Rebirth For Troubled Souls
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Rebirth for Troubled Souls" by Keith Wagner
"Trusting God in the Midst of Change" by Keith Wagner
"Facing What We Are" by C. David McKirachan
Rebirth for Troubled Souls
by Keith Wagner
2 Timothy 2:8-15
One of the highlights of my trip to Germany in 2004 was a visit to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. Johannes Gutenberg printed the first bible in movable type in the year 1436. The museum had a reproduction of the very first printing press. Our tour included a demonstration of how the press works. I was asked to be a volunteer to help with the printing of a single page. The page we printed just happened to be the first page of the gospel of John. It was printed in Latin.
Our tour of the museum also included a visit to the vault where five original bibles, first printed by Gutenberg, were kept in a secure area but on display. It was extremely meaningful to see such extraordinary books that have been kept in excellent condition for over five centuries.
In the 15th century most of the people in Europe were illiterate. It was only the very elite who could read. This meant that a small minority of society could interpret the bible. Gutenberg developed the printed bible so the masses could have access to the scriptures. Unfortunately few of them could read them, let alone afford them.
Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and businessman from the mining town of Mainz, borrowed money to develop a technology that changed the world of communication. The press used by Gutenberg was a hand press, in which ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of hand-set letters held within a wooden form and the form was then pressed against a sheet of paper. Gutenberg's name does not appear on any of his work but he is generally credited with the world's first book printed with movable type, the 42-line (the number of lines per page) Bible, also known as the Gutenberg Bible or the Mainz Bible (for the place where it was produced).
As I peered over those original printed bibles in a glass case I couldn’t help but think of all the bibles in our society, many in homes which sit on a shelf or a bookcase and never get read. Unlike the people in Gutenberg’s time we have access to the word. It is even available on line. Unfortunately we let others interpret it for us. Rather than read and immerse ourselves in the word, we are misled by messages taken out of context or snippets of scripture to give us direction rather than study it for ourselves.
In three decades, printing spread across Europe where it became one of the chief means by which the Renaissance, the humanist re-birth of interest in learning and the classics, was transmitted from culture to culture.
The experience of seeing those first Gutenberg Bibles reassured me that God’s word always seems to surface when the world needs to hear it. More than anything people need reassurance, exactly what the letter in 2 Timothy was intended, as Paul gave reassurance to the fledging Church.
When my mother died all four of her sons were out of the state. Even my dad had left the apartment to go get the mail when she apparently died of a heart attack. But, my mother was not alone. She had called the retirement home nurse who came immediately and attended to her. She could not revive her but I really found comfort in the fact that my mother was not alone in another way. When my brothers and I were going through her apartment we found my mother’s bible laying open on the end table. It had been opened to 2 Timothy where Paul was describing the faith of the faithful, one of which was Lois. My mother’s name was Lois. God’s word was with her when she breathed her last breath.
* * *
Trusting God in the Midst of Change
by Keith Wagner
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
In the spring of 2009 I received some rather shocking news from my father and mother who lived in Florida. They had been living in a retirement community for the past three years and they announced that they were moving. That news came as a total surprise. I thought they were set for the rest of their lives, living in a facility that would provide for their nursing care should they need it in the future. But, they told me that things were not the same. The management had changed and the living conditions were deteriorating. They also missed being around younger people.
My folks said they were going to live with one of my brothers and his wife in Orlando. He had purchased a second home in Georgia and needed someone to stay at his home in Florida when he was away. It’s hard to believe that two retired folks who were in their late eighties, were going to make a change.
My brothers and I thought my parents were content to stay where they were. If they had stayed in the retirement community we wouldn’t have had to worry about them. But, they were in control of their lives, not us. My parents were people of tremendous faith. Having moved many times in the past they had always embraced their new situations always interacting with their neighbors and community.
I believe this is what the Lord was telling Jeremiah to tell the Israelites. Although they were in exile they needed to accept their new situation and build community.
Sometimes we have to “let go” and give others the freedom to be who they are. It also reminds me that life does not stay the same. Circumstances change and we have to make adjustments in order to maintain a sense of harmony in our lives.
