Responsibilities!
Stories
Contents
“Responsibilities!” by C. David McKirachan
“Who’s Squeezing You?” by C. David McKirachan
“Superheroes” by Frank Ramirez
Responsibilities!
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 16:13-20
I’ve often been dragged to other realms of reality. Africa, California, Mexico, inner city Newark, all of them demanding that I deal with the day to day differently, taking into account details that would never occur to me if I was in a place of comfort and normality, in a place I was used to being.
In Africa, the food, the language, the parameters of safety, what was polite, what was a challenge, I had a lot to learn. In California, the guidelines for what I would be able to study, where my safe places were, and what theology meant, were all up for grabs. Mexico showed me poverty. Newark showed me what it meant to live in the richest country in the world, with no hope. All of them took me away from what I’d known. They opened the world, sometimes painfully, and forced me to reform who I was and what I believed.
Caesarea Philippi wasn’t a continent away from what the disciples knew and accepted as normal. But it was different. Even its name was pagan. Temples to pagan gods were common. They, themselves were foreigners. Different languages, customs, clothing surrounded them. They followed Jesus there, another trip, but perhaps more of a trip than any of them had ever taken away from anything they could call home.
Perhaps that’s why the Lord went there. Perhaps it was to remove his followers from what they were used to, from their comfort zones. Perhaps he wanted them in a place where they had nothing to lean on but each other and him. Perhaps it was the only place where they might think beyond the boundaries that had defined their lives up until then. Perhaps… We don’t know. But we do know that it was there that he pushed them beyond the opinions gleaned from the people around them, forcing them to confront this seminal question: “Who do you say that I am?”
So much is going on right now that many of us feel challenged. I sense quite a bit of stress in people because we don’t have our groups to lean on. Baseball is in a twilight zone. Players are giving the virus to each other. Games that are played are performances to empty stadiums, some with soundtracks. Is that weird or what?
Those of us that are willing to think, are confronting our own prejudices and our own responsibility for racism and inappropriate use of violence against blacks. Few of us can swallow children in cages. We wonder how we can accept the authority of our governmental authorities. Even our behavior with women is not something we can be comfortable with. We are surrounded by uncomfortable questions that don’t invite us to question, they demand it. And we can’t even go to church to be comforted and affirmed.
It sounds like Caesarea Philippi.
So, perhaps now is a good time for us to confront another question. Are we willing to say that this radical preacher from Galilee is the Christ, the hinge of history, are we willing to let his teachings about our responsibility for the poor and the vulnerable change our behavior, are we willing to take up our crosses, moving away from ‘me first,’ ‘America first,’ ‘money matters,’ and follow him on this rocky road of discipleship?
But there’s no one to discuss it with. This is all so radically new and different. It’s like we were in a different country.
There’s an old saying, “The only difference between a rut and a grave is depth.” It’s pretty clear that Jesus demands that we climb out of our ruts of comfort and conformity, out of the norms of our nationalism and materialism, out of our well defended prejudices if we mean business about calling ourselves Christians.
But we want to be reasonable, nice people who do good things for poor people when we can fit them into our busy lives. I don’t know if we can call any of the disciples reasonable and sometimes, they weren’t even very nice. They broke the law, spent a lot of time in jail, and most of them were executed, just like Jesus.
But we’ve got responsibilities!
Maybe we need to journey to a different country, a place where we can’t be comfortable. Maybe like here and now. And without Fox News or CNN, we have to let the Lord ask us, “Who do you say that I am?”
Good luck with those ruts.
* * *
Who’s Squeezing You?
by C. David McKirachan
Romans 12:1-8
I was about nineteen, a dangerous age, especially when it comes to child-parent relations. It was the late sixties, I was growing my hair, playing in a band (and I don’t mean John Phillip Sousa), and was part of a cultural divide that was painful for most. My father’s job had moved the family to Cincinnati, where he was Executive Presbyter. Home from college for the summer, I was attending church with my mother. One evening she gave me a present, a thank you gift for doing so well at school. It was a pair of pants that were bell bottom jeans. Colorful is an inadequate word. They fit my long, scrawny frame.
