Mistaken Identity
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Mistaken Identity" by Argile Smith
"Be Still and Know…" by John Sumwalt
"People with Chests" by C. David McKirachan
What's Up This Week
What is our true identity -- does our behavior reveal a love for God and his creation, or are our motivations more selfish and mundane? This week's edition of StoryShare features three pieces that look at that question from different perspectives. Argile Smith paints a portrait of a woman who we can all identify with -- besieged on all sides by frustrations at work and with her children, she unloads all of her accumulated anger on an unsuspecting caller… and while the woman feels better in the short term, she may have missed out on an unusual opportunity. Then John Sumwalt shares an arresting experience -- while in the process of exterminating some of God's more annoying creatures, he encounters another animal that abruptly changes his perception. And finally, David McKirachan tells of his father's behavior in a difficult circumstance… and how it exemplified the biblical conception of the heart as the center of our character.
* * * * * * * * *
Mistaken Identity
by Argile Smith
Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Hebrews 7:23-26
Maggie had just plopped into her favorite recliner when her phone rang. She didn't really want to answer it. The day had drained her energy. At work she seemed to be running into one problem after another. The people she supervised had behaved as if she had insulted them simply because she tried to supervise them. Not interested in her input, they didn't appear to be interested in working either. Only one activity interested them: whining. All of their energies that day had been invested in complaining, griping, and throwing pity parties. She could hardly wait to get away from them at the end of the day.
When she got home, she wondered if she had somehow taken a wrong turn and had gone right back to work. Her two teenage daughters let her know immediately upon crossing the threshold into her house that they didn't want her telling them what to do. They complained that she had been overbearing and that she never allowed them to spend time with their friends.
Their complaint spewed from them like lava from an active volcano. The seismic activity in their souls had been activated by her edict a couple of days earlier. That's when she grounded both of them because they had brought home some terrible grades at school. And that's when their anger at her began to boil.
She held her tongue through dinner. As she listened to them grumble about the food, the apartment, the restrictions placed on them, and the way that life made no sense anymore, she wanted to snarl at them about responsibility and appreciating when their mother tried to provide for them. Instead, she remained silent in the awareness that talking wouldn't do them any good at that moment. She knew that her words would turn into weapons-grade verbal blasts. She couldn't forgive herself if she wounded her daughters' souls with harsh, cruel words. So she kept quiet.
After dinner, everyone left for their own space. Her daughters went to their bedroom to grieve their confinement and to refine their strategies to make their mom's life miserable. And Maggie went to the living room, fell into her easy chair, and turned on the television to escape the difficulties of the day, and to unwind a little before going to bed.
So her decision about answering her phone didn't come easily. She decided to answer the call when she noticed that the caller's number looked, well, curious. She recognized the area code, but the number didn't seem to register with her. So she said to herself, "What's it going to hurt to answer the call. My day's already been shot. This call can't make it any worse."
But in a way, it did. The guy on the other end of the line claimed to be the president of the university from which she had graduated. He called because he wanted to keep in touch with alumni like her.
Of course, Maggie didn't buy his claim. Why would the president of her university be calling her anyway? She had graduated years earlier, and she hadn't made a contribution to the alumni fund. Besides, she recalled that the president of her university had retired a couple of years earlier. She reasoned that the guy on the other end of the line must be either a prankster or a sales representative. Either way she wasn't interested, so she hung up on him in mid-sentence.
He called her back right away. Mad about her day and frustrated with her kids, she reacted to the call by answering it -- but not to listen to the caller's pitch. She used it as an opportunity to ventilate. As soon as he started talking, she unloaded her entire arsenal of verbal weaponry on him, letting him have it for every offense from interrupting her evening to occupying space on the planet. Then she hung up again, this time with a little more satisfaction. She had used the faceless voice as a punching bag. Now she felt better. Soon she drifted off to sleep in her easy chair.
