Peter's Everything
Stories
Contents
"Peter’s Everything" by David O. Bales
"Confidence Corrective" by David O. Bales
Peter’s Everything
by David O. Bales
Mark 10:17-31
No, thanks, I’m not hungry. Give it to another prisoner. I appreciate your kindness, but guard yourself that your kindness doesn’t get you punished. Besides, my time’s running out and I’d rather fill you in more about Jesus. Let me go on from what I was telling you. To us this young man who came to Jesus was just a boy. When you’re over 35, you can consider someone half your age as only a child. He’d been circling the group, at the fringe of the listeners the whole day.
Easy enough to see this curious kid was rich. For what he spent on clothes you could outfit half a Roman legion. In Galilee as here in Rome, if you had it you were to flaunt it. Just that in Galilee, if you were rich, we Jews believed it was the straight, one way, absolute blessing of God. A little different than among you Romans, I realize. We had other beliefs at odds with your world. We grew up believing that if you were sick, God himself (that supreme God you’ve heard we Jews hold to) had slapped you. You have a paralyzed hand probably because you’d stolen something and God caught up with you. Blind? You’ve looked at something (probably a woman) you shouldn’t see -- or your parents did.
That’s the kind of world we lived in when Jesus came along by Galilee lake, that tiny spot of water we Jews call a sea, and he’d summoned us to follow him. Who’d encountered someone like this? A person just walking by and telling you to follow and he had things for you to do? We did as he said and tagged along. Figured we’d give him a try and, if after a week or two the contributions couldn’t keep us in food and shelter, our families would take us in again. You can call it faith or you can call it a gamble. But we did it because he did it to us.
We were getting used to this way of life. People gave us contributions, a group of women followed along and supported us from their wealth. He was this grand and exciting man, always talking about God’s government, how it’s about to arrive and change everything, like a group of visiting relatives knocking on your door.
Not that we’d completely figured out Jesus. He was hard to pin down, like a meal too large for the plate, he was more than we could comprehend. His parables slapped you smack on the side of the skull and spun around your thinking. He’d fool you with a question or an answer. Just when you thought you could put your hands around his message, he pulled it out of your grasp. He’d strain your ideas through a needle’s eye. Like with that rich kid.
I have to think the boy shared our assumptions about who was good and who was bad, whom God punished and whom God rewarded. We thought God was sprinkling special blessings on the young fellow. His family must have been worth a small city. But the boy sneaked around the edge of the crowd for the day. Kind of worried people. They gave him space because he was near royalty and by our beliefs was in good with God. He was rich, that explained enough.
Jesus stopped to bless some children. As he was leaving, the boy finally ran, yes, ran! to Jesus, rich robes flowing in the breeze, gorgeous sandals flashing a dozen shekels a step. Right there in the dust, knelt down. I and the eleven pushed back the crowd pressing in to gawk at a rich kid on his knees in the dust, a rich kid whose family these peasants always deferred to, a rich kid assumed to be the apple of God’s eye. What was on his mind? How to receive eternal life.
Now, Jesus had repeated a lot of things in his teaching, sometimes the same sermon, slightly changed. But when Jesus chatted with this eager boy, he said something we’d never heard him tell anyone. After drawing the boy’s response that he was keeping our Jewish law -- no small feat -- Jesus, looking at him, loved him. Then Jesus told him to give away everything that so obviously demonstrated God’s approval for his family. Just come to Jesus, Jesus alone. I and the rest of Jesus’ students were as shocked as the kid. We’d left our boats and nets with our family and partners. We could go back any time the contributions slowed down. After Jesus’ resurrection that’s just what we did. But everything, really everything? No matter what we might have said, we hadn’t left everything.
Everyone, villagers and we students, stood agog as we watched the boy’s expression twist. For a moment his stupefied face represented the bunch of us. He was as imprisoned by his wealth as we are by these walls. Was this boy willing right now to let Jesus be his everything?
After the boy left, I reminded Jesus we’d left everything to follow him, but he knew. The truth was: I hadn’t left everything for Jesus. I’d followed him to share the free meals at the banquets given for him. I’d followed to bask in the crowd’s admiration. I’d followed expecting a piece of the royal power that was about to arrive in God’s kingdom. But when he said it takes a miracle to enter the new life he brings, he couldn’t have been more accurate. My denying him on the night of his arrest was proof of that.
