The Real Presence Of Christ
Stories
Object:
Contents
A Story to Live By: "The Real Presence of Christ"
Sharing Visions: "Convincing Proof" by Margaret Nyland-Brown
Good Stories: "Witnesses" by John Sumwalt
The Scrap Pile: "Deus Ascendit" by Shawn Stapleton
I have been creating and telling stories for almost 25 years. Until recently I wrote mostly short fiction, parable-like stories which were published by CSS in a series of books called Lectionary Stories and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit. "Witnesses," which appears in this week's edition of StoryShare, is one of those tales. Like many of my stories it was inspired in part by a real event.
For the past 12 years I have been doing what I call "Story Concerts" at churches, schools, and civic clubs. Very often people come up to me afterwards and ask me about a particular story. The most common question: "Is that a true story?" I hear it so much that I have developed a stock reply: "All of my stories are true ... and some of them really happened."
Since the release of Vision Stories [link to 0-7880-1896-5] (Cycle B) (CSS, 2002), I have been telling personal stories, some of my own mystical experiences, and a number of favorites I have collected like Margaret Nyland-Brown's touching personal story below. Now I receive a different kind of response. Almost always someone takes me aside and says, "I had an experience like that once." They tell it to me in a quiet voice so that no one else can hear. And then they say with a sense of relief, "I've never told that to anyone before." This happens over and over again. I have come to understand that sharing visions is a much-needed ministry. It lets people who have had these powerful, life-changing experiences know that they are not alone.
I am pleased to announce that the second volume in the vision series, titled Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences [link to 0-7880-1970-8] (Cycle C), was released by CSS Publishing Company in May. It is available from CSS through their website (www.csspub.com) or by calling 1-800-241-4056. The 85 contributing authors include such notables as the Canadian writer Ralph Milton, author of Julian's Cell; singers Kerri Sherwood, Cheryl Kirking, and Lee Domann; professor Linda J. Vogel of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary; and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the movie The Sound of Music. Rosmarie also has a wonderful story in Vision Stories, which you will find in the bookstore when you visit the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, as we hope to do next summer.
Jo and I are collecting personal stories for a third collection to be released in 2004. The working title is Holy Moments: Life-Changing Visions And Other Signs of God's Presence (Cycle A). We are broadening the scope a bit to include any experience of the holy. Send stories to jsumwalt@naspa.net. And because our daughter is getting married in October, we need to hear from you ASAP.
John Sumwalt, co-editor of StoryShare
A Story to Live By
The Real Presence of Christ
Heather Murray Elkins, in her wonderful book Worshiping Women: Re-Forming God's People For Praise (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), tells about sharing communion with an 80-year-old woman in intensive care. She is in critical condition and not expected to live. Afterwards, Heather discovers that the old woman has never communed before, and some of her family lets it be known that they do not approve - accusing Heather of force-feeding a dying woman.
Then, to everyone's surprise, "The dying woman didn't die. She recovers. She returns home and then returns to church. She refuses to use the handicapped entrance, preferring to go hand over hand up the steep stairs. She sits in the notoriously empty front pew, close, very close to the table. Whatever crippling sense of unworthiness she has suffered is gone. Whatever has divided her from the body of Christ has disappeared. She believes, as few do, in the real presence of Christ." (pp. 68-70)
Sharing Visions
Convincing Proof
by Margaret Nyland-Brown
After his suffering, he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
Acts 1:3
I was born in 1970. My brother, Randy, was five years older than me. He died on February 28, 1982. In February of 1992, Randy came to me in a dream. At the time that I had this experience, I would have been a senior in college. I had been struggling with issues of whether we have a soul, and whether my brother was in a special place.
I dreamed that I was in a snow-covered field, but I wasn't cold. I saw Randy and suddenly I felt very tired and laid down on the ground and went to sleep. Sometime later, I awoke in the field and I looked up and saw him still standing there, watching me. We looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. I saw his face so clearly. He was wearing something red.
I tried to get up, but I couldn't. I called out his name and said, "Wait just a minute." But he turned and walked away, and disappeared. A few seconds later, I saw a bunch of moving lights in the shape of a body rise up, until it looked like a constellation against the stars in the night sky. Then he whizzed away overhead. I reached out my hand to wave, and I saw his hand raised as he zoomed out of sight.
The overwhelming feeling that I remember from this vivid experience is that of utter peace washing over me: of warmth, of love, not just his love for me, but something much bigger. Without the exchange of words, I received a message that everything was all right. It was so very comforting.