Three days later she got a personal note in the mail from the university. Her address had been written by hand on the envelope, and the words "President's Office" had been embossed on the card inside. The note simply read: "Sorry about offending you with my phone call. I'm new at this work, and I'm trying to find ways to get feedback from our alumni. Every night I call five alums at random. That's why you got the call. Again, sorry I bothered you."
Job didn't have a clear picture of the Lord when he complained in his misery. Clarity came when the Lord confronted him (Job 42:1-6, 10-17). Likewise, some of the Hebrew Christians had lost sight of Jesus Christ and his place in their lives. For that reason, the pastor of the congregation tried to help them to sharpen their perspective on Jesus Christ (Hebrews 7:23-28). The Lord wants to bless us, and we don't want to miss the blessing of an intimate relationship with him because of mistaken identity.
Argile Smith is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Biloxi, Mississippi. He previously served as the vice president for advancement at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and as a preaching professor, chairman of the division of pastoral ministries, and director of the communications center at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS). While at NOTBS, Smith regularly hosted the Gateway to Truth program on the FamilyNet television network. Smith's articles have been widely published in church periodicals, and he is the author or editor of four books.
Be Still and Know...
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 46
Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.
-- Psalm 46:10
Human beings have much to learn from all of the other creatures who walk the earth with us. Even the lowly Asian beetles -- those ubiquitous, foul-smelling red bugs that make their home in the neighbor's soybean field in summer and swarm through the warm cracks of the old farmhouse the moment our Wisconsin weather turns cold -- must have some redeeming value.
The words of a favorite camp chorus come mockingly to mind as I pick yet another bug out of my soup and flush him down the drain with un-Christlike glee:
All God's critters got a place in the choir.
Some sing low and some sing higher.
Oh yeah? Sometimes I wonder what God was thinking!
On Saturday, September 21, at 9:30 AM, in the year of our Lord 2009, fueled by a smoldering anger, this organic farmer wannabe declared all-out holy war against all beetles great and small. Wielding a sprayer, armed with what the guy down at TrueValue said was the only thing that would keep these craven ladybug lookalikes out of the house, and dressed in my favorite camouflage bibs, CSI gloves, goggles, and military surplus gas mask, I set out on my personal jihad. "Spray this stuff all over the outside of the house just as the leaves start to turn," the TrueValue man had said as I plopped my money down on the counter, shoved the poison stuff under my jacket, and ran toward the truck. I didn't stop to ask if this agent of mass destruction was "green." I didn't want to know.
I had just completed the first pass around the south side of the house with the sprayer when Jo called out from the deck, "Is that a cat out there by the brush pile? It looks too big to be a cat."
I wiped my goggles and peered out through the chemical fog toward the pyramid-size brush pile that has been accumulating for decades out by the back fence. It is the home of Bucky, our resident woodchuck, named for the mascot of my alma mater because the first time we saw him we mistook him for a badger.
There was, indeed, a very large cat crouched about three feet from Bucky's hole. I walked toward the brush pile to get a better look. Jo was right -- this was one huge feline, about four feet long, maybe 60 pounds, at least six times the size of an ordinary house cat. He had little pointy ears and a coal-black coat that glistened in the morning sun. What was most striking was his menacing eyes. Had I seen them gleaming in the dark on some moonless night, I would have run for my life.
I moved closer. The penetrating eyes that had been fixed on Bucky's hole were now lasered directly on me, though I had discerned the movement of nary a muscle. The dark creature was perfectly still -- waiting, watching, warily eyeing me as I continued my approach, poised to spring at the slightest alarm. His eerie stillness was disturbing, as was his steady, hypnotic gaze that pulled me onward like a tractor beam. The energy flowing between us was almost palpable, connecting me in some mysterious way with a larger stillness that was strangely familiar, comfortable even, yet unknowable in any way that I have known or been known before.
For one fleeting moment I was Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, "unstuck in time," and wondering about the meaning of it all. Could I allow myself to go where I had never gone before, to let go of all I knew to know the all?