Only after his resurrection did I finally leave almost everything … still not quite everything. My wife traveled with me. Church members became my new family. They shared their earnings with me. No matter the persecutions we students of Jesus endured after his resurrection it was still not everything … until now. My everything waits outside this door.
I haven’t explained enough of what Jesus said and did; but I’ve tried to use these moments. I hear footsteps outside. My time’s up. Let what I’ve shared with you help you ask Jesus for the miracle of faith. Don’t wait until tomorrow. I don’t have any tomorrows left to tell you more. Here’s the execution squad. And now … now finally for Jesus I give up everything.
Preaching Point: The difficulty of committing all of oneself to Jesus.
* * *
Confidence Corrective
by David O. Bales
Hebrews 4:12-16
“Looking back, it seems so clear now,” Melissa said. She gazed upward over Karen’s head, almost with a look of confession. “Not that I consider it my fault, well, not much. I’m getting over that. It’s like my daughter Shonda said when our sweet old neighbor asked her at her birthday party what it feels like to be eight years old. Shonda answered, ‘It takes a while to get used to being eight.’” She smiled and returned her look to Karen who held her counselor’s smile and nodded.
The two sat facing one another for half a minute. Karen said, “Go on. Tell me anything that seems important.”
“Well,” Melissa said, “I remember my mother’s moving her head around, neither a shake nor nod, kind of a rotation, as she agreed with my father. Mostly I remember his saying to her, ‘And you know I’m right.’ This also meant that if he was right, others -- she and in this case I -- were wrong. I always felt I had to tiptoe sideways to my father. Obvious to me now, that’s what I thought a husband was: someone -- like my father -- who knew he was right and said so. Consequently, taking a leap of 15 years, that’s a lot of what I saw in Tony that attracted me. Oh, he was kind at the time, even romantic; but underneath I’m sure I was attracted to him because he carried that sense of being right -- and he said so. And he was educated and I wasn’t. I had fantasized about being a pharmacist but he convinced me not to go to college but to marry him.”
Melissa let out a deep breath. Karen said, “I can tell you’ve really stirred around your memory with your counselee homework this week. I’m impressed.”
Melissa sat up straight in her chair and leaned forward. “Your pages on Types of Interpersonal Transactions and Names of Feelings were for me like a microscope and a telescope. Opened up how I’d felt in my important relationships. This week’s been like a dozen puzzles falling together, not easily, but so clear now that I’m embarrassed I’ve lived as I have.”
Karen raised a warning hand and Melissa said quickly, “Though I’m not totally responsible for what’s happened. Just hard to let that go … the feeling that I start out wrong and others start out right … but I think I understand why I’ve always felt disfigured.”
Karen raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Can’t put it any other way. Not ugly. I’ve never felt ugly, just that something was wrong, like the baking powder was left out of the banana bread and produced banana flavored cardboard.” She laughed at herself. Karen smiled, and said, “That’s something of what got you married to Tony. Tell me more about how your marriage relationship developed.”
Melissa shook her head, breathed slowly, and said, “It went in cycles for 11 years. Tony would get a job and all would be fine. Within a year, 16 months, for some reason or other, he’d lose his job. Each time his bitterness and complaining grew -- first toward the job and then the community, and that included Shonda and me. It’s like his bitterness and criticizing expanded around him like a shock wave: ‘Cops should jail that guy for all the car’s blue smoke. They should tear down that house; it’s a terrible color. Those people wasted their money on snowmobiles, didn’t buy insurance, and now the television station is guilting us into paying their hospital bill.’ He scattered ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ like throwing rocks. At me too. What I wore. He criticized the kind of clothes I like. Sometimes he attempted to be kind. They were like bouts of kindness with Shonda; but, she didn’t know what to do. His smile was too broad and his laugh too loud.
“I was in a cloud, thought this was normal. Wasn’t until three, four years ago that he criticized the pastor’s sermon to the wrong person. I’d met Lisa at Shonda’s kindergarten and discovered we went to the same church. Tony in one of his rotten moods mouthed off about the pastor to Lisa’s husband who knew that Tony also complained about him -- as he did about everyone. So, he told Lisa who told me why Tony kept losing jobs. The word was that he was a good worker -- smart, efficient, honest. But after he’d been in a job for a while he started telling others how to do their jobs and criticizing what he didn’t like. Soon he had no friends and the company found a way to release him while giving him an adequate recommendation.”