Margaret Nyland-Brown lives in Milwaukee with her husband and their pets. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with degrees in psychology and dance. She works as a choreographer and coach for figure skaters. Margaret's story appears in Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles [link to 0-7880-1896-5], edited by John E. Sumwalt (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 2002). Vision Stories is available from CSS through their website (www.csspub.com) or by calling 1-800-241-4056. Vision Stories is also available at Cokesbury, Family Christian Stores, and many local Christian bookstores.
Good Stories
Witnesses
by John Sumwalt
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."
Luke 24:45-48
There was a young couple in a small country church who had a very beautiful little daughter who was a favorite of everyone in the congregation. Clarissa had golden hair and was pretty and bright, with a sweet disposition. Ardella liked to dress her up in frilly dresses and bonnets when they came to church. Everyone loved to fuss over little Clarry, as her father called her. Gilbert used to take her fishing down by the river, and they would laugh together at the antics of the muskrats and the beaver they saw playing along the banks.
Then one day, they discovered that Clarissa had a fast-growing malignant tumor on her brain. The tumor was inoperable and untreatable. Clarissa died four months later, exactly a week before her fifth birthday. Gilbert picked up Clarissa's lifeless body and carried her across the long river bridge, all the way to the funeral parlor in town. Ardella and Gilbert remained faithful to the church, but the light had gone out of their lives. Everyone in the congregation grieved with them. After several months, it was apparent that both of them were deeply depressed. They talked to the pastor; they went to a therapist for counseling, but nothing seemed to help.
One Sunday morning, almost two years to the day after Clarissa's death, Gilbert and Ardella came into the church with smiles on their faces. Everyone could tell that something had happened, but they didn't know what. Gilbert and Ardella just said it had something to do with a gift of the Spirit. It wasn't until several months later that the congregation finally heard the full story.
There was an old Jehovah's Witness couple who had been coming to witness to Gilbert and Ardella for several years. They never turned them away, even though they were not much interested in the old couple's religion. Gilbert and Ardella would listen politely, and sometimes they would share a little of their own faith. After the couple's religious obligation was completed, Ardella would always insist that they stay and visit a while. Then she would lead them into the kitchen for milk and fresh bread with homemade strawberry jam. Often there was hot soup on the stove to go with the bread. They visited about everyday concerns, sometimes laughing and talking until late in the afternoon, well past chore time. When Clarissa died, the old couple came more often and said little about their religion.
Gilbert and Ardella noticed one day that it had been several months since the couple's last visit, and they began to wonder what had happened to them. They had never exchanged last names or telephone numbers. Gilbert and Ardella had no idea where the old couple lived or how to contact them. All they could do was wait and wonder. Several months passed, and then, one day, the old man showed up on their front doorstep alone. He said his wife had died quite suddenly, and he had been so grief-stricken that he had not been able to get out to do his witnessing. Gilbert invited him in, and Ardella made him sit down and have some soup with them. As he told about his wife's death, they wept with him, and put their arms around him, and loved him.
The Scrap Pile
Deus Ascendit
by Shawn Stapleton
Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-11
Ascension Sunday
In his book On a Wild and Windy Mountain, William Willimon tells of being in New Haven, Connecticut, as a student in 1970, during the famous Black Panther trials. It was a turbulent time for our country - a time of strife, discord, and agony that threatened to tear our country apart. Much of the unrest of those days came to a focus during the trial of those Black Panther leaders. It was just at that time that Willimon happened to attend a choral mass at a Catholic church near Yale University. A boys choir was singing a great Ascension composition called "Deus Ascendit" - Latin for "God Has Gone Up." As he sat there listening to those young voices, Willimon found himself thinking, "How appropriate. God has gone up. Gone up and away. God has left us to our confusion. Abandoned us in the midst of the angry shouts of the mobs, the sound of gunfire, and the rhetoric of the revolutionaries." It's not hard to feel that way. In the midst of the chaos that surrounded him then - and the chaos that surrounds us today - it's easy to feel as if God has abandoned us.
However, as he sat there and continued to listen, Willimon noticed that the boys were not singing Deus abscondit, which would mean "God has abandoned us," but rather they sang Deus ascendit, God has gone up. And the words of that song led Willimon to understand that God had not given up on us. Rather, the Ascension of Jesus signaled that what Jesus had begun on earth would be brought to completion in heaven even after his ascension to heaven. Many of us grew up repeating the words of the Apostles' Creed, which says, "He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father." He ascended not to abandon us but to complete what he began. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, through his church, and through his faithful people, Christ still is at work to rule with love and mercy.
