Seeking God
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
Stories to Live By: "Seeking God"
"Seeing God in Our Neighbor"
"Show Me Your Glory"
Shining Moments: "Is It Asking Too Much?" by C.B. "Cleve" Bishop
Sermon Starter: "Pascal's Night of Fire"
Scrap Pile: "In the Thick Darkness Where God Is" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
For insight into this week's Hebrew scripture, check out John's Scrap Pile sermon, "In the Thick Darkness Where God Is." The title is a direct quote from Exodus 20:21. For extra credit, read Exodus 24:1-4, 9-18. These passages describe a scene where Moses and 70 elders of Israel catch a glimpse of God, a transfixing moment of holy communion: "...they saw the God of Israel... they beheld God and ate and drank." We especially want to recommend the book John quotes from, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America by Chris Hedges. More stories about seeing God are found in this week's Stories To Live By and in the Sermon Starter.
Speaking of seeing God, Dale Caragotta, John's second cousin from Toronto, wrote last week to tell us how his mother saw God as she was dying: "About half an hour before my mom passed away, she spoke her last words. As reported to me by her caregiver (we had 24-hour-a-day caregivers staying with her), Mom was lying in bed with her eyes open and a serene look on her face, not showing any signs of the pain and discomfort that had been troubling her the last few weeks of her life, when she suddenly spoke. 'Mummy, Mummy, Mummy! God! Oh my God!' Many members of my family, including my uncle Jim Howe and myself, believe that Mom did see a vision of her mother, Florence Long Howe, who was there to greet her daughter at the Gates to Heaven -- and then Mom experienced the presence of Almighty God."
Our next book will be an anthology of "best stories" from preachers and Christian educators about experiences of God's presence. All of us who work in the church have powerful personal stories of the ways that God has called, led, guided, cajoled, dragged, knocked upside the head, and healed. If you are willing to share one of your stories or if you know of someone who has a story that is just too good not to share, write to us at jsumwalt@naspa.net.
Stories to Live By
Seeking God
Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you..."
Exodus 33:18-19a
In a sermon on this text, Dr. Mickey Anders of the First Christian Church in Pikeville, Kentucky wrote:
To me, this story speaks of the ineffable nature of God, the mystery of God's presence. We love to sing that great old hymn "In the Garden," where it says, "He walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own." I truly wish my relationship with God were as straightforward as that. But I usually only get a glimpse of God out of the corner of my eye. Someone has said that faith is what you do between the last time you experienced God and the next time you experience God. Those who are honest about their faith admit that they are like Moses, seeing only the backside of God.
When Rudolf Otto considered the incomprehensible yet magnetic pull of mystery and holiness in our lives, he coined a term from the Latin, mysterium tremendum. "This mysterium tremendum," says Otto, "may come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its... everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to ecstasy.... It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of -- whom or what? In the presence of that which is a mystery inexpressible and above all creatures."
(For the full text of the sermon click on http://www.pikevillefirstchristianchurch.org/Sermons/Sermon19991017.html.)
Seeing God in Our Neighbor
In a letter to the people of Albania on April 28, 1997, Mother Teresa wrote:
To be able to love one another we must pray much, for prayer gives a clean heart, and a clean heart can see God in our neighbor. If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another. If each person saw God in his neighbor, do you think we would need guns and bombs?
(http://www.frtommylane.com/homilies/year_a/34.htm#mother_teresa)
Show Me Your Glory
In 1995, twin girls had been born 12 weeks premature in the Medical Center Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts. They weighed in at about two pounds each, and had been placed in separate bassinets. One started to do just fine; the other began slowly to fade. Her heartbeat was rapid, she was visibly anxious, and nothing the nurses could do seemed to be able to stop what they saw as her inevitable death. Then one nurse remembered something she had read about treatment of premature infants elsewhere in the world. As a last resort the nurses put little Brielle, the weaker twin, right into the bassinet with Kyrie, her "big sister." (Kyrie was 3 ounces bigger!) In the words of one of the nurses on duty, the results were both immediate and dramatic. Little Brielle snuggled up to her sister, and her heartrate immediately slowed to normal. Her color came back. The baby visibly relaxed, it seemed almost with a sigh of relief. She accepted nourishment. The crisis was over. She would survive.
(http://www.pikevillefirstchristianchurch.org/Sermons/Sermon19991017.html)
Shining Moments
Is It Asking Too Much?
by C.B. "Cleve" Bishop
Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.
Psalm 99:6
They say you can't go home again, but I thought I'd try anyway. I went back to Seattle to visit my stepfather for a couple of weeks, after having been away for over 20 years. We really did have a good visit, and we enjoyed one another's company immensely.
