Where To Walk In Faith
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Where to Walk in Faith" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Grace under the Law" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Waters of Chaos, Waters of Salvation" by Frank Ramirez
What's Up This Week
When we come to Christ, we receive so much more than just salvation. There is so much that God offers us. In "Where to Walk in Faith," we see how God can give us courage and faith to face our fears. "Grace under the Law" illustrates the nature of grace, another of God's gifts to us. Perhaps one of the most valuable gifts we receive from Christ is a firm foundation, so that we can withstand the storms that come against us. This point is expounded in "Waters of Chaos, Waters of Salvation."
* * * * * * * * *
Where to Walk in Faith
By Peter Andrew Smith
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
"The world is falling apart," Joyce said as she watched the news. She got up during a commercial and started locking the doors.
"The news is never good," George answered from the desk as he signed checks. "Why are you locking the doors now?"
"The violence and drugs here in our town, that's why! Nowhere is safe anymore. Sometimes it makes me want to just stay behind a locked door."
George took off his glasses and looked up. "For how long?"
"Until things get better outside," she said. "I know you laugh at me for being a believer but I think God will straighten things out. Just like in the days of Noah, God doesn't want things the way they are today with the lawlessness and violence. God is going to cleanse the wickedness from the world. I want to be well away from those people when God starts cleaning things up!"
"Noah was the one who built the ark, wasn't he?"
"Yes, he was. He loaded his family and the animals as God commanded. Noah was a righteous man even though everyone around him was corrupt."
George put his glasses back on and resumed signing checks. "I'm glad Noah didn't hide behind a locked door in his house."
Joyce started to say something but closed her mouth. She went and unlocked the front door instead.
Grace under the Law
By Peter Andrew Smith
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)
Andy looked up at his grandmother. "It wasn't that bad."
His grandmother glared at him. He tried but found he couldn't meet her eyes for too long because all he could see was the hurt in them.
"I know Lindsey's upset," Andy said. "When I get back from the concert, I'll make things right with her."
"And what makes you think you are going to the concert?" his grandmother asked with a steel in her voice that sent a shiver down his back. "What makes you think you should enjoy that privilege after what you have done?"
"I'll go apologize to Lindsey now."
"That would be a good start," his grandmother said.
He felt her watching him as he walked down the hallway to Lindsey's room.
"Go away," Lindsey yelled from behind the door.
"I want to apologize."
The door swung open and the tear-stained red face of his baby sister confronted him. "Do you even realize what you have done? How much you humiliated me?"
Andy looked down. "I'm sorry. What I did was wrong. I'll talk to him and explain I was stupid."
Lindsey wiped at her eyes. "That won't change what you said."
"No," Andy said. "But it might make things easier for you."
Lindsey grabbed the phone and thrust it into his hand. He looked at it and then at her.
"I didn't mean --" he started. She grabbed the door and he stuck his foot in the way to keep it open. "Okay, okay, I'm dialing."
He found it hard to swallow as the phone rang. His mouth was dry as a familiar voice said hello. "It's Andy," he said. "I just wanted to say that I was wrong to say what I said when I saw you and Lindsey. You shouldn't think less of her just because she has an idiot for a brother. She shouldn't have to pay for my mistakes."
Andy handed the phone to Lindsey, "I think he wants to speak with you."
He heard the door slam as he started back down the hallway. There was conversation mixed with sobbing still going on from Lindsey's bedroom. His grandmother was waiting for him.
"I apologized," he announced.
"And?" she asked.
"Lindsey is talking to him now. I think everything is going to be fine."
"Really?"
Andy started to answer and realized he didn't know. "I wish I had never opened my mouth. If I could take back what I said..." he felt his eyes stinging. He turned away from his grandmother when Lindsey came out of her room.
"I'm going back to the mall to catch the early show with Kim," she said not looking at Andy.
"Are things okay with --"
"No they're not," she said cutting him off. "Nan, can I have some have money for the bus and popcorn?"
Her grandmother reached for her purse as Andy pulled out some money and handed it to his sister.
Lindsey narrowed her eyes. "This doesn't make up for what you did."
"I know," Andy said.
Lindsey considered the money he was still holding out to her.
"Okay," she said taking it. She flashed a smile at her grandmother. "Be back before curfew!"
Andy sat down on a chair as the door closed.
"Nan, will I ever do enough good things for her to make up for what I said?"
"No, you won't. There is nothing you can do to make up for what you did to her."
