Prophet
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Prophet" by Keith Hewitt
"Getting Mugged" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * *
Prophet
by Keith Hewitt
Amos 7:7-17
"So-o," Wagner asked, drawing out the word as he shuffled through a stack of papers on his desk, "you fancy yourself to be some sort of prophet." He paused, then, scanned one of the documents -- a column of newsprint fixed to a sheet of paper -- then raised his eyes to peer over the tops of his glasses at the man across the desk from him. "Is that correct?"
The man shifted, as though trying to find a comfortable position in the straight-backed, thinly padded chair, and ended up leaning back against the chair and to one side, resting his hands in his lap and his left elbow on the arm of the chair -- which was slightly too low for it to be comfortable. "No, sir, that is not correct. I am just a simple man -- until a few months ago, I was a baker."
"And now you're a writer -- and you write things like, The Road We Travel: A Prophecy of Tomorrow." He pushed aside sheets of paper from the stack, tapped another one. "Or here's one: If This Goes On -- The Fall of Judgment." Another long look, over the tops of his glasses. "It sounds prophetic to me, Mister Holt. Does it sound prophetic to you?"
The man in the chair shifted again, squirming so the fabric of his pants made a squeaking sound against the vinyl seat cushion; he stopped immediately, seemed embarrassed, then leaned back again, still canted over to the left -- a show of casualness that belied the cold fluttering in his belly. "Are you familiar with the railroad, on the east side of town?" he asked, after a moment.
Wagner's eyebrows drew together, as though they might fend off this non sequitur by combining forces. "Of course. But I --"
With a boldness in his heart, which he did not feel in his gut, the man in the chair leaned forward, then, and said, "And you know the siding, by the factory?" Wagner barely nodded, and the man plunged on. "Say I see that there is a train in the siding, waiting to be loaded, and another train on the tracks, waiting to be diverted onto the siding -- and then I see a third train, roaring down the tracks from the south... and it's not slowing down. If I also see that the signal is showing a clear track for the speeding train -- is it prophecy to say that there is going to be a terrible train accident?"
Wagner smiled grimly, then. "So you see our country's future as a train wreck?"
"I see it as a disaster," the man in the chair agreed.
"Need I tell you that we've put a long and costly war behind us, and that we are even now recovering from very difficult economic times? Of course there will be some bumps in the road, but our nation is not doomed to crash." Wagner began pushing papers back together, into an orderly stack. "I'm afraid you have some very misguided ideas, Mister Holt. Very misguided."
"Are they? As I said, I am a simple man, Mister Wagner. I didn't ask for this, but it has been put upon me, nonetheless. We've become a nation that is less concerned about right and wrong than we are about what will make us stronger. We have become a people who are less concerned about right and wrong than we are about what makes us richer, or what makes us feel good, if only for a moment. We know how we should live, but we stray. Our leaders know how they should govern -- what principles should drive them -- but they ignore principle for power."
Wagner leaned back in his chair and put his elbows on the cushioned arms, touched his fingertips together to make a sort of tent, then slowly began to move them, separating each pair of fingertips, then putting them back together, one pair at a time, repeating the movement several times. "And these principles you speak of. What are they? From where do they come?"
Holt looked surprised, for a moment, then frowned. "They are God's laws, of course. Long ago, he told us how we should live our lives -- and we've turned our back on what we were told. We've abandoned God's law, and now look to our own laws, and that way lies nothing but disaster. We shall fall -- either a long, slow plunge, or a catastrophic collapse, but either way, we shall fall." He leaned back, then, and shrugged. "That's why I had to start writing -- to tell people. Warn them."
"I see. And these insights of yours -- these observations -- you say they've been put upon you. I have to ask -- put upon you by whom? Apart from your own intellect -- and you admit, yourself, that you are just a simple man, Mister Holt -- apart from your own intellect, from where do these insights into our civilization and our future come?"
Holt hesitated, then sat up straight and looked Wagner in the eye. "From God, sir. This task has been put upon my shoulders by none other than God."
Wagner nodded slowly. "I see. And you feel quite sure of this?"
"I see no other explanation."
"Of course. God has picked you out of an entire nation -- you, an inconsequential baker -- to deliver a message of judgment and wrath."
Holt frowned. "Put that way, it sounds ridiculous."