One day I decided to take the bus downtown by myself, just to wander around and relive the "good old days." What a shock! I was amazed (and appalled!) at how things had changed... in fact, virtually all of my perceptions were so negative that I ended up in a really foul mood. I then decided that the only way to work all of the negative "vibes" out of my system would be to walk back to my stepdad's place, even though it was over 10 miles. This was a natural decision for me, as I was "into" walking for my health at the time.
As I walked, I carried on a running conversation with the Lord: "Lord God, I don't know what it's going to take to cheer me up! I'm in a really foul mood, Lord! About the only think I can think of that might cheer me up, Lord, would be to find a $100 bill!" That thought stuck in my mind, and I kept it up. "Lord, if I could find a $100 bill, it would be about the only thing I can think of that would cheer me up!" Grumble, grumble!
After a while, I was walking beside a chain-link fence that enclosed an industrial park bordering a four-lane highway -- no residences, no side streets, no cross streets, no chance of anybody ever finding anything along this stretch -- and I found a $100 bill!
In Monopoly money!
I laughed right out loud and said, "Lord, you really knew what it would take to cheer me up!" I sang praises to my God all the rest of the way home. I knew it had to be the Lord's doing, because I have never before nor since found any denomination of Monopoly money!
I learned several valuable lessons from this: 1) God hears me; 2) God knows me better than I know myself; 3) God answers me; 4) God wants me to be specific when I pray (I had not specified a $100 bill in legal U.S. tender); and best of all, 5) God has a terrific sense of humor!
Cleveland B. Bishop Sr. is pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Raton, New Mexico. Cleve believes his calling is to promote effective, dynamic, evangelistic Christian life and to encourage Christians to be bold about their faith. You can visit his church's website at http://www.ratondisciples.com.
Sermon Starter
Pascal's Night of Fire
"See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."
Exodus 33:21b-23
Blaise Pascal was an influential scientist who lived in the 1600s. He was something of a genius. For example, at the age of 12, even before he had received any formal training in geometry, Pascal independently discovered and demonstrated Euclid's 32 propositions. Pascal was also a Christian.
When he died in 1662 his servant found a small piece of parchment sewn into his coat. At the top of the paper Pascal had drawn a cross. Underneath the cross were these words:
In the year of the Lord 1654,
Monday, November 23,
From about half-past ten in the evening until half-past twelve.
Fire --
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not of philosophers nor of the scholars.
Certitude, Certitude, Feeling, Joy, Peace...
That was Pascal's record (abbreviated here) of an intense two-hour religious experience that he kept secret until his death. It was an experience of God that gripped his soul and changed the course of his life. He stored his record of it in the lining of his coat, close to his heart. For eight years he took care to sew and unsew it every time he changed his coat. It was a treasured experience, something he could return to again and again.
Adapted from Doubt and Assurance by R.C. Sproul (Baker Books, 1993) and The Galileo Connection by Charles Hummel (InterVarsity Press, 1986).
Scrap Pile
In the Thick Darkness Where God Is
by John Sumwalt
And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God has come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
Exodus 20:20-21 (KJV)
Jo and I attended the 75th annual Horse & Colt Show in her hometown of Viola last Saturday. The Horse & Colt Show is a combination fair and street festival. There is the showing of cattle, horses, and colts, plus the judging of vegetables, baked goods, hay and corn crops, paintings, quilts, and other hand-sewn works of art. There are tractor pulls and horse pulls (my favorite event), a midway with rides for the kids, and a parade with floats, clowns, and marching bands.
It rained on the parade this year, but no one seemed to care (it rains on the parade almost every year). Nothing stops the parade. Every year on the last Saturday of September, two or three thousand people line the streets of this little town of 700 that was nearly blown off the map by a tornado a little over a month ago.
There was never really any question that there would be a Horse & Colt Show this year -- even though every third or fourth roof is covered with a tarp, half the trees are gone, some people are still not back in homes that were a total loss, and FEMA (the federal agency that we all now love to hate) has refused to give any federal aid. The Horse & Colt Show in Viola, like Mardi Gras in New Orleans in February, will always go on. It is part of the heart and soul of the community. It is a homecoming. Once a year every Viola native comes back to their roots -- or wishes they could.
Part of the ritual for our family, after stopping in the old gym to look at the exhibits, is a stroll up the midway for hub fries, fresh squeezed lemonade, and deep fried cheese curds. Then we head over to the VFW for barbecue and pie (my other favorite event).
This year, along the way, as we were passing the old Methodist parsonage (now owned by a nice Pentecostal family) I noticed something new that I had never seen at the Horse & Colt Show before. Someone had printed the Ten Commandments on a piece of white tag board and posted them on a couple of stakes between the sidewalk and the street.