Christ has not abandoned us - but he has ascended into heaven, and that's what the focus of our worship today is about. So important is this event that Luke describes it twice - in the last chapter of his gospel and the first chapter of Acts. The setting is the Mount of Olives. Forty days had passed since the resurrection of Jesus. It was time for him to return to heaven. And so once again, Jesus appears to the disciples. He joins them in worship. He breaks bread with them. He announces to them that they will soon receive the Holy Spirit, and when the Holy Spirit comes to them, they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. And after he has given them this assurance, he is lifted up before them into the heavens until a cloud hid him from their sight. Deus ascendit. God has gone up.
You will hear me refer often to my Catholic upbringing, because I think we Protestants threw out the baby with the bath water in our reaction against Catholicism. The Puritans reacted especially violently against their Roman counterparts, throwing out all creeds and recited prayers as part of their worship services. It is because of that reaction that our worship looks and feels the way it does. For many years they would not even say the Lord's Prayer in worship as a reaction against anything memorized; they felt the soul must speak in prayer, and memorized prayers seldom moved the soul. They also felt there needed to be a closer relationship with God. They maintained a tension in their faith lives between a God who was mysterious and all-powerful, and a God who could be known and whose presence could be felt. They felt the Catholics had erred too much on the side of a mysterious God, and ceased striving for the closeness that we see as we read about the people in scripture.
As American Protestant Christianity matured, we lost touch with the mystery of God. The stress was placed on a conversion experience, and the need to have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." It was the birth of what I call the "Me and Jesus" movement, which is still prevalent today. Protestants embraced the God of the Gospels, a God who walks with us and talks with us and tells us we are his own. We embraced a God who calls us just as we are, without one plea. Now, there's nothing wrong with that necessarily. Paul talks about a God who fully knows us (1 Corinthians 13:12), as do the psalmists (Psalm 139:13) and the prophets (Isaiah 44:24; Jeremiah 1:5). We are known from the womb to the tomb. Jesus tells us that the hairs on our heads are counted (Matthew 10:30) and that every single one of our needs in life is known by God and will be taken care of (Matthew 6:25-34).
But we also must remember that the God we meet in scripture is mysterious and beyond our comprehension. This is the creator of the world, the one who, out of sheer grace, brought life and order from chaos. Just read the discourse at the end of Job - God is offended by anyone who thinks they fully know God. That's a classic Jewish understanding of God, and it's that understanding that we have inherited. We need to keep that understanding in tension with the idea of a God who intimately knows us.
That's also the understanding that the disciples had as they stood on the road at Bethany, watching their friend stretch out his hands and bless them as he was carried up in a cloud. Jesus had now opened their minds to the scriptures. They understood that he indeed was the Messiah, the one sent by God to reconcile the world to himself. They knew him now not as a prophet, but as God, made flesh. They knew God intimately, sitting at table with him, having him wash their feet and heal their relatives and friends. Now they were watching him ascend, returning to the realm from which he came. He was moving from familiar and intimate back to mysterious and transcendent. But he would not leave them, he said. They would receive his Spirit, which would remain with them and empower them as they carried out the work that he had ordained them to do. Jesus was both separated from them and with them. He was both in heaven and on earth. Jesus was not abandoning them as he ascended into the clouds - he would simply be present with them in a new way.
Next Sunday is Pentecost, the time when we remember the descending of the flames of the Spirit on those 120 disciples gathered in Jerusalem. We remember the power they received that day, for in those tongues of fire the disciples received all that they needed to go out and proclaim the Word of God in their words and actions. Taken together, these two Sundays are powerful times in the church year. They remind us of the multifaceted nature of the God we worship. They remind us that, even in the midst of the angry shouts of the mobs, the sound of gunfire, and the rhetoric of the revolutionaries, God is both beyond it and at work in the thick of it.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Shawn P. Stapleton serves as pastor and teacher of First Congregational Church in Beloit, Wisconsin. In addition to his full-time ministry duties, Rev. Stapleton also serves as co-editor of book reviews for the International Congregational Journal, and is currently working with a team of contributors to update a worship book suitable for churches in the "free church" tradition. He writes sermons aimed at introducing people to the cultural and political circumstances surrounding the Biblical text, with the prayer that by so doing people will gain a new understanding of the way God moved among God's people at that time, and how God moves among God's people today. Contact Shawn through his church's website (http://www.firstconbeloit.org/).