I looked like an awning from the waist down. She was delighted. My father was silent. She announced, “You can wear them to church on Sunday!”
Paul’s advice, “…be not conformed to this world (or age) but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” has always been important to me. I’ve read translations that say, “…don’t let the world squeeze you into it’s mold…” The question for us is clear. Who’s squeezing you?
Each and every one of us has numerous pressures, leaning, pushing, shoving us to go, do, and be somewhere and something in line with what they demand. Some of the pressures demand that we remain the same, not change, and do our best to keep everything in our culture exactly as it is. Problems with this rise immediately if we look at ourselves and the world around us. Change is basic to our universe, our environment, our culture, our families, and our bodies. As uncomfortable as change may be, remaining the same is impossible.
But sometimes we are ordered to become or do everything differently, to surrender our very nature, to take on what seems abhorrent. Such change is not only uncomfortable, it seems impossible. Such a demand can be cruel.
Between these two poles are the pressures leaning on us every day. Pressures of work, pressures of relationships, pressures of family, pressures of our own emotional drives. Driving and putting up with other people’s driving, trying to make vacations happen and trying to get the mob in line. Money, setting priorities for ourselves and people under our authority, choosing gifts for people who make it hard, communicating with people from different generations, different sexes, different cultures, political parties, religions, and sometimes it seems different planets.
All of these push and pull us, squeeze us, sometimes demand that if we are to go, get, have, function, remain married, remain employed, say out of jail we have to squeeze into molds that we don’t want to.
Joni Mitchell said, “Life is for learnin’.” And sometimes we need to be pushed, pulled, awakened from sleep so that we can receive the renewal of our minds to be transformed. In my long experience of learning and teaching, sometimes learning seems a painful squeeze. One of the greatest compliments I ever received from a student at university was, “This class makes my brain hurt.” I asked why. They replied, “I’m not used to thinking.” To truly learn we must think beyond the ruts of our normality and prejudice. Sometimes it hurts.
So, who’s squeezing you?
What Paul advises, to be a living sacrifice is not easy. It demands that we stay open in the midst of all the pushes and pulls of living, open to being like the Lord. Open to people, all of whom are God’s children. Open to learning to change and to preserve and to cherish. Open to teaching by witnessing, remaining silent, confessing, and getting our hands dirty.
Right now, we are confronted on all fronts by ugly truths, pressures about ourselves and the mistakes our culture has made and continues to make, about the pressures our prejudices have put on women, blacks, other races, other religions, children, the poor, the environment… The virus pushes us into corners where we have few options except fear and lonely anger.
Paul says, “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.”
We need to remember what the Lord calls us to be, and it’s not stuck in corners defined by fear and anger. We all have small and large ways to allow the transforming Holy Spirit to demonstrate that Christians are the Easter People. Sure, we can’t do it the way we’re used to. So, learn, grow, become what is holy and acceptable. Make God happy with what you’ve done, on this day.
My mother was a strong woman. She loved her son and she loved her husband and she loved her country. So, she wanted to witness to all of those loves with a pair of pants on her long-haired son, who proudly accompanied her to her lily-white suburban church. I was proud to be of help. I wore my cowboy boots and my peasant shirt too. And I think God was happy what we did, on that day, together.
My father was preaching somewhere else. When he came home, he took us out to dinner. Now that was a miracle.
* * *
Superheroes
by Frank Ramirez
Exodus 1:8--2:10
But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. (Exodus 1:17)
When a lot of us think of comic books, we also think of superheroes. Some of us older folks grew up with comics. Arguments would take place over which were better, DC, or Marvel comics. Sometimes parents threw out comics if they found them, because they’d been told that kids should read “real” books instead of kiddie stuff.
Over time it was realized that there are many different ways to learn. Some have a musical bent when it comes to learning. Others filter the world through the natural universe. Some learn by doing, some by being with people, and others learned better by themselves. Some people with a more visual bent certainly learned through pictures easier than words. Those people certainly gravitated to comic books.
Gradually they became more respectable. Graphic novels emphasized the artistic element of storytelling. If there were heroes involved, they didn’t necessarily have superpowers.
