Too Good To Be True
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Too Good To Be True" by Frank Ramirez
"The Meaning of Authority" by Sandra Herrmann
Too Good To Be True
by Frank Ramirez
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin... --Galatians 1:11
Wouldn’t it be nice to discover something important that no one else had and everyone wanted? Like an unknown photo of Abraham Lincoln, or a discarded scene from a famous movie like The Wizard of Oz, or, who knows, maybe a lost play by William Shakespeare?
It’s not easy to find something that everyone’s looking for and probably doesn’t exist. Take Shakespeare. There is probably more known about the life of William Shakespeare than is known about any other ordinary person from the Elizabethan era. That’s because people are constantly searching for new information about him. And there have been recent discoveries. In the past century three pages of a play he was hired to help rewrite to please the censor have been discovered, in his own handwriting. (By the way, it didn’t help. The play didn’t pass muster. It was never performed).
Word studies have shown that some additions in 1602 to one of the most popular plays ever written by someone other than William Shakespeare, The Spanish Tragedy, were probably written by -- you guessed it -- William Shakespeare.
And there are a couple other plays, like The Two Noble Kinsmen, and Edward III, which have long been known, that are now accepted as partly his.
But this was all stuff that existed, that people knew about, even if they didn’t now Shakespeare had a hand in them. However, starting around the year 1794 a young man named William Henry Ireland (1775-1835) startled the world with an astounding series of discoveries of Shakespearean manuscripts no one had ever heard of.
It began when he surprised his father, the noted engraver Samuel Ireland (he died around the year 1800), by showing him some amazing documents -- a letter to William Shakespeare from Queen Elizabeth. A love letter from Shakespeare to his wife Anne Hathaway. Additions to Shakespeare’s will. An improved manuscript copy of the famed tragedy King Lear, with all the raunchy language removed. Someone’s drawing of Shakespeare. And two totally unknown plays: “Vortigern” and “Henry II.”
Never mind that William worked in a legal office, where access to ancient paper, parchment, and official looking seals was close at hand. It was an era when interest in Shakespeare was growing again. People believed what they wanted to believe!
Where did all these documents come from? William claimed he had a source, a rich, young man with a chest full of old documents, who was willing, one by one, to give them to William in order to preserve his own anonymity. Some people, especially William’s father, passionately believed in the truth of these discoveries. Others were much more skeptical. On December 24, 1795, William’s father published many of the documents in an expensive volume that was purchased by curiosity seekers. After all, some experts had declared them authentic. And here they were in facsimile, so that people could judge for themselves.
Enter Shakespearen expert Edmond Malone, who had already debunked earlier forgeries. A little over three months after the book appeared he published a lengthy 400 page volume that tore holes in all the theories.
The book had only been out three days when, on April 2, 1796, the entire fabric of what was an elaborate deception, was torn into shreds. The Irelands, father and son, had convinced Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a noted Irish playwright, to mount a production of “Vortigern” at the famous Drury Lane theater. The theater’s manager and famed actor Philip Kemble took the leading role. The company’s leading lady insisted she was ill, and could not take part, perhaps because she saw what was coming.
The show was a disaster. Whether or not it appeared to be in Shakespeare’s handwriting (and in those days the only authentic examples were six wavery signatures of the dying man on his will), the language and the plot were awful. The play (set in ancient England before the time of King Arthur) showed clear signs of being unperformable. People laughed in inappropriate places and all control of the audience was lost when, towards the end, Kemble pronounced the line “And when this solemn mockery is o’er” in such an obviously humorous manner that order could not be restored. Nor could anyone credibly believe this was anything but a forgery.
Nevertheless, even after his son admitted what he’d done, his father continued to defend him, publishing the plays in 1799, and all the while failing to get a reputable theater company to perform the companion piece “Henry II.”
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians the apostle warns his listeners against false gospels that seem to some to have a ring of truth, but which in real life do not work, and do not give life! They may seem to the credulous to be authentic, but as Paul will show, the proof is in the pudding -- or in the performance!
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.
* * *
The Meaning of Authority
by Sandra Herrmann
Luke 7:1-10
When I was in high school, I joined Civil Air Patrol (the official civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force). This was at the end of the 1950’s, when people were still recovering from World War II, and the Cold War was part of our everyday experience. I suppose that some of that mindset is what interested me. Frankly, I can’t remember how I even heard of CAP, as it was informally known, but I was excited to join. We wore Air Force uniforms, but with the CAP insignia, and I was thrilled with the way I looked in uniform. Crass, I know, but what do you want from a 15-year-old?
Although the main thrust of CAP was ? and is ? to bring together people from all walks of life who are “aviation-minded” as the official website says, I never got the chance to fly in the 2-3 years when I was active, even though I was in love with flying. Our chances to fly were limited in those days, and that was a good thing, since one of the chief functions of CAP is to provide emergency services such as search and rescue and disaster relief. (These days, CAP is also involved with homeland security and courier service missions as well.)
