Two Brothers
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Two Brothers" by Keith Hewitt
"Let's Get This Clear" by C. David McKirachan
"Under the Mud" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * *
Two Brothers
by Keith Hewitt
Genesis 45:1-15
"Here's the offering report, Pastor."
John Randall looked up from his desk and saw Pete Marcus extending a couple of sheets of paper to him -- the record of the week's offering. Immediately, he knew something was up: The counters usually just left the report in the hanging tray on the wall outside the office or slid it under the door. "Is there a problem, Pete?" he asked, accepting the report. His eyes flicked over the names and numbers as he waited for an answer.
"Uh, no, I guess. Not really. Never mind," the man said quietly and started to turn away.
"Sounds like something to me," Randall said, laying the report down.
"What's up, Pete?" He nodded toward one of the two chairs facing the desk, waited until his guest sat down before he leaned back in his own chair and took out his pipe. "You've got the look of a man with something on his mind." Then he waited again, carefully tapping out the ashes in the glass ashtray on his desk before filling it again with sweet, aromatic tobacco from a pouch next to the desk blotter.
"Well, it's this way, Pastor," the man said hesitantly. "I don't usually have a lot to say -- that is, I don't usually think a lot about what you say up there."
Randall smiled and sighed a bit. "I see."
Pete Marcus looked puzzled for a moment, then his eyes grew round and he said quickly, "No, no -- that's not what I mean. I do think about what you say every week. But it doesn't usually bother me like this week did."
There was a long pause before Randall said gently, "Go on." Then waited again, tamping down the tobacco in the bowl of the pipe. When it was just right -- he could tell by the feel -- he put the stem in his mouth and checked his pockets, feeling in several different places before realizing the lighter was on the desk in front of him. He studied Marcus' face as he flicked open the Zippo lighter and spun the wheel, drew on the pipe to pull flame down toward the bowl.
When the silence got to be too long, Marcus shifted in the chair and said, "It's this way. That story about Joseph and his brothers. That's a really neat story, but I don't believe it for a minute. Nobody could be that forgiving, not after everything his brothers did to him."
"I think we'd better hope somebody could be," Randall said simply and puffed his pipe. The tobacco burned red and began to smoke. "What you have to remember, Pete, is that these men were his brothers. Family. That's different than strangers or friends. It shouldn't be, but it is. I think Joseph forgiving his brothers is an ultimate act of mercy and forgiveness, but I don't think it's impossible."
"Sometimes family is harder to forgive than strangers," Marcus said bleakly. "Because when a stranger does something to you, you can say, 'What the hell, they're just strangers who don't know me.' Pardon my language," he added hastily, suddenly realizing what he'd said. Randall just smiled. "But when a brother does something to you, it hurts, because you trusted them. So I don't buy it. Not for a minute."
"And yet, there it is," Randall said with a shrug. "Part of our history, Pete."
"Look -- you got a brother, Pastor?"
Randall nodded.
"Older or younger?"
"Older."
"What's the worst thing he ever did to you?"
Randall hesitated, eyes on his past as he quickly shuffled through his history. "I used to be afraid of snakes. One day when I was seven years old, my brother brought a big one into the house, showed it to me -- then he shoved me into a closet, threw the snake in, and slammed the door, held it shut for what seemed like forever."
"Wow. And it was a live snake?"
Randall smiled briefly. "Not by the time I was done."
"Did you ever forgive him?"
Randall shrugged. "Kind of have to -- he's my brother."
Pete Marcus looked away, then, and did not meet Randall's eyes again for several minutes as he spoke. "I was eight years old when our dad went into the army, my brother was six years older. Dad had this man-to-man talk with him when he left, told my brother he was in charge while he was gone, and that with Mom working in the yards, it would be up to him to keep me in line."
"I imagine there were a lot of those kinds of talks," Randall said quietly. "It was a unique time, Pete. People had to step up, grow up, and do a lot of things they wouldn't necessarily volunteer to do."
"Right. Like whipping a seven-year-old kid with an electrical cord."
The silence that followed was long and heavy. When Randall became aware that the tobacco in his pipe was no longer smoking, he picked up his lighter and sparked it into life again -- thankful that his hand did not shake when he was holding the lighter. "Your brother did that?"
"And other things. Things I don't want to talk about. But he kept me in line, I guess, so..."
