The Scribe
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"The Scribe" by Larry Winebrenner
"Something Better" by David O. Bales
"Open My Eyes" by Frank Ramirez
"A Psalm for Saints" by Larry Winebrenner
"Remembering" by W. Lamar Massingill
"Lazzie Jo" by Sandra Herrmann
What's Up This Week
Vision -- some of us are able to see beyond our present circumstances and grasp a greater reality, while others have difficulty seeing anything beyond what's right in front of them. As Paul Newman's character memorably puts it in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "I've got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals." But do any of us really have vision of God's kingdom? Several of the pieces in this week's edition of StoryShare address that theme: Larry Winebrenner tells of a scribe with the wisdom to understand Jesus' impatience over strict adherence to the law; David Bales paints a portrait of a slave girl who dreams of "something better"; Frank Ramirez describes an experience from his ministry that demonstrates how the Lord opens the eyes of the "blind" -- those who do not see the many ways we can communicate; Lamar Massingill muses on memory and on our call to act out the role God has given us in his cosmic drama; and Sandra Herrmann shares a touching story of a woman who has the vision to restore life for a little kitten.
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The Scribe
by Larry Winebrenner
Mark 12:28-34
Benjamin thought back to the days when he received his training as a scribe.
"Everyone can read," said the rabbi. "Only the scribe can write."
He smiled at the thought of the rabbi fibbing. Everyone could not read. There were women… and beggars… and even businessmen who grew up in other nations.
Nor were only scribes able to write. Sure, wealthy businessmen hired scribes to scribble for them. But it was not uncommon for a man to write identifying names on bundles of merchandise.
But Benjamin knew what the rabbi meant. Only a scribe was trained in the law sufficiently to write without unintentionally blaspheming the Lord. There were 631 laws one had to be careful not to break. He thought about that. How many times had he and his colleagues discussed -- no, argued about -- which of these laws were most important?
A favorite approach was to say, "Suppose you were in a situation where obeying one law meant breaking another, and not to obey in order to avoid breaking the other law meant you were breaking by not obeying?" The arguments often got very convoluted. They also got very silly. "Say a swarm of hornets were about to attack a man. You can thwart their attack by lighting a smudge pot so the man can stand in the smoke. If you don't do this, it is tantamount to murder. But, if it is the sabbath, do you avoid being a murderer by breaking another law and do sabbath work by lighting the smudge pot?" Silly and confusing.
Enough of this daydreaming. It was a beautiful day. Walking in the groves cleared his head. It actually inspired him. Hadn't the psalmist written, "The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them"?
When he considered the heavens in their starry glory and singing birds, when he examined the earth filled with green growth, the animals, and all creation, his voice exploded with the psalmist's words: "Bless the Lord, O my soul!"
Some of the younger scribes and Pharisees laughed when they heard his reedy voice holding forth. He was no great singer, but he was a great praiser -- and a great scribe. He knew the scriptures by heart. He was ready to be called rabbi when he celebrated his 40th birthday in a few weeks. Let the young pretenders laugh… some of them would never make the grade.
His walk eventually took him into the marketplace. Sometimes it was refreshing to listen to public debates among the young scribes. It gave him an opportunity to enlighten the more facile minds. It was one of his favorite activities. As often happened when he entered the marketplace, one such debate was under way. Instead of the scribes arguing among themselves, they had ganged up on a traveling preacher.
Benjamin had heard of the preacher -- Yeshua, or in that barbaric Greek tongue, Jesus. Thank goodness the man spoke Aramaic instead of the harsh Greek language. Yeshua had a reputation for knowing the scriptures as well as a fully trained scribe, so Benjamin listened to the debate with interest.
Like so many of the young scribes still trying to make a name for themselves, they were resorting to the tired old arguments so common they were boring. Yeshua seemed to be enjoying himself. Someone would ask him one of these commonplace arguments. Instead of the traditional response, Yeshua would introduce a telling scripture reference from a totally unexpected context.
"To obey is better than sacrifice," intoned one young scribe, lifting up King Saul's refusal to obey God's command to destroy everything, even the cattle in his battle against the Amalekites. "Does that mean sacrifices are of no value?"
Yeshua smiled, almost laughed. "What if sacrifice is not at issue," he responded, "like that pillar of salt on Mount Sodom?"
They had to ponder a moment. This seemed so out of context to their argument. Benjamin chuckled to himself. This Yeshua was a bright young man.
Before long the scribes they realized Yeshua was referring to Lot's wife. She was turned into a pillar of salt for disobedience. Benjamin decided it was time for a lesson. He walked up to the group. They parted like the Red Sea of old and smugly allowed him to pass. This scribe about to become a rabbi would put this thorn in his place.
Benjamin came face to face with Yeshua. "Which commandment is the first of all the commandments?"
Yeshua looked deeply into Benjamin's eyes. Benjamin felt his soul being examined. Without humor, Yeshua answered the question. It was not an argument. It was a straightforward answer to a serious question. "The first is 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "
Yeshua paused just a moment, just long enough for a response if there were to be one. Benjamin looked deeply into Yeshua's eyes, waiting for more. Yeshua didn't disappoint him.
"The second is this," he continued. " 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
Benjamin gave a slight nod. He addressed Yeshua with a term of respect, but he spoke to the young scribes. "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself' -- this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
Yeshua smiled. The words he said to Benjamin were burned into the scribe's soul. "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
The young scribes looked from Benjamin to Yeshua and back again. They wandered off, leaving the two men standing there. But they never again engaged Yeshua in debate.