Congressional Representative John Lewis grew up in a country where the law became slack, justice never prevailed, and the wicked surrounded the righteous.
Lewis risked his life in non-violent protest. He had his head knocked in by cops trying to cross a bridge in the south to march for equal rights, realizing that a new generation had to hear the story of the price some people paid so that all people, minorities as well as those in power, could be freed from the shackles of racism.
Lewis wanted to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement to a new generation and he was convinced a graphic novel (that’s what they call comic books now) was the way to go.
When you talk about Civil Rights, many people only remember two names, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, Lewis told a much more nuanced story involving a wide range of people who were willing to love their enemies nonviolently, no matter how difficult it was, while children were being murdered and courts refused to act, and police often joined the violent racists who beat people like Lewis unmercifully.
As one who often preached when he was younger, Lewis knew the Sermon on the Mount can appear weak and ridiculous to those in power. However, he was convinced that the purpose of loving one’s enemies was to transform them, and to save them. This history and this belief, and the suffering he had endured in the name of the gospel, led him to produce MARCH!, a three-volume graphic novel saga about the long march to freedom for both the oppressed and oppressors. He was helped by a couple veterans of the graphic novel industry.
This is a true story of heroism and grit, of women and men struggling against great odds to love their enemies, pray for their persecutors, and do good to those who hated them. Lewis emphasized the intentionality of the nonviolent movement to turn the other cheek and live according to God’s kingdom, even though their enemies responded with guns, bombs, truncheons, fire houses, and attack dogs. Their willingness to be attacked without responding in kind changed hearts and minds of those who had previously ignored their suffering. They made at least in one way the kingdom of God visible on earth.
Despite the despair we still feel when racism rears its ugly head. It’s good to know these Civil Rights marchers changed the world.
Come to think of it, maybe comics are really about superheroes. MARCH! is full of superheroes.
Two other superheroes, non-violent resisters also changed the world — Shiphrah and Puah — refused to do as they were ordered by law. As a result, a baby named Moses lived, and by living, changed the course of history.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 23, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Responsibilities!” by C. David McKirachan
“Who’s Squeezing You?” by C. David McKirachan
“Superheroes” by Frank Ramirez
Responsibilities!
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 16:13-20
I’ve often been dragged to other realms of reality. Africa, California, Mexico, inner city Newark, all of them demanding that I deal with the day to day differently, taking into account details that would never occur to me if I was in a place of comfort and normality, in a place I was used to being.
In Africa, the food, the language, the parameters of safety, what was polite, what was a challenge, I had a lot to learn. In California, the guidelines for what I would be able to study, where my safe places were, and what theology meant, were all up for grabs. Mexico showed me poverty. Newark showed me what it meant to live in the richest country in the world, with no hope. All of them took me away from what I’d known. They opened the world, sometimes painfully, and forced me to reform who I was and what I believed.
Caesarea Philippi wasn’t a continent away from what the disciples knew and accepted as normal. But it was different. Even its name was pagan. Temples to pagan gods were common. They, themselves were foreigners. Different languages, customs, clothing surrounded them. They followed Jesus there, another trip, but perhaps more of a trip than any of them had ever taken away from anything they could call home.
Perhaps that’s why the Lord went there. Perhaps it was to remove his followers from what they were used to, from their comfort zones. Perhaps he wanted them in a place where they had nothing to lean on but each other and him. Perhaps it was the only place where they might think beyond the boundaries that had defined their lives up until then. Perhaps… We don’t know. But we do know that it was there that he pushed them beyond the opinions gleaned from the people around them, forcing them to confront this seminal question: “Who do you say that I am?”
So much is going on right now that many of us feel challenged. I sense quite a bit of stress in people because we don’t have our groups to lean on. Baseball is in a twilight zone. Players are giving the virus to each other. Games that are played are performances to empty stadiums, some with soundtracks. Is that weird or what?
