The Times or Periods
Stories
Contents
“The Times or Periods” by David O. Bales
“Mark Twain’s The War Prayer” by David O. Bales
The Times or Periods
by David O. Bales
Acts 1:6-14
It didn’t matter which text the group was studying — Old Testament or New Testament — Wendell managed to bring attention to the end of the world drawing near. This morning, Howie responded to Wendell’s first foray into end times by repeating Pastor Drew’s habitual line, “But what does this text say?” — a remark which, until today, usually pulled the young men back to the day’s assignment. Yet Howie had let irritation seep out in his voice.
Wendell picked up on Howie’s tone. He was about to respond, when Pastor Drew also tried to drawattention away from the end of the world. He pointed to the open Bible on the table before him. “Let’s read the next chapter of Isaiah aloud.”
His maneuver didn’t work. Wendell went right on, “The billboards are up,” which half the group didn’t understand. Drew was alert to such things: A billboard on the interstate promised that on a date two months hence Jesus would return. “It’s mathematically certain, worked out by an engineering professor.”
Pastor Drew had seen the need for a young men’s group when he’d come to this congregation thirteen months ago. If all who accepted his invitation attended, there’d be two dozen young men gathered around the Bible in the Steeple Room of First United Methodist Church. The most, however, had been eight and Wendell’s obsession with the end times was taking its toll on those who came.
The rest of the fellows looked around to one another but said nothing. Howie turned to Pastor Drew and threw up his hands. Wendell caught that gesture and said, “I don’t think Methodists believe the Bible.”
From the appearance on the rest of the young men’s faces, Drew saw that the group needed a broader way to understand the Bible than merely applying whatever struck readers literally. The group also needed a full dose of the Holy Spirit’s presence, patience, and love. This could be the conversation that weened the infant group away from chatting about football scores and opinions of crazy TV commercials and into Christian ministry.
“I appreciate your concern,” he said to Wendell. “Jesus’ disciples also wanted to know such things.”
“It’s throughout the New Testament,” Wendell said. He sounded fearful and desperate and yet his statement was also a challenge.
“It’s not a matter of disbelief,” Drew said. “Yes, the Bible says Jesus will come again. But it’s a matter of Christian experience that everyone who’s set a date has been wrong. That adds up to two millennia of a few Christians disappointing many Christians and looking silly to non-Christians.
Wendell tipped his head down and grumbled something. The rest of the fellows waited, hoping at least that the problem would go away or at best that Drew would explain something about the Bible and the end of the world.
“We don’t just have the Bible to go by,” Drew said. Wendell opened his eyes wide and everyone saw he was about to say something rash. Drew continued, “Always scripture first,” he said as he held a reassuring hand toward Wendell, “but also the experience of Christians who’ve lived before us. We’re not the first ones to read the Bible. By listening to what earlier Christians have lived through and learned, we honor our fathers and mothers in the faith. I think of it as part of the communion of the saints as the creed put it.”
“Lots of Christians,” Wendell said, “promise that the Lord’s coming in our generation.”
“I know,” Drew said, “yet that’s not what United Methodists concentrate on.”
Wendell said, “Yeah, but — ”
“And,” Drew shook his head with a smile, “we’re not unbiblical to do so. In Acts 1, just before Jesus ascends to heaven, his disciples want to know, as Jesus puts it, about “the times or periods.” But Jesus sends them off to do ministry. Doesn’t tell them when he’s coming back. Says, ‘Go out and get busy.’ Some people study the Bible trying to guess when Jesus will return. It’s never worked. We try to study the Bible to be led into serving others with God’s love. That’s why our older men’s Caleb group serves dinner one night a week at the gospel mission. They don’t stand on the street corner and hand out Christian literature as people did generations ago. If they did, it would be as ineffective today as 300 years ago giving Bibles to tribesmen who were illiterate. The Caleb group studies the Bible, yes, and they serve people food. They sit with the folk they serve to show their concern for them; and, as much as is appropriate, talk with them about faith. Some of those in the middle-aged men’s Aaron group not only study the Bible but visit the prison to talk with anyone who will meet with them. They give prisoners friendship and support and deliver communion from our Lord’s Table to the men who will receive it. Those two groups, not to mention all the women’s groups in the congregation, undertake ministries of Christ’s love throughout the community and around the world.
“Their faithfulness to Jesus’ sending them in ministry is informed by the experience that these days the best way for Americans to spread faith in Jesus is by serving human need and sharing why we do so. I’ve been praying that this Bible study group will hear the Spirit’s calling us into such a ministry — I have no idea what kind.”
Everyone sat silently, but they took Drew’s statement seriously. “Acts 1, you say,” Wendell muttered. He held his head low. He spoke to the table in front of him, “I’ll have to go home and read that.” He said little for the rest of the morning.
