The Shining
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"The Shining" by Keith Hewitt
"A Transfigured Farmer" by John Sumwalt
The Shining
by Keith Hewitt
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)
“Look, can you keep a secret?”
I looked at him sharply; his eyes couldn’t seem to rest on anything for more than a moment, and there was worry in them. His face was stiff -- he probably thought it was an unreadable mask, but after three years I’d learned to read it pretty well. I shrugged. “If it’s that you can’t buy the next round because you left your money in your other clothes, I already know -- you never have any money. I’ve got you covered.”
He rewarded the jab with less of a smile than it deserved; it went away as quickly as it had come. “No. But thanks. It’s just that -- “ He paused, looked around the room to see if anyone was paying attention; they weren’t. No surprise. We didn’t go out like this very often, but when we did it was to the kind of place where people didn’t pay attention. When he had reassured himself he looked back at me. “You know how, in the Torah tells us that Moses had to wear a veil after he encountered the Lord, because of how his face shined?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
He looked embarrassed. “I never really believed it. I mean ... I don’t know, I thought it was allegorical, or something. I never believed that his face actually, you know ... shined.”
And there it was.
I nodded, handed him a cup. “And now, of course, you do.”
“I kind of have to, don’t I?” he asked, and took a sip -- then a deeper drink.
“Do you?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard. He looked at me closely. “What do you mean?”
“I mean eyes can be mistaken. Senses can be tricked. There was mist, fog, at the top of the mountain, before it burned off, and in the bright sunlight we could have been mistaken in what we thought we saw. It might have been an unusual reflection of the light, catching him at just the right angle. His face doesn’t glow now.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t just the glow -- there was an other-worldliness about his expression that I can’t wrap my head around. I can’t explain it, can’t imitate it, but it was like ... like when you take your son out on a dark night, and the first time he sees the stars spread across the vault of heaven. It was a look of wonder -- awe, at seeing and grasping things he hadn’t really grasped before.”
“There is that,” I agreed, remembering. It had been a confusing time, an encounter with the unknown. First, to see the Lord talking to those other men, whom we just knew were Moses and Elijah; then to see that soft glow that overcame his face. I don’t know how long it lasted, how long we stood, transfixed by the sight. It felt like just a moment, fleeting, here and gone -- but then my muscles ached, as though I had been standing perfectly still for a very long time. It was as though someone had taken my sense of time, stretched it almost to the breaking point, then let it snap back into place, leaving me with dueling senses of both long and short times.
Neither of us said anything, then, as I finished my cup. Then, while I pondered ordering another, I said softly, “So, you didn’t believe Moses’ face shone after he encountered Yahweh. Your secret’s safe with me.” I reached into the purse around my waist, felt for another coin -- it was empty. As usual. No more drinks tonight.
I almost missed it when he shook his head. “I don’t care about that. That’s history. That’s the past. The secret is this: I don’t know who -- or what -- we’re dealing with, here. I mean, you’ve been with him as long as I have. You’ve heard him preach -- it’s like he brings new insights, new meaning to the Law. He can speak about things we’ve all read, and make them seem new. He can take ideas we’ve never dreamed of, and make them seem reasonable.”
“That he can,” I agreed. “And don’t forget the signs -- the things he’s done, the people he’s healed. He’s a miracle worker -- he can either do it, himself, or call upon Yahweh to do what he asks. He says it’s just a matter of faith, but we know it’s more than that.”
“Of course. Just how much more, I’m starting to understand. This man we follow -- he’s not just a man, is he? What kind of man is able to call upon -- to speak to -- Moses and Elijah?” His voice dropped even lower. “And what kind of man has ... Yahweh ... call him ‘my son?’” He leaned closer to me. “I’m beginning to believe our Teacher is not just a man ... not just a Messiah ... but something much, much more.”
“So am I,” I admitted, after a short silence. “And if that’s the case, then what’s to become of him -- and us?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, needlessly. None of us knew, and I think only the three of us who had been there had any inkling of who he was, then. The only thing we knew, for sure, was that our world had changed that day -- as though we had gone up the mountain in one world, and come down in another.
And whatever happened next would be amazing. We were serving the Son of God, for heaven’s sake, that had become suddenly and abundantly clear to us, that day.