“His job loss, you mentioned, led to the crisis.”
“Absolutely. We were almost out of money. I got online and searched for a pharmacy tech program. When he found out, he screamed, kept bringing it up and hassling me about it for weeks as our money dwindled. The day I told him I could get financial aid to enter the pharmacy tech program he stepped close to me, grit his teeth and said, ‘I told you I’d never hit a woman.’ Then faster than I could blink he smashed his heel onto my right foot. Two broken bones.”
Karen waited as Melissa wiped her tears and blew her nose. Karen said quietly, “That’s when you went to Dr. Norrew.”
“Yeah. Lisa got me to Dr. Norrew; and Dr. Norrew is so kind. When she asked how it happened, I didn’t think about the consequences. Just told her.”
“And she got you to me,” Karen said.
“No. She referred me to my pastor,” Melissa said “He got me to you.”
“And how do you assess your life this week?”
“I’ve been thinking hard; I knew you’d ask me that again. First, Shonda’s okay. She doesn’t miss her dad, though she sees him once a month, and always with her grandmother present. For me, I’m two weeks from the end of the course. Yesterday my instructor said, ‘For sure in a month you’ll be wearing a tunic and rolling pills for a living.’
“What I’ve been pondering most is that starting way back in my life I felt that people could see that I wasn’t good and I was wrong to start with. But beginning with Dr. Norrew’s compassion, I feel strengthened, sputtering, but I feel assured at the same time.
“I’m concentrating and repeating to myself that I don’t have to creep sideways into anyone’s presence. Dr. Norrew and my pastor have been praying for me.” She looked at her watch. “Nearly 50 minutes, I see. But one more thing I want to tell you,” she said as she stood. “I’ve told Pastor also. I feel soul-strengthened. Dr. Norrew and you have helped me realize that God is inviting me to stand up straight, like I don’t have to creep in sideways to God either.”
Karen stood, acknowledging that the counseling session ended.
Melissa said, “I don’t think I need to meet every week now. How about if I’d get an appointment for two weeks?”
Karen said, “I think that’s fine.”
Preaching Point: Christ grants confidence with God and one another.
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 14, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 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.
"Peter’s Everything" by David O. Bales
"Confidence Corrective" by David O. Bales
Peter’s Everything
by David O. Bales
Mark 10:17-31
No, thanks, I’m not hungry. Give it to another prisoner. I appreciate your kindness, but guard yourself that your kindness doesn’t get you punished. Besides, my time’s running out and I’d rather fill you in more about Jesus. Let me go on from what I was telling you. To us this young man who came to Jesus was just a boy. When you’re over 35, you can consider someone half your age as only a child. He’d been circling the group, at the fringe of the listeners the whole day.
Easy enough to see this curious kid was rich. For what he spent on clothes you could outfit half a Roman legion. In Galilee as here in Rome, if you had it you were to flaunt it. Just that in Galilee, if you were rich, we Jews believed it was the straight, one way, absolute blessing of God. A little different than among you Romans, I realize. We had other beliefs at odds with your world. We grew up believing that if you were sick, God himself (that supreme God you’ve heard we Jews hold to) had slapped you. You have a paralyzed hand probably because you’d stolen something and God caught up with you. Blind? You’ve looked at something (probably a woman) you shouldn’t see -- or your parents did.
That’s the kind of world we lived in when Jesus came along by Galilee lake, that tiny spot of water we Jews call a sea, and he’d summoned us to follow him. Who’d encountered someone like this? A person just walking by and telling you to follow and he had things for you to do? We did as he said and tagged along. Figured we’d give him a try and, if after a week or two the contributions couldn’t keep us in food and shelter, our families would take us in again. You can call it faith or you can call it a gamble. But we did it because he did it to us.
We were getting used to this way of life. People gave us contributions, a group of women followed along and supported us from their wealth. He was this grand and exciting man, always talking about God’s government, how it’s about to arrive and change everything, like a group of visiting relatives knocking on your door.
Not that we’d completely figured out Jesus. He was hard to pin down, like a meal too large for the plate, he was more than we could comprehend. His parables slapped you smack on the side of the skull and spun around your thinking. He’d fool you with a question or an answer. Just when you thought you could put your hands around his message, he pulled it out of your grasp. He’d strain your ideas through a needle’s eye. Like with that rich kid.