"I know. I'm sorry that I ever said what I did. I never meant to make her cry. I guess I don't deserve to go to the concert." He hung his head. "It wouldn't matter even if I could go. I gave her the money I had for the bus and food. I guess that is only fair for me to pay for my mistakes."
"I guess it is," his grandmother said.
They sat in silence for a while. Finally his grandmother got up and handed him his jacket, the tickets to the concert, and some money.
"What? I thought you said I could never make up for what I had done."
"You can't. But you understand what you did was wrong, you did what you could to make it up to her, and now you know how much your insensitivity hurt your sister. And I know that there is no more good that can come out of you staying at home. Go and enjoy yourself."
His face exploded in a smile and he grabbed her in a tight hug.
"And that, Andy, is grace," she whispered in his ear.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada currently serving St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things are Ready (CSS) a book of lectionary based communion prayers and a number of stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
Waters of Chaos, Waters of Salvation
Frank Ramirez
Matthew 7:21-29; Genesis 6:9 ff
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.
-- Matthew 7:25
What does Christianity look like in our century? When some scholar in a future century looks back on our time, how will our faith be typified?
Is it reflected in the scholarly journals that gather dust on the shelf? Will someone write a thesis based on the table of contents of a periodical that none of us have ever cracked open?
We hope not. Wouldn't it be better to examine the sort of thing that the average church-goer treasures to learn what we believe and how our faith is practiced? In other words, wouldn't a bumper sticker, a tract, and that painting of the Good Shepherd on the wall tell more about who we are and what we believe? Wouldn't the hymns we call out at the hymn sing tell more about our faith than a sermon delivered at a congressional prayer breakfast? Wouldn't our CDs and our devotional magazines and booklets give a better clue toward our Christian faith than a lecture at seminary?
A good example of this would be the hymn "In The Garden." Studies tend to show that this is one of the most favorite hymns of folks going to church and sitting in the pews on Sunday. Studies also show this is one of the least favorite hymns of professional hymnologists, theologians, and scholars. Neither group is right or wrong, but both sides need to be heard when it comes to chronicling what the faith of our age looks like.
If that's true for now, what about the faith and practice of the early Christians? What did Christianity look like 2,000 years ago? Some pastors have a shelf full of books written by the Ante-Nicene Fathers -- in other words, the writings of the official scholars of the church in the era before Christianity became legal. These writings come from across the Christian world, but they reflect what the scholars were thinking. It is their definition of the faith.
What about the ordinary Christians of that era? What was important to them? What were their hymns about? What art did they choose for their churches and their tombstones? What stories from the Bible spoke to them most clearly? It's not like we can check sales records for the CDs they bought, or look for old devotional magazines from the first couple of Christian centuries.
Dr. Graydon F. Snyder, known to his students as Grady, has studied the early church most of his life, spending time in Europe tracking down the art left behind by ordinary Christians. He put some of his findings in a book called Ante Pacem (Before the Peace). In his study of what the church looked like before it was made legal by the Emperor Constantine, he focused not on the literary works left behind, but on the artwork, slogans, gravestones, hymns, personal letters, and church architecture to give a picture of what the average believer found important.
What he found was that stories involving safety despite the waters, such as the Jonah cycle and Noah in the ark, as well as the baptism of Jesus, appear an overwhelming number of times.
Why these stories? It didn't have to be that way. Dr. Snyder examined Celtic Christianity and he discovered that for them a whole different set of stories came to the fore. For them stories about Jesus healing and performing other miracles were far more important. But the key difference seems to be that Celtic Christians did not experience the same persecution as Christians in the Roman empire in the first three centuries, before the faith was legal.
In the ancient world, waters represented chaos, a force more powerful than the gods. For Christians under Roman rule, stories from the Old Testament that showed believers saved the chaos of persecution. Everything else was sheared away. Noah, for instance, is portrayed as a little man in an open box, arms raised in prayer, floating on the waters. His family -- the animals -- all that is shorn away. What mattered for the early Christians, whose faith was illegal, who faced persecution, who were shorn from their families because of their beliefs, was that through the waters of baptism they would be preserved over the waters of chaos.
There's no question that for ordinary Christians of the first century, stories about Noah and Jonah represented mercy and pardon for sinners, God's universal plan of salvation that included the Gentiles, death and resurrection, and shelter from the storms of chaos. The whole gospel is there, glimpsed through a glass darkly. For them these were the most important stories in the Bible
So when Jesus said, "The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock," that meant something.
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and has served as a pastor for nearly thirty years in Church of the Brethren congregations. 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.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply email the story to us at storyshare@sermonsuite.com.