It was a curious sight. I don't know if any one else in our party noticed. No one stopped to read them. We all pretty much know them by heart. No one commented on them.
I wondered why they were there. Was this a pot shot in the so-called culture wars? I didn't know the front had moved to Viola.
What is all this fuss in our nation about displaying or not displaying the Ten Commandments in public places? Would we as a people be more faithful to God if we could read these ancient words everywhere we went? Is this a crucial issue that makes any real difference in our everyday lives -- or in the well-being of our eternal souls?
How many Christians in the United States, do you suppose, would say that the Ten Commandments are important? It would be a very high percentage, don't you think, somewhere around 99.99%?
How many do you think would say they are very careful to keep every one of the ten? (Worship no other gods; no graven images; don't take the name of the Lord in vain; keep the Sabbath holy; honor parents; don't kill; don't commit adultery -- except once in awhile in their hearts; never steal -- this includes declaring every penny earned on income tax forms and never saying their child is 11 when they are really 12 so they don't have to pay full price at the amusement park; never lie -- this includes being truthful about whether they keep all of the above; and never covet their neighbor's house, spouse, income, facelift, BMW, stainless steel appliances, or Packers tickets.)
I'm going to guess that the percentage of positive responses here would be significantly less?
Would you agree that for many Christians in the U.S. it is what the Ten Commandments symbolize that is important to them -- more than any benefits that might come from living by them? Many U.S. Christians, and many of us here, if we are honest with ourselves, would have to admit that we really believe that we can live all right even if we have to fudge on a few of the commandments.
How are you doing on that fourth one -- keeping the Sabbath holy?
Perhaps more important than all of this is what Jesus said about the commandments. Fortunately for us, Jesus is on record on this one. When asked by a lawyer who was trying to trick him which commandment in the law is the greatest, Jesus said: " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:35-40).
That's quite clear. All the law and everything the prophets said comes down to two things: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. So why aren't we putting that up on courthouse walls? It would take up a lot less space and it is certainly easier to remember! Or why don't we put up the Sermon on the Mount?
Was Jesus saying that we no longer need the Ten Commandments? We are, after all, people of the New Testament, the new covenant -- not the Old Testament.
The Apostle Paul speaks to this in his letter to the Philippian church in that passage we heard a minute ago. He is writing to a church that is facing some pressure and persecution from Jewish Christians who insist that followers of Jesus must still keep every letter of the Old Testament law, including the one about circumcising male converts.
Paul reminds them that he is a Pharisee, a group that prided themselves in keeping the commandments and all the rest of the law perfectly. Paul says, "I was circumcised when I was a baby; I have been a meticulous observer of the law all my life. Don't talk to me about keeping the commandments; I've done it!"
And, he hastens to add, "It doesn't mean anything. It is all rubbish." He uses strong words so they can't miss his meaning. Eugene Peterson translates it like this:
The very credentials that these people are waving around as something special, I'm tearing up and throwing out with the trash. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ -- God's righteousness.
Paul would not have been concerned about tacking commandments up on every bulletin board or memorizing them in confirmation class. He wanted people to know God. To know God is to live the commandments. It is the relationship with God that makes it possible to live a good life.
There were Jews and Christians in Paul's day who devoted their lives to keeping all the rules. And it wasn't enough. Keeping the rules, honoring every commandment, is never enough. It is a means to an end, not the end.
The rule-keepers were so focused on the Ten Commandments and all the other laws that they couldn't see God. They worshiped the law and not God. The commandments had become their idol, the very thing the first and second commandments forbid.
This is what God was trying to teach Moses and the people of Israel when he appeared to them at Mount Sinai. Picture this (see Exodus 19:9--20:21):
After the people of Israel were delivered from slavery in Egypt, and God had brought them through the sea on dry ground, and had given them food and water in the wilderness, they came to Mount Sinai -- and God said to Moses, "I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear me speak with you and so trust you forever. Tell the people to wash their clothes, to be very careful not to go up on the mountain or to touch the edge of it or they will be put to death. It is only when they hear the trumpet sound a long blast that they can come up on the mountain."
Moses prepared the people, and three days later there was thunder and lightning and a thick cloud on the mountain. Then they heard a trumpet so loud that all the people trembled. Moses brought the people out. There was smoke all around and the mountain was shaking violently. The blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder.
Moses began to speak, and God answered in thunder. God spoke what we call the Ten Commandments. The people were all shaking in their sandals and got as far away from the mountain as they could go. They were scared to death and found themselves running away from God, and as they ran, they were calling over their shoulders for Moses to convince God not to speak to them again, lest they die. They said to Moses, "Why don't you just get the word from God and tell us? Don't let God speak to us anymore."