I have to think the boy shared our assumptions about who was good and who was bad, whom God punished and whom God rewarded. We thought God was sprinkling special blessings on the young fellow. His family must have been worth a small city. But the boy sneaked around the edge of the crowd for the day. Kind of worried people. They gave him space because he was near royalty and by our beliefs was in good with God. He was rich, that explained enough.
Jesus stopped to bless some children. As he was leaving, the boy finally ran, yes, ran! to Jesus, rich robes flowing in the breeze, gorgeous sandals flashing a dozen shekels a step. Right there in the dust, knelt down. I and the eleven pushed back the crowd pressing in to gawk at a rich kid on his knees in the dust, a rich kid whose family these peasants always deferred to, a rich kid assumed to be the apple of God’s eye. What was on his mind? How to receive eternal life.
Now, Jesus had repeated a lot of things in his teaching, sometimes the same sermon, slightly changed. But when Jesus chatted with this eager boy, he said something we’d never heard him tell anyone. After drawing the boy’s response that he was keeping our Jewish law -- no small feat -- Jesus, looking at him, loved him. Then Jesus told him to give away everything that so obviously demonstrated God’s approval for his family. Just come to Jesus, Jesus alone. I and the rest of Jesus’ students were as shocked as the kid. We’d left our boats and nets with our family and partners. We could go back any time the contributions slowed down. After Jesus’ resurrection that’s just what we did. But everything, really everything? No matter what we might have said, we hadn’t left everything.
Everyone, villagers and we students, stood agog as we watched the boy’s expression twist. For a moment his stupefied face represented the bunch of us. He was as imprisoned by his wealth as we are by these walls. Was this boy willing right now to let Jesus be his everything?
After the boy left, I reminded Jesus we’d left everything to follow him, but he knew. The truth was: I hadn’t left everything for Jesus. I’d followed him to share the free meals at the banquets given for him. I’d followed to bask in the crowd’s admiration. I’d followed expecting a piece of the royal power that was about to arrive in God’s kingdom. But when he said it takes a miracle to enter the new life he brings, he couldn’t have been more accurate. My denying him on the night of his arrest was proof of that.
Only after his resurrection did I finally leave almost everything … still not quite everything. My wife traveled with me. Church members became my new family. They shared their earnings with me. No matter the persecutions we students of Jesus endured after his resurrection it was still not everything … until now. My everything waits outside this door.
I haven’t explained enough of what Jesus said and did; but I’ve tried to use these moments. I hear footsteps outside. My time’s up. Let what I’ve shared with you help you ask Jesus for the miracle of faith. Don’t wait until tomorrow. I don’t have any tomorrows left to tell you more. Here’s the execution squad. And now … now finally for Jesus I give up everything.
Preaching Point: The difficulty of committing all of oneself to Jesus.
* * *
Confidence Corrective
by David O. Bales
Hebrews 4:12-16
“Looking back, it seems so clear now,” Melissa said. She gazed upward over Karen’s head, almost with a look of confession. “Not that I consider it my fault, well, not much. I’m getting over that. It’s like my daughter Shonda said when our sweet old neighbor asked her at her birthday party what it feels like to be eight years old. Shonda answered, ‘It takes a while to get used to being eight.’” She smiled and returned her look to Karen who held her counselor’s smile and nodded.
The two sat facing one another for half a minute. Karen said, “Go on. Tell me anything that seems important.”
“Well,” Melissa said, “I remember my mother’s moving her head around, neither a shake nor nod, kind of a rotation, as she agreed with my father. Mostly I remember his saying to her, ‘And you know I’m right.’ This also meant that if he was right, others -- she and in this case I -- were wrong. I always felt I had to tiptoe sideways to my father. Obvious to me now, that’s what I thought a husband was: someone -- like my father -- who knew he was right and said so. Consequently, taking a leap of 15 years, that’s a lot of what I saw in Tony that attracted me. Oh, he was kind at the time, even romantic; but underneath I’m sure I was attracted to him because he carried that sense of being right -- and he said so. And he was educated and I wasn’t. I had fantasized about being a pharmacist but he convinced me not to go to college but to marry him.”
Melissa let out a deep breath. Karen said, “I can tell you’ve really stirred around your memory with your counselee homework this week. I’m impressed.”