I recently retired from full-time pastoral ministry. I must confess I don’t miss it. I haven’t relocated but I have changed my life’s mission. I have focused on my hobby of model railroading which has basically been in storage for over three decades. In the process I have discovered many new places, made new friends and learned much about trains. My journey has been an absolute joy. And, not surprising there are just as many opportunities to do ministry in my new circles as there were in the local church.
For example, I recently made a new friend who told me about a widow whose husband had died this past year. She is lonely and needs support. Her husband left a basement full of trains and she has no idea what to do with them. I offered to appraise them for her and help her find a home for them. As a former pastor I can help her with her grief and at the same time help her to move forward with her life by letting go of the trains. At the moment she is stuck and unable to move forward. But, in time she will work through her grief and accept her new situation.
In her book, At Wit’s End, Erma Bombeck tells the story about the time she decided to reshuffle her priorities. A friend of hers had died which left her vulnerable, confused and doubtful about life. She felt like she should just draw all of her savings out of the bank and go to Tahiti. She felt like taking all of her plastic dishes and running over them with her car. She wanted to throw all of her imitation flowers away and replace them with live ones.
Instead she decided to rearrange her life. She made a vow. Then Erma decided to make some changes. She would live each day as if it was her last. She took the big candle in the sitting room that was shaped like a rose and gathering dust and lit it. She fixed her car window, the one that had a crack in it and also the one that her husband and she had decided not to replace until they bought a new car. She invited some old friends to dinner whom they saw at sixteen weddings. They were always saying, "We’ve got to get together." She opened a big tin of fish and baked it for dinner although no one else liked fish. She had always thought not to cook it would be wasteful. Then she washed her hands with a piece of pink soap, shaped like a sea shell, the one they were always saving because it was so special. Erma Bombeck decided she would move forward with her life.
Perhaps we have to be at our wits end to be receptive to the life-giving power of God. The Israelites found themselves in exile, but God had not forgotten them. At some point we have to realize we are powerless and we have to be willing to make some changes, shift some priorities and be open to the reconstructive ways in which our lives can move forward.
Rev. Dr. Keith Wagner is the pastor of St. John's UCC in Troy, Ohio. He has served churches in Southwest Ohio for over three decades. He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and has an M.Div. from Methodist Theological School, Delaware, Ohio, and a D.Min. from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He has also been an adjunct professor at Edison Community College, Piqua, Ohio. He and his wife, Lin, live in Springfield, Ohio.
* * *
Facing What We Are
by C. David McKirachan
Luke 17:11-19
Alcoholics Anonymous has always been a part of my ministry. I’ve heard that its results are mixed, but for most of the folks struggling with addiction, there are few places to go for help. AA is an option in a world full of dead ends and judgement.
One of the things I like about the program is the insistence that the addict admit that they ‘are’ an addict. It doesn’t ever turn into ‘was.’ There is an acceptance that, like it or not, addiction is something that has to be dealt with as an ongoing condition. It needs to be faced every day. To relax that sense of awareness and discipline is to deny a very real part of themselves and the insidious nature of something that has the power to destroy their lives.
I think this is very close to what it means to accept ourselves as sinners. It is very Reformed in approach, though I doubt it was Bill’s idea to found a movement on Reformed theology. But both of these approaches to living deal honestly with our need to be very aware and disciplined if we are to have lives that do not founder on the reefs of our own arrogance.
This story of the ten lepers offers a clear window into our own unwillingness to accept our need. The lives of lepers in that day and age were ones of condemnation to isolation from family, faith communities, and hope. Their only companions were each other. Alms were thrown to them from as far a distance as possible, as were rocks. They wore bells so that no one would inadvertently bump into them. Once these ten were healed by the Lord, they ran from their past of horror as quickly as possible. They would never consider going back. Why would any of us willingly return to a nightmare? Jesus was a reminder of what had been. They wanted nothing to do with that. Only one had the courage to face the gift that it was. He accepted the truth that that horror was real. He had lived it. It was part of who and what he was. He had not earned any part of this miracle. It was a gift. If he was to accept the gift, he would have to accept what the gift had liberated him from. In some ways he would always be a leper, but a liberated leper.