Larry Winebrenner is now retired and living in Miami Gardens, Florida. He taught for 33 years at Miami-Dade Community College, and served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Larry is currently active at First United Methodist Church in downtown Miami, where he leads discussion in an adult fellowship group on Sunday mornings and preaches occasionally. He has authored two college textbooks, written four novels, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
Something Better
by David O. Bales
Hebrews 9:11-14
My great-aunt, Morning Horn Smith, dictated the following to me November 1, 1928. She spoke a slave dialect. However, I have throughout rendered her words into the usual English equivalents and occasionally altered her grammar to make her story more understandable in this century.
(Signed) Elizabeth Donnally Marsano
My mother named me "Morning" because she said she hoped better things would come for me. When necessary to pretend we had a last name, we used that of our owner, William Horn.
What do I remember about the Civil War? Well, I was young. We didn't know we lived in Georgia. We didn't know about the United States and the Confederacy, although in a number of ways we heard that freedom lay in the north. Yet the master's people never mentioned the points of the compass. For direction the overseer would just say, "Go to the new field," or "the field by the river." No slave I talked with knew exactly what waited in the north or how far it was, only that it was freedom.
But of the war I most remember my bitterness when it was over. My father was sold away from the plantation when I was small. I barely remembered him. Today I have no specific memories of him, just a fussy bubble. (Here my aunt moved her hands in a large circle.)
My mother died the spring before, so I'd been on my own a year and survived the best I could. I sewed for my fellow slaves to barter for food or help in fixing the cabin. I possessed only a few pieces of cloth and had worked weeks to get another needle and more thread. Any shred of fabric went into my small bag, and I found a way to sew scraps into clothing for someone. The best work I did earned me a small knife.
The master and his wife had begun to show concern for the slave quarter. The overseer had gone off to the war half a year before, and after that the master himself had to herd us to the fields six mornings a week and set us quotas of work. Every day he seemed slower and sadder, especially as white people rode to our plantation and spoke excitedly about the "enemy."
My hope began when the master and his wife walked through our slave quarter one Sunday and saw me sewing a shirt for Betty -- a little girl with only one eye that worked. The master's wife walked over and saw my sewing and said, "That's very good, child. Maybe you could serve in our home." She smiled, yet she wasn't looking at me but to the master. They walked away, but my heart was pounding. Here was the only chance for a slave to get out of field work!
From that day I improved my sewing. Hope does such things. And I even charged less in order to spend every evening and Sunday sewing outside the cabin, waiting for the master and his wife to arrive and promote me to the master's house.
The chance to leave the fields and enter the house was my every dream -- both night and day. And then it came: The master one day charged into the fields and grabbed two men, another woman, and me. "Get to the house quick." I thought that was it -- life now begins in the big house.
But when we got there the master yelled at us to hurry and help the family pack into four wagons. Even the old, white grandfather was cursing us to hurry and the lash that hadn't been heard for half a year was now in the master's hand, and he went from one to the next of us to lay open our backs. It made no difference how quickly we worked or how we cried or begged for mercy.
All this did his family no good. Union troops seemed to flow from the forest and their cavalry clattered up to the house. I don't know what happened to them. The officer sent us slaves away and announced we were free and could leave. We stood there dumbfounded. "Leave," he shouted. One of the slaves asked, "Where?" He answered simply, "Go north." That was the only dealings I had with the Union Army.
We found the rest of the slaves gathered at the quarters, and when we saw the bales of cotton ablaze at the barn, we figured everything and everyone would soon burn. We left. That afternoon we met Confederate troops. We told them what happened but it made no difference. One short officer on a horse started pounding his shirt and pants with his hat, knocking the dust off. "You see how easy that Georgia dirt sprays off me? That's how slick it will be to kill you all. You get towards home." And we did, at least until evening. There were about 30 slaves. Seven of us decided not to return but to walk north separately, thinking that individually we had a better chance to hide and scrounge food.
So there I was, having been discovered by the Civil War. For weeks I walked north with a bag twice as big as my foot, in which I had fabric, four needles, thread, and a little knife. I was hungry, exhausted, and confused.
"Morning," my mama called me. Something better coming for me! I had worked for something better, had my eyes set on the only advancement possible for a slave. Now, here I walked -- alone, bleak of mind, sour of spirit, worn of soul.
Can you imagine (here my aunt laughed longer than I'd ever heard her laugh), can you imagine working harder to be a good slave, thinking there was nothing better?
David O. Bales was a Presbyterian minister for 33 years. Recently retired as the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Ontario, Oregon, he is also a freelance writer and editor for Stephen Ministries and Tebunah Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching Great Texts, and Interpretation, and he is the author of the CSS titles Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story and Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace.
Open My Eyes
by Frank Ramirez
Psalm 146
… the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
-- Psalm 146:8
There are different kinds of blindness that require different interventions from God in order for us to be healed. Some of us see so well we don't even guess that we are blind.
At every stage of my ministry I've always tried to include something on my calendar that doesn't necessarily benefit the church I am serving. Right now that is a jail ministry. Some years ago when I was a pastor in Indiana, I led a Bible study at a local nursing home. Once a week I would show up, read a few verses from the Bible, and talk. Though I would pause on occasion and ask if there were questions and comments, there was usually silence that I interpreted as appreciation.
In addition to talking about the scripture passage I might talk about the weather, what was happening in the fields of corn and soybeans that covered the local landscape, how children were dressing for school, or whatever came to mind. I was trying to bring a little of the outside into a closed place. Most of those present were in wheelchairs and appreciated a breath of fresh air from the larger world.
