Tidal Surge
Stories
Contents
"Tidal Surge" by C. David McKirachan
"We Are Assured" by Frank Ramirez
Tidal Surge
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 21:1-11
Through my years of ministry, I’d get to Palm Sunday and find myself grumpy, emotionally worn out, and on the edge of anger. I related it to the marathon of Lent, the classes, the special services, and the end of winter all conspiring to put me in an emotional pressure cooker. As years went by, I focused more on the journey of the Lord to Jerusalem, I began to pay attention to the pressure cooker he was in. I realized that Transfiguration was a moment when he made his decision and was affirmed in it to walk the road of sacrifice.
On Palm Sunday Jesus came to the center of the worship and tradition, the defining center of what it meant to be a Jew. And he came facing the empty form that would deny what Jesus knew to be the truth. He knew that his disciples and the people who lived in expectation, waiting for God to act in power were going to not only be disappointed, but would make their decision to walk or run away from the truth that Jesus stood for. He knew that he would stand alone in a battle that defined God’s purpose in the world. They didn’t get it, and they were unwilling to try to get it. So he cried.
The procession into the city was a tidal surge. It was as much a force of nature as a hurricane pushing the sea before it onto the land. But the people that Jesus loved and came to save, to offer them ultimate choice in life were not more ready to make that choice than a piece of driftwood pushed before the storm. So he cried.
And I watched the church celebrate Palm Sunday with little or no consciousness of Jesus’ tears. This was little Easter. It was a holiday, a parade. Aren’t the children cute? Were they ready, were any of us ready to make the choice he presented? Would we rejoice like the crowds, shouting of his kingship without even considering what he was about? Would any of us notice that at the center of all this rejoicing was a silent man? Would any of us notice that he cried?
And I realized that though I was as preoccupied and unconscious as everyone else, beneath all of the traditional pomp and circumstance, beneath all the fun and games, beneath all of my responsibility to make this day cook and click, there was something in me that noticed the crying man. He was the reason for the tidal surge. His willingness to empty himself taking the form of a servant. His willingness to speak the truth, to be the truth no matter what he had to give up, condemned him and exalted him.
The year it all came to the surface, the calendar had brought Palm/Passion Sunday like a locomotive into our church on the first Sunday of the month. Communion Sunday. Before Lent started I’d commented to the Worship Committee that it would be very meaningful to have the sacrament celebrated at the gateway to Holy Week. I spoke as a blithe fool. I forgot the crying man.
That Sunday I came to the consecration of the elements and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him suffer alone. I felt him broken on the horrible and ugly wheel of normality, and I refused to be part of it. I cried, speechless, standing there with the loaf in my hands. I felt that I was the one breaking him. How could we do this, unthinking? How could we go through these motions paying more attention to the clock than his loneliness and his suffering?
It washed onto me, over me, inexorable. I could not stop it any more than I could change time, or save this broken world. Only he could do that. Only he had that kind of focus and power and depth and understanding. And that was what we celebrated, remembering that he, this clear window in the wall of mortality was broken for us, confused and fickle and unfaithful as we are. He was doing this. Who was I to even consider stopping it?
But on that day I cried. Right there at the communion table, in front of the whole church.
I am no better than any. I have no claim to wisdom or virtue. But at that table on that day I learned again to never forget the crying man alone in the midst of the Hosannas of this day.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
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 Are Assured
by Frank Ramirez
Isaiah 50:4-9a and Psalm 31:9-16
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away (Psalm 31:9-10).
Christian Hervey Balsbaugh (1831-1909), a member of the Dunker church (one of the Pennsylvania Dutch churches) was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania. From infancy he was not virgorous in health like his parents and siblings. He wrote in his short autobiography “Although my ancestry were so hale, I was devitalized and frail all my lifetime... Without knowledge or ressponsiblity on their part, I was deprived of the benefit of their excellent physical resources before I was born... Instead of conferring on me their best organic qualities, I had my genesis at the point of exhaustion and weariness.”
As a young man he had a thirst for learning. Decades later he remembered, “Sometimes when anything unusually enthralling engaged my mind I would steal down stairs at night, when all the rest were wrapt in slumber, and rake coals out of the ashes one by one, and study by the dim light until my eyes felt like cracking.”
His family’s poverty and his own health struggles meant he tried teaching in public schools to earn enough money for further studies. At one point his frail state inspired him to study medicine, but the physical strain of his educational pursuits led to a nervous breakdown, causing him to lose his voice from 1853 to 1860. His silence and reliance on a slate and pencil helped him discover his true vocations -- he soon became known as a prolific writer, submitting articles to religious magazines at a prodigous pace. He also became devoted to the spiritual disciplines of prayer and bible study.
