Sit Down And Shut Up
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Sit Down and Shut Up" by C. David McKirachan
"We Know Better" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * *
Sit Down and Shut Up
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 4:35-41
Jesus ‘rebuked’ the storm, shutting down the chaotic conflict of the elements. The disciples were less than pleased. ‘Don’t you care about us?’ We shake our heads. Hey, the dude just saved your life, with weather control no less. It’s a great story, but applying this to our lives of faith kind of peters out after we get done being self-righteous. It’s rare any of us have opportunities to rebuke storms. We’re a bit shy in that category. Rebuking isn’t high on our list. We tend to worry about our retirement benefits, not to mention being light on the supernatural ability to zap things. But I’d bet that each and every one of us has been in situations when we faced chaotic conflict. Lightning and thunder of people being anything but Christian, with no discernable agenda left. Waves of opinion and emotion threatening to swamp the frail craft of the Session, the Deacons, the Finance Committee, the Presbytery, or our own family. We need and they need a voice of authority that will remind us that periodically sitting down and shutting up is preferable to flailing about like idiots.
I was leaving on a Senior High mission project to some isolated crossroads in Maine. The President of the Board of Trustees and the Chair of the Stewardship were two locomotives on the same track going in different directions, and it wasn’t away from each other. They represented two philosophies of ministry, save money and expand the ministry. It is a common conflict. This one had reached epic proportions. They had to meet. I was leaving. The Associate Pastor was up. She was perceptive, intelligent, articulate, and capable, and most important she had a deep faith. She’d be fine. But it was kind of nerve wracking.
I got a call from her in Maine. She had walked in on the two of them, they’d both arrived early, standing on opposite sides of a six foot church table, leaning in toward each other, yelling. Her entrance went unnoticed. Thunder, lightning, with wind and waves to boot swamping any reasonable agenda. She told me she came to the end of the table and in her best stentorian tone uttered words of command, though rather ironic at the moment. “Gentlemen, shall we pray?”
I would call her a genius, but you and I know better. The Holy Spirit had a lot to do with that one. It slammed into their insanity like the commands of our Lord hit that squall. They shut up and they sat down. She remained standing, and prayed the living daylights out of the occasion.
They weren’t being gentlemen, and the last thing on their mind was prayer, but they did need to be reminded of who they were and what they were there to represent. We belong to our Lord, not only to receive His miracles of healing and grace, but to be vehicles for them. I think it’s critical to remember that, especially in the midst of the squalls of our lives.
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.
* * *
We Know Better
by Frank Ramirez
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
There's a scrap of papyrus that has survived from the fourth Christian century. On it was taken down a deposition from a Christian woman regarding the way her husband treated her and her household. What thoughts might have gone through the mind of the scribe who took down this deposition is impossible to know, but her anguish is very apparent.
Regarding all the ways he insulted me:
He locked up his slaves and my slaves and my foster-daughters and his agent and his son in his cellar for seven whole days, his slaves and my slave Zoe he insulted and he beat them nearly to death. He stripped my foster-daughters absolutely naked and then used fire on them, which the laws don’t allow you to do? Then he said to my foster-daughters, “Give up whatever she has,” and he said that “She doesn’t own anything. And while he was beating the slaves he asked, “What did she take from my house?” and under torture they said that “She didn’t take anything but all your stuff is safe.”
Then Zoilus went to him because he locked up his foster-son, and he said that “Is it because of your foster-son or on account of that woman that you have come to me to talk about her?”
Then he swore, in the presence of the Overseers and his own brothers that I will no longer hide from her all of my keys (he believed his slaves but not me) nor would he insult me, whereupon a wedding contract was made yet despite all the oaths and the agreement he still hid the keys from me. So on the Sabbath I went to the Lord’s House but he caused the doors to be shut against me, saying, ‘Why did you come to the Lord’s House?” He insulted me through his nose to my face, and regarding the bill for one hundred bushels of grain I owe to the state he paid nothing, not one single bushel. Then he got hold of the books and told me to pay the hundred, but he paid nothing and then told his slaves to see if they could get me locked up. His assistant Koous was sent to prison but the bail paid by Euthalamos wasn’t enough so I gave the small amount necessary to Koous. Then, when we met in Antinoou and I had my bag of stuff he said, that “Whatever you have I will take because you gave money to my assistant Koous.” His mother testifies to all this.
And regarding his slave Anilla, he got me all agitated inside, here and at Antinoou, he said, “Throw this slave out because she knows what’s been bandied about and wants me to get involved so she can use this as an excuse to get everything I have” but I wouldn’t send her away, and he continued to say, “Within a month I will get a mistress.”
This God knows.
(Papyrus Oxyrhynchus VI. 903, translated by the present writer.)
There are no names to tell us who "he" and "she" are. "She" was probably a young woman who was first part of a common law marriage. Perhaps the marriage license was obtained in order to placate her at one point.
There are some horrifying things in this deposition, but the thing that ought to bother us the most is this: "So on the Sabbath I went to the Lord's House but he caused the doors to be shut against me...."
Despite all these horrible acts, "he" is able to close the church doors on "she." It sounds as if the church has taken someone's side. Is there no one to stand up for this poor woman who is barred from the church even though, judging from her deposition, one might consider her the wronged party?
We Christians ought to know better when it comes to the protection of abusers. We do know better. But imagine the helplessness of someone who, like the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians must say, "We are treated as impostors, and yet are true..."
