Off The Wagon
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Off the Wagon" by C. David McKirachan
"7C" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
Off the Wagon
by C. David McKirachan
Acts 2:1-21
Atticus Finch is one of my heroes. I have a hard time visualizing him apart from the character Gregory Peck created for the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird. It's become one of those welds that take all I thought about a book and made it breathe in a new way. I always think of him when I consider justice on the hoof. You could say that small southern town lawyer wasn't as much a hero as an incarnation of what it means to be a just man. So his heroism in the face of mob violence and the entrenched racism acted out in the courtroom was as natural for him as taking out his rifle and putting the rabid dog out of its misery or putting Scout to bed. They were aspects of that man.
We rarely view the chaotic exuberance of Pentecost from any point of view except the miraculous acts of God. The apostles are bit players, puppets on the string of the Holy Spirit, animated by the artistry of God's cartoon artists, part of a drama way beyond their humble origins. It's a convenient way of letting us off the hook. All we get to do is sigh and wish the Holy Spirit would give us a chance to fall of the wagon of our temperance. We shy from such unlikely and unseemly behavior in all other aspects of our lives, shunning it, putting it in boxes marked irrational, foolish, or a diversion from sober self-control. We tend to consider a lot of it faked by those who don't know systematic theology or biblical scholarship. It's cheap. Besides, what would it do for our reputations? We're a lot like the people in the crowd who stuck their noses up and wondered about these grown men, drunk in the morning. Well, you know how those hillbillies from Galilee are.
The Holy Spirit didn't enter the snobs from Jerusalem, or wherever else those snobs had pilgrimed in from. It entered the apostles. These were the men, for better and worse, that Jesus had chosen -- or more accurately -- who had said yes to his call to follow. They were the ones who clomped after him from gentle Galilee down to rough and tumble Jerusalem. They were the ones who'd run away and hid while he bled and died. They were the ones who had gathered again, trying to figure out who they were now, and where to from here when he came and stood among them. They were the ones.... Their awe and puzzlement, their laughter and tears, their doubt and faltering faith, their willingness to hold onto something and someone so many others had shunned or condemned, these were not only their actions, all of these grew out of them as much as rocking on the front porch grew out of Atticus Finch. So they were there, out of their depth, yes. But there they were, faithful, praying, and open to whatever came next. So when the wind blew, they put up their sails and let it blow them out into deep water. They weren't going to fail Jesus again.
God, I hope I'm not too stuck in my reasonable ruts to let the wind and fire ruin whatever reasonable edifice I have left. I pray that I might be faithful. I pray that I might be a fool, for him. Guess I better get started.
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).
7C
by Keith Hewitt
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
It was like a church.
The museum was like a church, he thought, where men went to worship beauty, to be in communion with the hearts and souls of others who had come before to sit in awe, or to praise, or to simply say thank you to whatever deity they believed in. There were people who could put emotion onto canvas... to build feelings the same way lesser men built furniture or buildings.
Although he knew the way well, he made a show of stopping at the museum directory and "finding" the place he wanted, then tracing out a route with his finger on the glass-covered map of the building. Then, with an increasingly bewildered young man in tow, he made his way across the lobby, up the escalator, through Gallery 7, and -- finally -- to a smaller room off that gallery.
It was more like an alcove, actually, although the elegantly lettered sign clearly said "Room 7C." There was no door. It was only big enough to hold a couple of small benches and the one painting at the end.
The painting...
One did not have to step very far into 7C to realize that the painting dominated the space. Not by size -- it was perhaps three feet tall, and four wide, and by no means took up the wall on which it was mounted; indeed, the space around it seemed to make a perfect frame.
