Take Off Your Shoes
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Take Off Your Shoes" by C. David McKirachan
"Tea and Crumpets" by C. David McKirachan
"Final Instructions" by Sandra Herrmann
* * * * * * *
Take Off Your Shoes
by C. David McKirachan
Exodus 3:1-15
Being a preacher's kid, I was taught that anywhere we lived had to do with my father's job, not home. Home was the family. The dedication to my father's book, Older than Eden, was "To Ked, with whom is home." The place was irrelevant. The gathering of the family made us what we were. That's handy if you move every few years. We happened to be living in another place, and further, a place that God called us to be, not our hometown.
But there was a place that did not change, a place that belonged to us. A place where I wasn't the preacher's kid, I was David, one of the bunch that did not come and go. We had a house on Long Beach Island, a populated sandbar a few miles off the coast of New Jersey. Most of the summer renters occupied the house, but even then they walked in and out the front door under a sign that said "The Mac's." And those people only stayed for a week or two. When we arrived the neighborhood knew that "The Mac's" had arrived in all their glory. At least that's the way it felt.
One of the things we did when we got there was take off our shoes at the door. They were then carried up to our closets. When we came in from the beach, sailing, or terrorizing the neighbors, we washed our feet out back. It was custom, it was practical, and it saved the floors. But in my young mind, it was a sign that we were home. This place was different; it was where we belonged, as much as the seagulls and the blue crabs. This was our environment, and that house was the center of it all. It was special, set aside for us. It was as Tillich said, our "ground of being."
We are Protestants. We are taught to be people on a journey, to be a people on the road with our Lord. We don't defend or sanctify places or things. Our community is what is holy because it becomes our Lord's living body when it remembers and appreciates and lives in the hope of his gospel. But when we find a place where that is the standard operating procedure, where we feel less distance between us and our true identity, where we feel less squeezed by the pressures of the world to depend on the stuff that we are told to depend on and more on the presence of something terrifying and healing all at the same time, then it is time to claim it as holy. I learned that as a sandy, sunburned kid. And I still remember it as an older, slightly bent senior.
I took that sign down when we sold the house after my parents died. It's in my study. I still take off my shoes at the door.
Tea and Crumpets
by C. David McKirachan
Romans 12:9-21
I was pastor of one of the up and coming congregations in the presbytery. Numerical growth, focused mission, willing to get its hands dirty, active adult education, lots of energy. The nominating committee had put me on a couple of committees that made big dents in the life of the churches. I was chair of one and up for reelection. I was a big cheese.
I took some continuing education that included taking a test to determine spiritual gifts. I was eager to find out the results. I wanted to move along in harmony with what God had given me. I was an arrogant young man.
The sheet of paper listed my highest scores. At the top was a surprise, a puzzle, and a disappointment. I wanted to put on armor and slay dragons. I wanted to lead. I wanted to discern the will of God for the lost sheep and carry them home. This score must be wrong. I put up my hand and asked what if we disagreed with our scores. The facilitator smiled sadly and inserted a burr under my saddle. "We often try to run away from God's calling, ignoring the still small voice that is offering us a new way to go. Sometimes we'd rather listen to the voices of the world or our own agendas. I find quiet prayer to be the best response to a sense of dissonance in what we hear." I felt handled. "... a sense of dissonance...?" This was nuts. I was ready to put up with anything, but hospitality? What was I supposed to do with that? Maybe take cooking lessons? Or should I study interior decorating?
I've discovered something about myself. When I hear something about myself I'm not satisfied with, I get defensive. I find justifications about the inaccuracy of the judgment and other good reasons to discount what I don't want to hear. And here I was again, denying what I didn't want to hear.
In this culture, we tend to discount "homemakers." We don't consider helping people feel cared about and cared for to be as valuable as producing, overcoming, and winning. And the list goes on. The virus had infected me. And now this crazy test had the audacity to remind me that I had the less valuable gifts, at least valuable in the accounting of the world. It took me a while to process this experience. And when I did, I went in to the presbytery executive and talked to him about creating a hospitality committee. I offered sound theological and organizational justifications and I volunteered to form the bunch, and we'd let them pick a chair.