And if that was the case, then what could possibly go wrong?
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). Keith's newest book NaTiVity Dramas: The Third Season will be published September 2012. He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
* * *
A Transfigured Farmer
by John Sumwalt
Exodus 34:29-35
As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. -- Exodus 34:29b
There is no such thing as a retired farmer, a sentiment that Nashville composer Lee Domann captured in his touching country song, "Daddy's Farmin' Now:"
I can hear my father laugh and say
"I'll always be a farmer"
When I die they'll come and carry me off of this land.
I still can see his faded overalls?
And the dirt that soap and water never quite washed from his hands.
He'd ride for hours upon an old red Massey Harris tractor...”
That describes my farmer Dad to a T, except his was a shiny red Massey Ferguson, brand new in 1959, and going strong yet in ‘97 when they hauled him off to Pine Valley where his farming continued, tractorless, and on something of a lesser scale. He dreamed about milking cows each night and ploughing the fields in spring. There was not space enough for even one cow on Dad's half of that little nursing home room, but he made up for that and the lack of fields to plough with specific instructions to bring pots with soil and as many plants as would fit on and around the window sill. Soon he was surrounded by green growth and the nursing staff marveled at his farmer wizardry. It wasn't nearly enough to replace what he’d lost, but it was something.
Farmers have an intimate relationship with the creator that has to do with growing things and being in direct contact with the earth. It is a kind of spirituality that cannot be expressed in formal religious terms. In fact many farmers profess no religion, but would recognize what Moses experienced on the mountain if it were just expressed in a way that made farmer sense.
“In Australia they tell a story about a farmer who simply could not connect with the words of the church. He could not make sense of the notion that the Spirit might speak to us. The theology of the Sunday sermons was a dead letter to him. He despaired that it had any answers to his longings and struggles.
His minister, himself an old farmer, asked him one day to remember what it is like on the tractor at night. He said, ‘Have you ever stopped for a break and decided to shut the thing down for a few minutes, and turned off the flood lights? Just stood there in the dark and smelled the new turned earth and listened to the silence, when all you can hear is the engine ticking a bit as it cools down?’ And the farmer just stared at him, stunned. ‘That's God?!’ All his long experience of the Holy which had always been devalued, even denied, was suddenly validated.”
Expressing his experience of the holy in religious language was never a problem for my Dad. He led the singing in church and could offer up a preacher-quality prayer at the drop of a hat. I think the good Lord, who surely takes special care of farmers, answered one of those prayers on that day my sister, Ruth, brought him the canaries. Now he had livestock on his make-do nursing home farm and he fussed over them like he had over the Holsteins and his beloved belted sows. But each day he sank lower as he fought a losing battle with Parkinson's and heart disease.
I recall how depressed he was as he experienced loss after loss of functions he had taken for granted all his life. I recoiled at his bursts of anger. I knew all about the stages of dying, but knowing what's coming, and why, did not make it easier to bear. This four-year veteran of World War II who had dodged bullets in the sand dunes of North Africa and on the mountains of Italy, was not going "gentle into that good night."
Then came an interlude of grace. The last time I saw Dad, not long before he died in September of 1998, I found him in a sweeter mood, the anger and defiant resistance against the relentless progression of disease forgotten for a moment. The birds were singing in their cages and he was playing along on his mouth organ --- an old hymn that I remember him singing in church. I sang with the birds as he played:
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done,
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God has done!
Dad's face was shining as the music soared upwards with each breath. The sweet familiar tune of that old gospel hymn took us to that place of light and peace that Moses must have known on the mountain when he caught a glimpse of the Almighty.
In loving memory of my father, A. Leonard Sumwalt, who is farming somewhere on the other side.
-- Lee Domann's song, "Daddy's Farmin' Now." Cover by
-- Gary Hall LIVE @ The Ohio Music Shop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxBdcibllCE)
-- Johnson Oatman, Jr., Count Your Blessings, Tabernacle Hymns Number Four, (Chicago: Tabernacle Publishing Company 1951), p. 50.
John E. Sumwalt is the lead pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee and the author of nine books, to be released by CSS in 2007. John and his wife, Jo Perry-Sumwalt, served for three years as co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
*****************************************
StoryShare, February 7, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2015 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.