Those of us that are willing to think, are confronting our own prejudices and our own responsibility for racism and inappropriate use of violence against blacks. Few of us can swallow children in cages. We wonder how we can accept the authority of our governmental authorities. Even our behavior with women is not something we can be comfortable with. We are surrounded by uncomfortable questions that don’t invite us to question, they demand it. And we can’t even go to church to be comforted and affirmed.
It sounds like Caesarea Philippi.
So, perhaps now is a good time for us to confront another question. Are we willing to say that this radical preacher from Galilee is the Christ, the hinge of history, are we willing to let his teachings about our responsibility for the poor and the vulnerable change our behavior, are we willing to take up our crosses, moving away from ‘me first,’ ‘America first,’ ‘money matters,’ and follow him on this rocky road of discipleship?
But there’s no one to discuss it with. This is all so radically new and different. It’s like we were in a different country.
There’s an old saying, “The only difference between a rut and a grave is depth.” It’s pretty clear that Jesus demands that we climb out of our ruts of comfort and conformity, out of the norms of our nationalism and materialism, out of our well defended prejudices if we mean business about calling ourselves Christians.
But we want to be reasonable, nice people who do good things for poor people when we can fit them into our busy lives. I don’t know if we can call any of the disciples reasonable and sometimes, they weren’t even very nice. They broke the law, spent a lot of time in jail, and most of them were executed, just like Jesus.
But we’ve got responsibilities!
Maybe we need to journey to a different country, a place where we can’t be comfortable. Maybe like here and now. And without Fox News or CNN, we have to let the Lord ask us, “Who do you say that I am?”
Good luck with those ruts.
* * *
Who’s Squeezing You?
by C. David McKirachan
Romans 12:1-8
I was about nineteen, a dangerous age, especially when it comes to child-parent relations. It was the late sixties, I was growing my hair, playing in a band (and I don’t mean John Phillip Sousa), and was part of a cultural divide that was painful for most. My father’s job had moved the family to Cincinnati, where he was Executive Presbyter. Home from college for the summer, I was attending church with my mother. One evening she gave me a present, a thank you gift for doing so well at school. It was a pair of pants that were bell bottom jeans. Colorful is an inadequate word. They fit my long, scrawny frame.
I looked like an awning from the waist down. She was delighted. My father was silent. She announced, “You can wear them to church on Sunday!”
Paul’s advice, “…be not conformed to this world (or age) but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” has always been important to me. I’ve read translations that say, “…don’t let the world squeeze you into it’s mold…” The question for us is clear. Who’s squeezing you?
Each and every one of us has numerous pressures, leaning, pushing, shoving us to go, do, and be somewhere and something in line with what they demand. Some of the pressures demand that we remain the same, not change, and do our best to keep everything in our culture exactly as it is. Problems with this rise immediately if we look at ourselves and the world around us. Change is basic to our universe, our environment, our culture, our families, and our bodies. As uncomfortable as change may be, remaining the same is impossible.
But sometimes we are ordered to become or do everything differently, to surrender our very nature, to take on what seems abhorrent. Such change is not only uncomfortable, it seems impossible. Such a demand can be cruel.
Between these two poles are the pressures leaning on us every day. Pressures of work, pressures of relationships, pressures of family, pressures of our own emotional drives. Driving and putting up with other people’s driving, trying to make vacations happen and trying to get the mob in line. Money, setting priorities for ourselves and people under our authority, choosing gifts for people who make it hard, communicating with people from different generations, different sexes, different cultures, political parties, religions, and sometimes it seems different planets.
All of these push and pull us, squeeze us, sometimes demand that if we are to go, get, have, function, remain married, remain employed, say out of jail we have to squeeze into molds that we don’t want to.
Joni Mitchell said, “Life is for learnin’.” And sometimes we need to be pushed, pulled, awakened from sleep so that we can receive the renewal of our minds to be transformed. In my long experience of learning and teaching, sometimes learning seems a painful squeeze. One of the greatest compliments I ever received from a student at university was, “This class makes my brain hurt.” I asked why. They replied, “I’m not used to thinking.” To truly learn we must think beyond the ruts of our normality and prejudice. Sometimes it hurts.
So, who’s squeezing you?