Drew resolved to pray daily for Wendell and meet with him as often as possible. Maybe he’d introduce him to the Methodist Quadrilateral method of reflecting up scripture and life, which by definition isn’t the first thing one teaches. He also would continue praying that the morning’s conversation would lead the young men to identify the service the Holy Spirit was preparing especially them, including them in ministry “to the ends of the earth.”
Preaching point: Christian service over speculation about end times.
* * *
Mark Twain’s The War Prayer
by David O. Bales
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
January, 1942 was a difficult time for the Society of Friends in the United States. What was one’s Christian responsibility when Christ commands that we be peacemakers yet our nation was attacked and war declared? For 300 years, Quakers had practiced as well as advised peace toward all. One congregation’s prayer group felt that in the middle of a new world war, a message for peace must somehow be proclaimed again. But how to get people caught up in fear, anger, hate and hysteria to consider Christ’s peace even here? They realized they couldn’t affect the greater US, and they were sure of abuse to come their way, but they sent to all congregations within their city a copy of Mark Twain’s The War Prayer. They wrote:
Samuel Clemons’ The War Prayer can instruct us whenever we reason in this war that — as all sides in World War I reasoned — God is on our side. As difficult as it is now to believe, God is on the side of peace. We cannot recommend one particular and absolute way to bring peace, but with slight omissions and punctuation changes we offer The War Prayer for your contemplation:
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun. Nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to the flag and country, and invoked the God of battles, beseeching his aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender — them home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory!
The community’s worship service proceeded first with a war chapter from the Old Testament read; the first prayer said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation —
“God the all-terrible! Thou who ordaineth!
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!”
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and with the pastor’s moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and for the hour of peril, bear them in his mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —
At that, an aged stranger entered the entered the church and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed on the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothing cataract to his shoulders. He made his silent way without pausing next to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of the old man’s presence, continued with his moving prayer and at last finished with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took the preacher’s place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!”
The words smote the house with a shock.
“He has heard the prayer of his servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, his messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For as with many of human prayers, it asks far more than he who utters it is aware of.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? O God grant that it is so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is so compact into these pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God, the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, victims of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of him who is the source of love, and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek his aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the most high waits!”
It was believed afterwards that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Preaching point: The danger of equating our enemies with God’s enemies.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 24, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 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 Times or Periods” by David O. Bales
“Mark Twain’s The War Prayer” by David O. Bales
The Times or Periods
by David O. Bales
Acts 1:6-14
It didn’t matter which text the group was studying — Old Testament or New Testament — Wendell managed to bring attention to the end of the world drawing near. This morning, Howie responded to Wendell’s first foray into end times by repeating Pastor Drew’s habitual line, “But what does this text say?” — a remark which, until today, usually pulled the young men back to the day’s assignment. Yet Howie had let irritation seep out in his voice.
Wendell picked up on Howie’s tone. He was about to respond, when Pastor Drew also tried to drawattention away from the end of the world. He pointed to the open Bible on the table before him. “Let’s read the next chapter of Isaiah aloud.”
His maneuver didn’t work. Wendell went right on, “The billboards are up,” which half the group didn’t understand. Drew was alert to such things: A billboard on the interstate promised that on a date two months hence Jesus would return. “It’s mathematically certain, worked out by an engineering professor.”
Pastor Drew had seen the need for a young men’s group when he’d come to this congregation thirteen months ago. If all who accepted his invitation attended, there’d be two dozen young men gathered around the Bible in the Steeple Room of First United Methodist Church. The most, however, had been eight and Wendell’s obsession with the end times was taking its toll on those who came.
The rest of the fellows looked around to one another but said nothing. Howie turned to Pastor Drew and threw up his hands. Wendell caught that gesture and said, “I don’t think Methodists believe the Bible.”
From the appearance on the rest of the young men’s faces, Drew saw that the group needed a broader way to understand the Bible than merely applying whatever struck readers literally. The group also needed a full dose of the Holy Spirit’s presence, patience, and love. This could be the conversation that weened the infant group away from chatting about football scores and opinions of crazy TV commercials and into Christian ministry.
“I appreciate your concern,” he said to Wendell. “Jesus’ disciples also wanted to know such things.”
“It’s throughout the New Testament,” Wendell said. He sounded fearful and desperate and yet his statement was also a challenge.
“It’s not a matter of disbelief,” Drew said. “Yes, the Bible says Jesus will come again. But it’s a matter of Christian experience that everyone who’s set a date has been wrong. That adds up to two millennia of a few Christians disappointing many Christians and looking silly to non-Christians.