I’ve often wondered how the other nine did. They couldn’t go back to their lives before leprosy. Did they go to new towns? Did they try to pretend they were normal folk, untouched by a curse, liberated by a miracle worker? Did they wake sweating from nightmares of then and of going back to then? Were they haunted? How did they treat lepers who crossed their paths? Did they remember how they’d been treated and offer compassion? Or were they afraid and in their fear do their best to live in denial and self-righteousness? Were they the first to cast stones? Their bodies were clean, but their souls were sunk in fear, fear of being discovered, fear of getting sick again, fear of what they really were.
We are all lepers. We are unclean. Our excuses for our sin surround us, separate us from each other and from God. And we compound them by denying them. We consider ourselves ‘good.’ And in our ‘goodness’ we don’t want to have anything to do with those who walk life’s roads wearing the bells of poverty, addiction, confusion, loneliness. We’ve got better things to do. Someone else will take care of them. We’ve done our share. They must have done something bad to get themselves into those situations. Our disease is sin. And unless we are willing to be more self-aware and disciplined it will rot our lives away.
It’s pretty scary stuff. But the miracle is always available. That in itself is something we need to remember. I think we need to have an AA group for sinners. Oh yeah. That’s the church. Maybe once in a while we ought to have people stand up and say, “My name’s ____ and I’m a sinner.” The congregational response would be, “Hi, _____.” And then we could tell our stories of sin and of the hope and gratitude of salvation. How do you think that would go over? Bring it up with the Worship committee. I dare ya.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. Two of his books, I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder, have been published by Westminster John Knox Press. McKirachan was raised in a pastor's home and he is the brother of a pastor, and he has discovered his name indicates that he has druid roots. Storytelling seems to be a congenital disorder. He lives with his 21-year-old son Ben and his dog Sam.
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 9, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
"Rebirth for Troubled Souls" by Keith Wagner
"Trusting God in the Midst of Change" by Keith Wagner
"Facing What We Are" by C. David McKirachan
Rebirth for Troubled Souls
by Keith Wagner
2 Timothy 2:8-15
One of the highlights of my trip to Germany in 2004 was a visit to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. Johannes Gutenberg printed the first bible in movable type in the year 1436. The museum had a reproduction of the very first printing press. Our tour included a demonstration of how the press works. I was asked to be a volunteer to help with the printing of a single page. The page we printed just happened to be the first page of the gospel of John. It was printed in Latin.
Our tour of the museum also included a visit to the vault where five original bibles, first printed by Gutenberg, were kept in a secure area but on display. It was extremely meaningful to see such extraordinary books that have been kept in excellent condition for over five centuries.
In the 15th century most of the people in Europe were illiterate. It was only the very elite who could read. This meant that a small minority of society could interpret the bible. Gutenberg developed the printed bible so the masses could have access to the scriptures. Unfortunately few of them could read them, let alone afford them.
Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and businessman from the mining town of Mainz, borrowed money to develop a technology that changed the world of communication. The press used by Gutenberg was a hand press, in which ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of hand-set letters held within a wooden form and the form was then pressed against a sheet of paper. Gutenberg's name does not appear on any of his work but he is generally credited with the world's first book printed with movable type, the 42-line (the number of lines per page) Bible, also known as the Gutenberg Bible or the Mainz Bible (for the place where it was produced).
As I peered over those original printed bibles in a glass case I couldn’t help but think of all the bibles in our society, many in homes which sit on a shelf or a bookcase and never get read. Unlike the people in Gutenberg’s time we have access to the word. It is even available on line. Unfortunately we let others interpret it for us. Rather than read and immerse ourselves in the word, we are misled by messages taken out of context or snippets of scripture to give us direction rather than study it for ourselves.
In three decades, printing spread across Europe where it became one of the chief means by which the Renaissance, the humanist re-birth of interest in learning and the classics, was transmitted from culture to culture.