"Clearly, nobody deserves that. Least of all an seven-year-old boy."
For the first time since he'd entered the office, there was a ghost of smile -- a hard, bitter expression -- on Marcus' face. "Yeah, that thought crossed my mind too."
"And your mother?"
He shrugged. "She didn't know what to do. Mothering wasn't really her thing, Pastor. She told me once that after they had Tony -- my brother -- after they had him, they weren't planning any more kids. Realized they weren't cut out for it. Then I came along. Surprise!" he added ironically.
"Right. Well, I'm so sorry about this all, Pete. I understand why you say that you don't think the story about Joseph forgiving his brothers could be real. You're still carrying that burden 25 years later. But my point is that we need to believe that that kind of forgiveness is possible, because of who we are, and what we did."
"I don't follow you."
"Look, Joseph and his brothers is a neat story, and one of my favorites. But aside from the historical side of it, I think it's also an important look ahead -- kind of an echo of something that hadn't happened yet."
"You said something about that, this morning, but I didn't follow. I was too busy thinking about Tony."
"I understand and I probably didn't do a very good job explaining it, but here's what I meant. Joseph came to the realization, after all of his mistreatment and all of the bad things done to him that he must have been sent by God to make it possible for his family to be saved. Right? By making it possible for them to come to Egypt to ride out the famine."
"Right."
"So, knowing what his purpose was, he was able to forgive what they did to him, right?"
"Right."
"Now think about Jesus. He was sent by God to make it possible for all of us to be saved. He was sent to make sure we could all have eternal life. So because of that, because that was his ultimate service to us -- because God sent him to pave the way by dying for us -- Jesus was able to forgive everything that was done to him... being beaten, whipped, and crucified, all of that, he was able to forgive so that we could be forgiven. In some ways, the story of Joseph and his brothers is like the story of Jesus and all of us -- because we've all sinned and caused him suffering, but we are still forgiven."
There was another long silence -- but there was something different, something lighter about this one. Finally, Pete Marcus nodded slowly, and said, "I think I understand. I think I understand the connection -- and I think I understand that you can love someone who has hurt you and not want them to die."
Randall nodded and felt a twinge of joy. "That's how I see it."
"Thank you for explaining it again. I really do see it too... I think."
"You've got a lot to forgive, Pete. But so did Jesus. And life is about more than anger and hurt -- it's about hope and love."
"Right. Thanks again, Pastor." Pete Marcus stood up, started to leave, then stopped halfway to the door, and turned to face Randall again. "This has helped me more than you can ever know, Pastor. Because I've been wrestling with something for a couple of weeks, now, and it's just been eating me up."
"What's that?"
"We were never close, Tony and I. We went our separate ways, and I stayed away from him as much as I could. You understand."
Randall nodded.
"But a couple of weeks ago he called me and told me he's dying. His kidneys aren't working so good anymore, and he hasn't got much time. And then he told me about this operation they can do, now, where they can take the kidney from someone like a brother, and put it in the one who needs it... but he never asked me. Stiff necked, I guess, or maybe he just knew how much I didn't like him, but he never asked me. But now I know -- maybe I came along so that one day I would be able to give him a kidney to save his life, so long as I can forgive him."
Randall hesitated, then asked quietly, "Can you?"
Pete Marcus shrugged. "It's what Joseph did for his brothers. It's what Jesus did for me. I s'pose it's the least I can do for him." He looked thoughtful, then smiled -- a genuine smile -- and said, "Thank you, Pastor. You kind of made my day."
As Marcus left, Randall slowly sparked and puffed his pipe back to life, then said softly, "And you've just made mine."
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.
Let's Get This Clear
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
When I was a kid, I was given a few injunctions which were hard line. One of them was to treat each and every person as a child of God. This was enforced when I made fun of others, called people names, or blamed a group of folks for something an individual had done. It was a pain in the neck, but it had a huge influence on my view of the world.
If there was a bunch that challenged my purity in this area of purity, it was people who didn't see every person as a child of God. I thought they didn't have the right to breathe. Their inhales were only preparations for making judgments on whole bunches of God's kids. They were committing more than infractions, they were being abusive to people God considered worth dying for. How dare they? I remember climbing onto that high horse during my junior and senior high school years with great regularity. Self-righteousness is so wonderful. I'm sure it releases endorphins and other enzymes while it pounds on sinners. They ought to do a study.