Actually, most of my memories of CAP involve close-order drill. It seems to me now that we spent a lot of time marching. In fact, one of the chants we learned to keep us in unison went something like, “The CAP is a flying corp. So what the heck are we marching for?”
I did learn quite a bit about authority, though. We weren’t taught just to take orders. We learned that there is a chain of command, and a system to follow if you have a problem or object to an order on moral grounds. We were required to state our concern to the person giving the immoral/unconstitutional order first. Only then could a corpsman go to that person’s commanding officer and state the objection. Not that anyone of us expected to be told to do something heinous. But there was a protocol to be followed. And as we have learned in the years since, these situations do come up, whether or not we expect them to.
We were also taught how to give orders. Orders need to be clear, and the person giving an order always needs to make certain that the order is understood. A person in authority also needs to be open to questions being asked, or else the orders can be carried out in ways we don’t anticipate. We were encouraged to say, when giving or transmitting an order, “Do you have any questions, cadet?” or “Do you understand what I’m expecting, cadet?” We were taught that an officer who gets defensive or who tries to stop people from asking questions about how to proceed will inevitably wind up in some situation s/he did not anticipate. “Unless someone is shooting at you, there is always time for questions,” our instructor told us. “The one exception is when your superior tells you to hit the dirt. You don’t ask questions about that one!” This was our time to laugh, mostly because we never expected to be under fire. We didn’t, after all, go to war. We were an auxiliary.
We were also taught about maintaining morale. “You never chastise someone in public,” our instructor taught us. “If you have to correct someone’s behavior, or the way they did a job, you talk to them in private. You don’t want to humiliate them. That’s bad for morale.
“By the same token, you want to compliment a cadet in front of as many people as you can manage. That’s why special honors and awards are presented in front of the entire formation. That sees to it that your cadets know that when they excel, they also will be praised in front of their fellow cadets. These two principles are universal. Remember them.”
Like the centurion who had sent messengers to Jesus, asking him to heal his servant, I learned from my training principles that stood me in good stead in the business world, and even more so in the church. In the case of the centurion, it led to Jesus praising his faith in front of the synagogue leaders who had come to tell him that this centurion was worthy of Jesus’ time and attention. This Roman had said something that only faith could cause him to say:
“I am a man who understands authority. When I tell a soldier or a slave to do something, they do it. You don’t need to come to my home to heal my servant; if you just say the word, I trust that what you say will come to pass.”
And then, without having to criticize any one of the crowd, Jesus corrects their faith: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” And of course, when the servants returned home, the slave, who had been close to death, was in good health.
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 29, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
"Too Good To Be True" by Frank Ramirez
"The Meaning of Authority" by Sandra Herrmann
Too Good To Be True
by Frank Ramirez
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin... --Galatians 1:11
Wouldn’t it be nice to discover something important that no one else had and everyone wanted? Like an unknown photo of Abraham Lincoln, or a discarded scene from a famous movie like The Wizard of Oz, or, who knows, maybe a lost play by William Shakespeare?
It’s not easy to find something that everyone’s looking for and probably doesn’t exist. Take Shakespeare. There is probably more known about the life of William Shakespeare than is known about any other ordinary person from the Elizabethan era. That’s because people are constantly searching for new information about him. And there have been recent discoveries. In the past century three pages of a play he was hired to help rewrite to please the censor have been discovered, in his own handwriting. (By the way, it didn’t help. The play didn’t pass muster. It was never performed).
Word studies have shown that some additions in 1602 to one of the most popular plays ever written by someone other than William Shakespeare, The Spanish Tragedy, were probably written by -- you guessed it -- William Shakespeare.
And there are a couple other plays, like The Two Noble Kinsmen, and Edward III, which have long been known, that are now accepted as partly his.
But this was all stuff that existed, that people knew about, even if they didn’t now Shakespeare had a hand in them. However, starting around the year 1794 a young man named William Henry Ireland (1775-1835) startled the world with an astounding series of discoveries of Shakespearean manuscripts no one had ever heard of.
It began when he surprised his father, the noted engraver Samuel Ireland (he died around the year 1800), by showing him some amazing documents -- a letter to William Shakespeare from Queen Elizabeth. A love letter from Shakespeare to his wife Anne Hathaway. Additions to Shakespeare’s will. An improved manuscript copy of the famed tragedy King Lear, with all the raunchy language removed. Someone’s drawing of Shakespeare. And two totally unknown plays: “Vortigern” and “Henry II.”
Never mind that William worked in a legal office, where access to ancient paper, parchment, and official looking seals was close at hand. It was an era when interest in Shakespeare was growing again. People believed what they wanted to believe!
Where did all these documents come from? William claimed he had a source, a rich, young man with a chest full of old documents, who was willing, one by one, to give them to William in order to preserve his own anonymity. Some people, especially William’s father, passionately believed in the truth of these discoveries. Others were much more skeptical. On December 24, 1795, William’s father published many of the documents in an expensive volume that was purchased by curiosity seekers. After all, some experts had declared them authentic. And here they were in facsimile, so that people could judge for themselves.
