Nice Feet!
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Nice feet!" by C. David McKirachan
"Pack Animals" by C. David McKirachan
"Out of the Same Boat with Peter" by David O. Bales
* * * * * * * *
Nice feet!
by C. David McKirchan
Romans 10:5-15
My father was a pastor for 50 years. He was a preacher until the day he died. He had a PhD from Princeton in Philosophy. He was a classical scholar, reading the Greek classics in their original language. He teased me when I was struggling with Greek that Sophocles and Euripides and Homer were so much better in Greek. I really ought to give them a chance to speak as they were meant to be heard. He decided to study Quantum Mechanics when he was 75. He wanted to see how it would help his cosmology evolve. The guy had a brain the size of a western state.
He also had a passion about the Bible. He loved it. He read that in the original languages too. When he preached you could see Jesus walking the roads of Galilee, teaching his disciples. You could hear the ranting and raving of the Geresene Demoniac and the screeching of the wind as the disciples’ boats were being swamped.
He also was head of staff of a few big churches, raised millions of dollars for Presbyterian mission, served on the General Council of the General Assembly, and was President of the Alumni Association of Princeton Seminary. Eugene Carson Blake and James McCord were his friends.
When he was 89 he got real sick, intensive care sick. It wasn’t fun to see this champion of philosophy and intellect flattened by illness. They gave him morphine and he hallucinated. It was frightening. He improved enough to come home for Thanksgiving. The sickness had taken so much of his energy. He was frail. I sat with him in his study, mostly quiet, just letting the November light filter across us and appreciate the moment together.
Out of the blue he said, “All those years of work and it seems that it’s made very little difference.” He looked at me, almost angry. But the words were sad, and the tone matched the words. I sat there looking at this man who had led me through my life by example. He’d always been almost frightening to me, larger than a person possibly could be. I realized that as great as he was, he was human. I also remembered times when I’d blurted to people I trusted about the futility of my profession and how hard it was to receive their comfort. I realized right now he didn’t need to be patted on the head, he needed to be respected. And he needed to be reminded how important he was. I did what he’d taught me. I told him the truth.
“It feels like that now. I’m sorry. I feel like that sometimes too, especially when I’m beat up and not in very good shape. I can’t make your feelings go away. But I’m going to remind you of a little boy who learned that the Bible was not a dusty book of old stories, but the living Word of God listening to you. And using that one kid as one example, I’d say you probably reached quite a few of the people you preached to. You blew my mind on a regular basis. And I know I’m not the only one.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You know your mother said almost exactly the same words to me yesterday. I’m glad you take after her.”
“Daddy, whether you or I like it or not, I’m a preacher. I think I get that from you. Thanks for the congenital disorder.”
He smiled a little wider. “I’m proud of us.” He shook his head again and looked straight at me, “I think Mother made some of that seafood chowder. Let’s go eat lunch.”
He died just before Christmas. He had beautiful feet.
Pack Animals
by C. David McKirachan
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
I spent some time in Africa, Ethiopia to be exact. We lived in a monastery near Addis Ababa. From the start we were warned not to go beyond the gates of the compound after dark. It wasn’t a human threat we had to worry about. It was hyenas. They ran in packs of twenty or more and took down anything that happened to be available. When you are surrounded by a threat, hearing it giggle every night, you tend to pay attention, and learn about what fills the dark with dread. They had some books in English in the library and I looked up these dark scavengers. I found out they’re gregarious animals, meaning they run in packs. Like dogs and wolves they function with rules that hold the bunch together. This pack attitude makes them strong, much stronger than they’d be alone. They live and die by these norms. If any dares violate the norms they are rejected, cut away, set adrift, or simply eliminated. It is ruthless. It is effective. The other thing I found out is that we are very much like them.
So how does progress happen? How do these effective beasts learn new things? How do they manage to move beyond that which is the norm and that which has worked before and become the iron rule of life and death of the pack? You see the problem. The rules make them and us strong as packs or families or nations or armies or churches; yet they hold us in tightly structured places of security determined by what has come before, what has worked before.
Then along comes a dreamer. Willing and able to see beyond what has worked and what must be, willing to see beyond power and strength, willing to lift up options that may in the short run seem counter to the survival of the pack. In any sense, they are uncomfortable and counterintuitive.
Joseph was a dreamer. The pack rejected his behavior and him. Yet his dreams and his willingness to see beyond the law of the pack put him in touch with the source of power that his father Jacob had wrestled with on the bank of the River Jabock. Joseph in his youthful arrogance considered himself superior. Such arrogance is as limited as blind reliance on the law of the past. As he became humbled, his dreams became a bridge to a new future for his people.
We are caught within a similar conundrum. Shall we adhere to that which has been dependable and comfortable and even effective? Or shall we reach toward a dream? Many would call this the height of arrogance. Joseph’s brothers did. They were a faithful pack but he was the future. Even more important, he was God’s future.