The experience of seeing those first Gutenberg Bibles reassured me that God’s word always seems to surface when the world needs to hear it. More than anything people need reassurance, exactly what the letter in 2 Timothy was intended, as Paul gave reassurance to the fledging Church.
When my mother died all four of her sons were out of the state. Even my dad had left the apartment to go get the mail when she apparently died of a heart attack. But, my mother was not alone. She had called the retirement home nurse who came immediately and attended to her. She could not revive her but I really found comfort in the fact that my mother was not alone in another way. When my brothers and I were going through her apartment we found my mother’s bible laying open on the end table. It had been opened to 2 Timothy where Paul was describing the faith of the faithful, one of which was Lois. My mother’s name was Lois. God’s word was with her when she breathed her last breath.
* * *
Trusting God in the Midst of Change
by Keith Wagner
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
In the spring of 2009 I received some rather shocking news from my father and mother who lived in Florida. They had been living in a retirement community for the past three years and they announced that they were moving. That news came as a total surprise. I thought they were set for the rest of their lives, living in a facility that would provide for their nursing care should they need it in the future. But, they told me that things were not the same. The management had changed and the living conditions were deteriorating. They also missed being around younger people.
My folks said they were going to live with one of my brothers and his wife in Orlando. He had purchased a second home in Georgia and needed someone to stay at his home in Florida when he was away. It’s hard to believe that two retired folks who were in their late eighties, were going to make a change.
My brothers and I thought my parents were content to stay where they were. If they had stayed in the retirement community we wouldn’t have had to worry about them. But, they were in control of their lives, not us. My parents were people of tremendous faith. Having moved many times in the past they had always embraced their new situations always interacting with their neighbors and community.
I believe this is what the Lord was telling Jeremiah to tell the Israelites. Although they were in exile they needed to accept their new situation and build community.
Sometimes we have to “let go” and give others the freedom to be who they are. It also reminds me that life does not stay the same. Circumstances change and we have to make adjustments in order to maintain a sense of harmony in our lives.
I recently retired from full-time pastoral ministry. I must confess I don’t miss it. I haven’t relocated but I have changed my life’s mission. I have focused on my hobby of model railroading which has basically been in storage for over three decades. In the process I have discovered many new places, made new friends and learned much about trains. My journey has been an absolute joy. And, not surprising there are just as many opportunities to do ministry in my new circles as there were in the local church.
For example, I recently made a new friend who told me about a widow whose husband had died this past year. She is lonely and needs support. Her husband left a basement full of trains and she has no idea what to do with them. I offered to appraise them for her and help her find a home for them. As a former pastor I can help her with her grief and at the same time help her to move forward with her life by letting go of the trains. At the moment she is stuck and unable to move forward. But, in time she will work through her grief and accept her new situation.
In her book, At Wit’s End, Erma Bombeck tells the story about the time she decided to reshuffle her priorities. A friend of hers had died which left her vulnerable, confused and doubtful about life. She felt like she should just draw all of her savings out of the bank and go to Tahiti. She felt like taking all of her plastic dishes and running over them with her car. She wanted to throw all of her imitation flowers away and replace them with live ones.
Instead she decided to rearrange her life. She made a vow. Then Erma decided to make some changes. She would live each day as if it was her last. She took the big candle in the sitting room that was shaped like a rose and gathering dust and lit it. She fixed her car window, the one that had a crack in it and also the one that her husband and she had decided not to replace until they bought a new car. She invited some old friends to dinner whom they saw at sixteen weddings. They were always saying, "We’ve got to get together." She opened a big tin of fish and baked it for dinner although no one else liked fish. She had always thought not to cook it would be wasteful. Then she washed her hands with a piece of pink soap, shaped like a sea shell, the one they were always saving because it was so special. Erma Bombeck decided she would move forward with her life.
Perhaps we have to be at our wits end to be receptive to the life-giving power of God. The Israelites found themselves in exile, but God had not forgotten them. At some point we have to realize we are powerless and we have to be willing to make some changes, shift some priorities and be open to the reconstructive ways in which our lives can move forward.