No, it was something more subtle. There was an other-worldly light to it, the way it poured in through the trees on the right and splashed in the clearing, almost as though the artist had been somehow able to capture actual sunlight and bind it to his vision with pigment and shadow. The colors of the leaves on the ground and on the trees that surrounded the clearing were a whisper of autumn, and the fire that smoldered near the center of the picture was its scent -- burning leaves borne on crisp, cool air. Two figures stooped just off-center, one gathering leaves and the other bent under a load of twigs bound to his back, and they were perfect renderings -- sharp enough to define them as people, features somehow distinct, yet vague enough that they could be almost anybody.
And through it all, the brush strokes were there to tease images out of the blank canvas, barely visible at times, bolder in others, but always a reminder that someone had created this picture. One could see them, but didn't mind, because they didn't spoil the illusion that one was actually looking at this scene, but somehow enhanced it.
Somehow...
He stood at a respectful distance, as he had done for years; it seemed presumptuous to just stalk right up to it. Beside him, the young man had stopped as well, and for a moment his guide wondered if this had been a mistake. The young man fidgeted, looking around, tried to check his watch without being seen, but then, as his guide stood motionless beside him, he turned forward and looked at the painting. Actually looked...
The older man could feel the change, sense it in the way his charge was suddenly motionless, as though his feet had been nailed to the floor and his head had been locked into place. No, not quite locked, because it moved subtly, following his eyes as they shifted, flowing through the painting to take it all in. Without much effort, he could convince himself that the atmosphere in 7C had somehow changed.
After a suitable time, the older man stepped closer to the painting, sat down on the bench a couple of yards away; his companion sat down wordlessly beside him. "You've been asking a lot of questions lately," the older man said quietly. "You've asked why we're here -- why humanity is here. And you've asked why certain things are the way they are, in this world."
The young man nodded, still studying the painting before them.
The older man smiled and inclined his head toward the painting. "There's your answer."
Reluctantly, the young man took his eyes off the painting and turned to his guide. "What do you mean? It's... beautiful... amazing... but I don't understand."
"Look at the composition, for a moment you can see the artist's brush strokes, and how they shift, they change, subtle in some places, pronounced in others, so that the strokes themselves become part of the image. Look at the different elements -- the trees, the light, the leaves, the people... it's easily a scene the artist could have encountered in his life, but here, now, it's obviously created. Every single element to this painting -- every image, every bit of color, every brush stroke that tells you how the image was made -- they were all created. All put there by the creator."
The young man's eyes shifted back to the painting, swept slowly over it. "I think I see," he agreed quietly.
"Change any one of those elements, and the painting itself changes. This is a moment in time, a bit of emotion, something that captured what the artist was thinking at the moment of creation. That expression of creation would become something quite different if anything within it changed." He looked at the young man then said, "If this were painted by someone else -- a lesser artist -- it would not capture the same emotions, the same picture. Our world -- our universe -- is God's creation, and every bit of it is woven together with every other bit, to make a whole. Take any bit out... change any part of it, even if it's as simple as taking out the parts we see as bad, or cruel, or that we just don't understand -- take it out, and the picture changes."
The young man's expression changed, and he nodded slowly. "I think I understand."
To be sure, his older companion now pointed to a part of the painting and said, "Imagine taking out those trees, there... or this broken-down cart, here... or the fire. Would it be the same picture?"
"Well, no. It would be different."
"Would it be worse?"
The young man struggled to imagine it with those different pieces missing, finally shook his head. "I don't know. But it would be different."
"Exactly. The artist maybe didn't know what his final painting would look like, how it would mean, what it would say... and there are days when I wonder if God knew everything that he wrought when he created the universe. But if he had done it any differently, it would have been a very different place. And it would not have been the same expression of his own creativity... his own love for us."
The young man turned to him, eyebrows knit together. "Love?"
"Why else would he give us such a place of beauty and majesty? Why else would he give us stars and mountains?" And then he nodded to the painting once more and added, "Why else would he give us people who could do that?"
Then, wordlessly, the two men turned back to the painting and contemplated God's creation in 7C... and saw that it was good.