I came to an abrupt stop about 50 feet away when it suddenly occurred to me that this black panther, for that is what it appeared to be, could most likely outrun me. I kept looking into his eyes as I backed away. The still eyes stared back.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
People with Chests
by C. David McKirachan
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Freud came up with the Oreo cookie theory of the personality. Good theory… but he copied the biblical idea. They saw the head as analytical, the gut as passion, and the heart as the place of decision and commitment. It's the place of loyalty and courage. That makes a lot more sense than our cute-ifying of the heart. It's nice for Hallmark moments -- but when it comes to standing up in the face of difficulty, hearts and flowers don't have a prayer. C.S. Lewis said, "What we need are people with chests."
As a kid, I watched my parents standing in the face of trouble. Dad was the pastor of a large church in a lily-white community that wanted to stay that way. He stood up for integration, and this delightful upper-class bunch of people grew fangs. We heard a lot of back and forth about how a minister shouldn't get involved in social issues. He didn't back down. Then it got uglier.
We lived on a nice quiet street. We had a nice picture window that looked out on our front lawn, shaded by maples and oaks. We were watching TV one evening when the peace was literally shattered. A softball-sized rock blew through the big window, sending chunks of glass flying all over the room. My father was on his feet and out the door and got to watch a car squealing down the street. He came back in and we took inventory. No cuts, just a case of the shakes. My mother picked up the rock and undid the rubber band holding a note. My mother was five feet tall, but as I watched her stand there reading the missive that had been sent to scare us, I stopped shaking. She smiled and said, "At least they told the truth and spelled everything correctly." She handed it to me. In crude language, it informed us that we loved a whole race of people. They thought it was an insult. My father took the note. He turned to me and said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." They blew my mind.
The next morning we found out our buddies had slashed our tires. My father replaced the window. Nobody offered to pay for it or the tires. I got beat up a few times at school. They called me what had been written on the note. When I said, "Yeah, I do. Why don't you?" they didn't like it.
I guess a bit of that heart business rubbed off on me. I hope so -- they were people with chests. That's another word for heroes.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
**************
StoryShare, October 25, 2009, issue.
Copyright 2009 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
"Mistaken Identity" by Argile Smith
"Be Still and Know…" by John Sumwalt
"People with Chests" by C. David McKirachan
What's Up This Week
What is our true identity -- does our behavior reveal a love for God and his creation, or are our motivations more selfish and mundane? This week's edition of StoryShare features three pieces that look at that question from different perspectives. Argile Smith paints a portrait of a woman who we can all identify with -- besieged on all sides by frustrations at work and with her children, she unloads all of her accumulated anger on an unsuspecting caller… and while the woman feels better in the short term, she may have missed out on an unusual opportunity. Then John Sumwalt shares an arresting experience -- while in the process of exterminating some of God's more annoying creatures, he encounters another animal that abruptly changes his perception. And finally, David McKirachan tells of his father's behavior in a difficult circumstance… and how it exemplified the biblical conception of the heart as the center of our character.
* * * * * * * * *
Mistaken Identity
by Argile Smith
Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Hebrews 7:23-26
Maggie had just plopped into her favorite recliner when her phone rang. She didn't really want to answer it. The day had drained her energy. At work she seemed to be running into one problem after another. The people she supervised had behaved as if she had insulted them simply because she tried to supervise them. Not interested in her input, they didn't appear to be interested in working either. Only one activity interested them: whining. All of their energies that day had been invested in complaining, griping, and throwing pity parties. She could hardly wait to get away from them at the end of the day.
When she got home, she wondered if she had somehow taken a wrong turn and had gone right back to work. Her two teenage daughters let her know immediately upon crossing the threshold into her house that they didn't want her telling them what to do. They complained that she had been overbearing and that she never allowed them to spend time with their friends.
Their complaint spewed from them like lava from an active volcano. The seismic activity in their souls had been activated by her edict a couple of days earlier. That's when she grounded both of them because they had brought home some terrible grades at school. And that's when their anger at her began to boil.