Rev. Dr. Keith Wagner is the pastor of St. John's UCC in Troy, Ohio. He has served churches in Southwest Ohio for over three decades. He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and has an M.Div. from Methodist Theological School, Delaware, Ohio, and a D.Min. from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He has also been an adjunct professor at Edison Community College, Piqua, Ohio. He and his wife, Lin, live in Springfield, Ohio.
* * *
Facing What We Are
by C. David McKirachan
Luke 17:11-19
Alcoholics Anonymous has always been a part of my ministry. I’ve heard that its results are mixed, but for most of the folks struggling with addiction, there are few places to go for help. AA is an option in a world full of dead ends and judgement.
One of the things I like about the program is the insistence that the addict admit that they ‘are’ an addict. It doesn’t ever turn into ‘was.’ There is an acceptance that, like it or not, addiction is something that has to be dealt with as an ongoing condition. It needs to be faced every day. To relax that sense of awareness and discipline is to deny a very real part of themselves and the insidious nature of something that has the power to destroy their lives.
I think this is very close to what it means to accept ourselves as sinners. It is very Reformed in approach, though I doubt it was Bill’s idea to found a movement on Reformed theology. But both of these approaches to living deal honestly with our need to be very aware and disciplined if we are to have lives that do not founder on the reefs of our own arrogance.
This story of the ten lepers offers a clear window into our own unwillingness to accept our need. The lives of lepers in that day and age were ones of condemnation to isolation from family, faith communities, and hope. Their only companions were each other. Alms were thrown to them from as far a distance as possible, as were rocks. They wore bells so that no one would inadvertently bump into them. Once these ten were healed by the Lord, they ran from their past of horror as quickly as possible. They would never consider going back. Why would any of us willingly return to a nightmare? Jesus was a reminder of what had been. They wanted nothing to do with that. Only one had the courage to face the gift that it was. He accepted the truth that that horror was real. He had lived it. It was part of who and what he was. He had not earned any part of this miracle. It was a gift. If he was to accept the gift, he would have to accept what the gift had liberated him from. In some ways he would always be a leper, but a liberated leper.
I’ve often wondered how the other nine did. They couldn’t go back to their lives before leprosy. Did they go to new towns? Did they try to pretend they were normal folk, untouched by a curse, liberated by a miracle worker? Did they wake sweating from nightmares of then and of going back to then? Were they haunted? How did they treat lepers who crossed their paths? Did they remember how they’d been treated and offer compassion? Or were they afraid and in their fear do their best to live in denial and self-righteousness? Were they the first to cast stones? Their bodies were clean, but their souls were sunk in fear, fear of being discovered, fear of getting sick again, fear of what they really were.
We are all lepers. We are unclean. Our excuses for our sin surround us, separate us from each other and from God. And we compound them by denying them. We consider ourselves ‘good.’ And in our ‘goodness’ we don’t want to have anything to do with those who walk life’s roads wearing the bells of poverty, addiction, confusion, loneliness. We’ve got better things to do. Someone else will take care of them. We’ve done our share. They must have done something bad to get themselves into those situations. Our disease is sin. And unless we are willing to be more self-aware and disciplined it will rot our lives away.
It’s pretty scary stuff. But the miracle is always available. That in itself is something we need to remember. I think we need to have an AA group for sinners. Oh yeah. That’s the church. Maybe once in a while we ought to have people stand up and say, “My name’s ____ and I’m a sinner.” The congregational response would be, “Hi, _____.” And then we could tell our stories of sin and of the hope and gratitude of salvation. How do you think that would go over? Bring it up with the Worship committee. I dare ya.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. Two of his books, I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder, have been published by Westminster John Knox Press. McKirachan was raised in a pastor's home and he is the brother of a pastor, and he has discovered his name indicates that he has druid roots. Storytelling seems to be a congenital disorder. He lives with his 21-year-old son Ben and his dog Sam.
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 9, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