So next time we feel like tossing some nut into a hole because they’re violating all the rules and being arrogant to boot, maybe we ought to give it a second thought. They may be our future.
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).
Out of the Same Boat with Peter
by David O. Bales
Matthew 14:22-33
The old man shook his head as though to clear his thinking. He looked down at a dozen anxious, starving people sitting around him on the floor of the house in Jerusalem. They stared at the old man eagerly. They heard Judean soldiers on the street yelling and running outside the house. “Forty years later,” the old man said to the group, “the story of Jesus and Peter on the lake can seem so simple — crisp, clean, and obvious. And I’ve heard people mutter that Peter was a coward or, worse, that he had no faith.”
The old man, wobbling from hunger, looked compassionately on each of these trembling Christians. “Peter got out of the boat in the worst of it. Remember that. Those who don’t pity Peter are like young men eager to be soldiers who’ve never seen war. Peter stepped out of the boat onto the roughest of seas, trusting the Lord toward whom he walked. We servants of Jesus don’t tell you of Peter and Jesus on Galilee’s lake so you can congratulate yourselves, thinking, ‘Well, I wouldn’t have worried about the wind as Peter. I’d have trusted my Lord.’ If anyone is going to scold Peter, let it be only his Lord Jesus who loved him and saved him. Trust my lifetime of living for Jesus when I urge you not to concentrate on Peter’s faltering. Instead, remember Jesus’ reaching out and saving him.”
More yelling comes from the street outside: “The Romans are over the north wall.”
“Not many boats up here in the hills,” he smiled feebly. “Any of you even seen a boat?” Two people nodded that they had seen a boat. Some others of the group might have gazed upon a boat but were too numbed by fear to respond. Most everyone held tightly to the persons sitting beside them. “Well, makes no difference that most of Jesus’ students in Galilee were used to boats and a bunch of us were fishermen. That evening we’d left Jesus to pray by himself and we started across the lake. Shouldn’t have taken long but that storm fell on the lake and tormented us head-on with waves.”
Somewhere not far away a man’s high voice repeated a shriek, “They got through the temple and their slaughtering the priests.” Muffled yells answered him. The sandals of many people pounded quickly past the house.
The huddled Christians tried to listen to the old man, no matter the destruction that so obviously approached them. “On the little mast the ropes pulled as tight as harp strings and the wind played an eerie melody on them. The sail yanked away like a rug being shaken in the morning’s cleaning.”
Outside the house the crowd, running by, crashed against the door, causing everyone to cower. A young couple whimpered.
“We were in peril of our lives. You’d have been as terrified as we were. The storm made the night completely black. We bumped into the fellow next to us as we scrambled to row or bail or right the boat. Lightning flashed and instantly lit up our desperation like a gigantic lamp; then, darkness enveloped us again, even darker, as the thunder crushed us.”
The people listening to the old man smelled smoke and then heard the crackling and snapping of a growing fire. The old man sighed, “The early dawn, just before Jesus came, was the worst. We were exhausted from bailing, couldn’t scoop water any faster. We had, right then, lost the battle against the storm. We’d given up hope and, as the last splashes came over the boat’s side, we stopped trying because the water poured in. Let me say, that’s when you most need faith in life beyond this world.”
At the sound of a child’s cry outside everyone looked toward the door. The old man tottered but continued, “God’s love in Jesus was hard to believe then, as it is hard to believe now. Nature’s storm or the storm of Romans ruining all of Judea — same destruction, same terror. I’ve told you before about Jesus’ resurrection. Don’t forget that first was his crucifixion, like a cyclone of hatred swallowing him. Let me assure you,” he said as they heard swords clashing outside the house, “if you see the wind, as Peter did, and you’re frightened, God doesn’t reject you for that. Then as now...”
Roman soldiers were crashing against the door. Everyone cringed. The old man looked to the door. With one hand he motioned for his listeners to do as he did. Then he extended the other hand toward the door. Roman soldiers charged in. He quickly repeated, “Then as now...” The last thing he said was, “In life’s storms, we have to trust Jesus to reach out to us — in this life or the next.”