Moses said everything would be all right. "Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of God in you so you won't sin anymore." But the people would come no closer. They stood at a distance and watched. Then Moses did something that must have blown the minds of all those scaredy -cat Hebrews:
"...Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was."
Did you know that? If you want to draw near to God, you have to go into the thick darkness where God is?
How do you feel about darkness? Most of us don't like darkness much -- ordinary darkness, much less thick darkness.
The story is told about a little boy who was afraid of the dark. He wouldn't go anywhere in the dark. One night his mother said, "Johnny, go out on the porch and get the broom." Johnny said, "I'm not going out there. It's too dark." His mom said, "There is nothing to be afraid of in the dark. Jesus is with you." Little Johnny opened the porch door a crack and called out, "Jesus, if you are out there, would you hand me the broom?"
There is a new book out by Chris Hedges called Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America (Free Press, 2005). Hedges is a newspaper reporter, a war correspondent for many years, who also happens to be the son of a pastor and a seminary graduate. When he was in seminary at Harvard, he chose to serve a dying church in Roxbury, one of the poorest ghettos in Boston. He writes that "the administration at Harvard Divinity School took a dim view of my decision to live and work in Roxbury. They had given me a full scholarship, but not in the words of a dean 'to be a social worker.' " Hedges writes about the thick darkness he entered in Roxbury, where his house and the church building were vandalized on a regular basis:
"I spent my first few weeks in despair. A boy about ten came to my door one morning and asked me to help his mother. We walked to her building, climbed the stairs that smelled of urine, and pushed open the metal door of the apartment. The woman was lying on a couch. Her arms were raw with blood and her flesh torn from rat bites. She had fallen drunk on her floor and become a meal for rodents. The wounds were untended. She did not respond as I spoke to her. The child implored me to do something. I found dish towels in a kitchen which was filled with dirty plates and filth, and wrapped them around the bites. I lifted her onto the couch and left her, breathing heavily and smelling of alcohol. I took her child to a neighbor" (pp. 17-18).
Hedges writes, "It is knowledge of this darkness that alone makes faith possible." He confesses that terror and despair overwhelmed him again and again as he encountered abject poverty and brutal violence, sometimes reacting with violence himself. But he adds, "It is in this fear, this darkness, that I found God, even as I thought I was fleeing God" (pp. 36-37). "All of us find God not in what we know but in what we cannot comprehend and cannot see" (p. 4).
Hedges asks: "Where are the theology professors, wrapped in the narcissism of their own scholarship, who spoke of liberation and empowerment for the poor but never went to the ghetto?" (p. 36). He condemns "out-of-touch liberal theology, blunted by too many years of catering to the comfortable in affluent suburban churches, rendered hollow by platitudes and the naiveté of the pampered and protected" (p. 29).
He's talking about us -- you and me. Hedges quotes Jesus' advice to the rich young ruler: "If you would enter life, keep the commandments" (Matthew 19:17). He writes: "The commandments lay down rules and guidelines to sustain community. They were, for the ancients and for us, the rules that hold us together and when dishonored lead to alienation, discord, and violence" (p. 1).
Is there hope for us comfortable suburban scaredy-cat Christians who give lip service to the commandments and are afraid of the dark?
Moses and some of the leaders of Israel had another encounter with God on the mountain, which is described a couple of chapters later in Exodus 24. It is a moment of Holy Communion that might give us hope as we enter into communion with God and with Christians all over the earth.
God invites Moses and Aaron and 70 of the elders of Israel to come up on the mountain. They went up and they saw the God of Israel. Under God's feet there was something, the author of the text writes, like a sapphire, a path of clear heavenly light. When they came back they said there was really no way to put into words what they had seen. They said, "We saw God, and we stood there unable to say a word, barely able to breathe. We didn't dare move. Everything was absolutely still. It was like time stopped. It was one of those forever moments. We felt like we were there for years. And God didn't hurt us. We saw God, and we ate and drank."