"The Shining" by Keith Hewitt
"A Transfigured Farmer" by John Sumwalt
The Shining
by Keith Hewitt
Luke 9:28-36 (37-43)
“Look, can you keep a secret?”
I looked at him sharply; his eyes couldn’t seem to rest on anything for more than a moment, and there was worry in them. His face was stiff -- he probably thought it was an unreadable mask, but after three years I’d learned to read it pretty well. I shrugged. “If it’s that you can’t buy the next round because you left your money in your other clothes, I already know -- you never have any money. I’ve got you covered.”
He rewarded the jab with less of a smile than it deserved; it went away as quickly as it had come. “No. But thanks. It’s just that -- “ He paused, looked around the room to see if anyone was paying attention; they weren’t. No surprise. We didn’t go out like this very often, but when we did it was to the kind of place where people didn’t pay attention. When he had reassured himself he looked back at me. “You know how, in the Torah tells us that Moses had to wear a veil after he encountered the Lord, because of how his face shined?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
He looked embarrassed. “I never really believed it. I mean ... I don’t know, I thought it was allegorical, or something. I never believed that his face actually, you know ... shined.”
And there it was.
I nodded, handed him a cup. “And now, of course, you do.”
“I kind of have to, don’t I?” he asked, and took a sip -- then a deeper drink.
“Do you?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard. He looked at me closely. “What do you mean?”
“I mean eyes can be mistaken. Senses can be tricked. There was mist, fog, at the top of the mountain, before it burned off, and in the bright sunlight we could have been mistaken in what we thought we saw. It might have been an unusual reflection of the light, catching him at just the right angle. His face doesn’t glow now.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t just the glow -- there was an other-worldliness about his expression that I can’t wrap my head around. I can’t explain it, can’t imitate it, but it was like ... like when you take your son out on a dark night, and the first time he sees the stars spread across the vault of heaven. It was a look of wonder -- awe, at seeing and grasping things he hadn’t really grasped before.”
“There is that,” I agreed, remembering. It had been a confusing time, an encounter with the unknown. First, to see the Lord talking to those other men, whom we just knew were Moses and Elijah; then to see that soft glow that overcame his face. I don’t know how long it lasted, how long we stood, transfixed by the sight. It felt like just a moment, fleeting, here and gone -- but then my muscles ached, as though I had been standing perfectly still for a very long time. It was as though someone had taken my sense of time, stretched it almost to the breaking point, then let it snap back into place, leaving me with dueling senses of both long and short times.
Neither of us said anything, then, as I finished my cup. Then, while I pondered ordering another, I said softly, “So, you didn’t believe Moses’ face shone after he encountered Yahweh. Your secret’s safe with me.” I reached into the purse around my waist, felt for another coin -- it was empty. As usual. No more drinks tonight.
I almost missed it when he shook his head. “I don’t care about that. That’s history. That’s the past. The secret is this: I don’t know who -- or what -- we’re dealing with, here. I mean, you’ve been with him as long as I have. You’ve heard him preach -- it’s like he brings new insights, new meaning to the Law. He can speak about things we’ve all read, and make them seem new. He can take ideas we’ve never dreamed of, and make them seem reasonable.”
“That he can,” I agreed. “And don’t forget the signs -- the things he’s done, the people he’s healed. He’s a miracle worker -- he can either do it, himself, or call upon Yahweh to do what he asks. He says it’s just a matter of faith, but we know it’s more than that.”
“Of course. Just how much more, I’m starting to understand. This man we follow -- he’s not just a man, is he? What kind of man is able to call upon -- to speak to -- Moses and Elijah?” His voice dropped even lower. “And what kind of man has ... Yahweh ... call him ‘my son?’” He leaned closer to me. “I’m beginning to believe our Teacher is not just a man ... not just a Messiah ... but something much, much more.”
“So am I,” I admitted, after a short silence. “And if that’s the case, then what’s to become of him -- and us?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, needlessly. None of us knew, and I think only the three of us who had been there had any inkling of who he was, then. The only thing we knew, for sure, was that our world had changed that day -- as though we had gone up the mountain in one world, and come down in another.
And whatever happened next would be amazing. We were serving the Son of God, for heaven’s sake, that had become suddenly and abundantly clear to us, that day.