Wendell tipped his head down and grumbled something. The rest of the fellows waited, hoping at least that the problem would go away or at best that Drew would explain something about the Bible and the end of the world.
“We don’t just have the Bible to go by,” Drew said. Wendell opened his eyes wide and everyone saw he was about to say something rash. Drew continued, “Always scripture first,” he said as he held a reassuring hand toward Wendell, “but also the experience of Christians who’ve lived before us. We’re not the first ones to read the Bible. By listening to what earlier Christians have lived through and learned, we honor our fathers and mothers in the faith. I think of it as part of the communion of the saints as the creed put it.”
“Lots of Christians,” Wendell said, “promise that the Lord’s coming in our generation.”
“I know,” Drew said, “yet that’s not what United Methodists concentrate on.”
Wendell said, “Yeah, but — ”
“And,” Drew shook his head with a smile, “we’re not unbiblical to do so. In Acts 1, just before Jesus ascends to heaven, his disciples want to know, as Jesus puts it, about “the times or periods.” But Jesus sends them off to do ministry. Doesn’t tell them when he’s coming back. Says, ‘Go out and get busy.’ Some people study the Bible trying to guess when Jesus will return. It’s never worked. We try to study the Bible to be led into serving others with God’s love. That’s why our older men’s Caleb group serves dinner one night a week at the gospel mission. They don’t stand on the street corner and hand out Christian literature as people did generations ago. If they did, it would be as ineffective today as 300 years ago giving Bibles to tribesmen who were illiterate. The Caleb group studies the Bible, yes, and they serve people food. They sit with the folk they serve to show their concern for them; and, as much as is appropriate, talk with them about faith. Some of those in the middle-aged men’s Aaron group not only study the Bible but visit the prison to talk with anyone who will meet with them. They give prisoners friendship and support and deliver communion from our Lord’s Table to the men who will receive it. Those two groups, not to mention all the women’s groups in the congregation, undertake ministries of Christ’s love throughout the community and around the world.
“Their faithfulness to Jesus’ sending them in ministry is informed by the experience that these days the best way for Americans to spread faith in Jesus is by serving human need and sharing why we do so. I’ve been praying that this Bible study group will hear the Spirit’s calling us into such a ministry — I have no idea what kind.”
Everyone sat silently, but they took Drew’s statement seriously. “Acts 1, you say,” Wendell muttered. He held his head low. He spoke to the table in front of him, “I’ll have to go home and read that.” He said little for the rest of the morning.
Drew resolved to pray daily for Wendell and meet with him as often as possible. Maybe he’d introduce him to the Methodist Quadrilateral method of reflecting up scripture and life, which by definition isn’t the first thing one teaches. He also would continue praying that the morning’s conversation would lead the young men to identify the service the Holy Spirit was preparing especially them, including them in ministry “to the ends of the earth.”
Preaching point: Christian service over speculation about end times.
* * *
Mark Twain’s The War Prayer
by David O. Bales
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
January, 1942 was a difficult time for the Society of Friends in the United States. What was one’s Christian responsibility when Christ commands that we be peacemakers yet our nation was attacked and war declared? For 300 years, Quakers had practiced as well as advised peace toward all. One congregation’s prayer group felt that in the middle of a new world war, a message for peace must somehow be proclaimed again. But how to get people caught up in fear, anger, hate and hysteria to consider Christ’s peace even here? They realized they couldn’t affect the greater US, and they were sure of abuse to come their way, but they sent to all congregations within their city a copy of Mark Twain’s The War Prayer. They wrote:
Samuel Clemons’ The War Prayer can instruct us whenever we reason in this war that — as all sides in World War I reasoned — God is on our side. As difficult as it is now to believe, God is on the side of peace. We cannot recommend one particular and absolute way to bring peace, but with slight omissions and punctuation changes we offer The War Prayer for your contemplation:
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun. Nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to the flag and country, and invoked the God of battles, beseeching his aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender — them home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory!
The community’s worship service proceeded first with a war chapter from the Old Testament read; the first prayer said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation —
“God the all-terrible! Thou who ordaineth!
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!”
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and with the pastor’s moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and for the hour of peril, bear them in his mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —
At that, an aged stranger entered the entered the church and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed on the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothing cataract to his shoulders. He made his silent way without pausing next to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of the old man’s presence, continued with his moving prayer and at last finished with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took the preacher’s place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!”
The words smote the house with a shock.
“He has heard the prayer of his servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, his messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For as with many of human prayers, it asks far more than he who utters it is aware of.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? O God grant that it is so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is so compact into these pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God, the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, victims of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of him who is the source of love, and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek his aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the most high waits!”
It was believed afterwards that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Preaching point: The danger of equating our enemies with God’s enemies.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 24, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 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.