She held her tongue through dinner. As she listened to them grumble about the food, the apartment, the restrictions placed on them, and the way that life made no sense anymore, she wanted to snarl at them about responsibility and appreciating when their mother tried to provide for them. Instead, she remained silent in the awareness that talking wouldn't do them any good at that moment. She knew that her words would turn into weapons-grade verbal blasts. She couldn't forgive herself if she wounded her daughters' souls with harsh, cruel words. So she kept quiet.
After dinner, everyone left for their own space. Her daughters went to their bedroom to grieve their confinement and to refine their strategies to make their mom's life miserable. And Maggie went to the living room, fell into her easy chair, and turned on the television to escape the difficulties of the day, and to unwind a little before going to bed.
So her decision about answering her phone didn't come easily. She decided to answer the call when she noticed that the caller's number looked, well, curious. She recognized the area code, but the number didn't seem to register with her. So she said to herself, "What's it going to hurt to answer the call. My day's already been shot. This call can't make it any worse."
But in a way, it did. The guy on the other end of the line claimed to be the president of the university from which she had graduated. He called because he wanted to keep in touch with alumni like her.
Of course, Maggie didn't buy his claim. Why would the president of her university be calling her anyway? She had graduated years earlier, and she hadn't made a contribution to the alumni fund. Besides, she recalled that the president of her university had retired a couple of years earlier. She reasoned that the guy on the other end of the line must be either a prankster or a sales representative. Either way she wasn't interested, so she hung up on him in mid-sentence.
He called her back right away. Mad about her day and frustrated with her kids, she reacted to the call by answering it -- but not to listen to the caller's pitch. She used it as an opportunity to ventilate. As soon as he started talking, she unloaded her entire arsenal of verbal weaponry on him, letting him have it for every offense from interrupting her evening to occupying space on the planet. Then she hung up again, this time with a little more satisfaction. She had used the faceless voice as a punching bag. Now she felt better. Soon she drifted off to sleep in her easy chair.
Three days later she got a personal note in the mail from the university. Her address had been written by hand on the envelope, and the words "President's Office" had been embossed on the card inside. The note simply read: "Sorry about offending you with my phone call. I'm new at this work, and I'm trying to find ways to get feedback from our alumni. Every night I call five alums at random. That's why you got the call. Again, sorry I bothered you."
Job didn't have a clear picture of the Lord when he complained in his misery. Clarity came when the Lord confronted him (Job 42:1-6, 10-17). Likewise, some of the Hebrew Christians had lost sight of Jesus Christ and his place in their lives. For that reason, the pastor of the congregation tried to help them to sharpen their perspective on Jesus Christ (Hebrews 7:23-28). The Lord wants to bless us, and we don't want to miss the blessing of an intimate relationship with him because of mistaken identity.
Argile Smith is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Biloxi, Mississippi. He previously served as the vice president for advancement at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and as a preaching professor, chairman of the division of pastoral ministries, and director of the communications center at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS). While at NOTBS, Smith regularly hosted the Gateway to Truth program on the FamilyNet television network. Smith's articles have been widely published in church periodicals, and he is the author or editor of four books.
Be Still and Know...
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 46
Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.
-- Psalm 46:10
Human beings have much to learn from all of the other creatures who walk the earth with us. Even the lowly Asian beetles -- those ubiquitous, foul-smelling red bugs that make their home in the neighbor's soybean field in summer and swarm through the warm cracks of the old farmhouse the moment our Wisconsin weather turns cold -- must have some redeeming value.
The words of a favorite camp chorus come mockingly to mind as I pick yet another bug out of my soup and flush him down the drain with un-Christlike glee:
All God's critters got a place in the choir.
Some sing low and some sing higher.
Oh yeah? Sometimes I wonder what God was thinking!
On Saturday, September 21, at 9:30 AM, in the year of our Lord 2009, fueled by a smoldering anger, this organic farmer wannabe declared all-out holy war against all beetles great and small. Wielding a sprayer, armed with what the guy down at TrueValue said was the only thing that would keep these craven ladybug lookalikes out of the house, and dressed in my favorite camouflage bibs, CSI gloves, goggles, and military surplus gas mask, I set out on my personal jihad. "Spray this stuff all over the outside of the house just as the leaves start to turn," the TrueValue man had said as I plopped my money down on the counter, shoved the poison stuff under my jacket, and ran toward the truck. I didn't stop to ask if this agent of mass destruction was "green." I didn't want to know.