So consider my troubled soul when I ran into this story of Jesus comparing a desperate mother to a dog who had no right to eat at the table with the children of Israel. I found it rather difficult to enjoy my endorphin rush when it was my Lord I was kicking from my supposedly high roost of righteousness. I was a sophomore, truly a wise fool, I was also an adolescent, full of self-doubt, trying to figure out who and what I was or even wanted to be. It was 1964. Need I say more.
My mother listened to my clear and utterly erudite exposition of the text under consideration. I had come to the conclusion that I had discovered the fissure that would crack Christianity apart, separating all the old fuddy-duddies from all of us enlightened humanists. Ta-da! Without missing a beat she told me calmly to go back and read the whole passage. That confused the blazes out of me. It seemed he was saying one thing to his disciples and then doing the opposite thing with this woman. She asked me why he would do such a thing. Why would he say one thing and then do something else?
Then she drew my attention to the rocks that had been thrown through our windows recently, the tires of our car that were slashed, and the names my father had been called. He'd taken a stand on fair housing that wasn't very popular in our lily-white community. She asked me how I felt about the people who did those things. I started to climb up on my comfortably elevated saddle and realized she was painting me into a corner. She asked me if I thought Jesus loved the people who crucified him. She asked me if I remembered the grace my father said the evening after the rocks came through our windows. Who did he pray for? It always bothered me how he'd prayed for the people who'd thrown the rocks. Then she told me to go sit on the screened porch and think about all of that for ten minutes. She came out with a glass of lemonade in about eight minutes. I don't know who did the talking out there, but I remember her letting me know that this was one of the hardest things anybody would ever learn.
I don't know what happened 2,000 years ago. I don't know who taught whom. I don't know what lesson we're supposed to learn from this passage (there are a few I can think of), but I do know that every time I run into someone who is judgmental, self-righteousness, racist, abusive, or close minded, I see the situation through the eyes of an insecure sophomore whose parents had the guts to stand with the victims of the world while they remembered their Lord and Savior who told us to love one another as he has loved us. And I remember the taste of the best lemonade in the world.
Under the Mud
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 133
The senior high group was a bunch of individuals and a few cliques. They had a hard time talking to each other, let alone sharing with each other. Quite a few of them came under protest, parents dragging them, bribing them, making deals with them, just to get them there. Running that bunch was like towing an anchor through peanut butter. It was a hot September, following a hot August. I figured it was time to up the ante. I went around to some of the kids' houses telling them I needed extra kids at the first meeting for the fall to do this wild and crazy thing I wanted to do. Could they come to the first meeting and provide a warm body for this weird activity? And could they bring a friend? If they didn't want to come back I promised them that I'd fix it with their parents to stop trying to make them do something that was no fun. Such a deal!
Then I got a couple enthusiastic parents to dig a hole three feet deep, about the size of a volley ball court, had them pick all the rocks out of the dirt, dump the soil back into the hole and ran a hose into the hole for two days. Mud pit. While we worked on the hole I told the parents that we couldn't have a youth group without a bunch of enthusiastic adults who were willing to roll up their sleeves and get down and dirty with the kids. A few of them bought in. I asked them to arrange an ice cream bar for refreshments. I sent out a post card to have the kids come to the meeting with the worst shorts and T-shirts and sneakers they owned and to bring a towel. I made a sign that was obscenely large: MUD OLYMPICS. And I prayed.
The day dawned hot and became oppressive. By 4:30 p.m. I had few hopes of a crowd, but they came. They were instructed to change in the church and come out. For the next hour they played in the mud. The first game was a team sport (all of them were). Which team could push the most mud to the other side. There were relay races, in the mud. There were tug of wars, in the mud. By the end of the hour they were pooped, and no one could tell who was who under all that mud. Then we hosed everyone down and sent them in to change. Then we had ice cream and I asked them if they'd had a good time. They bubbled, burbled, laughed, and acted like excited kids. Then I asked them if they wanted to come back next week. They voted unanimously to come back. We prayed and I sent them home to their puzzled parents.
The word spread around the high schools during the week. We had twice the number there the next Sunday. They wanted to see what might happen next.
The Holy Spirit works in many different ways. But when it allows us to discover that under our skins we are all brothers and sisters, when it tears down the walls that separate us, it allows us to experience a foretaste of the kingdom of God. I bet there's mud in heaven.
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, August 10, 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.