"Then let me put it another way. Perhaps you -- a baker, a good man, but nobody of note -- have seen others prosper around you. Perhaps their ways are not yours, and maybe that makes you angry, or maybe that makes you jealous -- but it certainly makes you envious. And you have seen the way this nation has begun to struggle back from difficult times and that makes you jealous, as well, because you are not personally sharing in the wealth, you are not benefiting from the regained prosperity. You see the way the will of the people can be harnessed, the way your leaders can achieve real strength in this world and that makes you feel your lack of consequence... your tininess... even more. So you lash out. You find you have a gift for words, as well as kneading dough, and you try to build yourself up by tearing society down. Does that not seem reasonable, Mister Holt?"
Wagner paused, then, to let his observations sink in. For a time, the only sound was the ticking of a clock, and the only movement was the slow, methodical motion of his fingertips separating, then being put together again.
After what seemed a very long time, Holt stood up, put his hands on the desk and leaned forward. His voice was calm, his expression almost serene. "That is perfectly reasonable, Mister Wagner, perfectly reasonable. Except for one thing."
"Yes?" Wagner asked, already knowing the answer.
"God did send me. He did send me to warn that there is a reckoning coming. You cannot turn your back on God, you cannot ignore him. The consequences will be evident -- and terrible. I am not a prophet, Mister Wagner, just a man telling the truth. God's truth."
Wagner's expression was bland as he stood up, in turn. "Of course you are, Mister Holt. Now, if you will just wait in the outer office for a moment, we will get you on your way."
Holt's answering smile was a little sad. "I'm sure you will."
It's as if he knew, Wagner thought, as the door closed behind Holt. But that's ridiculous -- he's not rational. He couldn't know. He sat down, again, and opened his desk drawer, pulled out the form marked "Involuntary Commitment" -- and hesitated. What if he's telling the truth? He sat motionless for a moment or two, then shook it off and smiled mirthlessly as he began to write. The very idea was ridiculous. If he began to entertain such notions, he would have to send himself to the asylum. There was no doubt...
The Reich would last for a thousand years... and no prophet baker could say any differently.
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
Getting Mugged
by C. David McKirachan
Luke 10:25-37
I was coming down a stairway from an apartment in Oakland. I reached the second floor landing, hand on the banister, my boots' clomp echoing off the cement floors and plaster walls. The next feeling I had was pain in the back of my head. Then I noticed a gun barrel crammed against my nose. The barrel was a cavern. I could see the groves inside it swirling away into darkness. There was writing above the cavern, just behind the sight. I was surprised it was in script rather than square type. Getting your head slammed against the wall tends to make things a bit abstract.
"Dude! Pay attention! Your wallet!" The big guy yelling at me held me off the ground pinned against the wall. He punctuated his demands with the aforementioned gun. I think they call it pistol whipping. I was a graduate student. I didn't have any money, but I was in no shape to argue. He got my empty wallet, and I finally made it down the steps and out to the street.
Things would spin and then stand still. I could taste my own blood. I couldn't go back up those stairs, balance and all that. Besides, the guy I'd been there to see had moved. Then there was the big guy with the gun. No car, no money, no balance, bad neighborhood. I made it a block and sat down against a building, supporting my head with both hands.
I didn't know him. He had a white buzz cut. He was driving a pick up that had stopped shining a few years ago. He had to say everything twice. I couldn't get it the first time. He drove for a while and finally stopped in front of a row house. The large mutt whined at the front door. "I leave him in the house when I go out. He discourages idiots. You sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" We sat at a beat up wooden table in his kitchen. Hot coffee actually helped hold things together. After a while he laughed. "Here I am, a marine who doesn't know what to make of all this free love crap, and I bring home a hippie. My friends would laugh at me."
I spoke through my split lip, "I won't tell. You're a good Samaritan."
He smiled, "That would make you the idiot, right?"
After macaroni and cheese, he drove me back to my apartment in Berkeley. A couple weeks later I took him out to lunch. Burgers and beer and some shared insights. He told me that his first instinct had been to drive by me. Then he'd heard his wife whisper in his ear, " 'Go and do likewise.' She's been dead for ten years and she's still pushing me around. So I grumbled some and came back for you."
I smiled, "Semper Fi."
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, July 14, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 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.