David Bales was a Presbyterian pastor for 33 years, a graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary. In addition to his ministry he also has taught college: World Religions, Ethics, Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek (lately at College of Idaho, Caldwell). He has been a freelance writer for Stephen Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Interpretation, Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching the Great Texts and other publications. For a year he wrote the online column "In The Original: Insights from Greek and Hebrew for the Lectionary Passages." His books include: Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace, Toward Easter and Beyond, Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story, and To the Cross and Beyond: Cycle A Sermons for Lent and Easter. Dave has been a writer for StoryShare for five years. He can be reached at dobales.com.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 7, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
"Nice feet!" by C. David McKirachan
"Pack Animals" by C. David McKirachan
"Out of the Same Boat with Peter" by David O. Bales
* * * * * * * *
Nice feet!
by C. David McKirchan
Romans 10:5-15
My father was a pastor for 50 years. He was a preacher until the day he died. He had a PhD from Princeton in Philosophy. He was a classical scholar, reading the Greek classics in their original language. He teased me when I was struggling with Greek that Sophocles and Euripides and Homer were so much better in Greek. I really ought to give them a chance to speak as they were meant to be heard. He decided to study Quantum Mechanics when he was 75. He wanted to see how it would help his cosmology evolve. The guy had a brain the size of a western state.
He also had a passion about the Bible. He loved it. He read that in the original languages too. When he preached you could see Jesus walking the roads of Galilee, teaching his disciples. You could hear the ranting and raving of the Geresene Demoniac and the screeching of the wind as the disciples’ boats were being swamped.
He also was head of staff of a few big churches, raised millions of dollars for Presbyterian mission, served on the General Council of the General Assembly, and was President of the Alumni Association of Princeton Seminary. Eugene Carson Blake and James McCord were his friends.
When he was 89 he got real sick, intensive care sick. It wasn’t fun to see this champion of philosophy and intellect flattened by illness. They gave him morphine and he hallucinated. It was frightening. He improved enough to come home for Thanksgiving. The sickness had taken so much of his energy. He was frail. I sat with him in his study, mostly quiet, just letting the November light filter across us and appreciate the moment together.
Out of the blue he said, “All those years of work and it seems that it’s made very little difference.” He looked at me, almost angry. But the words were sad, and the tone matched the words. I sat there looking at this man who had led me through my life by example. He’d always been almost frightening to me, larger than a person possibly could be. I realized that as great as he was, he was human. I also remembered times when I’d blurted to people I trusted about the futility of my profession and how hard it was to receive their comfort. I realized right now he didn’t need to be patted on the head, he needed to be respected. And he needed to be reminded how important he was. I did what he’d taught me. I told him the truth.
“It feels like that now. I’m sorry. I feel like that sometimes too, especially when I’m beat up and not in very good shape. I can’t make your feelings go away. But I’m going to remind you of a little boy who learned that the Bible was not a dusty book of old stories, but the living Word of God listening to you. And using that one kid as one example, I’d say you probably reached quite a few of the people you preached to. You blew my mind on a regular basis. And I know I’m not the only one.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You know your mother said almost exactly the same words to me yesterday. I’m glad you take after her.”
“Daddy, whether you or I like it or not, I’m a preacher. I think I get that from you. Thanks for the congenital disorder.”
He smiled a little wider. “I’m proud of us.” He shook his head again and looked straight at me, “I think Mother made some of that seafood chowder. Let’s go eat lunch.”
He died just before Christmas. He had beautiful feet.
Pack Animals
by C. David McKirachan
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
I spent some time in Africa, Ethiopia to be exact. We lived in a monastery near Addis Ababa. From the start we were warned not to go beyond the gates of the compound after dark. It wasn’t a human threat we had to worry about. It was hyenas. They ran in packs of twenty or more and took down anything that happened to be available. When you are surrounded by a threat, hearing it giggle every night, you tend to pay attention, and learn about what fills the dark with dread. They had some books in English in the library and I looked up these dark scavengers. I found out they’re gregarious animals, meaning they run in packs. Like dogs and wolves they function with rules that hold the bunch together. This pack attitude makes them strong, much stronger than they’d be alone. They live and die by these norms. If any dares violate the norms they are rejected, cut away, set adrift, or simply eliminated. It is ruthless. It is effective. The other thing I found out is that we are very much like them.
So how does progress happen? How do these effective beasts learn new things? How do they manage to move beyond that which is the norm and that which has worked before and become the iron rule of life and death of the pack? You see the problem. The rules make them and us strong as packs or families or nations or armies or churches; yet they hold us in tightly structured places of security determined by what has come before, what has worked before.
Then along comes a dreamer. Willing and able to see beyond what has worked and what must be, willing to see beyond power and strength, willing to lift up options that may in the short run seem counter to the survival of the pack. In any sense, they are uncomfortable and counterintuitive.
Joseph was a dreamer. The pack rejected his behavior and him. Yet his dreams and his willingness to see beyond the law of the pack put him in touch with the source of power that his father Jacob had wrestled with on the bank of the River Jabock. Joseph in his youthful arrogance considered himself superior. Such arrogance is as limited as blind reliance on the law of the past. As he became humbled, his dreams became a bridge to a new future for his people.
We are caught within a similar conundrum. Shall we adhere to that which has been dependable and comfortable and even effective? Or shall we reach toward a dream? Many would call this the height of arrogance. Joseph’s brothers did. They were a faithful pack but he was the future. Even more important, he was God’s future.