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 14, 2015, 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.
"Sit Down and Shut Up" by C. David McKirachan
"We Know Better" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * *
Sit Down and Shut Up
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 4:35-41
Jesus ‘rebuked’ the storm, shutting down the chaotic conflict of the elements. The disciples were less than pleased. ‘Don’t you care about us?’ We shake our heads. Hey, the dude just saved your life, with weather control no less. It’s a great story, but applying this to our lives of faith kind of peters out after we get done being self-righteous. It’s rare any of us have opportunities to rebuke storms. We’re a bit shy in that category. Rebuking isn’t high on our list. We tend to worry about our retirement benefits, not to mention being light on the supernatural ability to zap things. But I’d bet that each and every one of us has been in situations when we faced chaotic conflict. Lightning and thunder of people being anything but Christian, with no discernable agenda left. Waves of opinion and emotion threatening to swamp the frail craft of the Session, the Deacons, the Finance Committee, the Presbytery, or our own family. We need and they need a voice of authority that will remind us that periodically sitting down and shutting up is preferable to flailing about like idiots.
I was leaving on a Senior High mission project to some isolated crossroads in Maine. The President of the Board of Trustees and the Chair of the Stewardship were two locomotives on the same track going in different directions, and it wasn’t away from each other. They represented two philosophies of ministry, save money and expand the ministry. It is a common conflict. This one had reached epic proportions. They had to meet. I was leaving. The Associate Pastor was up. She was perceptive, intelligent, articulate, and capable, and most important she had a deep faith. She’d be fine. But it was kind of nerve wracking.
I got a call from her in Maine. She had walked in on the two of them, they’d both arrived early, standing on opposite sides of a six foot church table, leaning in toward each other, yelling. Her entrance went unnoticed. Thunder, lightning, with wind and waves to boot swamping any reasonable agenda. She told me she came to the end of the table and in her best stentorian tone uttered words of command, though rather ironic at the moment. “Gentlemen, shall we pray?”
I would call her a genius, but you and I know better. The Holy Spirit had a lot to do with that one. It slammed into their insanity like the commands of our Lord hit that squall. They shut up and they sat down. She remained standing, and prayed the living daylights out of the occasion.
They weren’t being gentlemen, and the last thing on their mind was prayer, but they did need to be reminded of who they were and what they were there to represent. We belong to our Lord, not only to receive His miracles of healing and grace, but to be vehicles for them. I think it’s critical to remember that, especially in the midst of the squalls of our lives.
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.
* * *
We Know Better
by Frank Ramirez
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
There's a scrap of papyrus that has survived from the fourth Christian century. On it was taken down a deposition from a Christian woman regarding the way her husband treated her and her household. What thoughts might have gone through the mind of the scribe who took down this deposition is impossible to know, but her anguish is very apparent.
Regarding all the ways he insulted me:
He locked up his slaves and my slaves and my foster-daughters and his agent and his son in his cellar for seven whole days, his slaves and my slave Zoe he insulted and he beat them nearly to death. He stripped my foster-daughters absolutely naked and then used fire on them, which the laws don’t allow you to do? Then he said to my foster-daughters, “Give up whatever she has,” and he said that “She doesn’t own anything. And while he was beating the slaves he asked, “What did she take from my house?” and under torture they said that “She didn’t take anything but all your stuff is safe.”
Then Zoilus went to him because he locked up his foster-son, and he said that “Is it because of your foster-son or on account of that woman that you have come to me to talk about her?”
Then he swore, in the presence of the Overseers and his own brothers that I will no longer hide from her all of my keys (he believed his slaves but not me) nor would he insult me, whereupon a wedding contract was made yet despite all the oaths and the agreement he still hid the keys from me. So on the Sabbath I went to the Lord’s House but he caused the doors to be shut against me, saying, ‘Why did you come to the Lord’s House?” He insulted me through his nose to my face, and regarding the bill for one hundred bushels of grain I owe to the state he paid nothing, not one single bushel. Then he got hold of the books and told me to pay the hundred, but he paid nothing and then told his slaves to see if they could get me locked up. His assistant Koous was sent to prison but the bail paid by Euthalamos wasn’t enough so I gave the small amount necessary to Koous. Then, when we met in Antinoou and I had my bag of stuff he said, that “Whatever you have I will take because you gave money to my assistant Koous.” His mother testifies to all this.
And regarding his slave Anilla, he got me all agitated inside, here and at Antinoou, he said, “Throw this slave out because she knows what’s been bandied about and wants me to get involved so she can use this as an excuse to get everything I have” but I wouldn’t send her away, and he continued to say, “Within a month I will get a mistress.”
This God knows.
(Papyrus Oxyrhynchus VI. 903, translated by the present writer.)
There are no names to tell us who "he" and "she" are. "She" was probably a young woman who was first part of a common law marriage. Perhaps the marriage license was obtained in order to placate her at one point.
There are some horrifying things in this deposition, but the thing that ought to bother us the most is this: "So on the Sabbath I went to the Lord's House but he caused the doors to be shut against me...."
Despite all these horrible acts, "he" is able to close the church doors on "she." It sounds as if the church has taken someone's side. Is there no one to stand up for this poor woman who is barred from the church even though, judging from her deposition, one might consider her the wronged party?
We Christians ought to know better when it comes to the protection of abusers. We do know better. But imagine the helplessness of someone who, like the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians must say, "We are treated as impostors, and yet are true..."
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 14, 2015, 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.