"Prophet" by Keith Hewitt
"Getting Mugged" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * *
Prophet
by Keith Hewitt
Amos 7:7-17
"So-o," Wagner asked, drawing out the word as he shuffled through a stack of papers on his desk, "you fancy yourself to be some sort of prophet." He paused, then, scanned one of the documents -- a column of newsprint fixed to a sheet of paper -- then raised his eyes to peer over the tops of his glasses at the man across the desk from him. "Is that correct?"
The man shifted, as though trying to find a comfortable position in the straight-backed, thinly padded chair, and ended up leaning back against the chair and to one side, resting his hands in his lap and his left elbow on the arm of the chair -- which was slightly too low for it to be comfortable. "No, sir, that is not correct. I am just a simple man -- until a few months ago, I was a baker."
"And now you're a writer -- and you write things like, The Road We Travel: A Prophecy of Tomorrow." He pushed aside sheets of paper from the stack, tapped another one. "Or here's one: If This Goes On -- The Fall of Judgment." Another long look, over the tops of his glasses. "It sounds prophetic to me, Mister Holt. Does it sound prophetic to you?"
The man in the chair shifted again, squirming so the fabric of his pants made a squeaking sound against the vinyl seat cushion; he stopped immediately, seemed embarrassed, then leaned back again, still canted over to the left -- a show of casualness that belied the cold fluttering in his belly. "Are you familiar with the railroad, on the east side of town?" he asked, after a moment.
Wagner's eyebrows drew together, as though they might fend off this non sequitur by combining forces. "Of course. But I --"
With a boldness in his heart, which he did not feel in his gut, the man in the chair leaned forward, then, and said, "And you know the siding, by the factory?" Wagner barely nodded, and the man plunged on. "Say I see that there is a train in the siding, waiting to be loaded, and another train on the tracks, waiting to be diverted onto the siding -- and then I see a third train, roaring down the tracks from the south... and it's not slowing down. If I also see that the signal is showing a clear track for the speeding train -- is it prophecy to say that there is going to be a terrible train accident?"
Wagner smiled grimly, then. "So you see our country's future as a train wreck?"
"I see it as a disaster," the man in the chair agreed.
"Need I tell you that we've put a long and costly war behind us, and that we are even now recovering from very difficult economic times? Of course there will be some bumps in the road, but our nation is not doomed to crash." Wagner began pushing papers back together, into an orderly stack. "I'm afraid you have some very misguided ideas, Mister Holt. Very misguided."
"Are they? As I said, I am a simple man, Mister Wagner. I didn't ask for this, but it has been put upon me, nonetheless. We've become a nation that is less concerned about right and wrong than we are about what will make us stronger. We have become a people who are less concerned about right and wrong than we are about what makes us richer, or what makes us feel good, if only for a moment. We know how we should live, but we stray. Our leaders know how they should govern -- what principles should drive them -- but they ignore principle for power."
Wagner leaned back in his chair and put his elbows on the cushioned arms, touched his fingertips together to make a sort of tent, then slowly began to move them, separating each pair of fingertips, then putting them back together, one pair at a time, repeating the movement several times. "And these principles you speak of. What are they? From where do they come?"
Holt looked surprised, for a moment, then frowned. "They are God's laws, of course. Long ago, he told us how we should live our lives -- and we've turned our back on what we were told. We've abandoned God's law, and now look to our own laws, and that way lies nothing but disaster. We shall fall -- either a long, slow plunge, or a catastrophic collapse, but either way, we shall fall." He leaned back, then, and shrugged. "That's why I had to start writing -- to tell people. Warn them."
"I see. And these insights of yours -- these observations -- you say they've been put upon you. I have to ask -- put upon you by whom? Apart from your own intellect -- and you admit, yourself, that you are just a simple man, Mister Holt -- apart from your own intellect, from where do these insights into our civilization and our future come?"
Holt hesitated, then sat up straight and looked Wagner in the eye. "From God, sir. This task has been put upon my shoulders by none other than God."
Wagner nodded slowly. "I see. And you feel quite sure of this?"
"I see no other explanation."
"Of course. God has picked you out of an entire nation -- you, an inconsequential baker -- to deliver a message of judgment and wrath."
Holt frowned. "Put that way, it sounds ridiculous."