In the late '80s, a British man was taken hostage in Lebanon and held in a cramped room in chains for five years. One day he and his fellow hostages were given a bowl of red cherries, the first fruit and the first color they had seen in four years. Despite their eagerness to eat the fruit they waited a day, simply to gaze upon the cherries in wonder and gratitude. One of the commentators on this text writes that this may have been what the elders of Israel did that day on the mountain. They gazed and gazed in awe and wonder, and then they ate. (The New Interpreters Bible (Volume One), Abingdon Press, 1994, p. 883)
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How to Share Stories
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StoryShare, October 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
Stories to Live By: "Seeking God"
"Seeing God in Our Neighbor"
"Show Me Your Glory"
Shining Moments: "Is It Asking Too Much?" by C.B. "Cleve" Bishop
Sermon Starter: "Pascal's Night of Fire"
Scrap Pile: "In the Thick Darkness Where God Is" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
For insight into this week's Hebrew scripture, check out John's Scrap Pile sermon, "In the Thick Darkness Where God Is." The title is a direct quote from Exodus 20:21. For extra credit, read Exodus 24:1-4, 9-18. These passages describe a scene where Moses and 70 elders of Israel catch a glimpse of God, a transfixing moment of holy communion: "...they saw the God of Israel... they beheld God and ate and drank." We especially want to recommend the book John quotes from, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America by Chris Hedges. More stories about seeing God are found in this week's Stories To Live By and in the Sermon Starter.
Speaking of seeing God, Dale Caragotta, John's second cousin from Toronto, wrote last week to tell us how his mother saw God as she was dying: "About half an hour before my mom passed away, she spoke her last words. As reported to me by her caregiver (we had 24-hour-a-day caregivers staying with her), Mom was lying in bed with her eyes open and a serene look on her face, not showing any signs of the pain and discomfort that had been troubling her the last few weeks of her life, when she suddenly spoke. 'Mummy, Mummy, Mummy! God! Oh my God!' Many members of my family, including my uncle Jim Howe and myself, believe that Mom did see a vision of her mother, Florence Long Howe, who was there to greet her daughter at the Gates to Heaven -- and then Mom experienced the presence of Almighty God."
Our next book will be an anthology of "best stories" from preachers and Christian educators about experiences of God's presence. All of us who work in the church have powerful personal stories of the ways that God has called, led, guided, cajoled, dragged, knocked upside the head, and healed. If you are willing to share one of your stories or if you know of someone who has a story that is just too good not to share, write to us at jsumwalt@naspa.net.
Stories to Live By
Seeking God
Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you..."
Exodus 33:18-19a
In a sermon on this text, Dr. Mickey Anders of the First Christian Church in Pikeville, Kentucky wrote:
To me, this story speaks of the ineffable nature of God, the mystery of God's presence. We love to sing that great old hymn "In the Garden," where it says, "He walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own." I truly wish my relationship with God were as straightforward as that. But I usually only get a glimpse of God out of the corner of my eye. Someone has said that faith is what you do between the last time you experienced God and the next time you experience God. Those who are honest about their faith admit that they are like Moses, seeing only the backside of God.
When Rudolf Otto considered the incomprehensible yet magnetic pull of mystery and holiness in our lives, he coined a term from the Latin, mysterium tremendum. "This mysterium tremendum," says Otto, "may come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its... everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to ecstasy.... It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of -- whom or what? In the presence of that which is a mystery inexpressible and above all creatures."
(For the full text of the sermon click on http://www.pikevillefirstchristianchurch.org/Sermons/Sermon19991017.html.)
Seeing God in Our Neighbor
In a letter to the people of Albania on April 28, 1997, Mother Teresa wrote:
To be able to love one another we must pray much, for prayer gives a clean heart, and a clean heart can see God in our neighbor. If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another. If each person saw God in his neighbor, do you think we would need guns and bombs?
(http://www.frtommylane.com/homilies/year_a/34.htm#mother_teresa)
Show Me Your Glory
In 1995, twin girls had been born 12 weeks premature in the Medical Center Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts. They weighed in at about two pounds each, and had been placed in separate bassinets. One started to do just fine; the other began slowly to fade. Her heartbeat was rapid, she was visibly anxious, and nothing the nurses could do seemed to be able to stop what they saw as her inevitable death. Then one nurse remembered something she had read about treatment of premature infants elsewhere in the world. As a last resort the nurses put little Brielle, the weaker twin, right into the bassinet with Kyrie, her "big sister." (Kyrie was 3 ounces bigger!) In the words of one of the nurses on duty, the results were both immediate and dramatic. Little Brielle snuggled up to her sister, and her heartrate immediately slowed to normal. Her color came back. The baby visibly relaxed, it seemed almost with a sigh of relief. She accepted nourishment. The crisis was over. She would survive.
(http://www.pikevillefirstchristianchurch.org/Sermons/Sermon19991017.html)
Shining Moments
Is It Asking Too Much?
by C.B. "Cleve" Bishop
Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.
Psalm 99:6
They say you can't go home again, but I thought I'd try anyway. I went back to Seattle to visit my stepfather for a couple of weeks, after having been away for over 20 years. We really did have a good visit, and we enjoyed one another's company immensely.
