictions of animals drawn by ancient humans on the walls of caves. There were probably other examples of artwork that hasn't survived the ravages of time because they were drawn on the dirt, or on outside surfaces such as walls or the sides of hills exposed to the weather.
At some point it was necessary for bean counters — well, bureaucrats — to keep track of who raised which animals or grew which crops, in order for them to be taxed. The most ancient writing that has survived the millennia might be the cuneiform accounts kept by the ancient Mesopotamian peoples, and of course the famous hieroglyphs written by the Egyptians. In these cases a stylized picture that represented a particular word was used to record what had happened. This can get a little clumsy, though, because you need a different symbol for each thing you want to write about.
That's why it's important that some genius figured out that the same symbols could be used to stand for consonants. Suddenly you were recording the sounds of the word, not a picture of that word, and that meant you could rearrange those symbols, which we call letters, to create all the words you use.
The Egyptians are credited with creating twenty-two symbols to stand for the consonants in their languages. At first only consonants were needed. In some languages, the rules for which vowels are used make it easy to guess which vowels to pronounce when reading. This was the case for the Phoenician alphabet, which was adapted from the Egyptian alphabet, as well as the Aramaic alphabet. These are the two most influential. Although the Hebrew language originally had its own symbols, eventually the copyists who preserved our Old Testament adopted that Aramaic alphabet, which is still used to this day.
That Phoenician alphabet mentioned earlier is the ancestor of the one we use. The Greeks adapted it, and so did the Romans, and so did we!
The Alpha that the Revelator writes about comes from the Hebrew Aleph, and is adapted from the picture of the Ox. It is the first letter of several alphabets. It also stands for the boss, or the leader. Since letters in the ancient world were made to stand for numbers as well (our system of Hindu-Arabic numbers only goes back about a thousand years), and the Alpha stood for 1.
The Omega is the twenty-second and last letter of the Greek alphabet. It was not in the earliest alphabets, however. It stands for the Great O (a ‘mega’ O, get it?), and represented a long 'o' sound. The Omega is also the number 800.
We sometimes use the term "Everything from A to Z" as a fancy way of saying everything. If you're British you say "A to Zed," since that's their way of pronouncing our last letter. And it makes perfect sense for Jesus, speaking in Revelation, to say "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." Everything we say, do, think, know, has happened, is happening, and will happen, is expressed within the confines of that marvelous invention we take for granted, the alphabet. Which kind of reminds me of the way we take Jesus for granted, as well as the plan Jesus has for history, outlined in Revelation.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 2, 2019, issue.
Copyright 2019 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.