**************
StoryShare, June 1, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
What's Up This Week
"Where to Walk in Faith" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Grace under the Law" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Waters of Chaos, Waters of Salvation" by Frank Ramirez
What's Up This Week
When we come to Christ, we receive so much more than just salvation. There is so much that God offers us. In "Where to Walk in Faith," we see how God can give us courage and faith to face our fears. "Grace under the Law" illustrates the nature of grace, another of God's gifts to us. Perhaps one of the most valuable gifts we receive from Christ is a firm foundation, so that we can withstand the storms that come against us. This point is expounded in "Waters of Chaos, Waters of Salvation."
* * * * * * * * *
Where to Walk in Faith
By Peter Andrew Smith
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
"The world is falling apart," Joyce said as she watched the news. She got up during a commercial and started locking the doors.
"The news is never good," George answered from the desk as he signed checks. "Why are you locking the doors now?"
"The violence and drugs here in our town, that's why! Nowhere is safe anymore. Sometimes it makes me want to just stay behind a locked door."
George took off his glasses and looked up. "For how long?"
"Until things get better outside," she said. "I know you laugh at me for being a believer but I think God will straighten things out. Just like in the days of Noah, God doesn't want things the way they are today with the lawlessness and violence. God is going to cleanse the wickedness from the world. I want to be well away from those people when God starts cleaning things up!"
"Noah was the one who built the ark, wasn't he?"
"Yes, he was. He loaded his family and the animals as God commanded. Noah was a righteous man even though everyone around him was corrupt."
George put his glasses back on and resumed signing checks. "I'm glad Noah didn't hide behind a locked door in his house."
Joyce started to say something but closed her mouth. She went and unlocked the front door instead.
Grace under the Law
By Peter Andrew Smith
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)
Andy looked up at his grandmother. "It wasn't that bad."
His grandmother glared at him. He tried but found he couldn't meet her eyes for too long because all he could see was the hurt in them.
"I know Lindsey's upset," Andy said. "When I get back from the concert, I'll make things right with her."
"And what makes you think you are going to the concert?" his grandmother asked with a steel in her voice that sent a shiver down his back. "What makes you think you should enjoy that privilege after what you have done?"
"I'll go apologize to Lindsey now."
"That would be a good start," his grandmother said.
He felt her watching him as he walked down the hallway to Lindsey's room.
"Go away," Lindsey yelled from behind the door.
"I want to apologize."
The door swung open and the tear-stained red face of his baby sister confronted him. "Do you even realize what you have done? How much you humiliated me?"
Andy looked down. "I'm sorry. What I did was wrong. I'll talk to him and explain I was stupid."
Lindsey wiped at her eyes. "That won't change what you said."
"No," Andy said. "But it might make things easier for you."
Lindsey grabbed the phone and thrust it into his hand. He looked at it and then at her.
"I didn't mean --" he started. She grabbed the door and he stuck his foot in the way to keep it open. "Okay, okay, I'm dialing."
He found it hard to swallow as the phone rang. His mouth was dry as a familiar voice said hello. "It's Andy," he said. "I just wanted to say that I was wrong to say what I said when I saw you and Lindsey. You shouldn't think less of her just because she has an idiot for a brother. She shouldn't have to pay for my mistakes."
Andy handed the phone to Lindsey, "I think he wants to speak with you."
He heard the door slam as he started back down the hallway. There was conversation mixed with sobbing still going on from Lindsey's bedroom. His grandmother was waiting for him.
"I apologized," he announced.
"And?" she asked.
"Lindsey is talking to him now. I think everything is going to be fine."
"Really?"
Andy started to answer and realized he didn't know. "I wish I had never opened my mouth. If I could take back what I said..." he felt his eyes stinging. He turned away from his grandmother when Lindsey came out of her room.
"I'm going back to the mall to catch the early show with Kim," she said not looking at Andy.
"Are things okay with --"
"No they're not," she said cutting him off. "Nan, can I have some have money for the bus and popcorn?"
Her grandmother reached for her purse as Andy pulled out some money and handed it to his sister.
Lindsey narrowed her eyes. "This doesn't make up for what you did."
"I know," Andy said.
Lindsey considered the money he was still holding out to her.
"Okay," she said taking it. She flashed a smile at her grandmother. "Be back before curfew!"
Andy sat down on a chair as the door closed.
"Nan, will I ever do enough good things for her to make up for what I said?"
"No, you won't. There is nothing you can do to make up for what you did to her."