One day I decided to take the bus downtown by myself, just to wander around and relive the "good old days." What a shock! I was amazed (and appalled!) at how things had changed... in fact, virtually all of my perceptions were so negative that I ended up in a really foul mood. I then decided that the only way to work all of the negative "vibes" out of my system would be to walk back to my stepdad's place, even though it was over 10 miles. This was a natural decision for me, as I was "into" walking for my health at the time.
As I walked, I carried on a running conversation with the Lord: "Lord God, I don't know what it's going to take to cheer me up! I'm in a really foul mood, Lord! About the only think I can think of that might cheer me up, Lord, would be to find a $100 bill!" That thought stuck in my mind, and I kept it up. "Lord, if I could find a $100 bill, it would be about the only thing I can think of that would cheer me up!" Grumble, grumble!
After a while, I was walking beside a chain-link fence that enclosed an industrial park bordering a four-lane highway -- no residences, no side streets, no cross streets, no chance of anybody ever finding anything along this stretch -- and I found a $100 bill!
In Monopoly money!
I laughed right out loud and said, "Lord, you really knew what it would take to cheer me up!" I sang praises to my God all the rest of the way home. I knew it had to be the Lord's doing, because I have never before nor since found any denomination of Monopoly money!
I learned several valuable lessons from this: 1) God hears me; 2) God knows me better than I know myself; 3) God answers me; 4) God wants me to be specific when I pray (I had not specified a $100 bill in legal U.S. tender); and best of all, 5) God has a terrific sense of humor!
Cleveland B. Bishop Sr. is pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Raton, New Mexico. Cleve believes his calling is to promote effective, dynamic, evangelistic Christian life and to encourage Christians to be bold about their faith. You can visit his church's website at http://www.ratondisciples.com.
Sermon Starter
Pascal's Night of Fire
"See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."
Exodus 33:21b-23
Blaise Pascal was an influential scientist who lived in the 1600s. He was something of a genius. For example, at the age of 12, even before he had received any formal training in geometry, Pascal independently discovered and demonstrated Euclid's 32 propositions. Pascal was also a Christian.
When he died in 1662 his servant found a small piece of parchment sewn into his coat. At the top of the paper Pascal had drawn a cross. Underneath the cross were these words:
In the year of the Lord 1654,
Monday, November 23,
From about half-past ten in the evening until half-past twelve.
Fire --
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not of philosophers nor of the scholars.
Certitude, Certitude, Feeling, Joy, Peace...
That was Pascal's record (abbreviated here) of an intense two-hour religious experience that he kept secret until his death. It was an experience of God that gripped his soul and changed the course of his life. He stored his record of it in the lining of his coat, close to his heart. For eight years he took care to sew and unsew it every time he changed his coat. It was a treasured experience, something he could return to again and again.
Adapted from Doubt and Assurance by R.C. Sproul (Baker Books, 1993) and The Galileo Connection by Charles Hummel (InterVarsity Press, 1986).
Scrap Pile
In the Thick Darkness Where God Is
by John Sumwalt
And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God has come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
Exodus 20:20-21 (KJV)
Jo and I attended the 75th annual Horse & Colt Show in her hometown of Viola last Saturday. The Horse & Colt Show is a combination fair and street festival. There is the showing of cattle, horses, and colts, plus the judging of vegetables, baked goods, hay and corn crops, paintings, quilts, and other hand-sewn works of art. There are tractor pulls and horse pulls (my favorite event), a midway with rides for the kids, and a parade with floats, clowns, and marching bands.
It rained on the parade this year, but no one seemed to care (it rains on the parade almost every year). Nothing stops the parade. Every year on the last Saturday of September, two or three thousand people line the streets of this little town of 700 that was nearly blown off the map by a tornado a little over a month ago.
There was never really any question that there would be a Horse & Colt Show this year -- even though every third or fourth roof is covered with a tarp, half the trees are gone, some people are still not back in homes that were a total loss, and FEMA (the federal agency that we all now love to hate) has refused to give any federal aid. The Horse & Colt Show in Viola, like Mardi Gras in New Orleans in February, will always go on. It is part of the heart and soul of the community. It is a homecoming. Once a year every Viola native comes back to their roots -- or wishes they could.
Part of the ritual for our family, after stopping in the old gym to look at the exhibits, is a stroll up the midway for hub fries, fresh squeezed lemonade, and deep fried cheese curds. Then we head over to the VFW for barbecue and pie (my other favorite event).
This year, along the way, as we were passing the old Methodist parsonage (now owned by a nice Pentecostal family) I noticed something new that I had never seen at the Horse & Colt Show before. Someone had printed the Ten Commandments on a piece of white tag board and posted them on a couple of stakes between the sidewalk and the street.