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.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 19, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Off the Wagon" by C. David McKirachan
"7C" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
Off the Wagon
by C. David McKirachan
Acts 2:1-21
Atticus Finch is one of my heroes. I have a hard time visualizing him apart from the character Gregory Peck created for the movie, To Kill a Mockingbird. It's become one of those welds that take all I thought about a book and made it breathe in a new way. I always think of him when I consider justice on the hoof. You could say that small southern town lawyer wasn't as much a hero as an incarnation of what it means to be a just man. So his heroism in the face of mob violence and the entrenched racism acted out in the courtroom was as natural for him as taking out his rifle and putting the rabid dog out of its misery or putting Scout to bed. They were aspects of that man.
We rarely view the chaotic exuberance of Pentecost from any point of view except the miraculous acts of God. The apostles are bit players, puppets on the string of the Holy Spirit, animated by the artistry of God's cartoon artists, part of a drama way beyond their humble origins. It's a convenient way of letting us off the hook. All we get to do is sigh and wish the Holy Spirit would give us a chance to fall of the wagon of our temperance. We shy from such unlikely and unseemly behavior in all other aspects of our lives, shunning it, putting it in boxes marked irrational, foolish, or a diversion from sober self-control. We tend to consider a lot of it faked by those who don't know systematic theology or biblical scholarship. It's cheap. Besides, what would it do for our reputations? We're a lot like the people in the crowd who stuck their noses up and wondered about these grown men, drunk in the morning. Well, you know how those hillbillies from Galilee are.
The Holy Spirit didn't enter the snobs from Jerusalem, or wherever else those snobs had pilgrimed in from. It entered the apostles. These were the men, for better and worse, that Jesus had chosen -- or more accurately -- who had said yes to his call to follow. They were the ones who clomped after him from gentle Galilee down to rough and tumble Jerusalem. They were the ones who'd run away and hid while he bled and died. They were the ones who had gathered again, trying to figure out who they were now, and where to from here when he came and stood among them. They were the ones.... Their awe and puzzlement, their laughter and tears, their doubt and faltering faith, their willingness to hold onto something and someone so many others had shunned or condemned, these were not only their actions, all of these grew out of them as much as rocking on the front porch grew out of Atticus Finch. So they were there, out of their depth, yes. But there they were, faithful, praying, and open to whatever came next. So when the wind blew, they put up their sails and let it blow them out into deep water. They weren't going to fail Jesus again.
God, I hope I'm not too stuck in my reasonable ruts to let the wind and fire ruin whatever reasonable edifice I have left. I pray that I might be faithful. I pray that I might be a fool, for him. Guess I better get started.
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).
7C
by Keith Hewitt
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
It was like a church.
The museum was like a church, he thought, where men went to worship beauty, to be in communion with the hearts and souls of others who had come before to sit in awe, or to praise, or to simply say thank you to whatever deity they believed in. There were people who could put emotion onto canvas... to build feelings the same way lesser men built furniture or buildings.
Although he knew the way well, he made a show of stopping at the museum directory and "finding" the place he wanted, then tracing out a route with his finger on the glass-covered map of the building. Then, with an increasingly bewildered young man in tow, he made his way across the lobby, up the escalator, through Gallery 7, and -- finally -- to a smaller room off that gallery.
It was more like an alcove, actually, although the elegantly lettered sign clearly said "Room 7C." There was no door. It was only big enough to hold a couple of small benches and the one painting at the end.
The painting...
One did not have to step very far into 7C to realize that the painting dominated the space. Not by size -- it was perhaps three feet tall, and four wide, and by no means took up the wall on which it was mounted; indeed, the space around it seemed to make a perfect frame.