StoryShare, June 1, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
A Story to Live By: "The Real Presence of Christ"
Sharing Visions: "Convincing Proof" by Margaret Nyland-Brown
Good Stories: "Witnesses" by John Sumwalt
The Scrap Pile: "Deus Ascendit" by Shawn Stapleton
I have been creating and telling stories for almost 25 years. Until recently I wrote mostly short fiction, parable-like stories which were published by CSS in a series of books called Lectionary Stories and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit. "Witnesses," which appears in this week's edition of StoryShare, is one of those tales. Like many of my stories it was inspired in part by a real event.
For the past 12 years I have been doing what I call "Story Concerts" at churches, schools, and civic clubs. Very often people come up to me afterwards and ask me about a particular story. The most common question: "Is that a true story?" I hear it so much that I have developed a stock reply: "All of my stories are true ... and some of them really happened."
Since the release of Vision Stories [link to 0-7880-1896-5] (Cycle B) (CSS, 2002), I have been telling personal stories, some of my own mystical experiences, and a number of favorites I have collected like Margaret Nyland-Brown's touching personal story below. Now I receive a different kind of response. Almost always someone takes me aside and says, "I had an experience like that once." They tell it to me in a quiet voice so that no one else can hear. And then they say with a sense of relief, "I've never told that to anyone before." This happens over and over again. I have come to understand that sharing visions is a much-needed ministry. It lets people who have had these powerful, life-changing experiences know that they are not alone.
I am pleased to announce that the second volume in the vision series, titled Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences [link to 0-7880-1970-8] (Cycle C), was released by CSS Publishing Company in May. It is available from CSS through their website (www.csspub.com) or by calling 1-800-241-4056. The 85 contributing authors include such notables as the Canadian writer Ralph Milton, author of Julian's Cell; singers Kerri Sherwood, Cheryl Kirking, and Lee Domann; professor Linda J. Vogel of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary; and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the movie The Sound of Music. Rosmarie also has a wonderful story in Vision Stories, which you will find in the bookstore when you visit the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, as we hope to do next summer.
Jo and I are collecting personal stories for a third collection to be released in 2004. The working title is Holy Moments: Life-Changing Visions And Other Signs of God's Presence (Cycle A). We are broadening the scope a bit to include any experience of the holy. Send stories to jsumwalt@naspa.net. And because our daughter is getting married in October, we need to hear from you ASAP.
John Sumwalt, co-editor of StoryShare
A Story to Live By
The Real Presence of Christ
Heather Murray Elkins, in her wonderful book Worshiping Women: Re-Forming God's People For Praise (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), tells about sharing communion with an 80-year-old woman in intensive care. She is in critical condition and not expected to live. Afterwards, Heather discovers that the old woman has never communed before, and some of her family lets it be known that they do not approve - accusing Heather of force-feeding a dying woman.
Then, to everyone's surprise, "The dying woman didn't die. She recovers. She returns home and then returns to church. She refuses to use the handicapped entrance, preferring to go hand over hand up the steep stairs. She sits in the notoriously empty front pew, close, very close to the table. Whatever crippling sense of unworthiness she has suffered is gone. Whatever has divided her from the body of Christ has disappeared. She believes, as few do, in the real presence of Christ." (pp. 68-70)
Sharing Visions
Convincing Proof
by Margaret Nyland-Brown
After his suffering, he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
Acts 1:3
I was born in 1970. My brother, Randy, was five years older than me. He died on February 28, 1982. In February of 1992, Randy came to me in a dream. At the time that I had this experience, I would have been a senior in college. I had been struggling with issues of whether we have a soul, and whether my brother was in a special place.
I dreamed that I was in a snow-covered field, but I wasn't cold. I saw Randy and suddenly I felt very tired and laid down on the ground and went to sleep. Sometime later, I awoke in the field and I looked up and saw him still standing there, watching me. We looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. I saw his face so clearly. He was wearing something red.
I tried to get up, but I couldn't. I called out his name and said, "Wait just a minute." But he turned and walked away, and disappeared. A few seconds later, I saw a bunch of moving lights in the shape of a body rise up, until it looked like a constellation against the stars in the night sky. Then he whizzed away overhead. I reached out my hand to wave, and I saw his hand raised as he zoomed out of sight.
The overwhelming feeling that I remember from this vivid experience is that of utter peace washing over me: of warmth, of love, not just his love for me, but something much bigger. Without the exchange of words, I received a message that everything was all right. It was so very comforting.