After a half-hour I would take time and listen to whatever the residents wanted to tell me. But there was one woman who could say nothing, though I sensed she had a lot to say. She was much younger than most of the residents, but was suffering from a degenerative disease that locked her mouth in an open smile and prevented her from speaking. She couldn't tell people she wanted to go to the Bible study, so if she was not there I would seek her out. Then I'd talk some more, and she'd listen.
She could respond to my questions on a nodding basis, yes or no. Sometimes it seemed like she was trying to tell me something, but I could not understand her and I was frustrated that she couldn't speak to me.
Then one night I had a dream. In the dream I came to the nursing home and discovered she'd been healed enough to be able to talk. She could speak perfectly clearly. I was overjoyed! What a great example of God's goodness… except that in the dream I kept interrupting her before she could finish a sentence. She'd say something and I'd finish it, or guess what she was about to say, at which point she would shake her head no, that wasn't it. She couldn't get a word in edgewise. In this dream a lot less communication went on than in our regular visits. She grew frustrated and I was puzzled. Then I woke up.
I thought about the dream for a good long while, and finally described it to my wife. She laughed and said that to her the meaning was pretty clear. In her mind the dream meant that the woman was already speaking to me clearly. The problem was that I just wasn't listening patiently enough.
She was right. Once I realized this, it was amazing how clearly this woman was communicating even though she could not form words as we know them. I'd been blind on this score, simply not seeing the possibilities of communicating just because some things weren't possible.
The Psalmist says that the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord also opens the brains of some of us who just aren't paying attention well enough. I've tried to keep this lesson front and center in my ministry with all people, not just the disabled.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly thirty years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
A Psalm for Saints
by Larry Winebrenner
Psalm 146
In choosing a psalm for saints, the first criteria must be praise. Some psalms cry out to the Lord for help, often for mercy. Others, royal psalms, proclaim the majesty of the king. Still others cry for victory over enemies.
The saint, however, lifts up his or her voice in praise. It is not praise for the moment. It is more akin to the hymn John Wesley sang on his death bed:
I'll praise my Maker while I've breath,
And when my voice is lost in death,
Praise shall employ my nobler powers.
And, like Wesley, the saint will sing praises "all my life long." A psalm for saints will also recognize the limitations of human rulers. They are compelled to say about humans with the book of Job:
His roots dry up below and his branches wither above.
The memory of him perishes from the earth; he has no name in the land.
Rather than crying for help, the psalm for saints extols the happiness of those who have the Lord as their helper. The psalm specifies the action of God's mercy and creation:
* created heaven and earth
* formed the sea, and all that is in them
* is faithful forever
* executes justice for the oppressed
* gives food to the hungry
* sets the prisoners free
* opens the eyes of the blind
* lifts up those who are bowed down
The psalm of the saint proclaims God's love for the righteous. In the psalm of the saint, the writer recognizes that the Lord even watches over the strangers. That was part of the Mosaic Code, but a practice among the Patriarchs even before Moses received the Law. God is concerned for the orphan in the saint's psalm. The widow, too, is remembered in the saint's psalm.
But what about the way of the wicked? In the psalm of the saint, God brings that way to ruin.
Now, one might write such a psalm to be read on All Saints Day. Or, one might turn to the book of psalms and read Psalm 146.
Larry Winebrenner is a retired pastor and college teacher who lives in Miami Gardens, Florida.
Remembering
by W. Lamar Massingill
Revelation 21:1-6a
Memory is a powerful thing. It's the stuff poets and writers and lyricists make powerfully healing stories and verses out of. Memory is also a crucial component of our own identities. Carlyle Marney once said that there are more than 80 million generations behind each one of us, and that we can't bless ourselves until we learn to bless our own origins. Actually, it's the last thing that our Lord told us to do when we gathered around the table: "As you do this, remember me."
Memory is a powerful thing. It is so because every single tidbit of our past contributes in some way to our present and future. It acts to shape and mold them in some way, and even acts to heal them.
The word "re-member" is not hard to figure out. It simply means to make members again. If we have forgotten some important part of our past or some important person in our past, then we make them members again, and we experience the healing power they once gave to our lives.
I've said many times in lectures, books, and from my own pulpit that quality lives forever, even though those who gave it to us are gone. Quality is immortal. It keeps changing and healing us. And the people who gave it to us are revered because of their gifts and their legacies to us. As Dan Fogelberg sang of his father:
The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old,
But his blood runs through my instrument, and his song is in my soul.
My own father died on April 28 of this year -- and I know that, on the Sunday we celebrate All Saints as one of the candles will be lit in his memory, I will remember that his "blood runs through my instrument" as well. His "song is in my soul" too, and I am a living legacy to him who has given me countless gifts of encouragement, growth, and healing. None of us is original, really. Only God is into originality. But what we know we have learned from both mentors who have gone before us and colleagues who journey with us.
This is the whole point of All Saints. The saints are still present in many ways in our lives, and always will be. We exist as legacies to those saints that, hopefully, we mention on the Sunday we celebrate All Saints or on the actual day of All Saints. Their blood runs through our instruments. Their song remains in our souls. And they are with the one whose life heals us all, and the one who first commanded us to remember.
There are two images that convey this blessed hope to me. The first is from the pen of a professor named Patrick Henry. His minister father had died prematurely in 1983, and it took years for his son to come to terms with the enormity of this unexpected tragedy. However, long after the initial event, Patrick visited the cemetery in Dallas where his father's body had been interred, and sitting there alone and deep in thought, it came to him that a cemetery was more like a seaside beach than anything else. Suddenly he sensed being on the shoreline of the ocean of eternity, and that the one he had loved had not ceased to be at all but had moved "farther on and deeper in" to the love and mercy of the Holy One. He began to see the tombstones around him as seashells, and the cemetery lost its terror and became yet another of the boundaries that we humans are ever crossing in our ongoing journey toward Home.