I had just completed the first pass around the south side of the house with the sprayer when Jo called out from the deck, "Is that a cat out there by the brush pile? It looks too big to be a cat."
I wiped my goggles and peered out through the chemical fog toward the pyramid-size brush pile that has been accumulating for decades out by the back fence. It is the home of Bucky, our resident woodchuck, named for the mascot of my alma mater because the first time we saw him we mistook him for a badger.
There was, indeed, a very large cat crouched about three feet from Bucky's hole. I walked toward the brush pile to get a better look. Jo was right -- this was one huge feline, about four feet long, maybe 60 pounds, at least six times the size of an ordinary house cat. He had little pointy ears and a coal-black coat that glistened in the morning sun. What was most striking was his menacing eyes. Had I seen them gleaming in the dark on some moonless night, I would have run for my life.
I moved closer. The penetrating eyes that had been fixed on Bucky's hole were now lasered directly on me, though I had discerned the movement of nary a muscle. The dark creature was perfectly still -- waiting, watching, warily eyeing me as I continued my approach, poised to spring at the slightest alarm. His eerie stillness was disturbing, as was his steady, hypnotic gaze that pulled me onward like a tractor beam. The energy flowing between us was almost palpable, connecting me in some mysterious way with a larger stillness that was strangely familiar, comfortable even, yet unknowable in any way that I have known or been known before.
For one fleeting moment I was Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, "unstuck in time," and wondering about the meaning of it all. Could I allow myself to go where I had never gone before, to let go of all I knew to know the all?
I came to an abrupt stop about 50 feet away when it suddenly occurred to me that this black panther, for that is what it appeared to be, could most likely outrun me. I kept looking into his eyes as I backed away. The still eyes stared back.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
People with Chests
by C. David McKirachan
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Freud came up with the Oreo cookie theory of the personality. Good theory… but he copied the biblical idea. They saw the head as analytical, the gut as passion, and the heart as the place of decision and commitment. It's the place of loyalty and courage. That makes a lot more sense than our cute-ifying of the heart. It's nice for Hallmark moments -- but when it comes to standing up in the face of difficulty, hearts and flowers don't have a prayer. C.S. Lewis said, "What we need are people with chests."
As a kid, I watched my parents standing in the face of trouble. Dad was the pastor of a large church in a lily-white community that wanted to stay that way. He stood up for integration, and this delightful upper-class bunch of people grew fangs. We heard a lot of back and forth about how a minister shouldn't get involved in social issues. He didn't back down. Then it got uglier.
We lived on a nice quiet street. We had a nice picture window that looked out on our front lawn, shaded by maples and oaks. We were watching TV one evening when the peace was literally shattered. A softball-sized rock blew through the big window, sending chunks of glass flying all over the room. My father was on his feet and out the door and got to watch a car squealing down the street. He came back in and we took inventory. No cuts, just a case of the shakes. My mother picked up the rock and undid the rubber band holding a note. My mother was five feet tall, but as I watched her stand there reading the missive that had been sent to scare us, I stopped shaking. She smiled and said, "At least they told the truth and spelled everything correctly." She handed it to me. In crude language, it informed us that we loved a whole race of people. They thought it was an insult. My father took the note. He turned to me and said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." They blew my mind.
The next morning we found out our buddies had slashed our tires. My father replaced the window. Nobody offered to pay for it or the tires. I got beat up a few times at school. They called me what had been written on the note. When I said, "Yeah, I do. Why don't you?" they didn't like it.
I guess a bit of that heart business rubbed off on me. I hope so -- they were people with chests. That's another word for heroes.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
**************
StoryShare, October 25, 2009, issue.
Copyright 2009 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.