Margaret Nyland-Brown lives in Milwaukee with her husband and their pets. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with degrees in psychology and dance. She works as a choreographer and coach for figure skaters. Margaret's story appears in Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles [link to 0-7880-1896-5], edited by John E. Sumwalt (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 2002). Vision Stories is available from CSS through their website (www.csspub.com) or by calling 1-800-241-4056. Vision Stories is also available at Cokesbury, Family Christian Stores, and many local Christian bookstores.
Good Stories
Witnesses
by John Sumwalt
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."
Luke 24:45-48
There was a young couple in a small country church who had a very beautiful little daughter who was a favorite of everyone in the congregation. Clarissa had golden hair and was pretty and bright, with a sweet disposition. Ardella liked to dress her up in frilly dresses and bonnets when they came to church. Everyone loved to fuss over little Clarry, as her father called her. Gilbert used to take her fishing down by the river, and they would laugh together at the antics of the muskrats and the beaver they saw playing along the banks.
Then one day, they discovered that Clarissa had a fast-growing malignant tumor on her brain. The tumor was inoperable and untreatable. Clarissa died four months later, exactly a week before her fifth birthday. Gilbert picked up Clarissa's lifeless body and carried her across the long river bridge, all the way to the funeral parlor in town. Ardella and Gilbert remained faithful to the church, but the light had gone out of their lives. Everyone in the congregation grieved with them. After several months, it was apparent that both of them were deeply depressed. They talked to the pastor; they went to a therapist for counseling, but nothing seemed to help.
One Sunday morning, almost two years to the day after Clarissa's death, Gilbert and Ardella came into the church with smiles on their faces. Everyone could tell that something had happened, but they didn't know what. Gilbert and Ardella just said it had something to do with a gift of the Spirit. It wasn't until several months later that the congregation finally heard the full story.
There was an old Jehovah's Witness couple who had been coming to witness to Gilbert and Ardella for several years. They never turned them away, even though they were not much interested in the old couple's religion. Gilbert and Ardella would listen politely, and sometimes they would share a little of their own faith. After the couple's religious obligation was completed, Ardella would always insist that they stay and visit a while. Then she would lead them into the kitchen for milk and fresh bread with homemade strawberry jam. Often there was hot soup on the stove to go with the bread. They visited about everyday concerns, sometimes laughing and talking until late in the afternoon, well past chore time. When Clarissa died, the old couple came more often and said little about their religion.
Gilbert and Ardella noticed one day that it had been several months since the couple's last visit, and they began to wonder what had happened to them. They had never exchanged last names or telephone numbers. Gilbert and Ardella had no idea where the old couple lived or how to contact them. All they could do was wait and wonder. Several months passed, and then, one day, the old man showed up on their front doorstep alone. He said his wife had died quite suddenly, and he had been so grief-stricken that he had not been able to get out to do his witnessing. Gilbert invited him in, and Ardella made him sit down and have some soup with them. As he told about his wife's death, they wept with him, and put their arms around him, and loved him.
The Scrap Pile
Deus Ascendit
by Shawn Stapleton
Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-11
Ascension Sunday
In his book On a Wild and Windy Mountain, William Willimon tells of being in New Haven, Connecticut, as a student in 1970, during the famous Black Panther trials. It was a turbulent time for our country - a time of strife, discord, and agony that threatened to tear our country apart. Much of the unrest of those days came to a focus during the trial of those Black Panther leaders. It was just at that time that Willimon happened to attend a choral mass at a Catholic church near Yale University. A boys choir was singing a great Ascension composition called "Deus Ascendit" - Latin for "God Has Gone Up." As he sat there listening to those young voices, Willimon found himself thinking, "How appropriate. God has gone up. Gone up and away. God has left us to our confusion. Abandoned us in the midst of the angry shouts of the mobs, the sound of gunfire, and the rhetoric of the revolutionaries." It's not hard to feel that way. In the midst of the chaos that surrounded him then - and the chaos that surrounds us today - it's easy to feel as if God has abandoned us.
However, as he sat there and continued to listen, Willimon noticed that the boys were not singing Deus abscondit, which would mean "God has abandoned us," but rather they sang Deus ascendit, God has gone up. And the words of that song led Willimon to understand that God had not given up on us. Rather, the Ascension of Jesus signaled that what Jesus had begun on earth would be brought to completion in heaven even after his ascension to heaven. Many of us grew up repeating the words of the Apostles' Creed, which says, "He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father." He ascended not to abandon us but to complete what he began. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, through his church, and through his faithful people, Christ still is at work to rule with love and mercy.