I like that image: the cemetery as seashore. I used to sit on the back deck of our home on Dauphin Island and listen to the waves break onto the beach. It became to me an image of what it must sound like to hear the breath of God. "Simply beautiful" doesn't do the calming sound justice.
The second image has to do with people under whose memory we "live, move, and have our being." I remember that back in the sixth grade I had a part in the school play, namely, to recite Psalm 100. When I got up to do it in front of all those people, I forgot the entire Psalm after I had perfectly done the first verse! You may have guessed already when I remembered that: when I forgot the Lord's Prayer a couple of weeks ago during my own pastoral prayer!
The entire experience at my sixth-grade school play reminded me of a story Bob Benson told in his book Laughter in the Walls. It seems his son was a stutterer, but nonetheless they gave him three lines in the school play. And they were at the last scene in the play, which means that his son must have been terribly nervous about this for a long time. As you and I both know, waiting is the worst thing in the world regarding the things we have to do in front of people. Bob's son was not the star, to be sure, but this was a moment for him. After that long and painfully nervous wait, he said his lines and he said them well. Not too soon, not too late, not too loud, not too soft, but just right -- he said his lines!
Folks, we're all just bit players in this drama of human existence, not stars of the show in any way. But God has generously given us lines to speak in this wonderful drama, this pageant of life. And when the curtain falls and the drama ends and the stage is vacant at last, I don't want to ask for a critic's raves or to be star of the show in any way. I only hope that the Holy One would say to me as I arrive in the Place described in the Revelation, as he has already said to my Dad and countless others: "He said his lines, and he said them well. Not too soon, not too late, not too loud, not too soft, but just right -- he said his lines!"
This is not only the high calling of God for these, but for us too! Blessed be He!
W. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, is now the minister at Richton United Methodist Church in Richton, Mississippi. He also serves as religion editor for the Magnolia Gazette and as a guest columnist for the United Methodist Advocate and the Richton Dispatch. Massengill is the author of two books, New Eyes: A Spirituality of Identity Formation and Soul Places, and he has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He is a graduate of William Carey University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Lazzie Jo
by Sandra Herrmann
John 11:32-44
Matthew was one of those kids who are always doing things no adult could quite understand. He had more ways of getting in trouble than most other boys of the same age -- so it was just one more of those things that make even parents look at their child and wonder.
It was a beautiful, summer day, and a bunch of us were gathered at the McCarthy house. They had a huge yard, and had set up a croquet course on one side of the house and a large wading pool on the other side. In retrospect it wasn't the best set-up, the children using the pool out of sight of those of us playing croquet. But both activities could be overseen from the deck on the back of the house. It was just that Betty was busy carrying food from the kitchen to the tables on the deck, not paying quite enough attention.
It was Bethany who raised the alarm. She started screaming -- and of course every adult in the area came running. It was a blood-curdling cry for help. We expected the worst, and in a way we were right, though none of the children were hurt or in danger.
Matthew was holding a kitten that was clearly dead… dead and soaking wet. Brian, his dad, was horrified. "Matthew, what happened here?"
In contrast to his sister, Matthew was grinning from ear to ear as only a three-year-old can. "I baptized the kitty," he said, holding it up.
Brian was clearly horrified. "What did you do?" he cried. "You drowned the kitten!" Matthew still hadn't caught up with the emotional swirl around him. "No, Daddy, I baptized him. Like Jesus."
Lily pushed aside a couple of people and reached out her hands. "Give me the kitty, Matthew," she said firmly, and Matthew did. Lily held the kitten upside-down for a moment, patting it on the back. Some water poured out of the kitten's mouth. Then she started compressing the kitten's chest, 1-2-3-4-5, and she blew gently into the kitten, her mouth covered its entire muzzle easily. Then back to compressions: 1-2-3-4-5; and another breath, a soft gentle puff. And again. And again. And again. None of us thought this would work, though we counted with her and watched, transfixed, as she continued CPR on a kitten that was barely larger than her hand.
We had all given up, all except Lily. And then the kitten sneezed, gurgled, and retched up a large amount of water. It retched again, coughed, lifted its head, and looked at Lily, then around the circle of anxious faces.
Everyone cheered and shouted! Then someone said, "You need to name that kitten Lazarus! And Lily, what a heroine you are! You brought that kitten back to life!"
Lily didn't deny it. When she had taken the limp body from Matthew, she had felt for a pulse, but there wasn't the slightest beat of life. Smiling at the kitten, she took a towel someone had fetched and wrapped up the kitten, holding it firmly against her chest. She continued to pat the kitten on the back ever so gently.
"Matthew," she said, "kittens don't like water. Don't ever put a kitten in water again, okay?"
By now Matthew understood that everyone was upset with him. He nodded soberly. Betty knelt down in front of him and looked him in the eye. "The water killed the kitten, Matthew. Don't ever hold anything under the water like that. Understand?" Matthew burst into tears, and at that sign of repentance, everyone relaxed.
"So how does it feel to save a life, Lily?" asked Brian.
"It always feels good… to share your own breath of life, to get the spark back into a little body. I've done it before, at the hospital. But I've never helped anything so small live again!" She laughed as she rubbed the little body and dried its fur. "But as for calling the kitten Lazarus, it'll have to be Lazzie Jo. It's a she."
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. She is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana.