And if that was the case, then what could possibly go wrong?
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). Keith's newest book NaTiVity Dramas: The Third Season will be published September 2012. He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
* * *
A Transfigured Farmer
by John Sumwalt
Exodus 34:29-35
As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. -- Exodus 34:29b
There is no such thing as a retired farmer, a sentiment that Nashville composer Lee Domann captured in his touching country song, "Daddy's Farmin' Now:"
I can hear my father laugh and say
"I'll always be a farmer"
When I die they'll come and carry me off of this land.
I still can see his faded overalls?
And the dirt that soap and water never quite washed from his hands.
He'd ride for hours upon an old red Massey Harris tractor...”
That describes my farmer Dad to a T, except his was a shiny red Massey Ferguson, brand new in 1959, and going strong yet in ‘97 when they hauled him off to Pine Valley where his farming continued, tractorless, and on something of a lesser scale. He dreamed about milking cows each night and ploughing the fields in spring. There was not space enough for even one cow on Dad's half of that little nursing home room, but he made up for that and the lack of fields to plough with specific instructions to bring pots with soil and as many plants as would fit on and around the window sill. Soon he was surrounded by green growth and the nursing staff marveled at his farmer wizardry. It wasn't nearly enough to replace what he’d lost, but it was something.
Farmers have an intimate relationship with the creator that has to do with growing things and being in direct contact with the earth. It is a kind of spirituality that cannot be expressed in formal religious terms. In fact many farmers profess no religion, but would recognize what Moses experienced on the mountain if it were just expressed in a way that made farmer sense.
“In Australia they tell a story about a farmer who simply could not connect with the words of the church. He could not make sense of the notion that the Spirit might speak to us. The theology of the Sunday sermons was a dead letter to him. He despaired that it had any answers to his longings and struggles.
His minister, himself an old farmer, asked him one day to remember what it is like on the tractor at night. He said, ‘Have you ever stopped for a break and decided to shut the thing down for a few minutes, and turned off the flood lights? Just stood there in the dark and smelled the new turned earth and listened to the silence, when all you can hear is the engine ticking a bit as it cools down?’ And the farmer just stared at him, stunned. ‘That's God?!’ All his long experience of the Holy which had always been devalued, even denied, was suddenly validated.”
Expressing his experience of the holy in religious language was never a problem for my Dad. He led the singing in church and could offer up a preacher-quality prayer at the drop of a hat. I think the good Lord, who surely takes special care of farmers, answered one of those prayers on that day my sister, Ruth, brought him the canaries. Now he had livestock on his make-do nursing home farm and he fussed over them like he had over the Holsteins and his beloved belted sows. But each day he sank lower as he fought a losing battle with Parkinson's and heart disease.
I recall how depressed he was as he experienced loss after loss of functions he had taken for granted all his life. I recoiled at his bursts of anger. I knew all about the stages of dying, but knowing what's coming, and why, did not make it easier to bear. This four-year veteran of World War II who had dodged bullets in the sand dunes of North Africa and on the mountains of Italy, was not going "gentle into that good night."
Then came an interlude of grace. The last time I saw Dad, not long before he died in September of 1998, I found him in a sweeter mood, the anger and defiant resistance against the relentless progression of disease forgotten for a moment. The birds were singing in their cages and he was playing along on his mouth organ --- an old hymn that I remember him singing in church. I sang with the birds as he played:
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done,
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God has done!
Dad's face was shining as the music soared upwards with each breath. The sweet familiar tune of that old gospel hymn took us to that place of light and peace that Moses must have known on the mountain when he caught a glimpse of the Almighty.
In loving memory of my father, A. Leonard Sumwalt, who is farming somewhere on the other side.
-- Lee Domann's song, "Daddy's Farmin' Now." Cover by
-- Gary Hall LIVE @ The Ohio Music Shop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxBdcibllCE)
-- Johnson Oatman, Jr., Count Your Blessings, Tabernacle Hymns Number Four, (Chicago: Tabernacle Publishing Company 1951), p. 50.
John E. Sumwalt is the lead pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee and the author of nine books, to be released by CSS in 2007. John and his wife, Jo Perry-Sumwalt, served for three years as co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
*****************************************
StoryShare, February 7, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2015 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.