Christ has not abandoned us - but he has ascended into heaven, and that's what the focus of our worship today is about. So important is this event that Luke describes it twice - in the last chapter of his gospel and the first chapter of Acts. The setting is the Mount of Olives. Forty days had passed since the resurrection of Jesus. It was time for him to return to heaven. And so once again, Jesus appears to the disciples. He joins them in worship. He breaks bread with them. He announces to them that they will soon receive the Holy Spirit, and when the Holy Spirit comes to them, they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. And after he has given them this assurance, he is lifted up before them into the heavens until a cloud hid him from their sight. Deus ascendit. God has gone up.
You will hear me refer often to my Catholic upbringing, because I think we Protestants threw out the baby with the bath water in our reaction against Catholicism. The Puritans reacted especially violently against their Roman counterparts, throwing out all creeds and recited prayers as part of their worship services. It is because of that reaction that our worship looks and feels the way it does. For many years they would not even say the Lord's Prayer in worship as a reaction against anything memorized; they felt the soul must speak in prayer, and memorized prayers seldom moved the soul. They also felt there needed to be a closer relationship with God. They maintained a tension in their faith lives between a God who was mysterious and all-powerful, and a God who could be known and whose presence could be felt. They felt the Catholics had erred too much on the side of a mysterious God, and ceased striving for the closeness that we see as we read about the people in scripture.
As American Protestant Christianity matured, we lost touch with the mystery of God. The stress was placed on a conversion experience, and the need to have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." It was the birth of what I call the "Me and Jesus" movement, which is still prevalent today. Protestants embraced the God of the Gospels, a God who walks with us and talks with us and tells us we are his own. We embraced a God who calls us just as we are, without one plea. Now, there's nothing wrong with that necessarily. Paul talks about a God who fully knows us (1 Corinthians 13:12), as do the psalmists (Psalm 139:13) and the prophets (Isaiah 44:24; Jeremiah 1:5). We are known from the womb to the tomb. Jesus tells us that the hairs on our heads are counted (Matthew 10:30) and that every single one of our needs in life is known by God and will be taken care of (Matthew 6:25-34).
But we also must remember that the God we meet in scripture is mysterious and beyond our comprehension. This is the creator of the world, the one who, out of sheer grace, brought life and order from chaos. Just read the discourse at the end of Job - God is offended by anyone who thinks they fully know God. That's a classic Jewish understanding of God, and it's that understanding that we have inherited. We need to keep that understanding in tension with the idea of a God who intimately knows us.
That's also the understanding that the disciples had as they stood on the road at Bethany, watching their friend stretch out his hands and bless them as he was carried up in a cloud. Jesus had now opened their minds to the scriptures. They understood that he indeed was the Messiah, the one sent by God to reconcile the world to himself. They knew him now not as a prophet, but as God, made flesh. They knew God intimately, sitting at table with him, having him wash their feet and heal their relatives and friends. Now they were watching him ascend, returning to the realm from which he came. He was moving from familiar and intimate back to mysterious and transcendent. But he would not leave them, he said. They would receive his Spirit, which would remain with them and empower them as they carried out the work that he had ordained them to do. Jesus was both separated from them and with them. He was both in heaven and on earth. Jesus was not abandoning them as he ascended into the clouds - he would simply be present with them in a new way.
Next Sunday is Pentecost, the time when we remember the descending of the flames of the Spirit on those 120 disciples gathered in Jerusalem. We remember the power they received that day, for in those tongues of fire the disciples received all that they needed to go out and proclaim the Word of God in their words and actions. Taken together, these two Sundays are powerful times in the church year. They remind us of the multifaceted nature of the God we worship. They remind us that, even in the midst of the angry shouts of the mobs, the sound of gunfire, and the rhetoric of the revolutionaries, God is both beyond it and at work in the thick of it.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Shawn P. Stapleton serves as pastor and teacher of First Congregational Church in Beloit, Wisconsin. In addition to his full-time ministry duties, Rev. Stapleton also serves as co-editor of book reviews for the International Congregational Journal, and is currently working with a team of contributors to update a worship book suitable for churches in the "free church" tradition. He writes sermons aimed at introducing people to the cultural and political circumstances surrounding the Biblical text, with the prayer that by so doing people will gain a new understanding of the way God moved among God's people at that time, and how God moves among God's people today. Contact Shawn through his church's website (http://www.firstconbeloit.org/).
StoryShare, June 1, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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