"Two Brothers" by Keith Hewitt
"Let's Get This Clear" by C. David McKirachan
"Under the Mud" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * *
Two Brothers
by Keith Hewitt
Genesis 45:1-15
"Here's the offering report, Pastor."
John Randall looked up from his desk and saw Pete Marcus extending a couple of sheets of paper to him -- the record of the week's offering. Immediately, he knew something was up: The counters usually just left the report in the hanging tray on the wall outside the office or slid it under the door. "Is there a problem, Pete?" he asked, accepting the report. His eyes flicked over the names and numbers as he waited for an answer.
"Uh, no, I guess. Not really. Never mind," the man said quietly and started to turn away.
"Sounds like something to me," Randall said, laying the report down.
"What's up, Pete?" He nodded toward one of the two chairs facing the desk, waited until his guest sat down before he leaned back in his own chair and took out his pipe. "You've got the look of a man with something on his mind." Then he waited again, carefully tapping out the ashes in the glass ashtray on his desk before filling it again with sweet, aromatic tobacco from a pouch next to the desk blotter.
"Well, it's this way, Pastor," the man said hesitantly. "I don't usually have a lot to say -- that is, I don't usually think a lot about what you say up there."
Randall smiled and sighed a bit. "I see."
Pete Marcus looked puzzled for a moment, then his eyes grew round and he said quickly, "No, no -- that's not what I mean. I do think about what you say every week. But it doesn't usually bother me like this week did."
There was a long pause before Randall said gently, "Go on." Then waited again, tamping down the tobacco in the bowl of the pipe. When it was just right -- he could tell by the feel -- he put the stem in his mouth and checked his pockets, feeling in several different places before realizing the lighter was on the desk in front of him. He studied Marcus' face as he flicked open the Zippo lighter and spun the wheel, drew on the pipe to pull flame down toward the bowl.
When the silence got to be too long, Marcus shifted in the chair and said, "It's this way. That story about Joseph and his brothers. That's a really neat story, but I don't believe it for a minute. Nobody could be that forgiving, not after everything his brothers did to him."
"I think we'd better hope somebody could be," Randall said simply and puffed his pipe. The tobacco burned red and began to smoke. "What you have to remember, Pete, is that these men were his brothers. Family. That's different than strangers or friends. It shouldn't be, but it is. I think Joseph forgiving his brothers is an ultimate act of mercy and forgiveness, but I don't think it's impossible."
"Sometimes family is harder to forgive than strangers," Marcus said bleakly. "Because when a stranger does something to you, you can say, 'What the hell, they're just strangers who don't know me.' Pardon my language," he added hastily, suddenly realizing what he'd said. Randall just smiled. "But when a brother does something to you, it hurts, because you trusted them. So I don't buy it. Not for a minute."
"And yet, there it is," Randall said with a shrug. "Part of our history, Pete."
"Look -- you got a brother, Pastor?"
Randall nodded.
"Older or younger?"
"Older."
"What's the worst thing he ever did to you?"
Randall hesitated, eyes on his past as he quickly shuffled through his history. "I used to be afraid of snakes. One day when I was seven years old, my brother brought a big one into the house, showed it to me -- then he shoved me into a closet, threw the snake in, and slammed the door, held it shut for what seemed like forever."
"Wow. And it was a live snake?"
Randall smiled briefly. "Not by the time I was done."
"Did you ever forgive him?"
Randall shrugged. "Kind of have to -- he's my brother."
Pete Marcus looked away, then, and did not meet Randall's eyes again for several minutes as he spoke. "I was eight years old when our dad went into the army, my brother was six years older. Dad had this man-to-man talk with him when he left, told my brother he was in charge while he was gone, and that with Mom working in the yards, it would be up to him to keep me in line."
"I imagine there were a lot of those kinds of talks," Randall said quietly. "It was a unique time, Pete. People had to step up, grow up, and do a lot of things they wouldn't necessarily volunteer to do."
"Right. Like whipping a seven-year-old kid with an electrical cord."
The silence that followed was long and heavy. When Randall became aware that the tobacco in his pipe was no longer smoking, he picked up his lighter and sparked it into life again -- thankful that his hand did not shake when he was holding the lighter. "Your brother did that?"
"And other things. Things I don't want to talk about. But he kept me in line, I guess, so..."
"Clearly, nobody deserves that. Least of all an seven-year-old boy."