"Then let me put it another way. Perhaps you -- a baker, a good man, but nobody of note -- have seen others prosper around you. Perhaps their ways are not yours, and maybe that makes you angry, or maybe that makes you jealous -- but it certainly makes you envious. And you have seen the way this nation has begun to struggle back from difficult times and that makes you jealous, as well, because you are not personally sharing in the wealth, you are not benefiting from the regained prosperity. You see the way the will of the people can be harnessed, the way your leaders can achieve real strength in this world and that makes you feel your lack of consequence... your tininess... even more. So you lash out. You find you have a gift for words, as well as kneading dough, and you try to build yourself up by tearing society down. Does that not seem reasonable, Mister Holt?"
Wagner paused, then, to let his observations sink in. For a time, the only sound was the ticking of a clock, and the only movement was the slow, methodical motion of his fingertips separating, then being put together again.
After what seemed a very long time, Holt stood up, put his hands on the desk and leaned forward. His voice was calm, his expression almost serene. "That is perfectly reasonable, Mister Wagner, perfectly reasonable. Except for one thing."
"Yes?" Wagner asked, already knowing the answer.
"God did send me. He did send me to warn that there is a reckoning coming. You cannot turn your back on God, you cannot ignore him. The consequences will be evident -- and terrible. I am not a prophet, Mister Wagner, just a man telling the truth. God's truth."
Wagner's expression was bland as he stood up, in turn. "Of course you are, Mister Holt. Now, if you will just wait in the outer office for a moment, we will get you on your way."
Holt's answering smile was a little sad. "I'm sure you will."
It's as if he knew, Wagner thought, as the door closed behind Holt. But that's ridiculous -- he's not rational. He couldn't know. He sat down, again, and opened his desk drawer, pulled out the form marked "Involuntary Commitment" -- and hesitated. What if he's telling the truth? He sat motionless for a moment or two, then shook it off and smiled mirthlessly as he began to write. The very idea was ridiculous. If he began to entertain such notions, he would have to send himself to the asylum. There was no doubt...
The Reich would last for a thousand years... and no prophet baker could say any differently.
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
Getting Mugged
by C. David McKirachan
Luke 10:25-37
I was coming down a stairway from an apartment in Oakland. I reached the second floor landing, hand on the banister, my boots' clomp echoing off the cement floors and plaster walls. The next feeling I had was pain in the back of my head. Then I noticed a gun barrel crammed against my nose. The barrel was a cavern. I could see the groves inside it swirling away into darkness. There was writing above the cavern, just behind the sight. I was surprised it was in script rather than square type. Getting your head slammed against the wall tends to make things a bit abstract.
"Dude! Pay attention! Your wallet!" The big guy yelling at me held me off the ground pinned against the wall. He punctuated his demands with the aforementioned gun. I think they call it pistol whipping. I was a graduate student. I didn't have any money, but I was in no shape to argue. He got my empty wallet, and I finally made it down the steps and out to the street.
Things would spin and then stand still. I could taste my own blood. I couldn't go back up those stairs, balance and all that. Besides, the guy I'd been there to see had moved. Then there was the big guy with the gun. No car, no money, no balance, bad neighborhood. I made it a block and sat down against a building, supporting my head with both hands.
I didn't know him. He had a white buzz cut. He was driving a pick up that had stopped shining a few years ago. He had to say everything twice. I couldn't get it the first time. He drove for a while and finally stopped in front of a row house. The large mutt whined at the front door. "I leave him in the house when I go out. He discourages idiots. You sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" We sat at a beat up wooden table in his kitchen. Hot coffee actually helped hold things together. After a while he laughed. "Here I am, a marine who doesn't know what to make of all this free love crap, and I bring home a hippie. My friends would laugh at me."
I spoke through my split lip, "I won't tell. You're a good Samaritan."
He smiled, "That would make you the idiot, right?"
After macaroni and cheese, he drove me back to my apartment in Berkeley. A couple weeks later I took him out to lunch. Burgers and beer and some shared insights. He told me that his first instinct had been to drive by me. Then he'd heard his wife whisper in his ear, " 'Go and do likewise.' She's been dead for ten years and she's still pushing me around. So I grumbled some and came back for you."
I smiled, "Semper Fi."
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, July 14, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 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.