No, it was something more subtle. There was an other-worldly light to it, the way it poured in through the trees on the right and splashed in the clearing, almost as though the artist had been somehow able to capture actual sunlight and bind it to his vision with pigment and shadow. The colors of the leaves on the ground and on the trees that surrounded the clearing were a whisper of autumn, and the fire that smoldered near the center of the picture was its scent -- burning leaves borne on crisp, cool air. Two figures stooped just off-center, one gathering leaves and the other bent under a load of twigs bound to his back, and they were perfect renderings -- sharp enough to define them as people, features somehow distinct, yet vague enough that they could be almost anybody.
And through it all, the brush strokes were there to tease images out of the blank canvas, barely visible at times, bolder in others, but always a reminder that someone had created this picture. One could see them, but didn't mind, because they didn't spoil the illusion that one was actually looking at this scene, but somehow enhanced it.
Somehow...
He stood at a respectful distance, as he had done for years; it seemed presumptuous to just stalk right up to it. Beside him, the young man had stopped as well, and for a moment his guide wondered if this had been a mistake. The young man fidgeted, looking around, tried to check his watch without being seen, but then, as his guide stood motionless beside him, he turned forward and looked at the painting. Actually looked...
The older man could feel the change, sense it in the way his charge was suddenly motionless, as though his feet had been nailed to the floor and his head had been locked into place. No, not quite locked, because it moved subtly, following his eyes as they shifted, flowing through the painting to take it all in. Without much effort, he could convince himself that the atmosphere in 7C had somehow changed.
After a suitable time, the older man stepped closer to the painting, sat down on the bench a couple of yards away; his companion sat down wordlessly beside him. "You've been asking a lot of questions lately," the older man said quietly. "You've asked why we're here -- why humanity is here. And you've asked why certain things are the way they are, in this world."
The young man nodded, still studying the painting before them.
The older man smiled and inclined his head toward the painting. "There's your answer."
Reluctantly, the young man took his eyes off the painting and turned to his guide. "What do you mean? It's... beautiful... amazing... but I don't understand."
"Look at the composition, for a moment you can see the artist's brush strokes, and how they shift, they change, subtle in some places, pronounced in others, so that the strokes themselves become part of the image. Look at the different elements -- the trees, the light, the leaves, the people... it's easily a scene the artist could have encountered in his life, but here, now, it's obviously created. Every single element to this painting -- every image, every bit of color, every brush stroke that tells you how the image was made -- they were all created. All put there by the creator."
The young man's eyes shifted back to the painting, swept slowly over it. "I think I see," he agreed quietly.
"Change any one of those elements, and the painting itself changes. This is a moment in time, a bit of emotion, something that captured what the artist was thinking at the moment of creation. That expression of creation would become something quite different if anything within it changed." He looked at the young man then said, "If this were painted by someone else -- a lesser artist -- it would not capture the same emotions, the same picture. Our world -- our universe -- is God's creation, and every bit of it is woven together with every other bit, to make a whole. Take any bit out... change any part of it, even if it's as simple as taking out the parts we see as bad, or cruel, or that we just don't understand -- take it out, and the picture changes."
The young man's expression changed, and he nodded slowly. "I think I understand."
To be sure, his older companion now pointed to a part of the painting and said, "Imagine taking out those trees, there... or this broken-down cart, here... or the fire. Would it be the same picture?"
"Well, no. It would be different."
"Would it be worse?"
The young man struggled to imagine it with those different pieces missing, finally shook his head. "I don't know. But it would be different."
"Exactly. The artist maybe didn't know what his final painting would look like, how it would mean, what it would say... and there are days when I wonder if God knew everything that he wrought when he created the universe. But if he had done it any differently, it would have been a very different place. And it would not have been the same expression of his own creativity... his own love for us."
The young man turned to him, eyebrows knit together. "Love?"
"Why else would he give us such a place of beauty and majesty? Why else would he give us stars and mountains?" And then he nodded to the painting once more and added, "Why else would he give us people who could do that?"
Then, wordlessly, the two men turned back to the painting and contemplated God's creation in 7C... and saw that it was good.
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.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 19, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