It was a curious sight. I don't know if any one else in our party noticed. No one stopped to read them. We all pretty much know them by heart. No one commented on them.
I wondered why they were there. Was this a pot shot in the so-called culture wars? I didn't know the front had moved to Viola.
What is all this fuss in our nation about displaying or not displaying the Ten Commandments in public places? Would we as a people be more faithful to God if we could read these ancient words everywhere we went? Is this a crucial issue that makes any real difference in our everyday lives -- or in the well-being of our eternal souls?
How many Christians in the United States, do you suppose, would say that the Ten Commandments are important? It would be a very high percentage, don't you think, somewhere around 99.99%?
How many do you think would say they are very careful to keep every one of the ten? (Worship no other gods; no graven images; don't take the name of the Lord in vain; keep the Sabbath holy; honor parents; don't kill; don't commit adultery -- except once in awhile in their hearts; never steal -- this includes declaring every penny earned on income tax forms and never saying their child is 11 when they are really 12 so they don't have to pay full price at the amusement park; never lie -- this includes being truthful about whether they keep all of the above; and never covet their neighbor's house, spouse, income, facelift, BMW, stainless steel appliances, or Packers tickets.)
I'm going to guess that the percentage of positive responses here would be significantly less?
Would you agree that for many Christians in the U.S. it is what the Ten Commandments symbolize that is important to them -- more than any benefits that might come from living by them? Many U.S. Christians, and many of us here, if we are honest with ourselves, would have to admit that we really believe that we can live all right even if we have to fudge on a few of the commandments.
How are you doing on that fourth one -- keeping the Sabbath holy?
Perhaps more important than all of this is what Jesus said about the commandments. Fortunately for us, Jesus is on record on this one. When asked by a lawyer who was trying to trick him which commandment in the law is the greatest, Jesus said: " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:35-40).
That's quite clear. All the law and everything the prophets said comes down to two things: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. So why aren't we putting that up on courthouse walls? It would take up a lot less space and it is certainly easier to remember! Or why don't we put up the Sermon on the Mount?
Was Jesus saying that we no longer need the Ten Commandments? We are, after all, people of the New Testament, the new covenant -- not the Old Testament.
The Apostle Paul speaks to this in his letter to the Philippian church in that passage we heard a minute ago. He is writing to a church that is facing some pressure and persecution from Jewish Christians who insist that followers of Jesus must still keep every letter of the Old Testament law, including the one about circumcising male converts.
Paul reminds them that he is a Pharisee, a group that prided themselves in keeping the commandments and all the rest of the law perfectly. Paul says, "I was circumcised when I was a baby; I have been a meticulous observer of the law all my life. Don't talk to me about keeping the commandments; I've done it!"
And, he hastens to add, "It doesn't mean anything. It is all rubbish." He uses strong words so they can't miss his meaning. Eugene Peterson translates it like this:
The very credentials that these people are waving around as something special, I'm tearing up and throwing out with the trash. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ -- God's righteousness.
Paul would not have been concerned about tacking commandments up on every bulletin board or memorizing them in confirmation class. He wanted people to know God. To know God is to live the commandments. It is the relationship with God that makes it possible to live a good life.
There were Jews and Christians in Paul's day who devoted their lives to keeping all the rules. And it wasn't enough. Keeping the rules, honoring every commandment, is never enough. It is a means to an end, not the end.
The rule-keepers were so focused on the Ten Commandments and all the other laws that they couldn't see God. They worshiped the law and not God. The commandments had become their idol, the very thing the first and second commandments forbid.
This is what God was trying to teach Moses and the people of Israel when he appeared to them at Mount Sinai. Picture this (see Exodus 19:9--20:21):
After the people of Israel were delivered from slavery in Egypt, and God had brought them through the sea on dry ground, and had given them food and water in the wilderness, they came to Mount Sinai -- and God said to Moses, "I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear me speak with you and so trust you forever. Tell the people to wash their clothes, to be very careful not to go up on the mountain or to touch the edge of it or they will be put to death. It is only when they hear the trumpet sound a long blast that they can come up on the mountain."
Moses prepared the people, and three days later there was thunder and lightning and a thick cloud on the mountain. Then they heard a trumpet so loud that all the people trembled. Moses brought the people out. There was smoke all around and the mountain was shaking violently. The blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder.
Moses began to speak, and God answered in thunder. God spoke what we call the Ten Commandments. The people were all shaking in their sandals and got as far away from the mountain as they could go. They were scared to death and found themselves running away from God, and as they ran, they were calling over their shoulders for Moses to convince God not to speak to them again, lest they die. They said to Moses, "Why don't you just get the word from God and tell us? Don't let God speak to us anymore."