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StoryShare, November 1, 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
"The Scribe" by Larry Winebrenner
"Something Better" by David O. Bales
"Open My Eyes" by Frank Ramirez
"A Psalm for Saints" by Larry Winebrenner
"Remembering" by W. Lamar Massingill
"Lazzie Jo" by Sandra Herrmann
What's Up This Week
Vision -- some of us are able to see beyond our present circumstances and grasp a greater reality, while others have difficulty seeing anything beyond what's right in front of them. As Paul Newman's character memorably puts it in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "I've got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals." But do any of us really have vision of God's kingdom? Several of the pieces in this week's edition of StoryShare address that theme: Larry Winebrenner tells of a scribe with the wisdom to understand Jesus' impatience over strict adherence to the law; David Bales paints a portrait of a slave girl who dreams of "something better"; Frank Ramirez describes an experience from his ministry that demonstrates how the Lord opens the eyes of the "blind" -- those who do not see the many ways we can communicate; Lamar Massingill muses on memory and on our call to act out the role God has given us in his cosmic drama; and Sandra Herrmann shares a touching story of a woman who has the vision to restore life for a little kitten.
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The Scribe
by Larry Winebrenner
Mark 12:28-34
Benjamin thought back to the days when he received his training as a scribe.
"Everyone can read," said the rabbi. "Only the scribe can write."
He smiled at the thought of the rabbi fibbing. Everyone could not read. There were women… and beggars… and even businessmen who grew up in other nations.
Nor were only scribes able to write. Sure, wealthy businessmen hired scribes to scribble for them. But it was not uncommon for a man to write identifying names on bundles of merchandise.
But Benjamin knew what the rabbi meant. Only a scribe was trained in the law sufficiently to write without unintentionally blaspheming the Lord. There were 631 laws one had to be careful not to break. He thought about that. How many times had he and his colleagues discussed -- no, argued about -- which of these laws were most important?
A favorite approach was to say, "Suppose you were in a situation where obeying one law meant breaking another, and not to obey in order to avoid breaking the other law meant you were breaking by not obeying?" The arguments often got very convoluted. They also got very silly. "Say a swarm of hornets were about to attack a man. You can thwart their attack by lighting a smudge pot so the man can stand in the smoke. If you don't do this, it is tantamount to murder. But, if it is the sabbath, do you avoid being a murderer by breaking another law and do sabbath work by lighting the smudge pot?" Silly and confusing.
Enough of this daydreaming. It was a beautiful day. Walking in the groves cleared his head. It actually inspired him. Hadn't the psalmist written, "The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them"?
When he considered the heavens in their starry glory and singing birds, when he examined the earth filled with green growth, the animals, and all creation, his voice exploded with the psalmist's words: "Bless the Lord, O my soul!"
Some of the younger scribes and Pharisees laughed when they heard his reedy voice holding forth. He was no great singer, but he was a great praiser -- and a great scribe. He knew the scriptures by heart. He was ready to be called rabbi when he celebrated his 40th birthday in a few weeks. Let the young pretenders laugh… some of them would never make the grade.
His walk eventually took him into the marketplace. Sometimes it was refreshing to listen to public debates among the young scribes. It gave him an opportunity to enlighten the more facile minds. It was one of his favorite activities. As often happened when he entered the marketplace, one such debate was under way. Instead of the scribes arguing among themselves, they had ganged up on a traveling preacher.
Benjamin had heard of the preacher -- Yeshua, or in that barbaric Greek tongue, Jesus. Thank goodness the man spoke Aramaic instead of the harsh Greek language. Yeshua had a reputation for knowing the scriptures as well as a fully trained scribe, so Benjamin listened to the debate with interest.
Like so many of the young scribes still trying to make a name for themselves, they were resorting to the tired old arguments so common they were boring. Yeshua seemed to be enjoying himself. Someone would ask him one of these commonplace arguments. Instead of the traditional response, Yeshua would introduce a telling scripture reference from a totally unexpected context.
"To obey is better than sacrifice," intoned one young scribe, lifting up King Saul's refusal to obey God's command to destroy everything, even the cattle in his battle against the Amalekites. "Does that mean sacrifices are of no value?"
Yeshua smiled, almost laughed. "What if sacrifice is not at issue," he responded, "like that pillar of salt on Mount Sodom?"
They had to ponder a moment. This seemed so out of context to their argument. Benjamin chuckled to himself. This Yeshua was a bright young man.
Before long the scribes they realized Yeshua was referring to Lot's wife. She was turned into a pillar of salt for disobedience. Benjamin decided it was time for a lesson. He walked up to the group. They parted like the Red Sea of old and smugly allowed him to pass. This scribe about to become a rabbi would put this thorn in his place.
Benjamin came face to face with Yeshua. "Which commandment is the first of all the commandments?"
Yeshua looked deeply into Benjamin's eyes. Benjamin felt his soul being examined. Without humor, Yeshua answered the question. It was not an argument. It was a straightforward answer to a serious question. "The first is 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "
Yeshua paused just a moment, just long enough for a response if there were to be one. Benjamin looked deeply into Yeshua's eyes, waiting for more. Yeshua didn't disappoint him.
"The second is this," he continued. " 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
Benjamin gave a slight nod. He addressed Yeshua with a term of respect, but he spoke to the young scribes. "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself' -- this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
Yeshua smiled. The words he said to Benjamin were burned into the scribe's soul. "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
The young scribes looked from Benjamin to Yeshua and back again. They wandered off, leaving the two men standing there. But they never again engaged Yeshua in debate.