We became known as the Tea and Crumpets Committee. We organized retreats, dinners, parties, talent shows, and support groups. We ended up publishing a cookbook. We developed a reputation for having the most fun of any committee in the history of the presbytery and having the most interesting reports. And we managed to do almost all of it without spending presbytery money. Obviously, we weren't important people. We were just trying to listen to our call. Who said cucumber sandwiches never accomplished anything?
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).
Final Instructions
by Sandra Herrmann
Matthew 16:21-28
"Lift up your head, for Love is passing by. So come to Jesus... and live." ("Come To Jesus" by Chris Rice)
When I was a pastor, I would preach at least once a year by asking the question, "Who here wants to go to heaven?" Most of the hands would go up. And then I would ask, "How many of you would like to go today?" Most of the hands would go down, and people would giggle or laugh outright. Caught!
We all want what is offered in the hymns of the church. To be with friends and/or family we have lost, to be at a huge banquet, with all of our favorite foods. To dance (whether we could in our earthly lives or not!) and have a merry time. To get to meet famous people we always thought were interesting or clever.
But to die? What is beyond that veil? We don't know, so we shy away. In the fifth book of the Harry Potter series, The Order of the Phoenix Harry and his classmates who have been practicing defenses against the dark arts of the cult of evil in the books (The Death Eaters) find themselves in a pitched battle with those Death Eaters in a room that contains nothing more than an archway that contains a veil. Harry finds himself drawn to this veil, for he can hear quiet whispers coming from it. But even as he circles the archway, wondering where the voices are coming from, his friends instinctively pull him away from it. There is something more than spooky going on here. The veil moves slightly, as though someone had just passed through it, and then there are the whispers.... The teenagers who are drawn to it have all lost someone to death, though no one realizes it at the time. Then, in the heat of the battle, his godfather, Sirius, is hit by a killing spell from Bellatrix, and falls backward through the veil. Harry means to grab Sirius and pull him back, but he is stopped by one of his teachers, who tells him it's too late, Sirius is gone. Harry fights to go after him, but after all, Sirius has passed through the veil. He is gone and there is no retrieving him.
We all want to make that veil either more permeable or less final. Where do they go? One minute, a person is struggling, and a moment later he has laid back quietly. We can see the vacancy in the eyes, but what has happened? The only change we can measure is that the heart has stopped, breathing has ceased, and if we check for brain waves, they may have stopped too (though they often last a bit longer than the stopping of the heart). But the person we loved is gone.
I had the opportunity to attend an autopsy when I was in a CPE placement as part of my seminary education. I watched in fascination as the organs were removed from the body one by one, laid out for examination, and weighed. But while others in the group gathered around the doctor as she explained what she was doing to determine the cause of death, I turned and looked at the body. The entire torso was open, so it was easy to see that all of the organs had been removed. What was left was little more than a carcass. A little while ago, she had been alive, smoking cigarettes (her lungs were dark and mottled), having a few drinks too many (her pancreas and liver testified), and laughing with her friends... but no more.
We had the opportunity to talk about our experience in our group of chaplains, and I talked about that moment, the sense of loss of the personhood of this woman who partied too well in life. I cannot remember that event without a sense of thinness spreading over me. I never expected to measure or even see her soul, but that feeling of the thinness of our lives has stayed with me ever since. One of the other students said she realized that she had avoided looking at the body while this was going on and wished now that she had. But she had been afraid, she realized. Afraid, maybe (?) of seeing and feeling what I had seen and felt. I said I had found the weighing and slicing of the organs too much like being in a butcher shop. Perhaps that's why I'd turned back to the body.
There is a legend about Lazarus, after Jesus raised him from the tomb. It says that Lazarus was never quite right. The pallor of death never left him completely, and people avoided him. The next time he got sick, he simply died, because he no longer belonged to this world. Now there will be Christians who will be offended by that legend -- after all, if Jesus brought him back from the dead, he would have brought him all the way back. But in that legend there is a truth that Rowling recognized in the Harry Potter series, and that is once one has passed over or through that veil, one no longer belongs to this world, and there is nothing to be done about that.
But there is one thing we Christians can do: we can trust the love of God as Jesus taught us. "Raise up your head," the hymn says, "for Love is passing by." The last verse says,
And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world good-bye
Then go in peace, and laugh on glory's side
And fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live*
*Songwriter: Christopher M. Rice, Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Sandra Herrmann is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 31, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 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.