Because of his ruined health Balsbaugh related that “Many of my articles were written while I was lying on my back with a board or some other support across my knees.” Furthermore, he remembered, “Through all these years of pain and lonelieness God was training me in deeper self-knowledge and for higher usefulness.”
Referring to his suffering as “the seminary of Calvary,” Balsbaugh developed a strong spiritual relationship with Jesus that inspired him to use his infirmity to comfort others in their struggle.
His voice was restored for a period of time, but after another nervous breakdown he once more lost the ability to speak from 1871-1884. During that time he was confined to bed for three years. Again he took up writing, determined to comfort others who suffered as well as to throw light on scriptures.
“When I entered the church,” he wrote in his short autobiography, “I was a rigid legalist, not knowing anything of the central doctrine of justification by faith. Baptism was to me the salient fact that distinguished between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.” He began to understand better what Jesus had been speaking about. “Now I see clearly as my shallow mind will allow how we are ‘saved by grace through faith,’ and yet must ‘work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.’” (See Ephesians 2:8 and Philippians 2:12).
His second envorced silence ended following his earnest prayer of faith. He used his voice, never strong, in order to take up the practical role of Sunday School superintendant in his local congregation.
Later his ruined health prevented him from traveling to church, so his friends from church came to worship with him at his bedside. After his death one of his admirers, James A. Neff, composed a poem that was printed next to his eulogy. It reads, in part:
Like a angel sent from heaven
With a message kind and true
He through years of toil and suffering
Filled his mission and withdrew.
Though his life was one of suffering,
Yet he yielded will to God
And his heart he gave to Jesus
As live’s lonely way he trod.
Through long nights of pain and anguish,
He relied on Jesus’ love
And his heart was filled with rapture
Lookng to the world above.
In today’s passage from Psalm 31:9-16, as well as Isaiah 50:4-9a we meet the biblcal idea of the Suffering Servant, whose travails are visible to the public, and the cause of ridicule and scorn. But those who suffer because of their faithfulness to God will be vindicated, we are assured.
(Want to know more? See Glimpses of Heaven or Letters of C.H. Balsbaugh, containing also his Autobiograhy, compiled by T.T. Myers, 1895, as well as Some Who Led.. by Daniel Long Miller, 1912, pp 157-160, and Gospel Messenger, February 20, 1909, 114-115.)
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, April 9, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 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.
"Tidal Surge" by C. David McKirachan
"We Are Assured" by Frank Ramirez
Tidal Surge
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 21:1-11
Through my years of ministry, I’d get to Palm Sunday and find myself grumpy, emotionally worn out, and on the edge of anger. I related it to the marathon of Lent, the classes, the special services, and the end of winter all conspiring to put me in an emotional pressure cooker. As years went by, I focused more on the journey of the Lord to Jerusalem, I began to pay attention to the pressure cooker he was in. I realized that Transfiguration was a moment when he made his decision and was affirmed in it to walk the road of sacrifice.
On Palm Sunday Jesus came to the center of the worship and tradition, the defining center of what it meant to be a Jew. And he came facing the empty form that would deny what Jesus knew to be the truth. He knew that his disciples and the people who lived in expectation, waiting for God to act in power were going to not only be disappointed, but would make their decision to walk or run away from the truth that Jesus stood for. He knew that he would stand alone in a battle that defined God’s purpose in the world. They didn’t get it, and they were unwilling to try to get it. So he cried.
The procession into the city was a tidal surge. It was as much a force of nature as a hurricane pushing the sea before it onto the land. But the people that Jesus loved and came to save, to offer them ultimate choice in life were not more ready to make that choice than a piece of driftwood pushed before the storm. So he cried.
And I watched the church celebrate Palm Sunday with little or no consciousness of Jesus’ tears. This was little Easter. It was a holiday, a parade. Aren’t the children cute? Were they ready, were any of us ready to make the choice he presented? Would we rejoice like the crowds, shouting of his kingship without even considering what he was about? Would any of us notice that at the center of all this rejoicing was a silent man? Would any of us notice that he cried?
And I realized that though I was as preoccupied and unconscious as everyone else, beneath all of the traditional pomp and circumstance, beneath all the fun and games, beneath all of my responsibility to make this day cook and click, there was something in me that noticed the crying man. He was the reason for the tidal surge. His willingness to empty himself taking the form of a servant. His willingness to speak the truth, to be the truth no matter what he had to give up, condemned him and exalted him.
The year it all came to the surface, the calendar had brought Palm/Passion Sunday like a locomotive into our church on the first Sunday of the month. Communion Sunday. Before Lent started I’d commented to the Worship Committee that it would be very meaningful to have the sacrament celebrated at the gateway to Holy Week. I spoke as a blithe fool. I forgot the crying man.