Larry Winebrenner is now retired and living in Miami Gardens, Florida. He taught for 33 years at Miami-Dade Community College, and served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Larry is currently active at First United Methodist Church in downtown Miami, where he leads discussion in an adult fellowship group on Sunday mornings and preaches occasionally. He has authored two college textbooks, written four novels, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
Something Better
by David O. Bales
Hebrews 9:11-14
My great-aunt, Morning Horn Smith, dictated the following to me November 1, 1928. She spoke a slave dialect. However, I have throughout rendered her words into the usual English equivalents and occasionally altered her grammar to make her story more understandable in this century.
(Signed) Elizabeth Donnally Marsano
My mother named me "Morning" because she said she hoped better things would come for me. When necessary to pretend we had a last name, we used that of our owner, William Horn.
What do I remember about the Civil War? Well, I was young. We didn't know we lived in Georgia. We didn't know about the United States and the Confederacy, although in a number of ways we heard that freedom lay in the north. Yet the master's people never mentioned the points of the compass. For direction the overseer would just say, "Go to the new field," or "the field by the river." No slave I talked with knew exactly what waited in the north or how far it was, only that it was freedom.
But of the war I most remember my bitterness when it was over. My father was sold away from the plantation when I was small. I barely remembered him. Today I have no specific memories of him, just a fussy bubble. (Here my aunt moved her hands in a large circle.)
My mother died the spring before, so I'd been on my own a year and survived the best I could. I sewed for my fellow slaves to barter for food or help in fixing the cabin. I possessed only a few pieces of cloth and had worked weeks to get another needle and more thread. Any shred of fabric went into my small bag, and I found a way to sew scraps into clothing for someone. The best work I did earned me a small knife.
The master and his wife had begun to show concern for the slave quarter. The overseer had gone off to the war half a year before, and after that the master himself had to herd us to the fields six mornings a week and set us quotas of work. Every day he seemed slower and sadder, especially as white people rode to our plantation and spoke excitedly about the "enemy."
My hope began when the master and his wife walked through our slave quarter one Sunday and saw me sewing a shirt for Betty -- a little girl with only one eye that worked. The master's wife walked over and saw my sewing and said, "That's very good, child. Maybe you could serve in our home." She smiled, yet she wasn't looking at me but to the master. They walked away, but my heart was pounding. Here was the only chance for a slave to get out of field work!
From that day I improved my sewing. Hope does such things. And I even charged less in order to spend every evening and Sunday sewing outside the cabin, waiting for the master and his wife to arrive and promote me to the master's house.
The chance to leave the fields and enter the house was my every dream -- both night and day. And then it came: The master one day charged into the fields and grabbed two men, another woman, and me. "Get to the house quick." I thought that was it -- life now begins in the big house.
But when we got there the master yelled at us to hurry and help the family pack into four wagons. Even the old, white grandfather was cursing us to hurry and the lash that hadn't been heard for half a year was now in the master's hand, and he went from one to the next of us to lay open our backs. It made no difference how quickly we worked or how we cried or begged for mercy.
All this did his family no good. Union troops seemed to flow from the forest and their cavalry clattered up to the house. I don't know what happened to them. The officer sent us slaves away and announced we were free and could leave. We stood there dumbfounded. "Leave," he shouted. One of the slaves asked, "Where?" He answered simply, "Go north." That was the only dealings I had with the Union Army.
We found the rest of the slaves gathered at the quarters, and when we saw the bales of cotton ablaze at the barn, we figured everything and everyone would soon burn. We left. That afternoon we met Confederate troops. We told them what happened but it made no difference. One short officer on a horse started pounding his shirt and pants with his hat, knocking the dust off. "You see how easy that Georgia dirt sprays off me? That's how slick it will be to kill you all. You get towards home." And we did, at least until evening. There were about 30 slaves. Seven of us decided not to return but to walk north separately, thinking that individually we had a better chance to hide and scrounge food.
So there I was, having been discovered by the Civil War. For weeks I walked north with a bag twice as big as my foot, in which I had fabric, four needles, thread, and a little knife. I was hungry, exhausted, and confused.
"Morning," my mama called me. Something better coming for me! I had worked for something better, had my eyes set on the only advancement possible for a slave. Now, here I walked -- alone, bleak of mind, sour of spirit, worn of soul.
Can you imagine (here my aunt laughed longer than I'd ever heard her laugh), can you imagine working harder to be a good slave, thinking there was nothing better?
David O. Bales was a Presbyterian minister for 33 years. Recently retired as the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Ontario, Oregon, he is also a freelance writer and editor for Stephen Ministries and Tebunah Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching Great Texts, and Interpretation, and he is the author of the CSS titles Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story and Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace.
Open My Eyes
by Frank Ramirez
Psalm 146
… the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
-- Psalm 146:8
There are different kinds of blindness that require different interventions from God in order for us to be healed. Some of us see so well we don't even guess that we are blind.
At every stage of my ministry I've always tried to include something on my calendar that doesn't necessarily benefit the church I am serving. Right now that is a jail ministry. Some years ago when I was a pastor in Indiana, I led a Bible study at a local nursing home. Once a week I would show up, read a few verses from the Bible, and talk. Though I would pause on occasion and ask if there were questions and comments, there was usually silence that I interpreted as appreciation.
In addition to talking about the scripture passage I might talk about the weather, what was happening in the fields of corn and soybeans that covered the local landscape, how children were dressing for school, or whatever came to mind. I was trying to bring a little of the outside into a closed place. Most of those present were in wheelchairs and appreciated a breath of fresh air from the larger world.