"Take Off Your Shoes" by C. David McKirachan
"Tea and Crumpets" by C. David McKirachan
"Final Instructions" by Sandra Herrmann
* * * * * * *
Take Off Your Shoes
by C. David McKirachan
Exodus 3:1-15
Being a preacher's kid, I was taught that anywhere we lived had to do with my father's job, not home. Home was the family. The dedication to my father's book, Older than Eden, was "To Ked, with whom is home." The place was irrelevant. The gathering of the family made us what we were. That's handy if you move every few years. We happened to be living in another place, and further, a place that God called us to be, not our hometown.
But there was a place that did not change, a place that belonged to us. A place where I wasn't the preacher's kid, I was David, one of the bunch that did not come and go. We had a house on Long Beach Island, a populated sandbar a few miles off the coast of New Jersey. Most of the summer renters occupied the house, but even then they walked in and out the front door under a sign that said "The Mac's." And those people only stayed for a week or two. When we arrived the neighborhood knew that "The Mac's" had arrived in all their glory. At least that's the way it felt.
One of the things we did when we got there was take off our shoes at the door. They were then carried up to our closets. When we came in from the beach, sailing, or terrorizing the neighbors, we washed our feet out back. It was custom, it was practical, and it saved the floors. But in my young mind, it was a sign that we were home. This place was different; it was where we belonged, as much as the seagulls and the blue crabs. This was our environment, and that house was the center of it all. It was special, set aside for us. It was as Tillich said, our "ground of being."
We are Protestants. We are taught to be people on a journey, to be a people on the road with our Lord. We don't defend or sanctify places or things. Our community is what is holy because it becomes our Lord's living body when it remembers and appreciates and lives in the hope of his gospel. But when we find a place where that is the standard operating procedure, where we feel less distance between us and our true identity, where we feel less squeezed by the pressures of the world to depend on the stuff that we are told to depend on and more on the presence of something terrifying and healing all at the same time, then it is time to claim it as holy. I learned that as a sandy, sunburned kid. And I still remember it as an older, slightly bent senior.
I took that sign down when we sold the house after my parents died. It's in my study. I still take off my shoes at the door.
Tea and Crumpets
by C. David McKirachan
Romans 12:9-21
I was pastor of one of the up and coming congregations in the presbytery. Numerical growth, focused mission, willing to get its hands dirty, active adult education, lots of energy. The nominating committee had put me on a couple of committees that made big dents in the life of the churches. I was chair of one and up for reelection. I was a big cheese.
I took some continuing education that included taking a test to determine spiritual gifts. I was eager to find out the results. I wanted to move along in harmony with what God had given me. I was an arrogant young man.
The sheet of paper listed my highest scores. At the top was a surprise, a puzzle, and a disappointment. I wanted to put on armor and slay dragons. I wanted to lead. I wanted to discern the will of God for the lost sheep and carry them home. This score must be wrong. I put up my hand and asked what if we disagreed with our scores. The facilitator smiled sadly and inserted a burr under my saddle. "We often try to run away from God's calling, ignoring the still small voice that is offering us a new way to go. Sometimes we'd rather listen to the voices of the world or our own agendas. I find quiet prayer to be the best response to a sense of dissonance in what we hear." I felt handled. "... a sense of dissonance...?" This was nuts. I was ready to put up with anything, but hospitality? What was I supposed to do with that? Maybe take cooking lessons? Or should I study interior decorating?
I've discovered something about myself. When I hear something about myself I'm not satisfied with, I get defensive. I find justifications about the inaccuracy of the judgment and other good reasons to discount what I don't want to hear. And here I was again, denying what I didn't want to hear.
In this culture, we tend to discount "homemakers." We don't consider helping people feel cared about and cared for to be as valuable as producing, overcoming, and winning. And the list goes on. The virus had infected me. And now this crazy test had the audacity to remind me that I had the less valuable gifts, at least valuable in the accounting of the world. It took me a while to process this experience. And when I did, I went in to the presbytery executive and talked to him about creating a hospitality committee. I offered sound theological and organizational justifications and I volunteered to form the bunch, and we'd let them pick a chair.