For the first time since he'd entered the office, there was a ghost of smile -- a hard, bitter expression -- on Marcus' face. "Yeah, that thought crossed my mind too."
"And your mother?"
He shrugged. "She didn't know what to do. Mothering wasn't really her thing, Pastor. She told me once that after they had Tony -- my brother -- after they had him, they weren't planning any more kids. Realized they weren't cut out for it. Then I came along. Surprise!" he added ironically.
"Right. Well, I'm so sorry about this all, Pete. I understand why you say that you don't think the story about Joseph forgiving his brothers could be real. You're still carrying that burden 25 years later. But my point is that we need to believe that that kind of forgiveness is possible, because of who we are, and what we did."
"I don't follow you."
"Look, Joseph and his brothers is a neat story, and one of my favorites. But aside from the historical side of it, I think it's also an important look ahead -- kind of an echo of something that hadn't happened yet."
"You said something about that, this morning, but I didn't follow. I was too busy thinking about Tony."
"I understand and I probably didn't do a very good job explaining it, but here's what I meant. Joseph came to the realization, after all of his mistreatment and all of the bad things done to him that he must have been sent by God to make it possible for his family to be saved. Right? By making it possible for them to come to Egypt to ride out the famine."
"Right."
"So, knowing what his purpose was, he was able to forgive what they did to him, right?"
"Right."
"Now think about Jesus. He was sent by God to make it possible for all of us to be saved. He was sent to make sure we could all have eternal life. So because of that, because that was his ultimate service to us -- because God sent him to pave the way by dying for us -- Jesus was able to forgive everything that was done to him... being beaten, whipped, and crucified, all of that, he was able to forgive so that we could be forgiven. In some ways, the story of Joseph and his brothers is like the story of Jesus and all of us -- because we've all sinned and caused him suffering, but we are still forgiven."
There was another long silence -- but there was something different, something lighter about this one. Finally, Pete Marcus nodded slowly, and said, "I think I understand. I think I understand the connection -- and I think I understand that you can love someone who has hurt you and not want them to die."
Randall nodded and felt a twinge of joy. "That's how I see it."
"Thank you for explaining it again. I really do see it too... I think."
"You've got a lot to forgive, Pete. But so did Jesus. And life is about more than anger and hurt -- it's about hope and love."
"Right. Thanks again, Pastor." Pete Marcus stood up, started to leave, then stopped halfway to the door, and turned to face Randall again. "This has helped me more than you can ever know, Pastor. Because I've been wrestling with something for a couple of weeks, now, and it's just been eating me up."
"What's that?"
"We were never close, Tony and I. We went our separate ways, and I stayed away from him as much as I could. You understand."
Randall nodded.
"But a couple of weeks ago he called me and told me he's dying. His kidneys aren't working so good anymore, and he hasn't got much time. And then he told me about this operation they can do, now, where they can take the kidney from someone like a brother, and put it in the one who needs it... but he never asked me. Stiff necked, I guess, or maybe he just knew how much I didn't like him, but he never asked me. But now I know -- maybe I came along so that one day I would be able to give him a kidney to save his life, so long as I can forgive him."
Randall hesitated, then asked quietly, "Can you?"
Pete Marcus shrugged. "It's what Joseph did for his brothers. It's what Jesus did for me. I s'pose it's the least I can do for him." He looked thoughtful, then smiled -- a genuine smile -- and said, "Thank you, Pastor. You kind of made my day."
As Marcus left, Randall slowly sparked and puffed his pipe back to life, then said softly, "And you've just made mine."
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.
Let's Get This Clear
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
When I was a kid, I was given a few injunctions which were hard line. One of them was to treat each and every person as a child of God. This was enforced when I made fun of others, called people names, or blamed a group of folks for something an individual had done. It was a pain in the neck, but it had a huge influence on my view of the world.
If there was a bunch that challenged my purity in this area of purity, it was people who didn't see every person as a child of God. I thought they didn't have the right to breathe. Their inhales were only preparations for making judgments on whole bunches of God's kids. They were committing more than infractions, they were being abusive to people God considered worth dying for. How dare they? I remember climbing onto that high horse during my junior and senior high school years with great regularity. Self-righteousness is so wonderful. I'm sure it releases endorphins and other enzymes while it pounds on sinners. They ought to do a study.