After a half-hour I would take time and listen to whatever the residents wanted to tell me. But there was one woman who could say nothing, though I sensed she had a lot to say. She was much younger than most of the residents, but was suffering from a degenerative disease that locked her mouth in an open smile and prevented her from speaking. She couldn't tell people she wanted to go to the Bible study, so if she was not there I would seek her out. Then I'd talk some more, and she'd listen.
She could respond to my questions on a nodding basis, yes or no. Sometimes it seemed like she was trying to tell me something, but I could not understand her and I was frustrated that she couldn't speak to me.
Then one night I had a dream. In the dream I came to the nursing home and discovered she'd been healed enough to be able to talk. She could speak perfectly clearly. I was overjoyed! What a great example of God's goodness… except that in the dream I kept interrupting her before she could finish a sentence. She'd say something and I'd finish it, or guess what she was about to say, at which point she would shake her head no, that wasn't it. She couldn't get a word in edgewise. In this dream a lot less communication went on than in our regular visits. She grew frustrated and I was puzzled. Then I woke up.
I thought about the dream for a good long while, and finally described it to my wife. She laughed and said that to her the meaning was pretty clear. In her mind the dream meant that the woman was already speaking to me clearly. The problem was that I just wasn't listening patiently enough.
She was right. Once I realized this, it was amazing how clearly this woman was communicating even though she could not form words as we know them. I'd been blind on this score, simply not seeing the possibilities of communicating just because some things weren't possible.
The Psalmist says that the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord also opens the brains of some of us who just aren't paying attention well enough. I've tried to keep this lesson front and center in my ministry with all people, not just the disabled.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly thirty years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
A Psalm for Saints
by Larry Winebrenner
Psalm 146
In choosing a psalm for saints, the first criteria must be praise. Some psalms cry out to the Lord for help, often for mercy. Others, royal psalms, proclaim the majesty of the king. Still others cry for victory over enemies.
The saint, however, lifts up his or her voice in praise. It is not praise for the moment. It is more akin to the hymn John Wesley sang on his death bed:
I'll praise my Maker while I've breath,
And when my voice is lost in death,
Praise shall employ my nobler powers.
And, like Wesley, the saint will sing praises "all my life long." A psalm for saints will also recognize the limitations of human rulers. They are compelled to say about humans with the book of Job:
His roots dry up below and his branches wither above.
The memory of him perishes from the earth; he has no name in the land.
Rather than crying for help, the psalm for saints extols the happiness of those who have the Lord as their helper. The psalm specifies the action of God's mercy and creation:
* created heaven and earth
* formed the sea, and all that is in them
* is faithful forever
* executes justice for the oppressed
* gives food to the hungry
* sets the prisoners free
* opens the eyes of the blind
* lifts up those who are bowed down
The psalm of the saint proclaims God's love for the righteous. In the psalm of the saint, the writer recognizes that the Lord even watches over the strangers. That was part of the Mosaic Code, but a practice among the Patriarchs even before Moses received the Law. God is concerned for the orphan in the saint's psalm. The widow, too, is remembered in the saint's psalm.
But what about the way of the wicked? In the psalm of the saint, God brings that way to ruin.
Now, one might write such a psalm to be read on All Saints Day. Or, one might turn to the book of psalms and read Psalm 146.
Larry Winebrenner is a retired pastor and college teacher who lives in Miami Gardens, Florida.
Remembering
by W. Lamar Massingill
Revelation 21:1-6a
Memory is a powerful thing. It's the stuff poets and writers and lyricists make powerfully healing stories and verses out of. Memory is also a crucial component of our own identities. Carlyle Marney once said that there are more than 80 million generations behind each one of us, and that we can't bless ourselves until we learn to bless our own origins. Actually, it's the last thing that our Lord told us to do when we gathered around the table: "As you do this, remember me."
Memory is a powerful thing. It is so because every single tidbit of our past contributes in some way to our present and future. It acts to shape and mold them in some way, and even acts to heal them.
The word "re-member" is not hard to figure out. It simply means to make members again. If we have forgotten some important part of our past or some important person in our past, then we make them members again, and we experience the healing power they once gave to our lives.
I've said many times in lectures, books, and from my own pulpit that quality lives forever, even though those who gave it to us are gone. Quality is immortal. It keeps changing and healing us. And the people who gave it to us are revered because of their gifts and their legacies to us. As Dan Fogelberg sang of his father:
The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old,
But his blood runs through my instrument, and his song is in my soul.
My own father died on April 28 of this year -- and I know that, on the Sunday we celebrate All Saints as one of the candles will be lit in his memory, I will remember that his "blood runs through my instrument" as well. His "song is in my soul" too, and I am a living legacy to him who has given me countless gifts of encouragement, growth, and healing. None of us is original, really. Only God is into originality. But what we know we have learned from both mentors who have gone before us and colleagues who journey with us.
This is the whole point of All Saints. The saints are still present in many ways in our lives, and always will be. We exist as legacies to those saints that, hopefully, we mention on the Sunday we celebrate All Saints or on the actual day of All Saints. Their blood runs through our instruments. Their song remains in our souls. And they are with the one whose life heals us all, and the one who first commanded us to remember.
There are two images that convey this blessed hope to me. The first is from the pen of a professor named Patrick Henry. His minister father had died prematurely in 1983, and it took years for his son to come to terms with the enormity of this unexpected tragedy. However, long after the initial event, Patrick visited the cemetery in Dallas where his father's body had been interred, and sitting there alone and deep in thought, it came to him that a cemetery was more like a seaside beach than anything else. Suddenly he sensed being on the shoreline of the ocean of eternity, and that the one he had loved had not ceased to be at all but had moved "farther on and deeper in" to the love and mercy of the Holy One. He began to see the tombstones around him as seashells, and the cemetery lost its terror and became yet another of the boundaries that we humans are ever crossing in our ongoing journey toward Home.