What Paul advises, to be a living sacrifice is not easy. It demands that we stay open in the midst of all the pushes and pulls of living, open to being like the Lord. Open to people, all of whom are God’s children. Open to learning to change and to preserve and to cherish. Open to teaching by witnessing, remaining silent, confessing, and getting our hands dirty.
Right now, we are confronted on all fronts by ugly truths, pressures about ourselves and the mistakes our culture has made and continues to make, about the pressures our prejudices have put on women, blacks, other races, other religions, children, the poor, the environment… The virus pushes us into corners where we have few options except fear and lonely anger.
Paul says, “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.”
We need to remember what the Lord calls us to be, and it’s not stuck in corners defined by fear and anger. We all have small and large ways to allow the transforming Holy Spirit to demonstrate that Christians are the Easter People. Sure, we can’t do it the way we’re used to. So, learn, grow, become what is holy and acceptable. Make God happy with what you’ve done, on this day.
My mother was a strong woman. She loved her son and she loved her husband and she loved her country. So, she wanted to witness to all of those loves with a pair of pants on her long-haired son, who proudly accompanied her to her lily-white suburban church. I was proud to be of help. I wore my cowboy boots and my peasant shirt too. And I think God was happy what we did, on that day, together.
My father was preaching somewhere else. When he came home, he took us out to dinner. Now that was a miracle.
* * *
Superheroes
by Frank Ramirez
Exodus 1:8--2:10
But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. (Exodus 1:17)
When a lot of us think of comic books, we also think of superheroes. Some of us older folks grew up with comics. Arguments would take place over which were better, DC, or Marvel comics. Sometimes parents threw out comics if they found them, because they’d been told that kids should read “real” books instead of kiddie stuff.
Over time it was realized that there are many different ways to learn. Some have a musical bent when it comes to learning. Others filter the world through the natural universe. Some learn by doing, some by being with people, and others learned better by themselves. Some people with a more visual bent certainly learned through pictures easier than words. Those people certainly gravitated to comic books.
Gradually they became more respectable. Graphic novels emphasized the artistic element of storytelling. If there were heroes involved, they didn’t necessarily have superpowers.
Congressional Representative John Lewis grew up in a country where the law became slack, justice never prevailed, and the wicked surrounded the righteous.
Lewis risked his life in non-violent protest. He had his head knocked in by cops trying to cross a bridge in the south to march for equal rights, realizing that a new generation had to hear the story of the price some people paid so that all people, minorities as well as those in power, could be freed from the shackles of racism.
Lewis wanted to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement to a new generation and he was convinced a graphic novel (that’s what they call comic books now) was the way to go.
When you talk about Civil Rights, many people only remember two names, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, Lewis told a much more nuanced story involving a wide range of people who were willing to love their enemies nonviolently, no matter how difficult it was, while children were being murdered and courts refused to act, and police often joined the violent racists who beat people like Lewis unmercifully.
As one who often preached when he was younger, Lewis knew the Sermon on the Mount can appear weak and ridiculous to those in power. However, he was convinced that the purpose of loving one’s enemies was to transform them, and to save them. This history and this belief, and the suffering he had endured in the name of the gospel, led him to produce MARCH!, a three-volume graphic novel saga about the long march to freedom for both the oppressed and oppressors. He was helped by a couple veterans of the graphic novel industry.
This is a true story of heroism and grit, of women and men struggling against great odds to love their enemies, pray for their persecutors, and do good to those who hated them. Lewis emphasized the intentionality of the nonviolent movement to turn the other cheek and live according to God’s kingdom, even though their enemies responded with guns, bombs, truncheons, fire houses, and attack dogs. Their willingness to be attacked without responding in kind changed hearts and minds of those who had previously ignored their suffering. They made at least in one way the kingdom of God visible on earth.
Despite the despair we still feel when racism rears its ugly head. It’s good to know these Civil Rights marchers changed the world.
Come to think of it, maybe comics are really about superheroes. MARCH! is full of superheroes.
Two other superheroes, non-violent resisters also changed the world — Shiphrah and Puah — refused to do as they were ordered by law. As a result, a baby named Moses lived, and by living, changed the course of history.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 23, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