So next time we feel like tossing some nut into a hole because they’re violating all the rules and being arrogant to boot, maybe we ought to give it a second thought. They may be our future.
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).
Out of the Same Boat with Peter
by David O. Bales
Matthew 14:22-33
The old man shook his head as though to clear his thinking. He looked down at a dozen anxious, starving people sitting around him on the floor of the house in Jerusalem. They stared at the old man eagerly. They heard Judean soldiers on the street yelling and running outside the house. “Forty years later,” the old man said to the group, “the story of Jesus and Peter on the lake can seem so simple — crisp, clean, and obvious. And I’ve heard people mutter that Peter was a coward or, worse, that he had no faith.”
The old man, wobbling from hunger, looked compassionately on each of these trembling Christians. “Peter got out of the boat in the worst of it. Remember that. Those who don’t pity Peter are like young men eager to be soldiers who’ve never seen war. Peter stepped out of the boat onto the roughest of seas, trusting the Lord toward whom he walked. We servants of Jesus don’t tell you of Peter and Jesus on Galilee’s lake so you can congratulate yourselves, thinking, ‘Well, I wouldn’t have worried about the wind as Peter. I’d have trusted my Lord.’ If anyone is going to scold Peter, let it be only his Lord Jesus who loved him and saved him. Trust my lifetime of living for Jesus when I urge you not to concentrate on Peter’s faltering. Instead, remember Jesus’ reaching out and saving him.”
More yelling comes from the street outside: “The Romans are over the north wall.”
“Not many boats up here in the hills,” he smiled feebly. “Any of you even seen a boat?” Two people nodded that they had seen a boat. Some others of the group might have gazed upon a boat but were too numbed by fear to respond. Most everyone held tightly to the persons sitting beside them. “Well, makes no difference that most of Jesus’ students in Galilee were used to boats and a bunch of us were fishermen. That evening we’d left Jesus to pray by himself and we started across the lake. Shouldn’t have taken long but that storm fell on the lake and tormented us head-on with waves.”
Somewhere not far away a man’s high voice repeated a shriek, “They got through the temple and their slaughtering the priests.” Muffled yells answered him. The sandals of many people pounded quickly past the house.
The huddled Christians tried to listen to the old man, no matter the destruction that so obviously approached them. “On the little mast the ropes pulled as tight as harp strings and the wind played an eerie melody on them. The sail yanked away like a rug being shaken in the morning’s cleaning.”
Outside the house the crowd, running by, crashed against the door, causing everyone to cower. A young couple whimpered.
“We were in peril of our lives. You’d have been as terrified as we were. The storm made the night completely black. We bumped into the fellow next to us as we scrambled to row or bail or right the boat. Lightning flashed and instantly lit up our desperation like a gigantic lamp; then, darkness enveloped us again, even darker, as the thunder crushed us.”
The people listening to the old man smelled smoke and then heard the crackling and snapping of a growing fire. The old man sighed, “The early dawn, just before Jesus came, was the worst. We were exhausted from bailing, couldn’t scoop water any faster. We had, right then, lost the battle against the storm. We’d given up hope and, as the last splashes came over the boat’s side, we stopped trying because the water poured in. Let me say, that’s when you most need faith in life beyond this world.”
At the sound of a child’s cry outside everyone looked toward the door. The old man tottered but continued, “God’s love in Jesus was hard to believe then, as it is hard to believe now. Nature’s storm or the storm of Romans ruining all of Judea — same destruction, same terror. I’ve told you before about Jesus’ resurrection. Don’t forget that first was his crucifixion, like a cyclone of hatred swallowing him. Let me assure you,” he said as they heard swords clashing outside the house, “if you see the wind, as Peter did, and you’re frightened, God doesn’t reject you for that. Then as now...”
Roman soldiers were crashing against the door. Everyone cringed. The old man looked to the door. With one hand he motioned for his listeners to do as he did. Then he extended the other hand toward the door. Roman soldiers charged in. He quickly repeated, “Then as now...” The last thing he said was, “In life’s storms, we have to trust Jesus to reach out to us — in this life or the next.”
David Bales was a Presbyterian pastor for 33 years, a graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary. In addition to his ministry he also has taught college: World Religions, Ethics, Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek (lately at College of Idaho, Caldwell). He has been a freelance writer for Stephen Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Interpretation, Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching the Great Texts and other publications. For a year he wrote the online column "In The Original: Insights from Greek and Hebrew for the Lectionary Passages." His books include: Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace, Toward Easter and Beyond, Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story, and To the Cross and Beyond: Cycle A Sermons for Lent and Easter. Dave has been a writer for StoryShare for five years. He can be reached at dobales.com.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 7, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