I like that image: the cemetery as seashore. I used to sit on the back deck of our home on Dauphin Island and listen to the waves break onto the beach. It became to me an image of what it must sound like to hear the breath of God. "Simply beautiful" doesn't do the calming sound justice.
The second image has to do with people under whose memory we "live, move, and have our being." I remember that back in the sixth grade I had a part in the school play, namely, to recite Psalm 100. When I got up to do it in front of all those people, I forgot the entire Psalm after I had perfectly done the first verse! You may have guessed already when I remembered that: when I forgot the Lord's Prayer a couple of weeks ago during my own pastoral prayer!
The entire experience at my sixth-grade school play reminded me of a story Bob Benson told in his book Laughter in the Walls. It seems his son was a stutterer, but nonetheless they gave him three lines in the school play. And they were at the last scene in the play, which means that his son must have been terribly nervous about this for a long time. As you and I both know, waiting is the worst thing in the world regarding the things we have to do in front of people. Bob's son was not the star, to be sure, but this was a moment for him. After that long and painfully nervous wait, he said his lines and he said them well. Not too soon, not too late, not too loud, not too soft, but just right -- he said his lines!
Folks, we're all just bit players in this drama of human existence, not stars of the show in any way. But God has generously given us lines to speak in this wonderful drama, this pageant of life. And when the curtain falls and the drama ends and the stage is vacant at last, I don't want to ask for a critic's raves or to be star of the show in any way. I only hope that the Holy One would say to me as I arrive in the Place described in the Revelation, as he has already said to my Dad and countless others: "He said his lines, and he said them well. Not too soon, not too late, not too loud, not too soft, but just right -- he said his lines!"
This is not only the high calling of God for these, but for us too! Blessed be He!
W. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, is now the minister at Richton United Methodist Church in Richton, Mississippi. He also serves as religion editor for the Magnolia Gazette and as a guest columnist for the United Methodist Advocate and the Richton Dispatch. Massengill is the author of two books, New Eyes: A Spirituality of Identity Formation and Soul Places, and he has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He is a graduate of William Carey University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Lazzie Jo
by Sandra Herrmann
John 11:32-44
Matthew was one of those kids who are always doing things no adult could quite understand. He had more ways of getting in trouble than most other boys of the same age -- so it was just one more of those things that make even parents look at their child and wonder.
It was a beautiful, summer day, and a bunch of us were gathered at the McCarthy house. They had a huge yard, and had set up a croquet course on one side of the house and a large wading pool on the other side. In retrospect it wasn't the best set-up, the children using the pool out of sight of those of us playing croquet. But both activities could be overseen from the deck on the back of the house. It was just that Betty was busy carrying food from the kitchen to the tables on the deck, not paying quite enough attention.
It was Bethany who raised the alarm. She started screaming -- and of course every adult in the area came running. It was a blood-curdling cry for help. We expected the worst, and in a way we were right, though none of the children were hurt or in danger.
Matthew was holding a kitten that was clearly dead… dead and soaking wet. Brian, his dad, was horrified. "Matthew, what happened here?"
In contrast to his sister, Matthew was grinning from ear to ear as only a three-year-old can. "I baptized the kitty," he said, holding it up.
Brian was clearly horrified. "What did you do?" he cried. "You drowned the kitten!" Matthew still hadn't caught up with the emotional swirl around him. "No, Daddy, I baptized him. Like Jesus."
Lily pushed aside a couple of people and reached out her hands. "Give me the kitty, Matthew," she said firmly, and Matthew did. Lily held the kitten upside-down for a moment, patting it on the back. Some water poured out of the kitten's mouth. Then she started compressing the kitten's chest, 1-2-3-4-5, and she blew gently into the kitten, her mouth covered its entire muzzle easily. Then back to compressions: 1-2-3-4-5; and another breath, a soft gentle puff. And again. And again. And again. None of us thought this would work, though we counted with her and watched, transfixed, as she continued CPR on a kitten that was barely larger than her hand.
We had all given up, all except Lily. And then the kitten sneezed, gurgled, and retched up a large amount of water. It retched again, coughed, lifted its head, and looked at Lily, then around the circle of anxious faces.
Everyone cheered and shouted! Then someone said, "You need to name that kitten Lazarus! And Lily, what a heroine you are! You brought that kitten back to life!"
Lily didn't deny it. When she had taken the limp body from Matthew, she had felt for a pulse, but there wasn't the slightest beat of life. Smiling at the kitten, she took a towel someone had fetched and wrapped up the kitten, holding it firmly against her chest. She continued to pat the kitten on the back ever so gently.
"Matthew," she said, "kittens don't like water. Don't ever put a kitten in water again, okay?"
By now Matthew understood that everyone was upset with him. He nodded soberly. Betty knelt down in front of him and looked him in the eye. "The water killed the kitten, Matthew. Don't ever hold anything under the water like that. Understand?" Matthew burst into tears, and at that sign of repentance, everyone relaxed.
"So how does it feel to save a life, Lily?" asked Brian.
"It always feels good… to share your own breath of life, to get the spark back into a little body. I've done it before, at the hospital. But I've never helped anything so small live again!" She laughed as she rubbed the little body and dried its fur. "But as for calling the kitten Lazarus, it'll have to be Lazzie Jo. It's a she."
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. She is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana.
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StoryShare, November 1, 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.