Enter Shakespearen expert Edmond Malone, who had already debunked earlier forgeries. A little over three months after the book appeared he published a lengthy 400 page volume that tore holes in all the theories.
The book had only been out three days when, on April 2, 1796, the entire fabric of what was an elaborate deception, was torn into shreds. The Irelands, father and son, had convinced Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a noted Irish playwright, to mount a production of “Vortigern” at the famous Drury Lane theater. The theater’s manager and famed actor Philip Kemble took the leading role. The company’s leading lady insisted she was ill, and could not take part, perhaps because she saw what was coming.
The show was a disaster. Whether or not it appeared to be in Shakespeare’s handwriting (and in those days the only authentic examples were six wavery signatures of the dying man on his will), the language and the plot were awful. The play (set in ancient England before the time of King Arthur) showed clear signs of being unperformable. People laughed in inappropriate places and all control of the audience was lost when, towards the end, Kemble pronounced the line “And when this solemn mockery is o’er” in such an obviously humorous manner that order could not be restored. Nor could anyone credibly believe this was anything but a forgery.
Nevertheless, even after his son admitted what he’d done, his father continued to defend him, publishing the plays in 1799, and all the while failing to get a reputable theater company to perform the companion piece “Henry II.”
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians the apostle warns his listeners against false gospels that seem to some to have a ring of truth, but which in real life do not work, and do not give life! They may seem to the credulous to be authentic, but as Paul will show, the proof is in the pudding -- or in the performance!
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.
* * *
The Meaning of Authority
by Sandra Herrmann
Luke 7:1-10
When I was in high school, I joined Civil Air Patrol (the official civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force). This was at the end of the 1950’s, when people were still recovering from World War II, and the Cold War was part of our everyday experience. I suppose that some of that mindset is what interested me. Frankly, I can’t remember how I even heard of CAP, as it was informally known, but I was excited to join. We wore Air Force uniforms, but with the CAP insignia, and I was thrilled with the way I looked in uniform. Crass, I know, but what do you want from a 15-year-old?
Although the main thrust of CAP was ? and is ? to bring together people from all walks of life who are “aviation-minded” as the official website says, I never got the chance to fly in the 2-3 years when I was active, even though I was in love with flying. Our chances to fly were limited in those days, and that was a good thing, since one of the chief functions of CAP is to provide emergency services such as search and rescue and disaster relief. (These days, CAP is also involved with homeland security and courier service missions as well.)
Actually, most of my memories of CAP involve close-order drill. It seems to me now that we spent a lot of time marching. In fact, one of the chants we learned to keep us in unison went something like, “The CAP is a flying corp. So what the heck are we marching for?”
I did learn quite a bit about authority, though. We weren’t taught just to take orders. We learned that there is a chain of command, and a system to follow if you have a problem or object to an order on moral grounds. We were required to state our concern to the person giving the immoral/unconstitutional order first. Only then could a corpsman go to that person’s commanding officer and state the objection. Not that anyone of us expected to be told to do something heinous. But there was a protocol to be followed. And as we have learned in the years since, these situations do come up, whether or not we expect them to.
We were also taught how to give orders. Orders need to be clear, and the person giving an order always needs to make certain that the order is understood. A person in authority also needs to be open to questions being asked, or else the orders can be carried out in ways we don’t anticipate. We were encouraged to say, when giving or transmitting an order, “Do you have any questions, cadet?” or “Do you understand what I’m expecting, cadet?” We were taught that an officer who gets defensive or who tries to stop people from asking questions about how to proceed will inevitably wind up in some situation s/he did not anticipate. “Unless someone is shooting at you, there is always time for questions,” our instructor told us. “The one exception is when your superior tells you to hit the dirt. You don’t ask questions about that one!” This was our time to laugh, mostly because we never expected to be under fire. We didn’t, after all, go to war. We were an auxiliary.
We were also taught about maintaining morale. “You never chastise someone in public,” our instructor taught us. “If you have to correct someone’s behavior, or the way they did a job, you talk to them in private. You don’t want to humiliate them. That’s bad for morale.
“By the same token, you want to compliment a cadet in front of as many people as you can manage. That’s why special honors and awards are presented in front of the entire formation. That sees to it that your cadets know that when they excel, they also will be praised in front of their fellow cadets. These two principles are universal. Remember them.”
Like the centurion who had sent messengers to Jesus, asking him to heal his servant, I learned from my training principles that stood me in good stead in the business world, and even more so in the church. In the case of the centurion, it led to Jesus praising his faith in front of the synagogue leaders who had come to tell him that this centurion was worthy of Jesus’ time and attention. This Roman had said something that only faith could cause him to say:
“I am a man who understands authority. When I tell a soldier or a slave to do something, they do it. You don’t need to come to my home to heal my servant; if you just say the word, I trust that what you say will come to pass.”
And then, without having to criticize any one of the crowd, Jesus corrects their faith: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” And of course, when the servants returned home, the slave, who had been close to death, was in good health.
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 29, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