Melissa sat up straight in her chair and leaned forward. “Your pages on Types of Interpersonal Transactions and Names of Feelings were for me like a microscope and a telescope. Opened up how I’d felt in my important relationships. This week’s been like a dozen puzzles falling together, not easily, but so clear now that I’m embarrassed I’ve lived as I have.”
Karen raised a warning hand and Melissa said quickly, “Though I’m not totally responsible for what’s happened. Just hard to let that go … the feeling that I start out wrong and others start out right … but I think I understand why I’ve always felt disfigured.”
Karen raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Can’t put it any other way. Not ugly. I’ve never felt ugly, just that something was wrong, like the baking powder was left out of the banana bread and produced banana flavored cardboard.” She laughed at herself. Karen smiled, and said, “That’s something of what got you married to Tony. Tell me more about how your marriage relationship developed.”
Melissa shook her head, breathed slowly, and said, “It went in cycles for 11 years. Tony would get a job and all would be fine. Within a year, 16 months, for some reason or other, he’d lose his job. Each time his bitterness and complaining grew -- first toward the job and then the community, and that included Shonda and me. It’s like his bitterness and criticizing expanded around him like a shock wave: ‘Cops should jail that guy for all the car’s blue smoke. They should tear down that house; it’s a terrible color. Those people wasted their money on snowmobiles, didn’t buy insurance, and now the television station is guilting us into paying their hospital bill.’ He scattered ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ like throwing rocks. At me too. What I wore. He criticized the kind of clothes I like. Sometimes he attempted to be kind. They were like bouts of kindness with Shonda; but, she didn’t know what to do. His smile was too broad and his laugh too loud.
“I was in a cloud, thought this was normal. Wasn’t until three, four years ago that he criticized the pastor’s sermon to the wrong person. I’d met Lisa at Shonda’s kindergarten and discovered we went to the same church. Tony in one of his rotten moods mouthed off about the pastor to Lisa’s husband who knew that Tony also complained about him -- as he did about everyone. So, he told Lisa who told me why Tony kept losing jobs. The word was that he was a good worker -- smart, efficient, honest. But after he’d been in a job for a while he started telling others how to do their jobs and criticizing what he didn’t like. Soon he had no friends and the company found a way to release him while giving him an adequate recommendation.”
“His job loss, you mentioned, led to the crisis.”
“Absolutely. We were almost out of money. I got online and searched for a pharmacy tech program. When he found out, he screamed, kept bringing it up and hassling me about it for weeks as our money dwindled. The day I told him I could get financial aid to enter the pharmacy tech program he stepped close to me, grit his teeth and said, ‘I told you I’d never hit a woman.’ Then faster than I could blink he smashed his heel onto my right foot. Two broken bones.”
Karen waited as Melissa wiped her tears and blew her nose. Karen said quietly, “That’s when you went to Dr. Norrew.”
“Yeah. Lisa got me to Dr. Norrew; and Dr. Norrew is so kind. When she asked how it happened, I didn’t think about the consequences. Just told her.”
“And she got you to me,” Karen said.
“No. She referred me to my pastor,” Melissa said “He got me to you.”
“And how do you assess your life this week?”
“I’ve been thinking hard; I knew you’d ask me that again. First, Shonda’s okay. She doesn’t miss her dad, though she sees him once a month, and always with her grandmother present. For me, I’m two weeks from the end of the course. Yesterday my instructor said, ‘For sure in a month you’ll be wearing a tunic and rolling pills for a living.’
“What I’ve been pondering most is that starting way back in my life I felt that people could see that I wasn’t good and I was wrong to start with. But beginning with Dr. Norrew’s compassion, I feel strengthened, sputtering, but I feel assured at the same time.
“I’m concentrating and repeating to myself that I don’t have to creep sideways into anyone’s presence. Dr. Norrew and my pastor have been praying for me.” She looked at her watch. “Nearly 50 minutes, I see. But one more thing I want to tell you,” she said as she stood. “I’ve told Pastor also. I feel soul-strengthened. Dr. Norrew and you have helped me realize that God is inviting me to stand up straight, like I don’t have to creep in sideways to God either.”
Karen stood, acknowledging that the counseling session ended.
Melissa said, “I don’t think I need to meet every week now. How about if I’d get an appointment for two weeks?”
Karen said, “I think that’s fine.”
Preaching Point: Christ grants confidence with God and one another.
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 14, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 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.