We became known as the Tea and Crumpets Committee. We organized retreats, dinners, parties, talent shows, and support groups. We ended up publishing a cookbook. We developed a reputation for having the most fun of any committee in the history of the presbytery and having the most interesting reports. And we managed to do almost all of it without spending presbytery money. Obviously, we weren't important people. We were just trying to listen to our call. Who said cucumber sandwiches never accomplished anything?
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).
Final Instructions
by Sandra Herrmann
Matthew 16:21-28
"Lift up your head, for Love is passing by. So come to Jesus... and live." ("Come To Jesus" by Chris Rice)
When I was a pastor, I would preach at least once a year by asking the question, "Who here wants to go to heaven?" Most of the hands would go up. And then I would ask, "How many of you would like to go today?" Most of the hands would go down, and people would giggle or laugh outright. Caught!
We all want what is offered in the hymns of the church. To be with friends and/or family we have lost, to be at a huge banquet, with all of our favorite foods. To dance (whether we could in our earthly lives or not!) and have a merry time. To get to meet famous people we always thought were interesting or clever.
But to die? What is beyond that veil? We don't know, so we shy away. In the fifth book of the Harry Potter series, The Order of the Phoenix Harry and his classmates who have been practicing defenses against the dark arts of the cult of evil in the books (The Death Eaters) find themselves in a pitched battle with those Death Eaters in a room that contains nothing more than an archway that contains a veil. Harry finds himself drawn to this veil, for he can hear quiet whispers coming from it. But even as he circles the archway, wondering where the voices are coming from, his friends instinctively pull him away from it. There is something more than spooky going on here. The veil moves slightly, as though someone had just passed through it, and then there are the whispers.... The teenagers who are drawn to it have all lost someone to death, though no one realizes it at the time. Then, in the heat of the battle, his godfather, Sirius, is hit by a killing spell from Bellatrix, and falls backward through the veil. Harry means to grab Sirius and pull him back, but he is stopped by one of his teachers, who tells him it's too late, Sirius is gone. Harry fights to go after him, but after all, Sirius has passed through the veil. He is gone and there is no retrieving him.
We all want to make that veil either more permeable or less final. Where do they go? One minute, a person is struggling, and a moment later he has laid back quietly. We can see the vacancy in the eyes, but what has happened? The only change we can measure is that the heart has stopped, breathing has ceased, and if we check for brain waves, they may have stopped too (though they often last a bit longer than the stopping of the heart). But the person we loved is gone.
I had the opportunity to attend an autopsy when I was in a CPE placement as part of my seminary education. I watched in fascination as the organs were removed from the body one by one, laid out for examination, and weighed. But while others in the group gathered around the doctor as she explained what she was doing to determine the cause of death, I turned and looked at the body. The entire torso was open, so it was easy to see that all of the organs had been removed. What was left was little more than a carcass. A little while ago, she had been alive, smoking cigarettes (her lungs were dark and mottled), having a few drinks too many (her pancreas and liver testified), and laughing with her friends... but no more.
We had the opportunity to talk about our experience in our group of chaplains, and I talked about that moment, the sense of loss of the personhood of this woman who partied too well in life. I cannot remember that event without a sense of thinness spreading over me. I never expected to measure or even see her soul, but that feeling of the thinness of our lives has stayed with me ever since. One of the other students said she realized that she had avoided looking at the body while this was going on and wished now that she had. But she had been afraid, she realized. Afraid, maybe (?) of seeing and feeling what I had seen and felt. I said I had found the weighing and slicing of the organs too much like being in a butcher shop. Perhaps that's why I'd turned back to the body.
There is a legend about Lazarus, after Jesus raised him from the tomb. It says that Lazarus was never quite right. The pallor of death never left him completely, and people avoided him. The next time he got sick, he simply died, because he no longer belonged to this world. Now there will be Christians who will be offended by that legend -- after all, if Jesus brought him back from the dead, he would have brought him all the way back. But in that legend there is a truth that Rowling recognized in the Harry Potter series, and that is once one has passed over or through that veil, one no longer belongs to this world, and there is nothing to be done about that.
But there is one thing we Christians can do: we can trust the love of God as Jesus taught us. "Raise up your head," the hymn says, "for Love is passing by." The last verse says,
And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world good-bye
Then go in peace, and laugh on glory's side
And fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live*
*Songwriter: Christopher M. Rice, Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Sandra Herrmann is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 31, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 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.