"I know. I'm sorry that I ever said what I did. I never meant to make her cry. I guess I don't deserve to go to the concert." He hung his head. "It wouldn't matter even if I could go. I gave her the money I had for the bus and food. I guess that is only fair for me to pay for my mistakes."
"I guess it is," his grandmother said.
They sat in silence for a while. Finally his grandmother got up and handed him his jacket, the tickets to the concert, and some money.
"What? I thought you said I could never make up for what I had done."
"You can't. But you understand what you did was wrong, you did what you could to make it up to her, and now you know how much your insensitivity hurt your sister. And I know that there is no more good that can come out of you staying at home. Go and enjoy yourself."
His face exploded in a smile and he grabbed her in a tight hug.
"And that, Andy, is grace," she whispered in his ear.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada currently serving St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things are Ready (CSS) a book of lectionary based communion prayers and a number of stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
Waters of Chaos, Waters of Salvation
Frank Ramirez
Matthew 7:21-29; Genesis 6:9 ff
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.
-- Matthew 7:25
What does Christianity look like in our century? When some scholar in a future century looks back on our time, how will our faith be typified?
Is it reflected in the scholarly journals that gather dust on the shelf? Will someone write a thesis based on the table of contents of a periodical that none of us have ever cracked open?
We hope not. Wouldn't it be better to examine the sort of thing that the average church-goer treasures to learn what we believe and how our faith is practiced? In other words, wouldn't a bumper sticker, a tract, and that painting of the Good Shepherd on the wall tell more about who we are and what we believe? Wouldn't the hymns we call out at the hymn sing tell more about our faith than a sermon delivered at a congressional prayer breakfast? Wouldn't our CDs and our devotional magazines and booklets give a better clue toward our Christian faith than a lecture at seminary?
A good example of this would be the hymn "In The Garden." Studies tend to show that this is one of the most favorite hymns of folks going to church and sitting in the pews on Sunday. Studies also show this is one of the least favorite hymns of professional hymnologists, theologians, and scholars. Neither group is right or wrong, but both sides need to be heard when it comes to chronicling what the faith of our age looks like.
If that's true for now, what about the faith and practice of the early Christians? What did Christianity look like 2,000 years ago? Some pastors have a shelf full of books written by the Ante-Nicene Fathers -- in other words, the writings of the official scholars of the church in the era before Christianity became legal. These writings come from across the Christian world, but they reflect what the scholars were thinking. It is their definition of the faith.
What about the ordinary Christians of that era? What was important to them? What were their hymns about? What art did they choose for their churches and their tombstones? What stories from the Bible spoke to them most clearly? It's not like we can check sales records for the CDs they bought, or look for old devotional magazines from the first couple of Christian centuries.
Dr. Graydon F. Snyder, known to his students as Grady, has studied the early church most of his life, spending time in Europe tracking down the art left behind by ordinary Christians. He put some of his findings in a book called Ante Pacem (Before the Peace). In his study of what the church looked like before it was made legal by the Emperor Constantine, he focused not on the literary works left behind, but on the artwork, slogans, gravestones, hymns, personal letters, and church architecture to give a picture of what the average believer found important.
What he found was that stories involving safety despite the waters, such as the Jonah cycle and Noah in the ark, as well as the baptism of Jesus, appear an overwhelming number of times.
Why these stories? It didn't have to be that way. Dr. Snyder examined Celtic Christianity and he discovered that for them a whole different set of stories came to the fore. For them stories about Jesus healing and performing other miracles were far more important. But the key difference seems to be that Celtic Christians did not experience the same persecution as Christians in the Roman empire in the first three centuries, before the faith was legal.
In the ancient world, waters represented chaos, a force more powerful than the gods. For Christians under Roman rule, stories from the Old Testament that showed believers saved the chaos of persecution. Everything else was sheared away. Noah, for instance, is portrayed as a little man in an open box, arms raised in prayer, floating on the waters. His family -- the animals -- all that is shorn away. What mattered for the early Christians, whose faith was illegal, who faced persecution, who were shorn from their families because of their beliefs, was that through the waters of baptism they would be preserved over the waters of chaos.
There's no question that for ordinary Christians of the first century, stories about Noah and Jonah represented mercy and pardon for sinners, God's universal plan of salvation that included the Gentiles, death and resurrection, and shelter from the storms of chaos. The whole gospel is there, glimpsed through a glass darkly. For them these were the most important stories in the Bible
So when Jesus said, "The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock," that meant something.
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and has served as a pastor for nearly thirty years in Church of the Brethren congregations. 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.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply email the story to us at storyshare@sermonsuite.com.
**************
StoryShare, June 1, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