So consider my troubled soul when I ran into this story of Jesus comparing a desperate mother to a dog who had no right to eat at the table with the children of Israel. I found it rather difficult to enjoy my endorphin rush when it was my Lord I was kicking from my supposedly high roost of righteousness. I was a sophomore, truly a wise fool, I was also an adolescent, full of self-doubt, trying to figure out who and what I was or even wanted to be. It was 1964. Need I say more.
My mother listened to my clear and utterly erudite exposition of the text under consideration. I had come to the conclusion that I had discovered the fissure that would crack Christianity apart, separating all the old fuddy-duddies from all of us enlightened humanists. Ta-da! Without missing a beat she told me calmly to go back and read the whole passage. That confused the blazes out of me. It seemed he was saying one thing to his disciples and then doing the opposite thing with this woman. She asked me why he would do such a thing. Why would he say one thing and then do something else?
Then she drew my attention to the rocks that had been thrown through our windows recently, the tires of our car that were slashed, and the names my father had been called. He'd taken a stand on fair housing that wasn't very popular in our lily-white community. She asked me how I felt about the people who did those things. I started to climb up on my comfortably elevated saddle and realized she was painting me into a corner. She asked me if I thought Jesus loved the people who crucified him. She asked me if I remembered the grace my father said the evening after the rocks came through our windows. Who did he pray for? It always bothered me how he'd prayed for the people who'd thrown the rocks. Then she told me to go sit on the screened porch and think about all of that for ten minutes. She came out with a glass of lemonade in about eight minutes. I don't know who did the talking out there, but I remember her letting me know that this was one of the hardest things anybody would ever learn.
I don't know what happened 2,000 years ago. I don't know who taught whom. I don't know what lesson we're supposed to learn from this passage (there are a few I can think of), but I do know that every time I run into someone who is judgmental, self-righteousness, racist, abusive, or close minded, I see the situation through the eyes of an insecure sophomore whose parents had the guts to stand with the victims of the world while they remembered their Lord and Savior who told us to love one another as he has loved us. And I remember the taste of the best lemonade in the world.
Under the Mud
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 133
The senior high group was a bunch of individuals and a few cliques. They had a hard time talking to each other, let alone sharing with each other. Quite a few of them came under protest, parents dragging them, bribing them, making deals with them, just to get them there. Running that bunch was like towing an anchor through peanut butter. It was a hot September, following a hot August. I figured it was time to up the ante. I went around to some of the kids' houses telling them I needed extra kids at the first meeting for the fall to do this wild and crazy thing I wanted to do. Could they come to the first meeting and provide a warm body for this weird activity? And could they bring a friend? If they didn't want to come back I promised them that I'd fix it with their parents to stop trying to make them do something that was no fun. Such a deal!
Then I got a couple enthusiastic parents to dig a hole three feet deep, about the size of a volley ball court, had them pick all the rocks out of the dirt, dump the soil back into the hole and ran a hose into the hole for two days. Mud pit. While we worked on the hole I told the parents that we couldn't have a youth group without a bunch of enthusiastic adults who were willing to roll up their sleeves and get down and dirty with the kids. A few of them bought in. I asked them to arrange an ice cream bar for refreshments. I sent out a post card to have the kids come to the meeting with the worst shorts and T-shirts and sneakers they owned and to bring a towel. I made a sign that was obscenely large: MUD OLYMPICS. And I prayed.
The day dawned hot and became oppressive. By 4:30 p.m. I had few hopes of a crowd, but they came. They were instructed to change in the church and come out. For the next hour they played in the mud. The first game was a team sport (all of them were). Which team could push the most mud to the other side. There were relay races, in the mud. There were tug of wars, in the mud. By the end of the hour they were pooped, and no one could tell who was who under all that mud. Then we hosed everyone down and sent them in to change. Then we had ice cream and I asked them if they'd had a good time. They bubbled, burbled, laughed, and acted like excited kids. Then I asked them if they wanted to come back next week. They voted unanimously to come back. We prayed and I sent them home to their puzzled parents.
The word spread around the high schools during the week. We had twice the number there the next Sunday. They wanted to see what might happen next.
The Holy Spirit works in many different ways. But when it allows us to discover that under our skins we are all brothers and sisters, when it tears down the walls that separate us, it allows us to experience a foretaste of the kingdom of God. I bet there's mud in heaven.
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, August 10, 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.