Moses said everything would be all right. "Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of God in you so you won't sin anymore." But the people would come no closer. They stood at a distance and watched. Then Moses did something that must have blown the minds of all those scaredy -cat Hebrews:
"...Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was."
Did you know that? If you want to draw near to God, you have to go into the thick darkness where God is?
How do you feel about darkness? Most of us don't like darkness much -- ordinary darkness, much less thick darkness.
The story is told about a little boy who was afraid of the dark. He wouldn't go anywhere in the dark. One night his mother said, "Johnny, go out on the porch and get the broom." Johnny said, "I'm not going out there. It's too dark." His mom said, "There is nothing to be afraid of in the dark. Jesus is with you." Little Johnny opened the porch door a crack and called out, "Jesus, if you are out there, would you hand me the broom?"
There is a new book out by Chris Hedges called Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America (Free Press, 2005). Hedges is a newspaper reporter, a war correspondent for many years, who also happens to be the son of a pastor and a seminary graduate. When he was in seminary at Harvard, he chose to serve a dying church in Roxbury, one of the poorest ghettos in Boston. He writes that "the administration at Harvard Divinity School took a dim view of my decision to live and work in Roxbury. They had given me a full scholarship, but not in the words of a dean 'to be a social worker.' " Hedges writes about the thick darkness he entered in Roxbury, where his house and the church building were vandalized on a regular basis:
"I spent my first few weeks in despair. A boy about ten came to my door one morning and asked me to help his mother. We walked to her building, climbed the stairs that smelled of urine, and pushed open the metal door of the apartment. The woman was lying on a couch. Her arms were raw with blood and her flesh torn from rat bites. She had fallen drunk on her floor and become a meal for rodents. The wounds were untended. She did not respond as I spoke to her. The child implored me to do something. I found dish towels in a kitchen which was filled with dirty plates and filth, and wrapped them around the bites. I lifted her onto the couch and left her, breathing heavily and smelling of alcohol. I took her child to a neighbor" (pp. 17-18).
Hedges writes, "It is knowledge of this darkness that alone makes faith possible." He confesses that terror and despair overwhelmed him again and again as he encountered abject poverty and brutal violence, sometimes reacting with violence himself. But he adds, "It is in this fear, this darkness, that I found God, even as I thought I was fleeing God" (pp. 36-37). "All of us find God not in what we know but in what we cannot comprehend and cannot see" (p. 4).
Hedges asks: "Where are the theology professors, wrapped in the narcissism of their own scholarship, who spoke of liberation and empowerment for the poor but never went to the ghetto?" (p. 36). He condemns "out-of-touch liberal theology, blunted by too many years of catering to the comfortable in affluent suburban churches, rendered hollow by platitudes and the naiveté of the pampered and protected" (p. 29).
He's talking about us -- you and me. Hedges quotes Jesus' advice to the rich young ruler: "If you would enter life, keep the commandments" (Matthew 19:17). He writes: "The commandments lay down rules and guidelines to sustain community. They were, for the ancients and for us, the rules that hold us together and when dishonored lead to alienation, discord, and violence" (p. 1).
Is there hope for us comfortable suburban scaredy-cat Christians who give lip service to the commandments and are afraid of the dark?
Moses and some of the leaders of Israel had another encounter with God on the mountain, which is described a couple of chapters later in Exodus 24. It is a moment of Holy Communion that might give us hope as we enter into communion with God and with Christians all over the earth.
God invites Moses and Aaron and 70 of the elders of Israel to come up on the mountain. They went up and they saw the God of Israel. Under God's feet there was something, the author of the text writes, like a sapphire, a path of clear heavenly light. When they came back they said there was really no way to put into words what they had seen. They said, "We saw God, and we stood there unable to say a word, barely able to breathe. We didn't dare move. Everything was absolutely still. It was like time stopped. It was one of those forever moments. We felt like we were there for years. And God didn't hurt us. We saw God, and we ate and drank."
In the late '80s, a British man was taken hostage in Lebanon and held in a cramped room in chains for five years. One day he and his fellow hostages were given a bowl of red cherries, the first fruit and the first color they had seen in four years. Despite their eagerness to eat the fruit they waited a day, simply to gaze upon the cherries in wonder and gratitude. One of the commentators on this text writes that this may have been what the elders of Israel did that day on the mountain. They gazed and gazed in awe and wonder, and then they ate. (The New Interpreters Bible (Volume One), Abingdon Press, 1994, p. 883)
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StoryShare, October 16, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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