That Sunday I came to the consecration of the elements and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him suffer alone. I felt him broken on the horrible and ugly wheel of normality, and I refused to be part of it. I cried, speechless, standing there with the loaf in my hands. I felt that I was the one breaking him. How could we do this, unthinking? How could we go through these motions paying more attention to the clock than his loneliness and his suffering?
It washed onto me, over me, inexorable. I could not stop it any more than I could change time, or save this broken world. Only he could do that. Only he had that kind of focus and power and depth and understanding. And that was what we celebrated, remembering that he, this clear window in the wall of mortality was broken for us, confused and fickle and unfaithful as we are. He was doing this. Who was I to even consider stopping it?
But on that day I cried. Right there at the communion table, in front of the whole church.
I am no better than any. I have no claim to wisdom or virtue. But at that table on that day I learned again to never forget the crying man alone in the midst of the Hosannas of this day.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
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 Are Assured
by Frank Ramirez
Isaiah 50:4-9a and Psalm 31:9-16
Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away (Psalm 31:9-10).
Christian Hervey Balsbaugh (1831-1909), a member of the Dunker church (one of the Pennsylvania Dutch churches) was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania. From infancy he was not virgorous in health like his parents and siblings. He wrote in his short autobiography “Although my ancestry were so hale, I was devitalized and frail all my lifetime... Without knowledge or ressponsiblity on their part, I was deprived of the benefit of their excellent physical resources before I was born... Instead of conferring on me their best organic qualities, I had my genesis at the point of exhaustion and weariness.”
As a young man he had a thirst for learning. Decades later he remembered, “Sometimes when anything unusually enthralling engaged my mind I would steal down stairs at night, when all the rest were wrapt in slumber, and rake coals out of the ashes one by one, and study by the dim light until my eyes felt like cracking.”
His family’s poverty and his own health struggles meant he tried teaching in public schools to earn enough money for further studies. At one point his frail state inspired him to study medicine, but the physical strain of his educational pursuits led to a nervous breakdown, causing him to lose his voice from 1853 to 1860. His silence and reliance on a slate and pencil helped him discover his true vocations -- he soon became known as a prolific writer, submitting articles to religious magazines at a prodigous pace. He also became devoted to the spiritual disciplines of prayer and bible study.
Because of his ruined health Balsbaugh related that “Many of my articles were written while I was lying on my back with a board or some other support across my knees.” Furthermore, he remembered, “Through all these years of pain and lonelieness God was training me in deeper self-knowledge and for higher usefulness.”
Referring to his suffering as “the seminary of Calvary,” Balsbaugh developed a strong spiritual relationship with Jesus that inspired him to use his infirmity to comfort others in their struggle.
His voice was restored for a period of time, but after another nervous breakdown he once more lost the ability to speak from 1871-1884. During that time he was confined to bed for three years. Again he took up writing, determined to comfort others who suffered as well as to throw light on scriptures.
“When I entered the church,” he wrote in his short autobiography, “I was a rigid legalist, not knowing anything of the central doctrine of justification by faith. Baptism was to me the salient fact that distinguished between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.” He began to understand better what Jesus had been speaking about. “Now I see clearly as my shallow mind will allow how we are ‘saved by grace through faith,’ and yet must ‘work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.’” (See Ephesians 2:8 and Philippians 2:12).
His second envorced silence ended following his earnest prayer of faith. He used his voice, never strong, in order to take up the practical role of Sunday School superintendant in his local congregation.
Later his ruined health prevented him from traveling to church, so his friends from church came to worship with him at his bedside. After his death one of his admirers, James A. Neff, composed a poem that was printed next to his eulogy. It reads, in part:
Like a angel sent from heaven
With a message kind and true
He through years of toil and suffering
Filled his mission and withdrew.
Though his life was one of suffering,
Yet he yielded will to God
And his heart he gave to Jesus
As live’s lonely way he trod.
Through long nights of pain and anguish,
He relied on Jesus’ love
And his heart was filled with rapture
Lookng to the world above.
In today’s passage from Psalm 31:9-16, as well as Isaiah 50:4-9a we meet the biblcal idea of the Suffering Servant, whose travails are visible to the public, and the cause of ridicule and scorn. But those who suffer because of their faithfulness to God will be vindicated, we are assured.
(Want to know more? See Glimpses of Heaven or Letters of C.H. Balsbaugh, containing also his Autobiograhy, compiled by T.T. Myers, 1895, as well as Some Who Led.. by Daniel Long Miller, 1912, pp 157-160, and Gospel Messenger, February 20, 1909, 114-115.)
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, April 9, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 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.
